Warmer Climes

Warmer climes here we come

Saturday Sky?

Am very tired of the roof, ground and sky being the same color.

Pools Update: Sleeve #1 is finished!!!!!!

With every thought of southern climes going into the suitcase, warm blue sky is beckoning (keeping fingers and toes crossed.)

Weather Tracker

The full lunar eclupse last night, taken 10:25 PM from the back porch doesn't show the magnificence of this lunar event. The Moon was mottled blood red with Saturn and the lead star from the constellation Leo bright as could be imagined. It was truly spectacular.
Then, back inside, watching The Weather Channel, a picture from Massachusetts which shows the moon a bluish color rather than the red I witnessed.

Here we are with TWC again showing the positioning of our sun, Earth and moon for the eclipse not happening again for three years.
This morning we awoke to the radio declaring 4 degrees at PIT while we are in the banana belt of 10 degrees. The temp is climbing now. Just look at the sun coming through the trees! Heavy frost and nature's diamonds always amaze me.

It's only running 20 degrees or so below average. And tomorrow is to bring another round of weather mayhem that's coming up from the southwest, where they don't want it either.

Pools is coming along beautifully. Sleeve #1 has 7" knit on it from shoulder down so far. Yes, was breezing through it yesterday. I forgot to mention that I kitchnered the shoulders. And, for the first time, I just did it. No instructional 'cheat sheet'. I realized that on the second one and was proud of myself! (We have to take pleasure in small pleasures or we miss the purpose of it all. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

Pools is vested

We're to a vested state in Pools in the River (WG#60 OOP).

Neither picture is an accurate color...just haven't found the right lighting yet! It would help immensely if I washed that mirror! I did want to show that it fits. (Click on either pic for detail.)

To this point, the body has been knit in the round to the arms, then separately knitted front and back. There are short rows at the back neck to prevent riding up. An inch of 2x2 ribbing bound off as it presents itself completes the neckline.

Next up: sleeves!

Robins!

I know you can't tell, but a whole flock of robins arrived just before noon today! Robins! Spring is coming even though snow showers are predicted this week and we've about a 2" snowpack!

700 knitted panels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0-1GKXZEA This is truly amazing. I found it on one of my lists and Lark found it on one of the blogs she reads. It is a UTube short movie with over 700 knitted panels creating a short movie, including music.

Saturday Sky 10:10 AM

Cold, crisp, diamonds on the snow. It's a February morning in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

The fact that it's to be 50 tomorrow with rain; well, that's more of a March day. Three days of sunshine this week! We had only three days without precipitation from the middle of January to the 9th of February. Depression was settling in.

Now, if I can get rid of this cold. I really didn't even realize it was a cold until yesterday since it'd been so long since I'd had just a regular cold.

Sunshine will help.

A Valentine's Improvement

Since Saturday's post, the weather has been alternating between this blizzard picture from Sunday and the sunny snow picture below. The two sunny days were cold, this morning was 11 to start, but warmed enough to begin to melt the layers of snow and ice.



Monday there was a two hour delay, Tuesday no school and Wednesday a two hour delay. We had that storm that started out as rain, rained all through the night, then temperatures dropped 6 degrees in 20 minutes and created solid ice and frozen slush.

Today's sunshine was a true attitude adjustment.




DH and I exchanged cards this St. Valentine's Day and he bought me a box of locally made turtles from the Valos Candy Co. in Arnold. Turtles are my favorite :) And, do click on this picture to read the 'cat card' I gave DH.




I had wanted to give a Pools in the River update with the shoulders seamed, but the back isn't quite there yet. It is coming along....

Happy Valentine's Day to All!

Plow "driver?"

This morning I awoke to about an inch and a half of very heavy, wet snow. Since DH was to take the car (which is housed in the one car garage) for inspection, I slowly shoveled the driveway. As I was finishing, the township plow came by.
While he was on his way out of our road, his plow dropped and he was plowing with both the top and the bottom of the plow. This had the effect of tearing up the asphalt at the bottom of our driveway, in front of the ditch and the road surface itself. I will be contacting the township for repairs.
As I was taking the damage pictures, the first bit of blue sky appeared.
Just thought I'd share.

Edited to add: The Township has been emailed and immediate repair has been requested along with the information that these pictures have been posted on this blog.

Still Winter

So 60 degree weather retreated South. The front came through to drop another 2" rain after Wednesday's post and the bit of snow shown here overnight. It's still flurrying.
Most of this will melt today before a predicted inch wakes us in the morning with its silence. It is amazing how noiseless our corners of the world become with snowfall. Rain is noisy, traffic makes it louder. Snow does muffle and blanket what we have become accustomed to hearing in our everyday world. Even the birds react noisily to rain and puff up their feathers while waiting out the snow.
It is pretty while it lasts. I keep telling myself that. Really, I'm a summer person. An over 75 degree, sunshine person. I liked being a desert rat all those years in the Southwest. Still, we're blessed not to have had the horrendous weather so many others are facing this week -- flooding, blizzards, tornadoes.
It's not so bad here after all.

60 degree Ash Wednesday

Not only do we have more and more Spring bulbs pushing through the soaked topsoil, but today, Ash Wednesday, we have our first flower. A dandelion.

Being that it is Ash Wednesday, DH places the cross on his Freightliner.




The strong front has brought us record-tieing 60 degree temperatures this morning, dark clouds, over an inch of rain. Sunday's high is to be 20.

Dolores for President

Dolores has declared her candidacy for President on the Fibertarians Party. The announcement is included in its entirety in the link below.

Her Press Secretary, Harry, the Ball of Yarn, has suggested the following as political promises:

*Elizabeth Zimmermann's birthday will be declared a national holiday.
*All fiber-related purchases will be fully tax-deductible.
*Knitting will become a mandatory subject in American public schools.
*Government subsidies for the establishment of independent yarn shops in high-need areas.

The 'tails' of Dolores are woven through the writings of our friend Franklin.

Should any reader be part of the Super Tuesday vote, I encourage a trip to the polls (send me some polled jacob fleece, please). My primary trek isn't until April 22nd.

It's in the Mist

SOTSii is shown in this morning's mist. It is a crisp 38 though we are to see 50 today, we hope. Fog moved in this morning, keeping the temperature down. SOTSii has grown by a few rows since she was last pictured. You might be able to see, especially if you click on the picture, that the rose bush has its red leaf buds breaking through.



Taken this morning, these two pictures show some of the spring flowers just starting to poke through by the pond.

First, we have day lillies (the old fashioned orange kind often seen as waste flowers by highways). These I transplanted as one little daylilly from up by the stable where they'd been growing for decades, longer than I've been alive. At one point my father had a lilly garden and a rose garden, when my parents met in 1944. There are also some daffodils poking through.
Here are some hyacinths rising through the heaving, frosty ground. They are lovely as long as the foraging rabbits don't get them first!

Pools in the River update

"Pools in the River" is coming right along after this week's decision making. To recap, I was deciding when to create the arnhole, what patterning to use and how best to develop the armhole. After having steeked the last few projects, all those years of other techniques totally disappeared in my memory bank. I really wanted to steek, but that was impossible with this alpaca/acrylic yarn.

The first shot is of the whole Pools right now from the front. I am using three circular needles, size 6; one for back stitches, one for front stitches and one to knit with.

Doesn't the grass look wonderfully green? Can't tell you how ecstatic I am with the ice melting off most of the ground today!



Picture Number 2 is from the front, showing an armhole being created. The patterning seems to be working fine as I knit across as usual then knit across the inside...flat knitting with a tube below and other needles in the back. It was a bit awkward for the first row or two;but, now, it isn't at all a problem.

The pictures show the yarn redder than it actually is. For a closer look as to the progress, click on the pictures to "embiggen".

St. Brigid's Day poetry

Today is St. Brigid's Day, the 3rd Annual Bloggers (Silent) poetry reading.

The Cast Off

This is a day to celebrate can-
openers, those lantern-jawed long-tailed
humping tools that cut through what keeps
us from what we need: a can of beans
trapped in its armour taunts the nails
and teeth of a hungry woman.

Today let us hear hurrahs for zippers,
those small shark teeth that part
politely to let us at what we want;
the tape on packages that unlock
us birthday presents; envelopes we slit to thaw the frozen
words on the tundra of paper.

Today let us praise the small
rebirths, the emerging groundhog
from the sodden burrow; the nut
picked from the broken fortress of walnut
shell, itself proed from the oily fruit
shaken from the high turreted
city of the tree.

Today let us honor the safe whose door
hangs ajar; the champagne bottle
with its cork bounnced off the ceiling
and into the soup tureen; the Victorian lady
in love who has removed her hood, her cloak,
her lace boots, her stockings, her overdress,
her underdress, her wool petticoat, her linen
petticoats, her silk petticoats, her whalebone
corset, her bustle, her chemise, her drawers, and
who still wants to! Today let us praise the cast
that finally opens, slit neatly in two
like a dinosaur egg, and out at last
comes somewhat hairier, powdered in dead skin
but still beautiful, the lost for months
body of my love.

---Marge Piercy
in
The Moon Is Always Female
Alfred A. Knopf
New York
1982

Punxsy Phil Sees Shadow

(File photo AP via KDKA website)

News Flash! Punxsutawny Phil sees his shadow -- Six More weeks of Winter to ensue!

This being Candlemas, a Pagan-Christian holiday brought to Punxsutawny by the German immigrants who couldn't find their traditional badger but utilized the omnipresent groundhog, the hope of Spring lies heavily upon us.

Once in a while Phil does not see his shadow up on Gobbler's Knob. Of course, were you to visit the downtown Punxsy library, you could see his year-round home. There are plate glass windows for viewing Phil and his illustrous mate. If you were routed out of hiding and away from your mate in this weather and surrounded by thousands of people with cameras and spotlights in the freezing pre-dawn, you'd see your shadow and bare your teeth also.

Groundhogs are by nature lumbering, biting, bedeviled varmints. Best get them out of the woodpile (and into the fire.)

Iceday

Over a half inch of rain fell overnight onto surface temperatures under 32 degrees.

Happy February 1st.

School was first posted as two hour delay but has since been cancelled.

Of course my stalwart bus driver DH had to leave to go to the bus barn before that cancellation came through.

The coffee pot is on and I'm waiting for him to be home "drectly" (sic). (His radio signoff was "Put the coffepot on, Sugar, I'll be home drectly.")