Knitting my way up north

Last weekend we headed up north, for those of you not from this area of the country, up north is used to generally refer to going north and heading to a multitude of lakes and woods in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  You don't even say exactly where you are going, but you simply say, we are heading up north and people nod and smile.  Well our "up north" was to my sister's place on the lake in northern Wisconsin. 

When you are on the deck at MK's, you are surrounded by trees and birds and blue skies.  Just a perfect place.  I spent a few hours trying to card and clean some roving I bought a year ago when I was a real newbie spinner.  I didn't inspect it at all, turns out it was just filled with veggie matter.  I tried carding it, didn't get rid of much at all.  The best solution I found was to hand pick it out, one little piece of grass at a time.  And after a couple hours of work I have a small pile of clean roving.  Did I mention that I really splurged and bought 8 ounces of the stuff?  It was so inexpensive!  sigh...I think this could take me all summer to clean.  But it isn't a hard job, just tedious.  And when I finally do get to sit and spin it, I will remember the hours spent outside, working through it.

The biggest drawback of working on the Yggdrasil blanket is not the cables, love those, it is not the color, I love that as well, it isn't even sitting with a pile of wool on my lap in summer, I'm managing that thankfully to careful positioning of a fan.  Nope the biggest drawback is that it has severly curtailed any pictures of cute knitting.  I'm not sure what I can show you that you haven't seen before.  I'm really happy working on it.  I've gotten to the point where it is relaxing and repetitive and soothing.  But there just isn't anything to take pictures of.  Short of stopping work on it to knit something else just to have pictures, I'm really going to have to get creative in my blogging.  So I'm hoping you will stick with me as I push through the last 2 sections of the blanket.

I can tell you I'm starting to plan what I'm going to work on next.  I feel a hat and mitten binge coming on.  So I'm off to peruse Ravelry for patterns that I find interesting.  Living in MN you can never have too many hats or mittens!  Winter is just around the corner....oh and just to end on a corny joke.  MN is 9 months winter and 3 months road repair.  Trust me, the road repair is going full force...