Is she really as busy as she says?

Yes. But that has never stopped me from 1) recreational reading, and 2) knitting.

But, you say, here you are obviously squandering a few minutes
trying to capture the perfect photo of sap dripping.
Yes, that is also true.

I finished a birthday scarf for one of my best girls, a confirmed Winter palette, who wears wool year round, so I was unperturbed that spring is nosing forward. It's a great scrunchy pattern that is so easy. This is the same woman who coined the term Conceptual Dressing, for the type of clothing choices we notice in Mainers who, when they see that the temperature is 55 degrees F think it is Spring and therefore, out come the shorts and tee shirts.

Photos are mildly blurry because the sky is blurry today also.

The rainbow shawl is growing.

So, how do I do it? Well I make knitting progress by having a project that is easy enough so that I don't have to really pay much attention, but it also can't be completely dull (like acres of Stockinette Stitch) or else I would be bored. Self-striping yarn helps keep the interest up also, as do bright colors.
I am the knitting geek who takes her knitting with her everywhere, in case there is an odd moment to knit. This makes me not resent waiting and makes me more peaceful. I knit through the school music concert last night. I sometimes knit and read, because I have this neat gismo to hold my book pages open. I take odd moments when I can get them.

Color therapy

Crafty Sunday

Some were beading.
Sylvan, carefully threading the tiniest beads onto wire:
Jonas, making earrings to sell at the fair next fall, to earn some money towards next year's skiing habit:
At $15 these lovelies are priced to sell! Let's hope the "age 11" minimum is slightly flexible by a few weeks...

And the new knitting project, a shawl, first seen on Soule Mama's blog a few week's back. Called Simple, Yet Effective 2.0, the pattern is here. It's not free, but it's still good! It calls for one skein of Noro Kureyon sock yarn, which is self-blending, and I used it for my birthday socks last year. (And oh my gosh, if you look at that post, the sweetness of raindrops on irises in June!). For this pattern, you split the skein and alternate the balls so you get stripes.
For this shawl, I chose something in the rainbow family, mostly because I like the idea of wearing rainbows around my shoulders in bleakest March. But rainbows also have special meaning for me and my name: Iris is the goddess of the rainbow in the Greek Pantheon. When my mom was pregnant with me she saw more rainbows in those nine months than in her whole life! (Wait, what part of that last paragraph gave it away that I am a child of the 70s?)

I had overthought this simple shawl and won't bore you with the details, but I decided after about 8" that I didn't love the way the stripes were alternating. So last night ripped it all out, rewound one of the balls and began again. Much better this time, proving to me that listening to my inner-ickometer is better than listening to my husband because we don't always share the same aesthetic.
Both portraits are hanging in my dining room now. At right, the photo taken by my husband when Jonas was just a small angel, maybe only a year old or so; the shiny glass made photographing it here challenging. At left, the portrait in oil crayon by my brother (first seen here) and given to me this February. Two of my most favorite fellows.