Snowmageddon 2011

We have a lot of snow.

A LOT. (Not alot, that's a whole different thing.)

How much snow do we have? Well, 14" + at this point.

Here's looking out across the cul-de-sac to the neighbors' house, with the kids helping Richard shovel the driveway:

I took this picture to show the impressive drift at the corner of the roof:

The one along the fence is cool, too.

Here's Gillian's snow fort that she made using the snow from the driveway:

So that was February 2nd.

Today we got MORE snow:

I figure we got about 2" more, judging from the arms of the chairs.


The kids have been out of school Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today. I suspect there won't be any school on Monday and possibly later since they're predicting more snow, and none of the neighborhoods around here have been plowed. This is a record-setting amount of snow and this area just isn't equipped to deal with it.

The grocery stores are pretty impressive--I've *never* seen the entire egg, bread, meat, and milk sections decimated, but there is NOTHING left on the shelves. Greg managed to time it just right this afternoon and got four dozen eggs at Braum's, thank goodness! I hadn't realized how many of my favorite recipes use eggs until we were down to five eggs.

Thank goodness we've not lost power so far! The 30-something hours we were without power a few years ago was sufficiently traumatic that we've stocked up on mini-propane tanks for our indoor-safe heater, but I'm hoping we keep power through the next wave of ice/snow.


Despite the kids being home I've managed to get a little bit of quilting done. This one, actually, was finished a few weeks ago but I'm just now getting to posting about it. This is Carolyn Lamp's quilt. She bought the blocks (minus centers) at a garage sale and put them together. I think it's a gorgeous quilt!



Aaand now Ryan wants my help with taking a bath so I'm off to do that and get back to quilting.

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm!

Back to School!

The storm dumped a bunch of snow, but it hasn't shut everything down the way the last ice storm did (thank goodness).

The kids *are* going back to school tomorrow, which is great! The only bad thing is that I've managed to come down with a horrible head cold, so I'll be canceling on going to the library to process holds like I normally do on Mondays. Can you imagine how I could spread this virus, handling a few hundred books? [Not to mention that I'm not very with it at the moment.]

I took some pictures of the weather, although they're not all that much different than the ones from the last post, you can see the snow is a lot deeper. Looking at the patio set in the back, I'd say we got around 6" at least.


I'd gotten some paperwhites right after Christmas, and I was so excited about them -- until they bloomed.

It took me about a day to figure out where the really nasty week-old newborn diaper smell was coming from.

I took this picture after putting them outside because I couldn't stand the smell any more. Unfortunately they've now drooped and I've probably killed them.

Pretty though, aren't they?


Speaking of pretty, the ice on all of the trees is pretty spectacular, especially with the sun shining through the ice.


I finished Gillian's new mittens a little while ago, and she took them out for a test:

The thumbs are blue because I ran out of purple yarn. LOL! She doesn't seem to mind, thankfully.

This next picture gives a pretty good idea of just how much ice we got.


On Thursday afternoon while it was snowing I managed to spin up one of the braids that my Mom and Karen helped me dye:


I still need to ply it, but I'm going to wait another day or so until the singles aren't so energized so I don't have as many tangles to deal with. As usual, I've wound it into a center-pull ball and I'll ply from both ends of the ball. Once that's done and the twist is set, it's on to the next braid. I have five braids total, and I can't wait to get it all done so I can start knitting it up into a Bono Kimono (Ravelry link). I'm shooting for a heavy worsted-weight yarn but we'll see. According to my spinner's control card the singles is 22wpi, which might *just* be worsted once the twist is set. I could be surprised though! This is really the first project where I'm trying very hard to go for a specific weight.

Speaking of knitting and spinning, thank you Fillyjonk, Marianne, ShortOldLady, Denise, and Calista for your comments on the last two posts. :-)

I'm going back to bed now and try to sleep off this cold.

I hope you all had a great weekend!

Ice Storm

We're getting walloped by the weather around here.

It started raining yesterday, which froze as soon as it hit the ground. Right now it's snowing.
So far we still have power, and hopefully we'll continue to have power. We keep having flashbacks to the ice storm of 2007, also known as The Ice Storm of Doom. LOL!

This time around we've got a propane indoor-safe heater, so things won't get quite as bad as 2007 as long as the power doesn't go out for too long.

I haven't actually ventured outside yet, but I did take some pictures from inside.

This is how the hoses looked this morning around 9:00:


Two hours later, after the snow started, they looked like this:

It's continuing to snow so they're quite a bit more buried now.

Here's the patio set:


The next-door neighbor's weeds (yes, they're so big they're growing above the fence--this one is about 12' tall):

The back fence (with the other neighbor's sagging patio cover) and lots of icicles:

It's really, really nasty out there. The problem isn't the snow, it's the 3/4" of ice all over everything. Greg actually stayed home from work today, which makes me worry a LOT less. He said he went to get on the turnpike (about a mile south of us) and the ice pellets started hitting his windshield. He said that getting there probably wouldn't be a problem, but getting home again after snow all day could be a *big* problem.

I was supposed to go scrapbooking tonight but I'm going to call and cancel. It's just not worth it to go anywhere, especially since we're normally there until around midnight.

I hope all of you are staying warm, and that all of my local friends don't lose power!

Merry Christmas!

It's been busy in the run-up to Christmas, so I've been enjoying being lazy for the last few days.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have been wonderful!

Here's the tree before Santa came:

See those two big boxes with the striped paper? Those are mine. LOL! The bottom one is a wonderful new computer chair (that I'm sitting in while posting this -- it's fabulous!), and the box on the top is a new set of pans! I'm pretty spoiled.

Here's after Santa came and filled the stockings:

This is one of the ornaments I made this year:

I used my Cricut machine and a file I downloaded after seeing it on the Sure Cuts A Lot list (the software that allows me to create files and cut them using the Cricut).

We managed to hold off the kids from opening presents until 7:30, although they sure looked over everything until we let them have at it.


Karen is looking out the back door at all the snow (more about that in a bit).

Christmas wouldn't be complete without a holiday apron, right? Here's the one I made last week, as a prototype for one I made for Karen:


I mentioned snow. Yes, we got some!
It started out as rain, then became frozen pellets of ice (but not quite hail), then turned to snow. Here's when it was ice:



After dinner, this is what we saw:




The kids about popped. Grandma took pity on them and went out with them for a few minutes, although they didn't last too long (it was COLD and really windy).

Here's my new set of pans!


Hopefully later I'll have some more pictures to post. We need to take a picture of some of Karen's aprons (she got four!) and my gorgeous wooden swift, among other neat things.

I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas, and a happy holiday season!

Pretty things

We finally had good enough weather for me to get some pictures taken this morning! All weekend was icky weather, with lots and lots of rain. Not so good for taking pictures but great for the plants. First up (speaking of plants) are some pictures of my amaryllis. This is such a gorgeous plant! Greg had been teasing me about watering an empty pot, but we finally got this: There's still one blossom to come. I'm really enjoying this plant!

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I promised better pictures of the yarn for the Yarn Dash, and here they are: This picture is in strong light and is probably the closest-in-color to the yarn in real life. (Monitors vary, of course!) This next picture shows the slight variations from the kettle-dyeing technique: It's 880 yards/100 grams of lace-weight merino wool. This will make a gorgeous shawl! (Or anything else you'd like to use it for. LOL!) Go sign up for the Yarn Dash if you haven't already, and this skein of yarn could be yours.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Gillian came up with this drawing this morning before school and I think it's just too wonderful not to share.


Unfortunately I heard we're in for six more weeks of winter. :-(

More pictures

This post could also be titled "Machine Monday, Three Days Late."

First, last night we had a kind of blah sunset, but the light from the sunset shining through the ice on the trees was pretty darn spectacular!

YOU MUST click on the pictures to see the light. It doesn't show up in the small pictures, 'k?

I was just entranced! Then I went back inside because it was cold!

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Next up, Karen's Birthday Quilt Which Is Late. Yep, that's it's official name right now.



I'm struggling with a design for the blocks. My Mom suggested a free form feather, but I'm still waffling. It'll come to me in the next day or so, hopefully.

And now I've got a splitting headache so I'm going to bed. At least the kids (finally!!) go back to school tomorrow.

Ice Pictures

Today is stunningly beautiful, but it's still nasty outside.

(As always, click the pictures to embiggen!)





That's ice, not snow. Little tiny pellets of ice.
It rained ice all day yesterday, starting at about midnight, and didn't stop until sometime last night. Now it's sunny out and it's all melting, so we might actually be able to resume our lives tomorrow!

Luckily the kids are being really good.

Yesterday afternoon they put a cup of water outside to see what would happen, and this is what they brought in this morning:




I'm fascinated by the air bubbles!

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In knitting news, I've been working a little bit on my Hyrna Herborgar shawl. This is where I stopped yesterday, and I'm really glad to be finished with the double yarnovers for a while.


I'm using some of my early hand spun and I'm learning a lot about how I want to spin differently for the next lace-weight project.

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I've been doing some quilting, trying to get my sister's quilt finished. I'll work on taking some pictures in a little bit.

I hope you are all having a great week so far!

Yarn

Wow, how's that for a post title? Yeah, not feeling real creative at the moment. :-)

Let's start with the yarn:

This is some KnitPicks Bare in fingering weight that I dyed. I love the colors, they're exactly what I was shooting for.

A gratuitous close up:

I'll be using it for Sivia Harding's Dué Amore fingerless mitts, which I'm way excited about. I got beads yesterday and I hope to cast on tomorrow.

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Here are some pictures from earlier in the summer that I don't think I posted.

First up, a Black Swallowtail caterpillar.


We had a TON of them this summer. They only eat parsley and one other plant (I can't remember what it is, but we don't seem to have any in this area) and as you can see they ate a lot of parsley. It's been neat to see more butterflies around.

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This was an awe-inspiring cloud and moon that we saw when my MIL and niece were here.


And last up, one of the three black widow spiders we (read Greg) uncovered when moving the landscape block to make the island in the front yard.

Be sure to click and embiggen (if you can handle a large spider picture!). Each of the three he found were about 3" from tip of leg to leg.

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That's all from me for the moment. I hope everyone is having a great week!

Quick post

I have a TON of things I want to blog about but I can't seem to get my act together.

In the mean time, here are some pictures of some flowers in the front bed:





We even have snapdragons in bloom!! It's incredibly windy today (after two days of rain for a total of maybe 5" -- that's what was in the garbage can when I dumped it the other day) so I haven't gotten pics yet but I will soon.

The powers-that-be cancelled school today because so many roads were flooded that they were worried about busses being able to get kids to school, so that's added to the chaos around here.

Have a great weekend, everyone, if I don't manage to post again before Saturday.