Winter Weekend in Chelmsford

It snowed again this weekend, and I took a walk to do a little grocery shopping (we were out of coffee, a huge tragedy in our house)...

Side street near our house.

Fishbones! Love this restaurant in the middle of Chelmsford.

One of the older buildings in town (1726-ish, IIRC) - it's offices for lawyers now.


Episcopal church a couple doors down from our house - I could hear the organ playing during the morning service as I walked by, very nice.

Our cozy little house. (Love my buddlea on the right of the frame. Very worried about the crab-apple tree in our front yard, it was very unhappy this year!)

Bella and I making the most of our little yard by cross-country skiing all around it (and into the front yard, too, our neighbors are probably thinking - there they go again, crazy people!). With all the new snow, we didn't make it up to Pat's to ski this weekend, so it was good to get Bella out on her little cross-country skis - and she had a blast!

Me, being goofy. I love winter!

That's all, nothing newsworthy, just a nice winter weekend in New England...

More Ruffles...

I actually managed to hem, photograph and list a scarf today. Wow.


Black merino yarn combined with a hot pink tencel that I dyed myself back before I was pregnant with Conall. It's been lying around, looking at me accusingly, so I decided to finally use it in a brightly colored scarf...

I am really having fun with this differential shrinkage stuff. It's very neat to give up a measure of control - weavers are such control freaks - once you put it in the washing machine, all you can really do is cross your fingers and hope it comes out right...

And, obviously, we're home again! We had a very fun trip to Stowe, lots of good skiing for everyone (even on the day that it rained - it just sprinkled up on the mountain and it turned the snow soft-ish, very much like spring skiing - and the rain scared everyone away, so, no lift lines!).

This is what happens when an almost-four-year-old skis for a couple hours:

She was so crashed, she didn't even realize that Tia Lexi had stopped in for a surprise visit (photo by Lexi). Conall knew though, and flirted appropriately.



Very neat to see Lexi! :) And I can't wait to get back up to Stowe - probably next weekend, the cats would never forgive us if we went up again right away. We were looking at real estate listings up there a little bit... So close to being able to swing a little vacation condo, that would be awesome! Maybe in another year or two...

Snow Day!

So, after a week or so of grey, rainy, yucky winter weather, we got a little snow this morning. Hooray! It looks all nice and pretty and white out again (though it's that really heavy, wet snow - great for snowballs, not so great to shovel).

Bella's preschool was cancelled today, so she's been outside playing:

Snow sculpture! How fun....

Stowe

Man, I have been completely lame about posting lately, haven't I?

On the bright side - it was about 60 degrees out early this morning when I went to the YMCA to work out. Wow! Felt like fall, almost. Gorgeous! I love cool weather... And I love that I'm starting to get back in shape (two kids and about two total sit-ups in three years = one very out of shape weaver). Here's hoping that this shapes up to be a fantastic ski season...

Ahhh. One of my favorite places on earth. Mt. Mansfield in Stowe, Vermont. Highest mountain in Vermont, gorgeous views from the top (yup, we've hiked up there, in the winter, no less, skis on our shoulders, ski boots on our feet, for some amazing back-country skiing...). Wonderfully challenging terrain for advanced skiers (especially off the beaten path and especially if you're not afraid of tree skiing), but also a really friendly beginners area on Spruce Peak across the street, where kids/beginners don't have to worry about being run over by skiers bombing down the black diamond runs. A really nice setup. So many ski areas just cut their green (easy) trails back and forth across the hard runs - not a nice learning environment at all. Which, since Ms. Bella will really learn to ski this year, is important to us!

Maybe I can talk Carlos into spending a week in Stowe this winter... Before we had kids we used to rent a house for the season and go up every weekend - sometimes longer (I spent one winter working as a contract attorney and could work from the house up there - hooray for the internet - so I spent 3-4 days there at a time...).

I really would love to live there someday, if we could figure out how (houses are *not* cheap in Stowe, but the school system is very good). Maybe when we retire, if we still have knees at that point, that is, lol.

Two Posts in One Day?

I have the feeling I probably won't manage this very often in the future!

I did manage to list another scarf on etsy today, though, here's one of the pics. It takes me forever to list items, I don't know why. Hopefully it will get faster as I get more used to it... A dress form of some sort would probably help quite a bit.

Man, though, I am loving shadow weave (this scarf is in a rosepath shadow weave pattern). So many pattern possibilities! And so far I've only done it on my little four-shaft loom - when my hubby manages to find time to set my 12-shaft loom back up for me, there will be so much more to try out.

It can be a little difficult to photograph the patterns - natural light really helped with this particular piece, I think.

It came out so wonderfully soft... I love Zephyr (wool/silk blend) and bamboo yarns, and together, they're even better.