Happy Holidays!

Today is DD's last day before the holiday break, and in my mad rush to get everything done, I want to pass on some holiday cheer. Check out this tree. [I'm not posting a picture here in respect of copyright, but check out the link!]

I've been promising pictures of my lace-weight yarn, and here it is!



I got 945 yards out of 3.75 ounces (I suspect it was 4 ounces to begin with, but I had some parts I picked out because they were making me mad--much shorter staple length. Grrrrrr!) I'm fairly happy with it, but of course the test will be in the knitting. Now if only I could decide on a pattern....

The bottom yarn is some I managed to spin up, 4 ounces of some beautiful hand-dyed roving my Mom gave me for my birthday. It's not finished yet (need to wet it and hang it to dry). I really love it! I've got another package of the same stuff, and I'm looking forward to getting it spun up, too. I got 135 yards out of that first package. I think it was 2 ounces, but I'm not sure. I'll check later.

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Sometimes I get reminded that I have little ears listening to everything, and maybe I need to clean up my language a little bit. For example, here's a conversation we had this morning:

DS: "Is it close to Christmas?"
Me: "It's VERY close to Christmas."
DS: "Oh my hell!?" under his breath.
Me: [giggling] "Sweetheart, how about saying 'Oh my goodness' instead of 'Oh my hell,' all right?" [Yes, I know I shouldn't giggle, but I do think it's pretty darn funny. Even when he does it in public.]

DH and I were talking last night about how he's very much a boy--he loves testing things to, and past, their breaking point. He wants a remote control car for Christmas (and has for months--ever since the summer, if you ask him what he wants for Christmas, it's always "a remote control" by which he means a remote control vehicle of some kind). He'll be four years old in January, and almost none of the remote control cars out there are made for anyone under eight years old, so I anticipate having a broken RC car pretty quickly. Sometimes he surprises us though!

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I find it pretty amusing that three of the four people who commented about the ice storm video live in warm places! Thank you for your comments, ladies! It's supposed to be around 60 as the high here again, although it's chilly in the shade. Odd weather, that's for sure!

Ice Storm Video

I ran across this video on the local newspaper site. Once you get through the insane line in the grocery store that's just up the street (the line goes all the way through the store), the video shows my neighborhood. They show the street behind our house in the first part of that section.

Today we spent some time chopping up limbs and making a huge pile in the front yard. I've dubbed it the beaver dam, and hopefully tomorrow I'll have pictures. It was snowing too much to have the camera outside, although thankfully none of the snow stuck to the streets. There are a few patches of black ice, but hopefully the (forecast) temps in the 40s tomorrow will get rid of that.

Have a great weekend, all!

Hot water again!

Pretty, isn't it? (All of the pictures are clickable if you want to see larger versions.)



In this picture the icicles are hanging straight down, which wasn't the case for most of the icicles--the weight of the ice caused the tree branches to bow and finally break, and the icicles made interesting arcs.

Our yard looks like a war zone, and the falling branches took out most of our chain-link fence:

That's the neighbor's dog, who was quite interested in all the smells! :-)

Thank goodness the power is back on!

Our house is all electric--there is no gas line to the house. So when the power goes out, so does the hot water and the oven! No cooking, no warm water, no lights, nothing. The power company has done an incredible job of getting us back up and running. The kids are still out of school because about half of the schools here don't have power, but they're getting everyone back up pretty quickly. The original estimate was three to 11 days, so they're really pushing hard! Unfortunately there are still a lot of people without power.

This is the neighbor's tree that almost came through our back door--two more inches and we would've had a lot of glass broken.

It totally creamed our porch swing, and it takes a LOT of force to bend tubular steel! It was a graphic demonstration of why you don't want to be standing under a tree when branches start coming down!

The purple is an outline of the now very oddly-shaped porch swing. I have no idea how we're going to get rid of it. Hopefully the sanitation department will take it, although they usually don't take things like that.

Not much knitting has been done, mostly because this is how I had to do it:



After the power came back on I managed to finished the quilting on the harpiscord cover for my Dad:



I started it before the power went out, and it was just horrible to look at it and KNOW that I couldn't work on it until the power came back on. It was 8 yards of 60"-wide fabric. I managed to get it done in time for my Mom to throw it in her suitcase, throw the suitcases into the truck, and speed to the airport. It was a bit tight there at the end!

Luckily I was able to do some spinning during the brief time that there was enough natural light, and I got the blue sparkly lace-weight stuff done at last! I bought the 4 ounces of roving in May at the Snake River Fiber Fair, and it's taken me seven months to get it spun up. Pathetic! Pictures next time, hopefully.

I hope everyone is staying warm! If the storm is headed your way, go buy D-cell batteries NOW--the entire city of Tulsa seems to be sold out of C- and D-cell batteries and chain saws. Don't forget about non-perishable food, and a way to warm it up. Needless to say, once things are restocked in the stores around here we'll be buying some back-up supplies....

Have a great day!

Still here, but no power

We're still here and doing well, despite being without power (and therefor no heat or hot water) for a day now. Hopefully the power will be on later today or tomorrow, but I've heard reports that it could be up to 10 days. I certainly hope not!

I have lots of impressive pictures of tree limbs down, including one that almost came through our back door! Once the power comes back on and we can fire up my computer, I'll post some of them.

My DH's work has power all the time since they've got generators (part of the building has hospital facilities, so they always have power) so if all else fails and the temp drops too low in the house we can always come and camp out here.

I'd forgotten the joys of washing my hair in really really cold water. LOL!

Have a great week, everyone!