Spring!

2011-2012 has been a really strange winter around my area.  We normally have very hard winters, but this year there has hardly been a week without 1-2 days in the 40s.  There have been a few impressive rain storms that would have been serious snow had they been snow, but overall we are warm and entering spring with a drought.  This weather is confusing to me and it certainly seems to be confusing to my bulbs, which are now sprouted 1-2 inches tall around my house.  This is very strange for March.

Anyway, seeing these sprouted plants makes me focus on spring crafts.  I finished my lacework scarf that I had been working on for a while and won't get the yarn order for my next project until tomorrow, so a filler project is in order.  Perhaps multiple filler projects.

I decided to make the Egg to Bird and Nest pattern from my craft library.  Since it is small, it probably won't take that long.  In fact, I knocked out the white egg portion yesterday in about 90 minutes and am now almost done with the bird body.  I originally wasn't planning on making the nest, but it seems like I will have time so I might as well.  This project will be an Easter gift for my niece, who will be 8 months old by then.  I know that she will be too young to turn the egg into a bird and back again, but I thought she would enjoy watching someone else do it.  Plus I really like giving knitted toys to babies, since they don't have small parts to detach and they are soft (and, depending on the yarn, washable). 

Aside from small projects simply taking less time, this one will also (hopefully) use up stash yarn.  Originally I bought Knit Picks Swish Worsted for a baby hippo I made for a friend's baby.  I had a bunch of Dusk (navy) and Serrano (red) left from that project, so I bought White and used it for the Olympic Hat for my husband.  That used all the Dusk, but I now have White and Serrano left.  Making the egg almost took all the White and now I am hoping to have enough Serrano left to make the whole bird.  The nest will be Wool of the Andes leftover from socks I made for Christmas gifts, which I am also hoping to have enough of to finish.  Stash knitting can be very stressful.