Creeping Along

Yes, I have been alive since the blizzard. I've mostly been working on a project that I can't show pictures of yet, but will be able to very soon. I made something that shouldn't ordinarily take a long time, but because of the persnickedyness of the pattern and the size of the wool and needles, it took me a good while to get finished.

When I finally did finish the mystery project, I immediately started on a sweater for the baby girl my niece is currently working on putting together. I'm making the sweater, leggings and hat on the cover of Dalegarn 129.



In a matter of three days I got the entire body done, as well as one of the sleeves.

This is one of the reasons I like making baby things; even with tiny needles and fingering weight yarn, I can still get a lot accomplished in a pretty short amount of time. The only downside that I can see is that there a lot of ends to be dealt with. The leggings are going to be a real monster in that department, but the cuteness factor will make it more manageable.

I also finally finished my cursed Blackhawkey Sockies. Every time I worked on them on a game day the Blackhawks lost. Now that the socks are finished I tested wearing them on a game day, Sunday afternoon. The Blackhawks lost in overtime.

Perhaps I need to start making socks for the other guys...

After

OK, so after looks a lot like During, mostly because the additional 5 or 6 hours of storm didn't actually happen.



This is the only window that we have on the south side of the house. Because the wind was mostly from the north northeast, this side of the house got a lot more snow than the windward side did.



The dog trying to swim through the snow. He hasn't been able to run around in the yard since Tuesday afternoon. I shoveled out a couple of paths for him so that he could at least get off the patio to do his business.



Husband got the sidewalk next to the house shoveled off (it's on the south side of the garage, which is again why so much snow.) It feels like going through a tunnel.



Daughter has been making tunnels and snow caves. This is her just outside the living room window. She's close to 5 feet tall, and you can see the snow is up to the top of her chest.



I think this will be one of the more memorable Groundhog Days that I'll ever have.

During

It started snowing at 2:00 yesterday afternoon. We got at least an inch every hour, aand because of the 40-50 mph winds, there are drifts everywhere.



That's Husband trying to get the sidewalk shoveled out so we can get to the garage and the snowblower.



Murray (that's the snowblower) is my new hero. He's a little guy, but he's been out there taking the 8 inches out of our driveway like a trooper.



Our street hasn't been plowed since 7:00 last night. Our neighbor across the street works for our Park District, and he's been on plow duty. He got up very early this morning and had to walk out to the main street because there's no way anything short of a snowcat is getting up or down our street.



The fence in the backyard is four feet tall.

Snow's supposed to keep coming down for 5 or 6 more hours, so we'll see how this all ends up.

The Before

As you are probably aware, I live in the Chicagoland area. They have been telling us for the last week or so that a big storm is headed our way. As time has gone by the meteorologists have been predicting worse and worse weather for us. As of this morning we are expecting the worst storm the area has seen since 1967, with the blizzard watches having been upgraded to blizzard warnings.

I thought it might be interesting to have some before and after pictures to record this event, so here is what our neighborhood looks like today.












Stay tuned for updates as the snowpocalypse hits us this afternoon and evening.

False Start

Happy New Year everyone. Yes, it's true that the new year has been around for nearly two weeks already, but I find that it's best to give it a little time to feel the new year out before assuming that it will be happy. As Sherlock Holmes says, it is a capital error to theorize without data.

And based on the data that I have accumulated thus far, it is going to be a year full of challenges and partial triumphs. I started the year by casting on for a new pair of socks. It's one of the October Rocking Sock club offerings called Buggin Out. (Ravelry Link)



It's made with a nice deep green that I like very much. The pattern at the bottom of the photo is supposed to look like a spider. I was a bit concerned while making them that they seemed a little on the narrow side, but they called for the same number of stitches to begin with that I usually use with this yarn and needles, so I figured that they would just stretch to fit.



So I continued on, creating spiders and turning the heel and knitting up about half of the foot. This is the point where I start trying the socks on to see when I need to start the decreasing for the toes. Unfortunately I was unable to determine if the foot was long enough because I could not get my own foot into the leg portion of the sock. While it is true that the ribbed portions of the sock stretch nicely, those cute little spiders do not. Not at all. Not even a little bit. After finishing almost 3/4 of a sock before determining that it won't fit on anyone other than Olive Oyl, I ripped the whole thing out and wound it back into a ball. I'll have to come back and revisit these when I am not so mad at them.

In the meantime, I started another pair of plain socks using some wool I got several years ago from Interlacements. These will certainly not be socks to wear to a somber gathering.

A Christmas Miracle

This year for Thanksgiving Daughter, Husband and I went to visit Brother and his family in the Detroit suburbs. We had a very enjoyable time which included eating a lot of food, as well as a little of a new hobby that Daughter and I have taken up called geocaching. Before we left for Detroit I looked up a few caches that would be close to Brother's house and got the details.

Here we are after finding the first cache. It was a little chilly out, and there was a very brisk breeze blowing that day, so we only found two of the three that I had looked up.

While we were digesting our turkey feast, brother mentioned that his hunting hat was getting too stretched out for his taste, and would it be possible to make him a new one? He wanted a Liberty Cap in hunter's orange, if possible. It seemed like an easy enough request, so I said yes.

The first step in the process was acquiring the yarn. In case you haven't checked your local yarn purveyor recently, you may not know that hunter's orange is not a well stocked item. Perhaps the problem was that I was trying to find it just after hunting season, but the yarn proved tricky to find. I eventually turned to the internet and found a company selling hunter's orange wool. I ordered a cone of their HunterSafetyOrange just to be sure I didn't run out. It came soon after and I made up a gauge swatch to see how it would work up.



Next I had to locate a pattern for a Liberty Cap. The internet came to the rescue in this department as well, although the first pattern that looked promising turned out to be sized for an 18 inch doll rather than a real human being. I finally located a pattern here that I was able to use with a few modifications.

The next step, of course, is to actually knit the thing. For reasons unknown to me, at least on a conscious level, I didn't start doing the real knitting until Christmas Eve. To make it an even better challenge for myself, I needed to have it done and ready to go by 9:00 in the morning on the 26th, which was when Brother and his family were leaving Parents' house to go back down south.

I got ready to start and discovered that I had everything that I needed except a crochet hook. The pattern calls for a provisional cast on, and the only way I know how to do one is using a crochet hook. I asked Mom if she had one, and after searching in several locations she told me that she did not. I was momentarily concerned that the hat might not happen, but then brother asked me for the specification of a crochet hook. I told him that it was just a long piece of thick wire with a hook on the end. He then borrowed a piece of old coat hanger from Mom, went down to the workshop, and came back minutes later with this:



It's not particularly pretty, but it got the job done. I spent most of Christmas day knitting. I took a couple of breaks to play Scribblish and watch a family movie classic (Boxman, for those of you in the know.) Most of the day, however, looked like this:



(Thank you again, Honey, for the cool new Blackhawks jammie pants.) At the end of the day, the very end of the day, I finally finished it off, built a tassel using no instructions whatsoever, and washed and conditioned the hat. I set it out in the living room hoping it would be at least mostly dry by morning.

It did not dry completely, but that didn't stop Brother from putting it on and modeling it just before getting into the car and speeding away.



Looks pretty good for a hat knit in a day.

Socks, Check

I finished the socks. The pattern is called "My Heart Beets 4U." If you look at the heel in just the right way, it is supposed to look like a beet, with the pattern on the leg forming the beet greens.





I don't know that I really see it, but they are good looking socks, even if I can't see the cuteness of them.

I'm glad that they're done because the beginning of the end starts tomorrow when we leave for 4 days at Kohler Andrae state park in Wisconsin.