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All of the holiday knitting is finished. Two more FO posts and I’m all caught up! Hooray!

That meant that this week I could cast on for something selfish. There will be a sweater in my near future, but my first selfish project is actually going to be a class sample. Assuming the class flies, but that’s a whole different issue.



This is the Christmas in the Country cowl by fellow DePauw grad Susan Pandorf. Aside from the fact that we share an alma mater (TIGER PRIDE, BABY!!!), she is quite the prolific pattern-writer! I’m hoping to teach a beginning colorwork class at the store, and this will be one of the suggested patterns for students.

I was cruising until I got to the first row with three colors being worked. At which point I took a break and wove in (almost) all of my ends. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

I’m sure the Gumdrop Socks will return to the rotation sooner rather than later, but meanwhile it’s nice to have some Cashsoft/CashVero on the needles and a project with no deadline whatsoever.

In other news …

We got a new water heater yesterday



It's high efficiency and quick-recovery. A tankless heater would be really impractical and quite inefficient, actually, because of how long the runs are in our house. That info makes this a good energy-efficient alternative for us, and should qualify for the federal tax rebates.

And the water company is trying to turn our driveway into a skating rink



We’re hoping that the fix isn’t going to involve ripping up our driveway. I have a feeling Penn-American Water wants to do that about as much as we want them to do it. Meanwhile? Salt/calcium is our friend.

Paging Dr. Kevorkian

Rather than running for public office, the Doc should perhaps visit my laundry room.

When we bought this house, it had two refrigerators. One in the kitchen, the other in the laundry room.


This is the laundry room fridge. It was the kitchen fridge before my mom remodeled the kitchen in 1996. And it’s old.

In fact, it’s on its last legs. About two weeks ago, I noticed that a previously frozen-solid loaf of bread was “squishy” when I took something else out of the downstairs freezer. My secret stash of ice cream (it lives downstairs. It's less tempting that way.) was soft, but still frozen.

I moved the “really must stay frozen” stuff upstairs, but most of the other stuff was OK down there, as it was probably hovering around 35 degrees. It all came upstairs on Sunday night when pretty much nothing was still frozen solid

Now? It’s probably about 38-40 degrees, and the refrigerator portion of the program isn’t all that cold either.

We can’t really afford to replace the thing right now, and it’s probably not worth it to try to get it fixed. It’s old. How old?


Anybody remember these? Yep. It’s the Envelope of Life! (holy crap! I had no idea they were still doing that! Who knew?!!) And how long has that envelope been in this fridge?


April 4, 1982. That’s my dad’s semi-legible chickenscratch, by the way. Oh, and my last tetanus shot being in 1981? My dad and I were both listed with 1981 as our last tetanus shot, which means that was the year of the Great Hamster Incident, in which hamsters escaped and were captured, but managed to bite (and draw blood) both my dad and me.

That coincides with end of our hamster ownership. Ahem.

Anyhoo, the date on that Envelope of Life being in 1982 means that this fridge is at least 26 years old. Probably closer to 30. We’re talking about what to do replacement wise and when. We’ve talked about the Sears scratch-and-dent on Rt. 50 which has a lot of potential. We’re also talking about getting an upright or chest freezer rather than another traditional refrigerator. However, I didn’t have any other blog fodder, so this is what you get today.

I’ll try for crafty content tomorrow. And yes, I have had a teatnus shot since 1981. Two, actually!