Uthvilt

Wow, that trip to Chicago really took it out of me. I've been sleeping in as late as 7 or even 8 in the morning all this week, and am only now starting to feel caught up.

I was delighted to come home to a blooming garden. Here are a few things that are springing to life in our yard:

This is the most exciting blooming thing, namely our apple tree, which was planted last fall. But there are also quite a few volunteer flowers that I'm very fond of:

This is hvitveis, the classic early spring flower that in some places here blankets the forest floor. We've just started getting a few clumps in our yard. I caught these on film just before KE mowed them down! Then there are these sweet little violets:

I totally love these, but I couldn't get a non-blurry picture since it was a pretty breezy day and I'm not a very patient photographer.

I also finally got around to taking some work-in-progress pictures of the two sweater projects I've got going. The first is that crazy pink mohair yarn that L in Eugene gave me:

I just have to knit the two fronts, finish the second sleeve, sew it together, then figure out what to use for the ruffle edging. I'm thinking of a green that matches the green accents in the yarn. It's a wild project for this drab gal. The other thing I'm working on is much more my style:

 These are the arms for the cabled pullover that I started two weeks ago. It's slow going on size 3mm needles with cables every sixth row.

In other exciting news, I think I have a new hobby! For the longest time I've been wanting to get into orienteering or geocaching or something like that, and yesterday when we walked to the grocery store we were met by some folks from the Nesodden sports club who were selling map packets for this season's "turorientering." Basically, they set up 70 "posts" out in the woods, mark them on the map, and then you walk around finding them and clipping them on a card (there's also a bingo card too for a lottery drawing). Here's the basic equipment:

It's such a totally nerdy thing to do! Today we went out and spent about two hours in the woods. In part we were on familiar trails, but the posts forced us off in new directions too, so it's a great way to get to know the area better. Here's our first every post sighting:

And here's E and I clipping our second family post (KE snuck off while we were relaxing and bagged a third post, but I'm saying that one doesn't count!):

(E did the actual clipping seconds before KE too this picture. I know it looks like I'm the one doing it here, but he did get to do it himself!) It was mostly fun, though E had a few hissy fits along the way, of course.