Islander Day or February Holiday - whatever, I'll take it.

It's been another few days of bad weather - not a storm per se, but chilly and flurrying and, on Saturday when we got back from Halifax, quite a lot of snow and blustery. Ah well. It has to be over soon.
We had spent 3 days in Halifax because Fred had a medical procedure - didn't do any yarn shopping but I did get a nice haircut - and we visited the new Pier 20 Farmers' Market too. There were free outdoor concerts every noon and evening because of the Canada Games. Katie was going to the evening ones. We ate at Heartwood on Quinpool and the Wooden Monkey too - that was lovely.
We did go for a walk in the outdoors today (it's better than having to take the car to the gym) and, except that I didn't really wrap up properly it was lovely. I'd wished I'd taken the camera with me (but I didn't go back afterward). High tide and lovely pristine snowbanks make a really nice combination. I love the look of the land covered with snow and open water.
Got a fair bit of knitting done on a shawl today - I am trying to get back into the 11 shawls in 2011 - and there's a KAL in the Beginning Lace group on Ravelry which is working on "Ethereal" which is quite nice. Because of all my lace-yarn shopping I have quite a bit so I should be able to make 20 or 30 before running out of yarn or patterns.

The FO thread on the 11 in 2011 group is an inspiring place to find new patterns and great colour combinations. I saw a two-tone shawl in KidSilk and thought - that might be the solution for the several single balls of KidSilk in stash. I am thinking a green and beige or red and beige might be nice. I have two of sapphire blue so those should make a proper size shawl (they are 212 metres each). And I still have that big skein of fleece artist Mo which is over 500 metres. I must be afraid of the mohair as I avoid it so sedulously. Anyway, this ill-placed photo is Ethereal in Knit Picks baby alpaca. As usual it looks like a pile of tangled string, but when it is blocked it should be quite nice.
I forgot to mention that I was wearing my Bitterroot on Thursday when Fred went in for his assessment at 7 am - I found a parking spot, paid for an hour, and went to Starbucks for coffee, where I knit and listened to podcasts (and read The Coast). Then I did the haircut, and then realized I'd left my Bitterroot at Bucky's! Went back (parking by the Public Gardens) and it was there! Some kind Haligonian had turned it in. The one girl who was working there told me how VERY nice it was - I think maybe she was going to get to claim it if I hadn't turned up by the end of her shift. Then later I almost left it at the Wooden Monkey. Sheesh. You would think I don't appreciate the amount of work that goes into these things.