Icelandic Single and Kool-Aid Dyed Socks

This month I'm doing my "Fair" spinning. Yarns that meet the requirements for the State Fair, but that I hope to be able to enter one or more for judging at Black Sheep Gathering and then the county fair. My first one I had hoped to be a thicker more worsted weight yarn but the fiber didn't want to cooperate. ;-) It was full of hay and other veggie bits and then kind of neppy. The fiber? Icelandic roving with both the tog and thel that I picked up during the Seattle-Portland Yarn Train Crawl at Urban Fiber Arts:

I ended up with 247 yards:

 On the bobbin

 Off the bobbin, soaked and washed and twist set

Showing the strands. It's surprisingly soft yarn even with the tog.  What to knit with it after all the Fairs?

I had a different sock planned in my queue but last month as I was going through my Christmas bin I found another pattern - Twists and Turns. I thought it would be great for the intended yarn, my Kool-Aid overdyed Lion Brand Sock-ease. Formerly Cotton Candy, I dyed it with Cherry, Tropical Punch and Black Cherry. The yarn came out a bit more orange-red than planned. Then because of the yarn wraps to hold in place, there were lots of places where dye never reached. At knit night they said it looked fine and to keep it that way. It bugged me, so I over dyed again with Black Cherry after I completed the socks.

Yesterday we had a break in all our rain and had a sunny day. We took the dogs for a nice walk, but didn't have the camera. Since it wasn't raining today and I had the camera outside for the sock photos, plus the yard was freshly mowed....I was able to see that my violas were blooming:

Which caused me to discover that the Bleeding Heart is getting ready to burst forth into blooms:

The Asian Pear is also loaded in blooms and hopefully will become future fruits:

At least one Mason bee has come out of its tube, hopefully its also laying larvae in one of the other tubes over the season. Still have five others that need to come out, but we're back down below 60 degrees again and some areas got snow last week.