It's the Little Things

Today was a day for appreciating the little things. A long hot shower. Hot coffee. Electric lights. Yes, lights...amazing how much easier it is to knit when you have them. We got power back yesterday (Monday) afternoon, after losing it Saturday evening during the snowstorm. Not that it was much of a storm, by NH standards, but it was very early, very wet and very heavy. How heavy? This heavy:


No damage to the pool or (newly stained) deck as far as we can tell.
The leaves are still on the trees, which is mostly why the snow pulled down so many branches. I've never seen the bushes in my yard flattened like this. They're normally over eight feet tall!


And the neighborhood got hammered- this was what I saw in nearly every yard along my street when I ventured out.


(It's hard to see in the photo, but there's a wire down across the street there.)

As far as losing power, it really wasn't that much of a hardship for us. We lit the oil lamp and a few candles, hauled in some wood, and built a nice toasty fire in the wood stove. Sunday morning we still had hot water for showers in the water tank, and even Monday it was pleasantly warm. Today was the morning I wasn't looking forward to washing in cold water, but I was spared even that minor hardship. We're pretty close to the center of town, so we're often near the top of the list for repairs. This is the first time in the nine years I've lived here that we've had an outage lasting more than a day.

And while I appreciate room lighting for knitting, I certainly didn't let a little thing like that stop me! Several different projects got some attention.

But, I should introduce the WIPs:
1. My lace scarf (the Foreign Correspondent scarf, which I fell in love with after seeing the two that Toni knit) and it's coming along. I plan to just keep knitting until I finish the skein of yarn, but I'm at that stage where I knit, the scarf gets longer, and ball doesn't seem to change size at all. Maybe it's a feature of the yarn? (Valley Yarns Charlemont Kettle Dyed, in Evergreen- it's a lovely silk and merino blend.)


2. The Which Way is Up reversible cabled scarf, which I hauled out of the pile and did a bunch of work on this weekend. I've actually taken a few stitches out of the pattern because I'm knitting it in bulky weight instead of the worsted the pattern calls for, but I already know I'm going to make this one again. It's a very charming pattern, and I love it that the scarf has no wrong side.


3. An intarsia hat, in time out after I messed up the chart six rows back. That one really ought to go to the head of the list, since I wanted it done before Christmas. But you can meet it when we're back on speaking terms.

4. A mitten- I started that one just so I'd have something simple for dim light. Also my local knitting group is doing a charity knitathon this month, for which I'd like to have some more hats and mittens done.

5 and 6. Are secrets.

7 and 8. The mitred square blanket and the multi-pink afghan. These will get some intermittent work- probably the pink afghan mostly, as it is very bulky and I'd like get it finished and donated before the holidays.

9. The bamboo summer top which is definitely my oldest WIP. I probably won't pick this up again until after the Christmas knitting is done, but I would definitely like to get it out of my queue this winter.

Oh, yes and the FO. Before the power went out I finished the second afghan (second one started but first one finished). Very Easter-y, but I'm pleased to have used up all the yarn- about 14 skeins-worth, but several of them were huge 8 oz skeins, so it's a lot of yarn. The finished size came out 46" x 70". Strangely, the afghan seems way heavier than the yarn was before it was crocheted!


And somewhere in there, I really ought to knit myself some more mittens. I can only find one pair of the four I ought to have, and they're in terrible shape. Although I strongly suspect that some of the missing ones are going to turn up before I get around to knitting more!

PS. Cookie wanted me to say that he's happy the heat is on too. The sitting around the wood stove thing was interesting, but the couch is more comfortable.