A Little Yarn On The Side

I am crafting today: working on the flannel shirt, then maybe the pink sweater which is now all the way to the sleeves, and enjoying the sunshine, and not have to shovel today.  And I'm spending time with all you wonderful crafters who visit each other's blogs and say nice things and make lovely craft items.  This is a nice world. And then there's the not-so-nice one.  A friend of mine is running for DNC chair, and while anyone who steps up to run for office should be applauded because it's a lot of work and there's often no reward and no thanks, I was kind of trying to lay low and not have anything to do with it.  Kudos to her for running, but a DNC chair from Idaho would be like and RNC chair from Hawaii or whatever other state hasn't elected a statewide Republican in 20 years--maybe NOT your expert on building a successful organization.  However, when I logged on to social media this morning, I had a message that Breitbart had done a story attackin...

I had actually forgotten about Me Made Mondays, but later I'll be donning this  to go out and deal with this: Yes, it's snowing again.  And had I checked the weather forecast, I might not have done a second set of arm exercises at the gym last night, but sometimes you just don't want to know.  They stopped discussing record snowfall about 3 or 4 storms ago.  I wish people would stop calling each other "snowflakes" to imply fragility.  They've obviously ticked off Snow Miser, who is taking it out on the northwest.  There is NOTHING fragile about snowflakes when they unite.  More than 50 buildings in the town closest to where I grew up have collapsed under the weight of snow, including the grocery store.  And it's only January. I am crafting today.  I've made progress on the new flannel shirt, and am trying out some of the new embroidery designs, starting with towels followed by a new icicles design,  and hopefully b...

A lot of people have asked why I didn't march yesterday because I have been so politically active, and I've been a speaker at marches in the past.  When people asked if I was joining the local march, I said "sure," but when it came down to it, I just couldn't go.  Even I didn't understand why I didn't march until today. I didn't march yesterday because for years I have been trying to get people to be politically involved, and have heard over and over "I don't follow politics" or "I don't follow local politics." Trump didn't happen overnight or this year. He started with Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. He started with the No Child Lef t Behind Act. He started with Reagan repealing the Fairness Doctrine. He started with big money being poured into judicial races. He started with low voter turnout and voter apathy. He started with people preferring to follow celebrity news over actual journal...

And for the first time since our winter-from-hell began, it was snowman snow.  So, of course: but the ensemble was 100% courtesy of my husband, Andy.  Besides loving his sense of humor, he's a staunch supporter of human rights--not to mention those of snowpeople. 

We used to be a nation that expected a free press to question our leaders. We used to be a nation where presidential candidates of both parties released tax returns to assure the public they had no conflicts of interest. We used to be a nation where presidents put their financial affairs in a blind trust, or in Jimmy Carter's case, sold their peanut farm because Americans understood how dangerous financial conflicts for a president could be. We used to be a nation where marital infidelity and multiple wives would have been the end of a campaign, especially for the party of "family values." We used to be a nation where bragging about groping women was wrong. And as of today, we aren't.

So in the interest of wearing more of my me-mades, this year I decided that every Monday didn't have to be a different me-made item.  Last year I found myself wearing fewer hand-made items the rest of the week to try to "save" them for Mondays (which probably says sad things about my enthusiasm for doing laundry).  Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, and since we have been housebound quite a bit this winter, I celebrated being out by wearing the blue microsuede ensemble AND a blue bowknot scarf that has apparently never gotten a "finished" picture.  It felt so festive! And I learned a very important lesson: If you are trapped in a waiting room for an hour with some "Discovery" Channel show about hillbillies making moonshine (and boasting about not knowing what they're doing), the actual exam is NOT the worst part of the annual "woman's wellness" exam.  Heavens.  I like my doctor, who is a very educated man who probably s...

We have managed to not lose power, but other parts of the state haven't been so lucky.  Now we've had 3 days of heavy rain here, which melted off much of our snow but has led to flooding, rock slides, and avalanches.  In one of the weirdest twists of fate, one of the nearby ski resorts is closing tomorrow because of TOO MUCH snow .  I've never seen that.  With everything going on with our crazy winter, I was a bit unenthusiastic about putting these up and my hip/back was even less so as I did something and threw it out, landing myself in bed for the last day and a half.  I'm better today, and I keep trying to remind myself that winter justifies knitting lots and lots of sweaters.  To emphasize this, for Me Made Monday I wore the first wearable sweater I ever knit: Sure, it was supposed to be in cotton and I made it in some bizarre acrylic that Red Heart no longer even makes, but compared to my earlier sweater attempts, that was only a mildly wrong...

The second Santa stripe table runner is done, and aside from not realizing the lines wouldn't line up once I stitched the seams, I'm pleased with them.  And I've started two MORE table runners with fabric strips cut from my college fabric prints: and now that we can take a break from Snowmageddon, I'm hoping to clear off my craft table enough to maybe cut out this, which is one of my "allowed" purchases which just arrived.  It's a nicer flannel in a very dark hunter green.  Andy has been wearing the flannel shirt I made him so much that I wanted one for myself.  And this, is a Polartec fleece that I'll be using to make Andy a shirt for Valentine's Day.  I found this fabric in 2015, I think, so not deep stash, but stash all the same.  And they're both Warm Things.  Honestly, my hometown has at least twice as much snow as we do right now, so it's not like I didn't grow up with bad winters, but potential power outages with no n...

This morning our "togetherness" activity was to remove the snow from the roof of the patio, because while we're pretty confident about the rest of the roof holding, the patio was questionable since freezing rain is predicted for today.  This is our backyard today: That's easily 2 feet of snow on the ground, and heavy rain just started.  The storm drains have been dug out, but so many of them are frozen over that when the rain melts this snow, there is going to be trouble.  We live at the top of a hill, so aside from the voles who built their tunnels at the bottom of the slope in our backyard about to be drown, we won't see much flooding, but things could get very ugly for the people at the bottom of the hill and in the valley.  Now they're saying this storm will be with us through Wednesday and we're still in a state of emergency. Ugh. We cleared off as much ice as we could earlier, and with the rain now, we can finally take a break from storm ...

Theoretically, this would make for a great sewing day.  However, our county is now in a state of emergency, so we had a few things to do.  We received another 3-5 inches of snow this afternoon, but this particular storm system is projected to bring more snow, freezing rain, and rain this weekend, leaving us at risk for downed trees and power lines, flooding, and power outages with temperatures below freezing.  So we have spent the day shoveling snow, shoveling snow for neighbors, prepping for potential power outages, filling water containers, Andy did a grocery run, and I baked bread--more because I wanted bread than as a survival technique, but it is sourdough-oatmeal.  It's a bit unnerving as I have never seen a winter like this in Boise, but the good news is, I am wearing hand-knitted wool socks every day, and everything I've made for us out of fleece is FABULOUS.  If it stays like this, I am making fleece underwear.

It has finally stopped snowing here, and since Andy handled the 8-inches on Wednesday, I did the remaining 2 yesterday: I grew up with much more snow, but since Boise doesn't really get much snow, the county doesn't own many snowplows, and never, ever, EVER plow roads like ours.  This has been record-breaking snowfall for us, with 15-inches on the ground, but that also means 15-inches on the ROADS.  Schools have been closed for two days, and one of our local pizza companies earned HUGE points for closing for the safety of their drivers.  Emergency services were asking people to stay off the roads unless it was absolutely necessary, so I'm disappointed more businesses DIDN'T close.  Luckily, Andy telecommutes and I haven't found a new job yet, so we're good.  We're getting a break from snow as it's -7 right now, and while there's debate about whether or not it can be too cold to snow,  -7 makes it extremely unlikely to snow.  Since ...

Okay--100 finished projects.  I can do this--and have done it many times. But it is a bit daunting when one is at zero. For the first Me Made Monday of 2017, I wore what I call my "clown" socks.  They're so loud that I put a bobble pattern on the leg: which didn't go as badly when we went snowshoeing as I had thought.  It's been too cold here to do more than a mile, but since we're in the middle of yet ANOTHER snowstorm, it's nice to have snowshoes to be able to negotiate the local streets.  Subdivisions never get plowed here--they barely do the main streets--so my little Toyota Corolla is going to be safe in the garage for a bit.  Thank heavens I haven't found a job yet! I took down Christmas decorations yesterday, but I did take a break to start the stippling on the second runner,  and am working on it again this morning over morning coffee: (Note to self:  make sure at least SOME coffee has kicked in before trying to sew.) While I...