January thaw

It's been just too cold in Rhode Island and so I betook myself to Boca, to visit a dear friend who winters there. I'm the only person I know who'd never been to Florida and I thought it was time to lose my virginity.

When I left T.F. Green airport in Warwick it was 17 degrees F. When I arrived in Fort Lauderdale it was 70, overcast, and very humid. I didn't mind at all. By the time I left Boca Raton, three days later, it was sunny, dry, crystal clear, and drop-dead gorgeous.

This mini-vacation was deeply salubrious. To prolong the ecstasy, I brought back two small bags of Key Limes to make H a Key Lime pie. Before spending an inordinate amount of time juicing the bitty things (with an electric citrus juicer, mind you), I posed them in the alien snowscape just outside my kitchen door. The temperature was, at the time of the photo shoot, about 20 degrees. The pie did not turn out all that well, I am sorry to report, but we ate most of it anyway.

I brought my knitting to Florida, of course, and finished yet another pair of fingerless gloves, this for my friend D who lives in Portland, Maine, and needs all the cold protection she can get. In the photo, they're posed next to a pair I made for Cy's mother, whose birthday arrives in about three weeks. Her mitts, plum colored, are from Debbie Bliss Chunky Merino, and D's are from Queensland Kathmandu DK (a merino, silk, cashmere blend), which I double-stranded. They look white in the photo, but are really a tweedy light brown. Here's the free pattern, on the Vogue Knitting website (you have to register to download it): http://www.vogueknitting.com/free_patterns/ribbed_wristers.aspx

It's on #9 double points and knits up really fast.