Cold, Cold and More Cold

Not to sound too much like a broken record but it is very cold out again today.   We are setting all kinds of records (or at least coming close to records) for coldest;  coldest February, lots of snow, wind chill, biggest potholes, most salt used, you name it we have it in Buffalo.  The temps got down to below zero and wind chills much less than that.   But although it is cold today, at least the sun is out.  Yeah!

Lots of opportunities to wear lots of warm knitted wool.  I have my long johns on under my cords and my sock liners on under my wool socks in the hopes that I will stay warm when I pick up the little girl today.

This week was supposed to be a full week of school for her, but she got sick on Tuesday and stayed home with me.  A little 24 hour bug that didn't affect us, thank goodness.

Lots of finished objects in the knitting department since the last time out:

 My Valentine Socks  finished in time for Valentines Day

A Turn a Square Hat for hubby with a little longer ribbing to cover his ears and this was done in grays and red.

The anniversary socks finally finished.

 A Windschief hat in navy for Mike

And a pair of socks for me for St. Patrick's Day.

All the socks are Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's plain sock top down heel-flap recipe with various rib variations, my go-to and much loved pattern.  My Valentine socks have some components of "I Love Gansey" from the "Sock Club".  The green sock's are the "Cynthia Variation" that Jasmine and Gigi of the Knitmore Girls talk about and I love how it looks with this self-striping Felici.  That yarn is going away and it is as soft as a baby's you-know-what.  I love the feel of it as I'm knitting so I ordered another couple of colors, again bright, happy colors (no way this winter is going to get me down).  At this rate my sock yarn box is never going to go down since I have replenished and then some what I have knit.

I have hubby's St. Pat's socks on the needles, just begun really.  That means I have 17 days to finish them.  I have never made a pair of totally Fair Isle socks and it is proving to be a little slow going.  That will be my only project until they are done.  We'll see how long they take.

I have a plain pair of socks for homework time that I have dubbed Mardi Gras socks because of the time of year and their very happy colors.  I won't have them finished for Mardi Gras which is Tuesday, but I think the bright color combination will lift my spirits until it starts to warm up.

Looks like I am still in the Happy Land of quick, small projects.  Sure gives me a sense of accomplishment!

Hat-o-rama

Last week was a perfect week for using hats.  Forget about hat hair, it was so cold and windy. hats were a must.

In the crazy weather-winter we are having, there was another polar vortex on Tuesday, with wind chills in the -25 degree range, so the schools were closed.  Yeah!  Wednesday, it was only slightly warmer and the forecast called for it to get warmer by 11:00 a.m.  Most schools remained closed but not ours!  They had a two hour delay, which meant a lot of scrambling for parents.  The weather forecast was very wrong.  They forgot to mention that there would be snow and blowing wind all day, which made it the worst driving conditions I think I've driven in all year.  It was miserable!  Got everyone home safely, including two friends of the boy.  It was just too cold for them to walk home.  Saturday it rained!  Then it got cold enough to make Hat weather indeed.

I am doing well on my stash knitdown.  I have 11 items finished since the beginning of January. The remaining projects include five hats, three pairs of fingerless gloves,  two cowls and a sock and a half for my Valentines socks.  Small projects are really eating through the leftover yarn piles.

I have two larger projects that I am itching to get started on.  Once I get through the hat and fingerless glove set for Hubby and my Valentine gloves, oh, and the hat I promised #2 Son-in-law, I will start one of them. Both of them need total concentration, so I can work on them only when I am listening to books or TV shows that don't need too much attention.  That means I can have one or two of the small, portable projects when I am doing homework, waiting for appointments, riding in the car and all the other times I need mindless knitting.  Who knows, maybe this year I will totally become a project knitter.

Here are some pictures:

Wurm

Fartlek

Windschief Scarf

Lovesocks for Hubby for Valentines day.

The Miracle of Blocking

Day off today, which is funny since I don't work.  The kids have off for MLK day, so I get to stay home. There has been a flurry of knitting at my house.  I have (drum roll please) seven completed items for January. I am loving making small items like hats and cowls and fingerless mitts, using up stash yarn and making very welcome, warm items.

It is going to get freezing cold here again this week.  Temps below zero with lots of wind.  Yeah for wool!

This weekend we watched the playoff games and I knit up a storm.  This knitdown is really making me happy and I find myself planning the next project using up yarn in my stash.  The problem is I keep finding more and more oddiments that need to be destashed.  Here is the winding station I have set up on my dining room table with a few of the skeins waiting to be turned into yarn cakes to use in up-and-coming projects.

This is not, however the yarn I am using for the January Small Knits Throwdown .  That consists of yarn left over from finished projects where more than a skein has been leftover, or a project that has sat in my craft room so long, the recipient has outgrown it.  I am teaming these oddiments up with new patterns.  Although a few new yarn projects may creep in, such as the new hat for hubby since he lost his.  I had to buy a skein of Cascade Aran in grey and I made him a Windschief hat over the weekend.  What a fast knit!  I may have to make this hat for all the boys in the family.  It is good looking and snug like they like their hats.

I think I am going to make the matching cowl for hubby.  He's not so sure he will like it (is it too girly?)  but I think it will be a nice warm addition to his outdoor gear and won't get in his way like a scarf does.

Here are the items I have complete so far that I have not posted:

 Homework Socks

 Cowl

  Snuggly Cowl

Elephant Hat for Jordyn

I have enough of the white yarn left to make matching fingerless gloves using the Koolhaas pattern that will make a really nice set of hat, cowl and mitts.  The Snuggly Cowl and the Magnolia hat used up the leftover

yarn from my Central Park hoodie with this much left over

I wasn't going to make the Elephant hat because it was a little small.  I probably should have made it 4 years ago when elephants were her favorite animal.  She is now into dragons and cheetahs.  However, I have a long queue of fair isle sweaters and hats that I have waiting and I haven't done this technique in a number of years, so I decided to make the hat as practice.  I added an extra row of border between the two elephant motifs and used a size larger needle.   I think I held my yarn a bit too tight with the large elephant motif but by the time I got to the small elephants, I had relaxed a bit and loosened up my tension.  I don't have a before picture, but when I finished I wasn't terribly pleased, as the stitches were a bit uneven and wonky.  As the yarn is a washable wool, I wasn't expecting much after blocking, but boy was I surprised.  The yarn relaxed in the bath and the hat is beautiful.  

Something I am really learning, especially as I use up yarn that has been sitting around for a while, blocking can be your finished garments best friend and make you look like a superstar knitter.

Rainy Saturday

The weather people got it right.  We are now having near 50 degree temps and lots of rain.
I had off three days this week, since Jordyn had a dentist appointment yesterday and Daddy picked her from school.  I think because of that I got two more projects completed, Chiara's birthday gloves

and a hat made with City Tweed leftover from my Central Park Hoodie  that I finished in 2010.  Good grief.

I have enough left to make a cowl to match.

The kids are sleeping over tonight, so I probably won't get much knitting done.  With the damp and cold, I have some homemade pea soup and Dilly bread for dinner.

Blizzard

Because we had an impossibly huge and debilitating blizzard in Buffalo in 1977, the weather bureau never uses that term loosely.  So it was a little shocking to hear the term on the weather report last night.  Very cold temps with high winds and snow make a blizzard and we are now in the gripe of one.  

There was lots of warning, schools were open yesterday and the temperatures started going down when everyone was home, including me.  I picked the kids up from school and left the oldest one in charge for an hour until his mother got home and got myself home before the storm hit. 

There was not much more than a few inches of snow on the ground, but when 45 mile an hour wind whips it around, it results in white outs.  Nasty.

It snowed for about six hours today and has just let up a bit.  The snow bands fluctuate so it could be back any time.  Lots of wind and wind chill in the minus 30 degree range.

We have nowhere to go, lots of food and books and knitting to keep occupied.  A friend of mine would always stash a project at the beginning of winter that she saved for a winter storm, which here is usually two or three days long.  It seems that this one will be winding down later tomorrow and by Saturday the forecast calls for rain.  Right now that blows my mind.

I finished one of the fingerless mitts and am working on the second.  I hope to have it done today.  Although I have a book I would like to finish also.

Hard to catch the fury of the storm in my backyard but we couldn't see the shed at times through the snow.

Here is one that captures the feeling we have, Frankie trying to crawl inside the fireplace.  She settled for laying on the rug in front of the fire.

Little Christmas 2014

All the Christmas decorations are put away in bins in the basement.  The house looks bare, bare, bare. Today the trees come down.  We usually wait for the 6th of January to do this, the last day of Christmas. (if the trees hold out).

They still look pretty good.  Here you can see some of the smocked ornaments I made, quite a few years ago.  Every year I make plans to add a few more, but never seem to get the time or the inclination to work on Christmas ornaments once Christmas is over.  Maybe this year?  I always say that every years' tree is the best one ever, but this year the size and fullness of the tree was just right to show off all the ornaments to their best advantage.

In between taking down decorations, we watched a lot of football this weekend and the games were very exciting.  We also have been watching a BBC series "Orphan Black" which is very good.  We watched all the episodes in the past two weeks and have the series finale to watch tonight.  

I discovered last year, that I am really a process knitter, enjoying the process of knitting, not counting the numbers, not bothered by unknitting or items gone wrong or the number of unfinished objects I have.

However, there has been a perfect storm of happenings that is encouraging me to think differently for January and February.  

The Olympics are in February and talk on the podcasts I listen to and the Ravelry groups I am on, has been about the Ravelenic games, starting a project at the opening ceremonies and having it finished by the closing ceremonies. I have been toying with the idea of making the Must Have aran sweater that I have had in my queue forever, during the games.  

I also cleaned out my knitting room and went through all my yarn, divested myself of more old yarn I have been hanging on to for 35 years.  If I haven't started anything with it yet, I never will.  So now all old useless yarn is gone, gone, gone.  Whew, what a relief.  But I collected all the bits of yarn that I was saving from recent projects and realized I have quite a number of them.

I lost my favorite hat.  The one I knit from Boku that goes with the scarf and every one of my coats.  So now with the wind chill in the negative range, I had no hat that fit me just right.

I got two requests for special projects.  One from Hubby, who wants Valentine socks and one from the eldest granddaughter who wants fingerless mitts that go up to her elbow for her birthday January 24th.

Therefore I am going to try an experiment and see how many of the small items that  I have yarn for, I can get done in January and the beginning of February.  That means finishing up some that are started and starting some I have had forever.  I am not going to push myself, but I am going to concentrate on the small stuff.

Here is a pile of some of the little projects I have selected for this.

I have already finished two items- a cowl to go with the Koolhaas hat I made to replace the Boku hat and the Homework socks that have been on my needles since September.  I have one of the fingerless mitt almost done.  I actually had to re-knit this and add 8 stitches as the mitts were very tight as originally written. I'll make note of the changes on my project page.  I'll keep track of my progress on the blog on Mondays. Should be interesting.

Keep warm and safe in this nasty weather.  I am thinking no school tomorrow with the dangerous wind chills being predicted and maybe Wednesday as well. More knitting time for me!

Christmas Thanks

Yesterday we had a very cold, very snowy and windy walk home from school.  There was a wind chill of -11 degrees and it was much too cold for walking little ones home.  The wind chill today is in the -15 degree range so there was no school.  Even though right now the sun is shining, it is a cold that seeps into your bones.  It is suppose to dip down more tonight.  And there is the prediction of snow and even more bitter cold for Monday and Tuesday.

We decided to do some stocking up and went grocery shopping and I went to the library to stock up on a few books to see me through, in case we get socked in.

We are slowly putting Christmas away.  I hate to see things like the twinkly lights on the mantle and tree and stairway and the candles in the window get taken down, so they will be the last things to go.  I turn them all on when I get up in the morning to push back the winter gloom.

I still love my mantle decorations

and the red bows on the icy tree.

Everyone still enjoys decorating the little village made out of graham crackers

although it does seem to get a  little gruesome.  What started out as March of the Penguins, ended up as a penguin massacre, but fun was had by all.

I loved how my Christmas goodie bags turned out.  Everyone loved the Lo-Lo bars so much, I am ordering more.

All-in-all, it was a pretty stress-free Christmas this year.  Early planning and keeping on top of things, plus a few days of not having to get the little one from school which allowed me more time for cooking and wrapping, really helped.

Topping it all off, a lovely New Year's Day dinner of 

a mushroom and carmalized onion topped fillet, lobster tails and a sparkling wine.  Perfect!