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.

Senior Pictures & Knitting

Well, this year is the year that I officially started really feeling my age. I have a senior in high school this year and therefore I must be old enough to have one. One of the things that need to be done for seniors is submitting a 'senior portrait' to the school for the yearbook. Our budget is tight and I wasn't sure how we would swing some of the prices that were being quoted, so I contacted Amanda York at amble imagery. She is the daughter of a dear friend and also a close friend of mine and I know that she does AMAZING work. She worked with us on the price and I just picked up the photos today. Here is one of the many shots she took, when she and DragonNight went out a few weekends ago. It's a great shot that so captures DragonNight's style.

Since Amanda did such an amazing job and helped us out, I wanted to do something a little extra for her and so I created this set (modeled by me this morning), for her. I used the stitch pattern from a pair of legwarmers but since that was the sole use of the other pattern, I am planning to write this one up and sell it on Ravelry. If you are a knitter and would like to test either pattern, give me a holler.



I'll also include another finished project that I finished last month, but haven't shared yet. I knit the Celebration Shawlette that my friend Jane created for a local yarn store's anniversary. I knit it in Handmaiden SeaSilk yarn, since so many natural fibers irritate me. This allows me to wear it and enjoy it. Here it is pictured with one of my Irish Rose Button Closures.

Stripes are a good thing

I will now introduce my children to you all. I have a senior in high school this year, I will call her DragonNight (DN for short). She is my first born and a very talented artist. She has been drawing since before she could write. I remember her preschool teacher sending home a little picture she had drawn, entitled 'Duck', and it really looked like a duck! She has always enjoyed drawing and has taken art classes through the school since 7th grade. She is now working at making it her career and therefore has her own website DragonNight Art and is working at selling her art on finished products at Zazzle.com.


My youngest is in 5th grade this year and was just placed in the Highly Capable Program, I'll call her Little Bigfoot (LBF for short). Her online nickname came about when I was buying her shoes earlier this year and she had jumped into a women's size 7 1/2 at her young age. I have no illusions that I won't be the shortest person in my family at 5'8", when my children are fully grown. DN already is taller than me by at least an inch and LBF isn't far behind.


Last year LBF wanted a felted bag for her school bag, so we picked out yarn colors and a pattern and I made her a bag that was faithfully used all year long. This year, she is now needing to carry her binder back and forth daily and that bag is just a little bit of a tight squeeze, so she requested a new bag. We picked out some gorgeous colors of yarn from Knitpicks.com and I searched for just the right pattern. Due to the fact that I don't make a lot of felted projects, I always feel more confident that I'll get close to desired size, if I start with a pattern, so I searched everywhere, for a messenger style bag that had dimensions listed and would be generous enough for her binder, but not too large for a kid of her age. I eventually found something that would fit the bill with the Practical Messenger Bag from Let's Knit.co.uk. I didn't really care for their construction and wanted to knit a true chevron pattern (rather than a fair isle technique), so decided to work with their numbers for size and make up the rest of the pattern for myself. Here is what I have so far:

It is coming along fairly well. I'm working it single stranded on size 6 needles and am over half way up the sides. I'm planning on continuing the pattern on one side up for the flap and then on the sides for the handle, which I'll graft at the middle point. Then throw it in the washing machine to felt. We are also planning on lining it, which will give us the opportunity to add some interior pockets as well. I was hoping to finish the knitting by this weekend, but had to take a break earlier this week, due to my arm acting up, so did not make quite as much progress as I had hoped. Still I should have it finished by early next week, then we'll shop for the perfect fabric to line it.