Snowed In

So basically, I haven’t left my house since I got home from the gym on Friday.

  This is the part of our deck that is under the roof.
Since then, I’d estimate we’ve gotten at least six inches of snow. We took some time out this morning to shovel the driveway, but because there were plenty of reports of just how terrible the roads were, we decided to just not go anywhere.


A friend of mine went to church this morning with her family. Roughly a mile away from their house. It took them almost an hour to get home, so I think we made the right choice! Since I stayed indoors, I did a few small things in my weaving room that I’d been meaning to do for a while. The first was that I took the screen off of a side window in my weaving room and put up two pieces of stained glass that I got in Ireland last year.


I also got out my hammer, and hung a piece of art that came from my mom’s sewing room. It’s titled “She Works With Quills,” and the joke that the last word was “Quilts.” Mom was a quilter, which is what made me start. And I liked it, so I re-homed it.


And then, I got a warp under tension and started to weave.


It’s rep weave, so it’s weaving off very quickly. Which is great, because I have several more warps just waiting to jump on the loom. And since we’re looking to have more snow followed by Polar Vortex temperatures, more weaving is just what Old Man Winter ordered. I love it!

Life, in a Nutshell

OK, so the freelance gig is great. I have no complaints.

But the workload is tremendous, and will be until about April 5. I have four sports in season, so that’s eight deadlines a week. Again -- this is a great opportunity for me and I’m making it work. But it’s really killing my crafting time.

I wake up in the morning, make breakfast, have a cup of tea and work until bedtime with side-trips to the gym or other obligations. My knitting/sewing/weaving time is shoeboxed between when I get home from the LYS on Saturday nights and when I go to bed on Sunday night. That’s it. That’s the list.

So I ask that you, my loyal readers, bear with me for the next 2+ months. I promise I’ll catch as many WiP Wednesdays as I can. And when I have finished stuff, I’ll be happy to take a bunch of pictures and tell you all about them. But in between? There may be a bunch of radio silence.

Meanwhile, I woke up this morning to this:


I thought we were supposed to get 1-2”. We got a little more than that, but it was manageable. I shoveled the Incredible Shrinking Driveway …


Why is it shrinking? Because at this time of year the hardest part of shoveling is getting the new snow up-and-over the barrier of old snow. Ugh. But it’s done, and the Big Ball of Fire in the Sky had it completely clear and dry in no time.

And before you ask, yes, I still prefer shoveling snow to raking leaves. No contest. Yes, I am the freak that loves winter. Why do you ask?

I’m nearly finished with the mug rugs. With a little luck, they’ll come off the loom some time this week. Which means I’m winding my next warp. This time? Rep weave placemats!


Looks great, right? Well, I’m not quite done winding the warp. Why?


Yeah. I need 30 more yards (ish) from that nekkid core. (and another 30 yds from that skinny middle cone, but we're not going to borrow trouble on that one.) Obviously, that’s not going to happen, so I’m eagerly awaiting a make-good cone from the vendor. Since this was sold as a kit, running drastically short of one of the three colors is kind of a problem. At least it wasn't my project-planning error?

Oh well. These things happen. Fortunately, I am not on a deadline!

Finding My Stride

Aside from doing my best to not cough up a lung, I’m doing just fine. I’ve been spending the vast majority of my time writing up a storm. (Lemme know if you want a link or two. I’d rather not link there from here)

And because I’ve been spending all of my time writing there, I haven’t been doing as much crafting as I’d like so I don’t have much to show you. I’ll get into a routine with my new work and find a balance. I’m just not there quite yet.

But we got a nice little snowstorm here today. So I took a few pictures.


My street

My neighbors

Cool shot of the pine tree next to our front door.

We probably had about 4-5” of snow, but it was super light and easy to shovel. I’ll probably do the rest of the driveway tomorrow.

Wearing my new hat!

Yeah, I know I’m a knitter and I can make my own hats blah blah blah. But if there’s one thing the NHL Winter Classic has become known for, it’s some truly kick-ass hats. This one isn't quite as awesome as some of its predecessors, but I still liked it enough to bring it home. I went Christmas shopping at Consol Energy Center (the shiny new home of the Pens) last month and was truly disappointed in their hat selection. But when I braved the mall today (had to exchange a gift), there was a new team apparel store that had a much better selection of Winter Classic hats. I liked this one, so I bought it!

I’ll be back in a few hours with a shiny new WiP Wednesday. Still knitting mittens!

WiP Wednesday: Random Edition

There’s been some weaving, but I’m between commission scarfs at the moment. I’m also a bit limited in mobility today. Did you know that some couches have six legs instead of four? With a hidden front-center leg lurking behind the skirt? Yeah, I didn’t either. Until I kicked the crap out of one last night. Ouch.

Meanwhile, the Musique socks are getting good “waiting time” knitting.


And I cast on another Christmas present. This one for my sister in law. It’s an Everlasting Bagstopper since she has admired mine. Here’s hoping she likes it! I know it’ll go quickly.


In other news, as much as I hate LeafWars and fought the (hopefully) last battle of the year on Monday, with the weather yesterday and today, I’m glad I took the time then. Looky what I woke up to this morning!


With all the rain yesterday, Santa and the tree lights shorted out twice last night (the rain popped the safety switch on the outlet). With the switch to snow, here’s hoping they behave properly from here on out. Have a great week!

Day 5: Olympic Update

I had an amazingly busy three-day weekend (Fri-Sun), and am starting to feel human again.

I did cast on my Northman Mittens (thanks for the pep-talk, everyone. I really appreciate it!) as the Olympic Cauldron was lit in Vancouver, then I essentially didn’t touch them again until Monday night. They’re going great, and I am so much happier with these mittens than I was with my Postwar Mittens. It’s not even close.

I split for the thumb on the right mitten last night. Here’s the palm:


And here’s the back:


I had a "Yikes! The cuff is rolling!" moment last night. Then I remembered that the lining will correct that issue. Yay, lining!

In other news, this is the 13th consecutive day of shoveling here at chez DPUTiger. My entire neighborhood is looking like an Icicle Factory. Here’s my house:


See that gigantic bank of icicles on the right-hand side? Between the big window for the TV room and the little window for the bathroom? The big boy in the middle has been touching the ground for three days now. Here’s a close-up:


And on that note, it’s time to bust out the snowblower. Again. I’d use the plywood, but it’s too hard to get the shoveled snow up-and-over the snow bank on the edge of the driveways. (Yes. Plural driveways. I'm doing mine and SuperNeighbor's) So I use the snowblower and wind up wearing as much as I clear, but it’s still better than shoveling. My wrists and lower back are fed up with the shoveling, but I'm feeling OK.

I love winter. I love snow. I am SO over the white stuff right now. Ugh.

Snow. Snow. More Snow.

I had grand plans for the second half of last week. I have a Knitting Olympics post I need to share. And a kick-ass new hat that I love and that I can't wait to show you.

But there was nothing to show you on Wednesday that was different from the previous Wednesday. (Like literally nothing. How boring is that?). I spent Thursday doing a job application for a part-time position that I think would be a really good fit. Then, Friday happened.

They said the snow was going to start around lunchtime. At about 12:05 pm, someone “hit the switch” and the snow started. It was freaky that the weather reports were so dead-on accurate on the timeline.

This was around 4 p.m. EST on Friday. A little snow, but really not much.

Pretty shortly after the Hubster got home – he left the office shortly after 3 p.m., and I picked him up at the Castle Shannon trolley stop around 4:25 p.m. – it really started to come down.

We went to sleep knowing that we probably had about eight inches on the ground. I woke up at about 2:45 a.m. and realized almost instantly that we didn’t have any electricity. Or heat. Went back to sleep.

Woke up again at 7 a.m. I couldn’t go back to sleep without having an idea of how long we’d been without power, so I came downstairs and poked around for a while. Figured out the power went out about 1 a.m. It was chilly in the house, but not too bad. Yet. Went back to bed. Hey, it wasn’t really daylight yet and it was still snowing!



I got moving around 9:30 a.m. It was instantly apparent that there was a lot of snow on the ground.

Those snow-covered lines are the dead power lines. We were power-free for 36 hours.

And just as much in the back yard. That yardstick is showing 24 inches of snow. That’s TWO FEET. Yikes.



It pretty much took the whole morning to clear the front walk. Front walk isn’t straight, so it was a bit of a guessing game to figure out where I needed to shovel next. Oh, and I was shoveling solo, since Hubster is still on injured reserve with a broken collarbone. He’s healing, but hasn’t healed enough to deal with this kind of snow.



By early afternoon, I had dug out enough to get over to SuperNeighbor’s house and start on his driveway. If the power didn’t come back on by nightfall, Option #1 was to make it over to my parents house, but walking would be a nightmare and their condo complex had barely been touched by plows. Therefore, no place to park.

Option #2 was staying at SuperNeighbor’s house. Fortunately, by mid-afternoon, enough neighbors had gotten out to say that if you were careful, the roads weren’t unreasonable. I quit shoveling around 4:30 p.m. in order to shower and pack. SuperNeighbor drove us over to my parents house, where we spent the night. Power company had our side of the street back to 2010 technology by roughly noon on Sunday, and we were home right after the Penguins game … shortly after 3 p.m. House was cold, but it was good to be home.



Links after the pictures will take you to my Flickr set with more detailed descriptions of each photo. Enjoy!



1. CtrDormer.jpg, 2. CleanCorolla.jpg, 3. 7FebOfficeDormer.jpg, 4. Streetlight.jpg, 5. Icicles2.jpg, 6. JustStarting.jpg, 7. MeasureBackyard.jpg, 8. 8FebHouse.jpg, 9. BuriedCorolla.jpg, 10. CoveredCorolla.jpg, 11. OfficeDormer.jpg, 12. Roof6FebDusk.jpg, 13. Icicles1.jpg, 14. Dogwood.jpg, 15. FrontLattice.jpg, 16. Allenberry.jpg, 17. MeasureFront2.jpg, 18. 21inches.jpg, 19. 7FebSunset.jpg, 20. Frontyard.jpg, 21. House6Feb.jpg, 22. Woodbridge.jpg, 23. WoodbridgeMboxes.jpg

Ahhhhh…

Happy Turkey Day Eve, to all of my American readers. This is my favorite holiday. A full day of hanging out with the family. Great food. Lots of fun without any of the stress of finding presents for those hard-to-buy-for folks on your lists!

It started snowing big-time yesterday, but has now stopped. It was big fat heavy wet flakes and it was sticking to everything. But when I woke up this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my driveway had already melted. Bonus!

But, I know I have many readers who miss winter, so here’s a little photo-mosaic for you. All photos taken around 9 am EST today.


In other news, here’s what I’m working on knitting-wise:

My first Moebius!

I’m into the second skein of Malabrigo silky wool. I’m not quite sure how much more I’ll knit, but I am definitely enjoying this project and will Moebius again!

My first colorwork!

The Postwar Mittens from the new Twist Collective. Loving this project!

And, we got a shiny new sock yarn in at Bloomin Yarns, and I just had to try it out.

My first sock! (of this pair!)

So that’s about it from here. I’m off to run some errands and enjoy the beginnings of a four-day weekend. Hope you can do the same!