Murphy and I enjoyed a wonderful walk this morning. We walked around the "big lake" as the sun was coming up, and he only had to be carried a little bit. He's getting into the spirit of walking, vs. sniffing every blade of grass, dragging behind, pretending to pee. The last one is my absolute favorite - he pauses and hikes a leg and stands there looking into the distance as if meditating, but nothing is happening, if you know what I mean, because he has long since emptied his bladder on every tree and light post along the way. I say, "You're faking it, keep walking!" and he gives me a look of utter disgust, because I rudely interrupted his moment. But after pulling the fake pee trick a couple of times and getting carried for a couple of hundred yards, he suddenly got into the joy of a brisk walkie and did great the rest of the way. I hope this bodes well for the future. I know when it gets too hot he will want to turn into an anchor at the end of the leash, so I have to take advantage of this pleasant weather to develop his walking habit - and my own.

The weather is unreal - today we may hit 80 degrees. 80?! Little wonder I am not inspired to work with wool, and I'm already thinking of light shawls and sleeveless dresses. In response to some Taggers - yes, I'm definitely considering all cotton, I'm also considering a mostly cotton-wool blend. It will depend on the drape of the yarn - and my first preference is to use something from the Stash From Hell. I actually have some chocolate brown sport weight cotton in my insane stash that would probably do the trick, and I think I'll swatch it later. This is the pattern I have: St. Seraphina Knits and it really is just as easy as it claims - I did a fooling-around swatch yesterday with some Cascade Key Largo, also from the stash (nice soft yarn, wrong color) and it meets my must be practically-a-no-brainer tv watching knitting standard, and it goes very quickly, too. The designer helpfully includes instructions for a test swatch, to demonstrate how easy the pattern really is, which is perfect for my purpose of sampling stash yarns to find the right candidate.

Of course, I suspect this lovely warm snap will be followed by a late cold spell, so while I'll be wearing shorts and doing yard work today, I'll be whining about the cold at the end of March. I recall the cold weather lasted late last year, too. So don't worry Girlchild, I'm not going to slack off on finishing Bardot.

I also worked on the French Market bag yesterday. I finished the bottom and got about 2 inches up the sides, while watching the Monk marathon. I did some useful chores, too, like clean out the kitchen pantry. I won't tell you how out of date some of the stuff in the back corners was, and there is no truth to the rumor that the Smithsonian expressed interest in a couple of the cans.

I'm off today, and after a trip to the Mighty Tar-jay, I'll put in some quality time in the backyard. I'm resisting the urge to start planting, because as I said, I'm convinced this warm snap is a fluke and we have plenty of time for a hard freeze or two before winter is really over.