Finally a Birthday

    With our uncharacteristic weather last week, Little Bigfoot had to postpone celebrating her birthday with her friend. Every year, she is given the choice of how she would like to celebrate with her friends. She has come to the realization, that she really prefers to interact with her friends on a one-on-one basis. Less confusion and easier to keep up with. We had been planning since Christmas for her friend to sleep over the weekend of 14 January, but with the snow being forecast for that afternoon, we decided it was best to postpone the plans a week. Then we were under 18" of snow the next weekend, so it definitely wasn't happening then. Now after a week of typical Seattle winter weather, most of the snow is gone and we were able to go forward with the 'party'.

  I picked the girls up from school and they proceeded with the fun. This involved a lot of giggling, playing with Littlest Petshop toys (of which LBF has 3 large Rubbermaid totes full of) and general fun. I had picked up Papa Murphy's pizzas earlier in the day for dinner and crumb-coated the cake (which was a lemon pound cake with lemon pudding filling, neither gluten-free, dairy or egg free, as those aren't an issue for the kids). It had earlier been decided that DragonNight would do the artwork for the cake, as only she could properly depict LBF's vision of a wolf silhouetted by the moon. It was later decided that she would also do the actual decorating. This would be her second cake decorating adventure. I think she did an outstanding job. I really love how their idea of ringing the moon with the candles, really highlighted the whole cake and brought the image to life.

    We will later go to my mother-in-law's house for another postponed birthday celebration (both LBF and my MIL's). I guess we could say that this year is the year of the never-ending birthdays. Hopefully the rest of the birthdays this year will happen more smoothly, since they are all summer season ones. It is the year with three Friday the 13ths in it, so the luck should fall into place at some point.

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Shows 6" outside my door, most of this is from today,
since it's been cleared fairly regularly, from
people going in and out.

    We are supposedly on the tail end of an unusual weather system here. Most winters, in and around the Seattle area, we get cold, rain and sometimes ice. On January 14th, it started to snow. It has changed many times during the days, sometimes being small ice pellets, other times large flakes of snow, a fine powder still other times. Over the last six days, we have gotten probably close to 18" of snow at my house. Totals have been extremely varied, depending on where you live, how close to the water you are and whether you are to the north or the south, but everyone in the Puget Sound has received some snow over the last six days. I've been voluntarily snowed in, since it started, as my car is over 10 years old and insurance would not cover a comparable replacement. My husband, The Redneck, is a very experienced snow driver and is one of the few people I would trust to get me somewhere in this snow, if I wasn't comfortable driving myself at that particular time, but even he has parked his truck and is walking to visit neighbors this week.


    The kids have had an extra four days off of school and it would appear that they will probably not go to school tomorrow as well. This means they will have extra days of school tacked on at the end of the year, making their summer shorter, but with all of the hills around here, it doesn't take a lot of bad, freezing weather to make it impractical for the buses to attempt their routes. Thankfully we have been one of the few to mostly maintain power throughout it all, most of my friends have lost their power for several hours and/or days. So far *knock on wood* we have only had a few power flickers and then 45 minutes without, last night. We've probably added about 4" - 6" of new snow, just today, as it has been snowing steadily since 5:30 am. Here is a comparison photo of our driveway & street, a few days ago and then this morning.

The left is from a few days ago (maybe Tuesday?), the right is from today.

Panache Shawl;
pattern by Lankalomero on Ravelry

    It hasn't all been a lost cause however. I have gotten some knitting done as well. I started this shawl on Friday (I think), I finished it on Tuesday. It actually took me a day longer than I had thought it would. I didn't feel quite as bad about that as I could have, once I realized that each row (over 300 stitches) was taking me 30 minutes to complete. I realized I only had five rows left, plus the crocheted edging, and then realized that it was still three hours from being finished, if I worked without interruptions. The shawl still needs to be blocked, but I'll wait for slightly warmer weather (next week) and no kids around trying to help or get in the way.

New pattern in the works
by Tandy Imhoff Designs

    My mom has been repeatedly asking for the pattern that I used to make a hat that I gave her for Christmas, as a dear friend of her's would love the pattern. I've tried explaining that it is something that I just winged, based on a picture I saw, but her friend REALLY wants the pattern. So yesterday, I pulled out a comparable yarn from my stash and set about duplicating the hat, writing down my procedure and stitch counts this time. Since I love designing multiple sizes, I also made a child's version, which I plan to expand into three child/teen sizes and two women's sizes. I'll be putting it all together soon, but here is a teaser photo of the hats I've made so far. (Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, didn't set up for a proper shot with proper lighting on this.)

Yes, I even sew a bit too

  Well, I wouldn't say that I'm a great sewer, but I do own a machine and can sew when the need arises. My mother-in-law mentioned that she would love to have a few more reusable heat packs for her birthday this week, so I thought why not. I usually use a nice cotton quilting fabric, double thick, with a few seams and it's done. I prefer to use flax seed and since discovering that my local dollar store sells one-pound bags of it for a dollar, it seems very inexpensive to do.


  Around Halloween time, I was in the Goodwill shop, across the street from the Everett Imagine Children's Museum, where DragonNight has been volunteering, and found some wonderful socks with skull & crossbones on them. I thought "I wonder if I could use these to make heat packs with?". They went on the back burner of projects, since I was working on various knitting projects. I figured eventually I'd get around to sewing them (which is how I think of all of my sewing projects). 

  So I ran out yesterday (since we were supposed to be celebrating both my MIL & Little Bigfoot's birthday today) to find some fun socks to make into heat packs for my MIL. I found these one. I love the Betty Boop ones. Since they were ankle socks, I made pocket warmers and then each pair of knee socks equaled two 12"(ish) long neck packs and two smaller 3-4" pocket packs. On the Betty Boop ones I made them just with the socks and tested them. They didn't really retain their heat very long, so I used cotton tube socks and then sewed the decorative (polyester/spandex) socks over them. They work fairly well, not quite as good as my fabric ones, but they are fun and super easy and quick to make and will warm you up if you are chilly or need just a little heat on your neck or head. I highly recommend storing the large ones in the freezer and then just microwaving them a bit longer when you need heat instead of cold. The cold that these packs give off is a very nice soothing chill rather than the cold freeze you get from ice packs.


  Just decided to postpone our birthday get-together until next weekend though, since the weather decided to be unpredictable and rather icky. Snow & ice doesn't generally slow down the Redneck or myself, but rather other drivers' skills behind the wheel in this weather strongly influence us to just stay home.