A shot of the hats sitting all well-behaved on the stool in the sun puddle in the kitchen.



Cloud Hat (pdf) with Silk Garden (nope, don't know the colour ... ball band missing) and some kind of (also ball band missing) green mohair ... stretchy! Will fit young teen through adult, probably.



Cloud Hat (pdf) I ran out of the Silk Garden part-way through and switched to some pale, pale khaki (yet another missing ball band ... imagine!) King Cole superwash merino, then ran out of the green mohair and switched to a dark variegated (King Cole again?) ... child to small adult.



Cloud Hat (pdf) The same (King Cole?) dark variegated mohair with a ball of mostly black Filatura Di Crossa 127 Print ... young teen to small adult.



Two strands of Lang Tosca held together with a 3x3 rib brim ... child to teen.



Ooo, a close-up! Reminds me of blood orange guts.



Two of the seed stitch panels joined and some flurff added, none of which photographs well!



This is what Miz Bequita Banana did the day after her teeth cleaning/purple monkeys ordeal.



"They're my shoes. I found them. They fit perfectly, see? Mine! ... Sister Cleopatra Longtail at her most charming



It warmed up overnight. And snowed again. I am waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the kid who comes 'round with a shovel, 'cuz, though I'd reall rather just do it, I feel I should give him the opportunity to keep his promise. Damnit.

I Did Not!

I did not knit hats today.
I did not add any trim.
I did not shovel snow.

I did not take any cats to the vet today.
I did not put the second duvet on the bed.
I did not sign anyone's community service record.
I did not close the bedroom window.
I did not make crêpes.



A while ago, Vince sent me a link to this post on his friend's pesky'apostrophe blog, which led me to this site about the Dulaan Project, from which I followed a link to a blog called Mossy Cottage Knits. I read most current post (at the time), which was all over the freakin' map!

Scam Myth Debunked ...Happy Thanksgiving ...dinner club ... angry pie ... Heartbreakers ... freaked out ... malnourisment ... vulnerable ... wonderful ... grownup ... scared ... hope ... strength ... missing leg ... skinny, pregnant ... Cuzzin Tom ... skillfully made ... sheer joy ... weepy ... blessing ... panic attack ... knitting ... encouraging ...

Too much all at once! Huh? Wha? Still reeling, I followed the link to the angry pie story, at which point, I was hooked. Back to the beginning I went (and bookmarked Cuzzin Tom for later).

The roads were kind of icky, going to the APs on Sunday night. They were worse, going home.
It'd been cold out all week. It got colder over the weekend and colder yet Monday and Tuesday. Last night, there was a windchill of -46°C. I stayed home.

When I came home on Sunday night, I settled in to finish catching up on Mossy Cottage. I hauled out part of a ball of Silk Garden and some mohair, cast on and knit a Cloud Hat (pdf), cast on a second one and knit and read 'til way too late.

I spent a good chunk of Monday doing the same thing. Whenever I ran out of one kind of yarn, I added something else and kept going. And pilling Beq. And shovelling snow.

On Tuesday, I finished the hat I was working on and decided I should really be working on the poppet project that's been taking forever. I did some joining and added a bit of trim. I'm going to need another ball of yarn for each one. Poo. Then I decided that's okay, 'cuz I should really be working on little socks for Annailese's advent calendar.

I put the second duvet on the bed last night. Ohmygawdssoverycozy! I also closed the outside bedroom window. Buh! Good thing it wasn't frozen open. I woke up this morning to water dripping on my pillow. The ice on the inside window was melting.

The neighbourhood kid who shovels walks came by and asked me to sign his community service hours sheet thingy. Weird.

Nope, didn't make crêpes. Nor did I go get a pepper, so I could make greek salad. Maybe tomorrow ... and I can pick up the yarn to finish the poppet project, too.

The bright side (you should pardon the pun) of very coldness is how clear and bright and crisp it gets, so I can take pictures of some of the things I did not do today. I'll post them tomorrow.

Stuff and Nonsense ...

Daylight:

Length of day: 7:59
Hours of dark: 14:40ish
Sunrise: 8:23 am
Sunset: 4:22 pm
Start of twilight: 7:42 am
End of twilight: 5:03 pm

Current weather: Mostly Cloudy. -21°C (-5°F), -31°C (-23°F) with windchill, wind SSE 20.8 km/h (13 mph), relative humidity 64%, pressure 29.99 in Hg.

Forecast:

Tonight.. Clear. Increasing cloudiness near midnight with 30% chance of flurries overnight, wind up to 15 km/h. Low -22°C, -32°C with windchill.
Thursday.. Cloudy with sunny periods, 30% chance of flurries early in the morning, 40% late in the afternoon. High -7°C.
Thursday Night.. Cloudy, 40% chance of flurries early in the evening, wind NW 20 km/h becoming light in the evening. Low -19°C. -28°C with windchill.
Friday.. A mix of sun and cloud with 60% chance of flurries. High -14°C.
Saturday.. Sunny. Low -20°C. High -8°C.
Sunday.. Cloudy. Low -8°C. High 0°C.
Normals for the period.. Low -13°C. High -3°C.

Hoary Day ...

It's so very still out, right now. The dry, dry snow that fell last night is still perched on the clothes line and the mountain ash berry bunches have snow caps bigger than they are. There's a layer of fine snow, like powdered sugar, over a crusty layer from the wind the other night. Sir Bunrab hopped every sidewalk and path in the yard, as if to mark them.

At -26°C, it was pleasant to shovel the walks. I got way colder, many times faster in -18°C with -32°C windchill the other day. It's foggy and the sun is struggling to be seen at all though pale dense clouds. There's plenty of light, and most everything's a muted bright white. Photographs come out blue-grey ... the camera does not see the lovely, soft, day I see, nor does it feel the stillness and quiet I feel.

Purple Monkeys ...

Miss B is home, stoned, and with all her teeth intact. She has receeding gums and bone on one side, though, so we get to brush her teeth daily from now on. Oh joy. She wobbled around for a while, then settled on top of the carpeted thingy in the 'puter room. She's been staring out the window, mezmerized by the purple monkeys for a couple of hours.

Cats ...

Bequi's at the vet, getting put under to have her teeth cleaned and possibly one extracted if it's really bad. It's bloody cold outside ... scraping the inside of the windows while stopped at red lights kind of cold ... so I wrapped up a boiled hotpack and bundled it into the carrier with Beq, who meowed piteously all the way there. She and Cleo haven't been apart since I brought Beq home when Cleo was six months old. When I got home, Cleo flattened herself to the floor, doing her best the-sky-is-falling pantomime. When I picked her up, she clung like a limpet. When I put her down again, she disappeared and didn't come out for breakfast. She's just resurfaced and, apparently, the sky is still falling. She doesn't even like Beq.

Ghostesses ...

It looks like the snow is here to stay. It snowed again last night ... everything has a clean white blanket.

Vincent is going to be in town again, but only for a few hours, so a few of us are meeting downtown at the Blue Plate Café for brunch on Sunday.

So much for my plan to knit two little socks a month for Annailese's advent calendar! I did a few last year and Barbara used some of her baby socks. I'll do a few more this year and she'll swap out some of the baby socks for them. Eventually, she'll have a whole set. I am so not a production knitter.

And finally, so I don't have to scour the web for it again next year:

Three little ghostesses,
Sitting on postesses,
Eating buttered toastesses,
Greasing up their fistesses,
Up to their wristesses.
What little beastesses,
To make such feastesses.

Eleven ...

Happy, safe and mindful Samhain, Hallowe'en, Los Dias de los Muertos, Guy Fawkes Night, Hallow Tide ... bon fires, candles, handing out or collecting candy, dressing up, undressing, parades, graveyard renovating, buying things, getting drunk ... however you celebrate this time of year.

More and more families are going to the malls and safe events instead of going door-to-door, but I lit candles and hung a bazillion filmy scarves around the place (no, not near the candles), got dressed up and waited anyway. I knew there would be at least one kid 'cuz My Dawn Chicken had phoned to ask about bringing Hugh by before they went 'round their neighbourhood.

Hugh said, "I'm a ninja. What're you?" I said that I could be a witch or might be a gypsy or possibly a pirate or how about a dark faerie or maybe even a half-dead librarian. Hugh thought about it and told me I was a witch. But where was my hat? I pointed out that the candy was in my hat. He said witches don't wear cowboy hats. Dawn decided I must be a newt rancher. Hugh looked at us both like we had tomato plants growing out of the tops of our heads.

"I'm a ______. What are you?" is pretty common, since costumes are over/under or incorporate snow suits, toques, scarves, mitts and boots. With the exception of one dad (who may have been dressed as a hockey dad, I guess), all the parents who came with the eleven kids (that's eleven more than last year!) were dressed up. Coolness!

I put l'il rubber spiders in with the candy and a black flocked rubber rat (with a little silver leash) on the edge of the hat-bowl. They were more popular than the candy! I'll hafta remember that for next year. And here I thought it would scare 'em! Hah! Creeped Nina out, though.