Goodbye snow... hello rain

Hello all!
A special welcome to all those crafters who have come over from Crochet Pattern Central: so nice to see you. Come in and have a look around - the kettle is on, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and take the weight off your feet. I've spent hours and hours clicking my way through CPC, so it's given me a huge thrill to see a link to MY pattern on it - woohoo! That's me! Me!

Well, the snow is melting as fast as the memory of it fades. Piles of brownish slushy snow line every path and street, people have to hop over puddles to avoid getting their feet wet. However bad it might be over here, people in Ireland are enjoying it even less. We've had an unusually cold winter in the British Isles this year. (My mother phoned me in December to report the news of our Big Freeze: "It reached minus 16 degrees Celcius in County Carlow," my mother told me in hushed awe. I had to break the news to her that I'd been forced to do my Christmas shopping at minus 15°C just that previous Saturday, but I got precious little sympathy: the point was, we're used to these temperatures in Bavaria - but this was Carlow, for crying out loud.) The snow brought complete and total chaos to Ireland and Great Britain: no-one has winter tyres for their cars (in Germany people have winter and summer tyres, the winter tyres are more suited to travel in snowy conditions), there aren't that many snow ploughs, and emergency supplies of sand and grit quickly ran out, meaning that many people were forced to take an impromptu enforced holiday and simply stay at home - roads were impassable (do you hear the collective cheering of Ireland's school children?).

Now that the white stuff is melting, local authorities in Ireland have to deal with flooding and, bizarrely, water shortages. Half the country is water-logged, the other half is schlepping buckets of water up the stairs to flush the loo. (Shakes head).

Well, the bad weather's far from over, so I thought we might take up our hooks and make a scarf to protect us from the February chills. This one's quick and (once you get the hang of the pattern repeats) nice and easy. If done extra wide with a lighter yarn, it makes a nice summer scarf as well. As you can see, I've gone for worsted weight (Aran weight) yarn in a vibrant blue.