Knit Addict

Our weather folks in Oklahoma can sometimes be a little…well…shall we say excitable? They get going and scare the shit crap out of you and then nothing happens. Anyone remember the story of Chicken Little?

Well, this time they were right. We got a boatload of ice. When we went to bed last night they said there were 24,000 customers in the OKC Metro without power. Judging from the amount of ice added over night, I suspect that number has gone up. We’ve had a couple of pretty good hits - it was off once last night some time for a couple of minutes - but so far we’re still lit. And more importantly, still have a blower motor for the heater. Gas heat doesn’t do much good when it can’t move through the house.

This is our worst casualty so far. We hope it survives, because it’s the dogs favorite shade tree. If not they have others, along with a heated/cooled garage so they won’t exactly suffer. But having the bird bath in the shade is kind of nice during the summer.

I did this last weekend but forgot to take pics. It’s another gift scarf, but this time I slipped the first stitch of every row purlwise with yarn in front.

Another ice photo. I think this is just way cool looking.

So what do you do when it’s icing? Why, you knit of course.

This won’t surprise anyone, but I changed the Ms Morrison. It’s really minor, but change it I did. I chose to go ahead and knit the sleeves before finishing the body. Seems like sleeves last just bog down for me, so it made sense. I also decided I wanted them a little smaller around at the cuff, so I decreased six more stitches than my size called for. Since I didn’t decide to do that until I was already down to that point, I shortened the cable pattern by one repeat so they say obvious 3/4 sleeves. Had I gone much longer I think they would have looked like long sleeves that were too short.

I like the way these multi-colored yarns change patterning on sleeves because of the change in circumference. Don’t like it so much when shaping the body of a sweater, but that’s another topic entirely. In case you’re interested, I’m knitting the medium size, an am through almost two hanks of the Miss Priss. The sleeves took…probably 85% of a hank.

The difference between yesterday and today:

That’s my rain bell yesterday.

This is today. The ice is actually mounded up at the top, like a rounded spoonfull of something. We’ve got one spot (that we’ve found) on the roof that was leaking last night. It’s in one of the valleys and the guttering is all frozen. Our guess is because the gutters are froze up the water is running under the ice and pushing back up under the shingles. Luckily (???) it came down inside one of the walls and popped out from under in the garage where it’s not done any damage. Jim was out at 10:30 last night trying to break it up a little so the water would run off. I think it worked because that spot dried out over night and we got a lot of rain, but we haven’t ventured into the attic yet this morning to see.

Finally, I’ve got some mystery wool in my stash. It’s a commercial product, but for some reason I wound it into balls (not on the ball winder, what’s up with that?) and didn’t keep labels. I know it’s 100% wool and it’s about a DK weight. But how do you know how much you’ve got? You check it with your McMorran balance.

This tool is not a stranger to any of the spinners. You hang a length of yarn off the arm, then keep snipping until it balances. Measure the piece that’s left and multiply the number of inches by 100 to get the approximate number of yards in a pound, or meters in a kilo if you get that version. Very handy little gadget.

Well, the boss got my IP plugged into the firewall so I can work. Hope you’re all warm and dry. If you know of any friends on the south side of OKC who are without power, have them give me a shout if they need somewhere warm. All our power lines are buried and the main feeders were all replaced in 1999, so chances are pretty good we’ll keep power through this.