Blah, Blah, Rain, Blah, Blah, Wind, Blah, Blah, Blah

So, now that you know how I feel about today we can move on.

I finally spent my birthday Knit Picks gift card.  I didn't want to squander it on something just to spend it so I saved it until now.  The trend in knitting lately seems to be BIG--big yarn, big needles, big oversize things.  Purl Soho showed a pattern, yarn, and needles a couple weeks ago that just about blew my mind.  The yarn comes in 5kg (that's 11 lbs., people) "bumps" and the needles to knit it with are made with 2" diameter PVC pipe and a carved wooden tip.  Not only does it cost more than my first car to acquire the stuff, I think it'd take two men and a crane to knit it up.  A few days later they featured a slightly more do-able big yarn/big needle project, one I could see myself actually doing one day except I didn't have the right size needles (US36, that's a US8 beside them for scale).  I do now.  Thanks one more time, DS, DIL1 & LC.

I resurrected a hibernating project, the Southwestern Cowl, the other night.  My hands were getting crampy from doing all that snowball crocheting and I wasn't in the mood to start another Sudoku square so I nabbed this onesie project that had bubbled to the top of the pile to knit on.  It's not even close to a favorite, hence it being banished to the basement UFO pile, but for some reason I can't bring myself to frog it and use the yarn for something else.  So it gets knit upon this week, maybe I'll even finish it.  Lucky it.

The blue and purple yarn is back in the bag with the other, more traditionally colored snowball yarn.  Like I said, it's not enough to knit anything else with, anything else that I'd use or want, that is, so a snowball it will become.  Maybe two snowballs if the yarn holds out.  I know that these oddball colors aren't part of the natural snowball lexicon but these are toys for frivolous fun (some of my favorite knitting) so don't judge.

December 16--Karen Schulenburg, Loire Valley, France.  Lia put her hand out to touch the wrought iron latch on the red door.  The house was old, so old that the walls reminded her of ruined castles.  She thought maybe the oldest parts were bombed in WWII and had been rebuilt.  The ad in the back of Travel magazine had said, "Traditional house in a quiet village in the Loire Valley close to vineyards and wineries."  It sounded like the perfect place to get away from life after her divorce and the restructuring at her job left her standing in the lobby one Friday with her pens and stapler in a cardboard box in her arms and no clear idea of how she got there.

Yesterday's snowflakes were just a taunt.  I think they came to tell us that there would be no white Christmas this year.  Today it's spitting rain and blowing like crazy, not enough to topple the trash bins but it's plenty windy.  In just a few days DD and SIL1 will be pulling in to spend a few days with us, we can't wait, and after I work tomorrow I will have 19 straight days off.  Did I mention that I love my employers with all my heart and soul?  I don't get vacation pay but a long stretch of not having anything I "have" to do seems like the perfect Christmas gift to me.  Now if I could only farm Durwood out for a few of those days... but I've had 39 years of practice ignoring him so things should be fine.  Don't worry.
--Barbara