Holy Bejeebers, It's Cold

 

It was one lonely degree when I got up this morning shortly before 8 o'clock and it didn't get much warmer all day.  It took me until after 4:30 to convince myself that I really wanted to go to the Y to walk around and around and around but I went and I'm glad.

When I came out the Super Blood Wolf Moon was high enough in the sky to shed its light on the land.  On the way home from the Y I stopped for the makings of a pot of chicken soup--except I forgot to get more broth.  *sigh*  It was too cold to go out again (by then it was all of 8 degrees) so I'll nab some on my way home from the chiropractor in the morning.



 
This morning I finished the Cast Sock I cast on yesterday.  I looked at the pictures of other knitters' projects on Ravelry (a website for fiber enthusiasts) and saw that some of them were different than mine.  It dawned on me that I'd knitted mine in the round, not flat the way the pattern says to, which meant that I don't have the garter stitch top the way the ones knitted flat do.  So I made some notes on the pattern so that if I want a ridged top on the next one I'll remember how to knit it without having to think much.

After finishing the Cast Sock I cast on another sock for me.  Remember that I started the Turquoise & Orange sock with a pattern that blurred the yarn patterning and then frogged it to make it plain?  Well, I was looking forward to knitting the next sock using that broken rib pattern so I just happened to have another skein of yarn handy so, in an attempt to stall going out in the freezing cold, I cast that one on too.  This pattern requires me to think about which row I'm on, there's a two-row repeat, so I need to pay more attention on this one than on the plain one where I can just knit around and around until the sock leg is 7" long.  (like you care)



Once again I'm blogging late so that I could dart outside to see if the Moon was being gobbled by the Earth's shadow and it was.  Hooray!  I won't be staying up long enough to see the total eclipse when the Moon will turn red but I got to see some of it.

At Friday Night Knitting LB showed us a picture of the 3D puzzle she got from her nephew for Christmas that she had finished last week.  Holy. Moly.  There is no way that I would evereverever be able to put something like that together.  I have enough trouble with the 500 piece ones they do up at The Clearing.  Crossword puzzles, yes.  Jigsaw puzzles, no.


20 January--Tropical Obsession.
Mona ran her thumb over the surface of the shell in her pocket.  The tiny ridges and whorls like a fingerprint, each little bump and dip were the only things that felt real to her.  Events had spiraled so out of control, out of her control that if it weren’t for the little scrap of shell nestled in a teaspoon of sand in the pocket of her shorts she would run screaming into the night.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, her life was meant to be calm, serene even.  She had played by all the rules, upheld her end of the cosmic bargain, and kept herself trim, informed, well groomed.  She cultivated an interest in art and finance, even though at first the numbers and their antics had seemed like a foreign language.  But she had persevered, had spent time with her nose in books, magazines like Barron’s, even subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a while which she considered a kind of grad course in companionship.  “His companion” that’s what he called her.  At first she heard a warm intimate caress in his voice when he said it that made her happy to hear it, but lately there was a sharp, almost disgusted, note to his voice that made her want to take a shower.  It had been hours since he had left in the minivan taxi on some unspecified mission.  He didn’t tell her where he was going or why.  It had been nearly one hour since the island policeman had come to the door to tell her that they had fished a body out of the sea on the northern end of the island, a body with Jack’s ID in its pocket.  Where was Jack? the policeman asked her fifteen different ways in his low honeyed island voice.  If it weren’t for the little scrap of seashell in her pocket she would be screaming

It's so cold.  I checked when I went out to see the Moon and it was all of 3 degrees.  It's supposed to get up into the 20s for the next week but Friday's high is predicted to be 1 lone degree.  It is winter and I do live in Wisconsin but, man, I'm cold.  I think I'll wear a wool sweater tomorrow, wool socks too.  Maybe longies.
--Barbara