quiet mornings

The mornings lately have been so very quiet (once the cat is done yowling). Yesterday was especially quiet because it was raining. All the world's sounds were muted, and it seemed as if everyone in the city had decided to stay in bed.


even the coffee shop was empty at 8:30

Just by chance -- well, actually by mandate of the cat -- I have been waking up the same time every morning, about 15 minutes before sunrise. HWWLLB stays in bed a bit longer and snoozes or reads, so the house is silent and I've been getting out my yoga mat to practice for 15 or 20 minutes before getting ready for work. It's so wonderful. I leave all the curtains open, and the morning sun slowly starts to fill the room as I wake up stretching and opening my mind and body. It really puts me in a happy, peaceful mood to start the day.

Afterwards I love running outside in the cold to get the newspaper, inhaling the sharp cold air and then the warm, warm house again when I come back inside. The sky is also very beautiful just at sunrise. I love looking to the west, where the light is just beginning to warm up the cool gray. I love how black winter branches are silhouetted against it. Lately I've been walking around all the time with my head back, gaping up at the different kinds of branches against the beautiful winter sky.

As you can imagine, all of this really puts me in a mood to stay home and knit. I am dreaming of yarn all day long.

The cloche is coming along all right; I ran out of yarn with just a few inches to go and had to order some more and then wait, wait wait for the mailman to bring it.

In the mean time, I started swatching for a design I've been thinking about & doodling for a girl's spring/fall sweater. I swatched it with some Shine Sport (which is a cotton/modal blend) and the swatch was just lovely, but a bit too lightweight for what I was imagining. So I went yarn-browsing on Ravelry. Have you ever used their yarn browser function? It's dreamy. The filters let you narrow down to a handful of yarns that match all your specs - so after a few minutes of filtered browsing, I had a short list of machine-washable, worsted-weight, cotton-blend yarns with 4-star or 5-star ratings to go investigate.

So I investigated, and came home with a bunch of Lion Cotton-Ease, though I'm not so sure about the color. I think I need to head over to the LYS after work to look for some of the other yarns that were on the list. Duty calls!

And now the rest of the cloche yarn has arrived, so it's time to wrap that up before I get too enthralled with the next project.

I hope you find some quiet to dream or knit in today!