Happy Leap Day!

I know, I know, I was planning on posting on the winter solstice. Then I thought New Year's, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day... None of those days resulted in a blog post, but I have finally surfaced.

I'm going to give you a short review of the year to-date, and I'll attempt to return sometime in March with a more lengthy post.

So, what's been happening? January saw our only snowfall of the year—thank goodness we didn't get a repeat of last February! Mr. D and I took a walk up to the park and enjoyed the snowy beauty, and we also spotted an unusual sight: palm trees in the snow!

After two days, the snow was gone.

Later in January, we celebrated Chinese New Year at a party at my friend Sylvia's. She and her husband lived in Singapore for a couple years about 15 years ago, and her husband learned to cook all sorts of New Year delicacies. Welcome to the Year of the Rat!

Probably the biggest event of the year so far happened on February 7. Mr. D and I went up to Everett and attended a Fed Cup qualifier. Fed Cup is a women's tennis team competition. The U.S. team played Latvia in Everett, and we saw the first two matches: Sofia Kenin (who was fresh from winning the Australian Open) versus Anastasija Sevastova. It was a very exciting two-set match, which Kenin won. The highlight of the evening was the second match: Serena Williams versus Jelena Ostapenko. So exciting!!! Serena won in two straight tie-break sets. This was the first live tennis match that I have ever seen and I got to see a legend!

I could go on and on, but I'll just end by sharing some photos from the event:

I have been doing more then walking in the snow, celebrating Chinese New Year and watching live tennis, but I'll save that for my next post. There will be knitting, I promise!

And it Snowed, and it Snowed and it Snowed...

My last post was of the "isn't the snow pretty" variety, but that got old pretty quickly. Between February 3rd (the snowstorm shown in the last post) and February 12th we had four, count 'em, FOUR snowstorms roll through the Puget Sound region.

At first it was fun. Mr. D and I went snowshoeing:

We went for walks to  the post office with a side trip to a cafe, wearing our Yaktrax on our feet.

As the temperature dropped, we observed ice in its various forms and locations:

But mostly, we just watched as the snow just kept coming down, and then cleaned up when it was all over.

There was one benefit from being snowed in for more than a week: lots of knitting time. Here's a sneak peek at one of the projects I worked on, and I'll be back with some of my snow knitting projects (and others) very soon.

Snow in Seattle

It started yesterday afternoon...

The temperature had dropped from about 41 degrees at noon to 32 degrees less than two hours later, and around that time the snow began.

Then it snowed, and snowed and snowed, and this morning that same little Japanese Maple looked like this:

Mr. D and I went for a walk this morning and enjoyed the silence and quiet beauty of a snowy morning.

Happy Winter!

Snow in Spring

It seems like much of the Midwest and East Coast has suffered through a lot of snow since the calendar turned over to spring. Here in Seattle, that has not been the case. With the exception of three warm and sunny days last week, it's been rain, rain, rain for almost the whole past month.

Despite the fact that rain is the most common form of springtime precipitation here, spring snow has been known to occur.

The most recent instance was this year, on March 23rd. The morning started out very cold, the sky was heavy with gray clouds, and for a couple of hours this happened:

In 2013, a snow squall blew through on March 22nd, two days after the spring equinox.

Those poor daffodils!

But the latest spring snow, by far, was in 2008, on April 18th:

The storm struck at dusk, and the rhododendron outside my front door—and the street beyond—was covered in that cold, white stuff.

Fortunately, there are less than 24 hours left in the month of April, so I think we are safe from any more spring snow this year. At least, I hope so...

Traveling to the Land of Winter

As part of my 2015 goals, I promised that I would share more photography on the blog, and this will be one of those posts. Two weeks ago, I traveled to Minnesota, to see my college friends and my nephew in Minneapolis, and to attend the Knitajourney Midwinter Retreat in Duluth. I hear a lot of incredulous, "You're going to Minnesota in winter?" comments from my Seattle friends, but I love getting a taste of real winter on this trip. We have been sadly lacking any true winter weather this year in the Northwest, but going to Minnesota in January gives me my winter fix. So, enjoy my scenes from Minnesota, the Land of Winter!

Winter Sunset over Lake Calhoun

Perfectly Frosty Ice Lamps

Bare Trees and Winter Sky

A Cold Seat

Winter Apples

Winter Handknits

Roof Lines, with Snow

Winter, from the Air

Photo of the Week: Old Man Winter Returns

81/365: Old Man Winter Returns, a photo by jchants on Flickr.

On the third day of spring, and after a winter with almost no snow, we had an intense two-hour snow squall pass through. Thankfully, by noon it was all over and the snow was almost all gone.

Snow Days

It started with just a dusting, but over the next few days, it developed into a real winter storm. Here are some of the scenes from our rare Seattle snowstorm.