It Fits!

My new, thrifted Irish wool sweater fits.  I didn't try it on in the store, I held it up to myself, thought that it would fit, and I was right.  This morning I slipped it on over my new red fitness top and it fit like it was made for me.  It's a little scratchy so I'll be wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a collar or turtleneck under it but I will be wearing it.  Maybe tomorrow when I promised to go downstairs, where it's chilly and damp, and make a new sash for Durwood's ancient Pendleton bathrobe.  Now, don't misunderstand, I don't have any Pendleton wool in the stash but I think I've got some suiting and, really, any old sash will do.  It's a bathrobe, not a coronation robe.  A beautiful bathrobe but a bathrobe nonetheless.

Ahead of the predicted ice/snow storm headed our way I spent the early afternoon running around doing errands, me and fifty thousand other idiots.  The streets were just wet, especially the main roads, and it was only as the afternoon wore on that things started to ice up.  I heard on TV that schools in the area will have a 2-hour delay tomorrow.  I'm sure there are thousands of "snow day" prayers going unanswered even as we speak.


After supper I finally got around to OJ's mitten thumb gussets.  See the mint green safety pin on the cuff of the left one?  That's my end of the round marker for both mittens.  I'm knitting them side by side so I did the right one's gusset, counting the rounds, reset the counter, and then knit the same number of rounds on the left one.  That's what I did on the cuffs and that's what I'll do on the hands.  It's working well and I'll get both mittens done at the same time.  No second-mitten syndrome for this girl.  (which means that you get the first one done and then lose steam getting the second one started and finished)

February 19--Edward Savage, The Washington Family.  You can see him in the shadows.  He's a richly dressed black man, in the painting but somehow not.  He has no face, it blends into the darkness in the upper right corner of the canvas.  Was he a servant?  A slave?  I'd like to think that his presence there, nebulous as it is, represents his importance in the household.  I'd like to think that the men who founded our country were above thinking of people of color as less human than white people.

This morning before my errand run I went out and filled all the feeders, spilling a bit of cracked corn and sunflower seeds by the cans.  Look who came out in the sleet to dine.  The rat.  It's huge.  I don't hate it but I sure wish it lived someplace else.  And speaking of living someplace else, did I tell you that our renters gave notice and they'll be moving out by March 15?  So if anyone needs a nice 2-bedroom/1 bath duplex to live in, let me know.  The bad news is that I live next door but I'm very quiet and throw very few wild parties.  Call me.  (ooh, maybe I shouldn't mention the rat...)
--Barbara