Tuesday morning when I woke up, it was -30C (from a reliable thermometer. I do think the tall trees round here hold in the cold the same way they hold cool in the summer. The nearest Weather office station said -26C) and by lunchtime, people were going round with unzipped coats or no coats.  There are tons of things I'd like to say about the weather we have been having, but this is a family rated blog.  Besides, technically, it is still winter.  

Before this degenerates into a completely weather related day, I'll move on to something sensible.  

Some time ago, I started knitting a blanket for son3.  He asked for something with no holes, and when asked what colour he wanted, in a very guy way, he said orange.  What he meant was he had no idea and he was going to leave it up to me.  

I ordered the yarn and planned to start a fantastic colourwork piece, but with Mr. Needles vest on the go, I decided to save my sanity to I started this.

Carrying two strands up the side was making me nuts. As I worked up the rows, the two yarns would tangle and twist and before I knew it, I had a yarn barf ball that had to be released each and every time I had to switch colours.  I did not like the gauge I was getting.  I hated the clunky big needles but most of all, the pattern was singularly uninspiring.

Over the winter, with a lot of time spent mulling blankets, I decided to switch everything around.   I picked up a few more balls of yarn in some rich eye popping colours and...

Much better. Smaller needles.  Fun pattern.  No carrying yarns.  Brainless brier watching knitting (Brier = Tim Horton's Brier - 2011= curling, the real Canadian winter sport ). Eventually these colour blocks will be the Moderne Log Cabin from Mason Dixon Knitting.

Plus its got orange.