Eight days and I still let it slip by (maybe . . . I think.) This is the snow we've been enjoying. This morning I felt a little throb of relief when I saw that the temp had risen to 0 degrees(or -18C). Now it's up to 5. Hip, Hip, Hooray! And how does zero degrees feel? It hurts. Here's how the snow looks as of this a.m. These pictures are for you, my fellow norths, but especially for fschmom's boy, in case he is still interested.
Street view out front window--blurry patches are "kitty prints."
The promenade to the front steps. I don't know what the N stands for, but it seems to be stuck to the window
The snowbanks on either side of the little walk that goes out to the street are nearly up to my hips. Nope, I'm not that tall, so let's say 28-30 inches or 70 cm. See the snow at the end of that little walk? It's probably about half that high. It's a foreshortened picture. This is what happens when the plows come through and make another pass. You can't wait for the plowing to stop because then it gets really high, thick, and it'll be all chunky and packed from the plowing and very hard to move. A foot is really not too bad. I have to clomb over that to get to my ride. Clomb is not a typo. It's kind of charming to watch somebody, especially if that somebody is wearing nice clothes, negotiate a bank that is a mixture of great lumps of ice and giant fragile lumps of snow that appear identical, all held together by quicksand. Clomb is the right word. If I shovel it down to the pavement, somebody always parks directly in front of it. Yeah-no, I don't do my own shoveling. Silly.
Here's the area between the houses out my back door looking toward the street. My back door is the one I use mostly. You can see how the snow is already turning to ice. There's nothing you can do about it because as more melts from the sides of it and from the roof, the meltwater collects there and refreezes. The same thing happens on the path through the back yard to the garage, but not as badly. To get a decent picture of that path, I'd have had to actually step outside the door. You can surmise why that is unpictured.
If I weren't such a lazy A, I'd get on over to the beach to see what the wind and below zero temperatures have done with Lake Michigan and snap some pics for you. It's a sad thing when the local news outlets are too busy covering I don't know the heck what, to run a few pictures of the sun glinting off wild ice sculptures. I didn't find anything good online, or I'd link you.
A few inches of snow is predicted for tomorrow. I am scheduled to fly out to Bakersfield, California tomorrow at 5 p.m. We'll see.
Welcome, William! December 24, 2008. Healthy, whole, and well-loved. 
William's dad, my Andy, modeling the Devan sweater while getting me online. Congratulations!
And here is my newest WIP courtesy of the most gigantic, perfectly formed skein of yarn I've ever found. A 14 ounce/400 gram skein of cotton. It was 6 bucks and there were others as well, but only one in this color, which is the one I wanted right then. The color is called cornhusk. It turns out that I like it better than Sugar and Peaches. I was expending a gift card and 50% off coupon at JoAnn's. The 50% came off some very shiny, very red pleather I bought for table cloths. It was even called pleather. Did I mention that I had a birthday yesterday? I turned EGADS! Gulp, gulp, gulp, 50. (Gulp.) I'm not trying to complain, it's just that I'm so da*n surprised. 
Here is another WIP that arose courtesy of yarn that I could not resist. It is a wool/mohair sock yarn will that is becomimg wristwarmers. I got the yarn here . It was a good Thanksgiving sale. Naturally, there was only one (50 gram) skein of that, --not enough for a pair of socks. Pink and grey together without purple or blue is a favorite color scheme of mine, despite the fact that I've been eschewing pink for 25 years. Maybe now that I'm 50, and I don't mind when people call me a girl, I can be more accepting of the pink. This is called Leili sock. It's by the Unique Sheep--er, THE Unique Sheep, since in the table of contents, you will find The Unique Sheep under T.
When I seamed the front to the back at the shoulder the correct way the second time, I considered that that could be a hint. I considered, and then I went back to un-three-needle-binding again in order to seam the front on the "wrong" way with the reverse stockinette side to the outside. Not a believer in divine intervention and/or my unconscious am I apparently. I chose this route because I thought the color changes on the reverse looked more mellow, more subtle. The difference isn't great, but it wouldn't make any more work, nor would it take any fudging. The picture is just to show you the difference. The shoulders are not yet seamed there. 
It became hard to figure out if the sweater was inside out or rightside out. Then I went to bed. I got up and went to work. I had a busy day at work. I stopped at Target on the way home. I spent a ton of money. I ran into one of the kids from school there. I had a 2-3 minute conersation with her and she introduced me to her brother and sister. Her step mother was 3 feet away waiting in a line of which she was the only member, but she never turned and acknowledged me. I got the feeling she (the girl) didn't rate. The other kids weren't faring too much better maybe. They looked a little disheveled. Creepy, huh? Poor kid, stuck with a frickin' nutjob/very angry person--I couldn't tell which. I suppose it's very angry person. Sigh. I know this student can really (really, really) get on a person's nerves, but this woman's behavior was embarassing.
By the way, I did frog and reknit the back. Here it is in stripes. In other knitting news, there isn't any. There isn't any unless you count the 2 hours I just spent at DBNY looking at all the luscious yarns and going back and forth to Ravelry to see how people are using them and how the colorways look. What a magnificent waste of time. 
