A Happy Fuzzy Blog

Hello Winter

So, we've been getting winter storm warnings periodically for the last few weeks but the big storms have kept passing us by.  A few flurries here and there, and last weekend we got about an inch or two of snow, but nothing big.  Until this weekend. 

This was the view out the front door this afternoon.  It didn't pass us by this time.

So I guess I need to buy some boots.  You'd think that living in Michigan for nearly 40 years, I'd have the sense to own a pair of winter boots, and don't think I haven't tried to buy a pair.  I used to have boots, but they ended up way too big when I lost weight, so they were very uncomfortable.  I don't know how many times I've tried to buy boots since then, and every time I've given up in disgust and frustration.  Most winter boots seem to be made by people who assume that women are only going to walk from the front door to the car, not a mile or two.  And when I've tried hiking boots, they take 15 minutes to get in and out of, weigh 5 pounds, and are so stiff they make me feel like I'm putting my feet into wooden boxes.  Not comfortable.

Ideally I want something easy to get in and out of, waterproof, warm, comfortable, with a good arch support, vegan, cute, that doesn't cost a fortune.  But today I decided hell, I just needed a pair of boots (see photo above), so when I was at Meijer buying groceries, I figured I might as well look at their boots.

I wear a size 8 1/2.  Their boots didn't seem to be in any particular order.  None of them were actually cute, but I started with the less ugly ones and looked at sizes.  They had lots of 10's.  Lots of 11's.  Some 6's.  A few 9W's.  Sigh.  Well, it looked like 9W was the closest I was going to get.  I figured I might as well try it on (I figured I would probably need to put an orthotic in it to get a decent arch support anyway, so maybe a larger size wouldn't be a bad idea).  Um...except it had one of those weird cardboard thingies they put in new shoes to make it keep its shape, and I couldn't get it out.  Ok, they apparently don't want anyone to buy that pair.

I found another pair of 9's, went to pull the zipper down to try them on, and the zipper was stuck.  Alrighty.  Found another pair of 9's with a stuck zipper, and said screw it. 

See, this is why I don't have any boots.  I think I'm going to have to find something online since any store I go to will have long sold out of 8 1/2 in anything at all useful since apparently I was supposed to buy boots in July.  Feh.

But on a happier note, look, I added one of those flickr things over there in the sidebar.  Is it just me, or is that thing totally hypnotic?  It's like looking at a lava lamp.  I find myself just staring at it...  Wow, man...  I'm going to be loading some of my older photos into flickr as I have time, so stay tuned.

Also, I had a lightbulb over my head.  For years I always used to drink orange juice all the time.  When I cook broccoli, I put the broccoli in a saucepan with just a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan, maybe about half an inch, then put a lid on the pan, and cook it for 5 minutes to steam the broccoli.  I used to pour the water down the drain, but my friend Ken said no, you should drink it, it's full of nutrients, and I realized he was right, so I started pouring it into a cup and refrigerating it and when it was cold I would add it to my orange juice.  Now, that was very healthy, but it kind of confused my brain.  It looked like orange juice.  It tasted mostly like orange juice, but it also tasted like broccoli.  Weird.

Then I stopped drinking orange juice because of my reflux, so I had to think about what to do with the broccoli water.  Aha!  Today as I was cooking the broccoli, I also boiled some water.  I put a teabag in a mug, and when the 5 minutes was up, I poured the broccoli water into the mug, then filled it up the rest of the way with the boiling water.  Broccoli tea!  The tea was strong enough that it completely covered up the taste of the broccoli.  It's just extra healthy!  Yay!

I totally would've worn these with safety pins

So since the needle incident disabled my last bus knitting project, I had to start another one immediately.  Now, you know when I dye yarn, I put a little bit of my soul into each skein, but creativity nourishes my soul, so it balances out.  I'm sending the skeins out into the world, like sending my children off to other homes to live, but they're going to live with knitters, so they're going to good homes, right?  They'll be ok. 

Every once in a while, though, I dye a colorway, and I look at it and think, ok, you're staying with me, and it goes into my stash.  Fortunately for you all, I tend to dye several skeins of a colorway and just keep one skein, or nothing would end up in the store.  (If it was just one, it was probably an experiment or an accident I had to save.  Heh.  Nothing to see here, move along.)

Punk grrl was one I had to keep.  Funny thing is, I'm not a "pink" person at all.  But the combination of the pink with the black and the violety blue is so...yes!  I totally would have worn these back when I wore safety pins in my ears!  I love this!  (Oh.  Yes.  It's on metal needles.  Ahem.)

Another cool thing I wanted to mention was you can help Anne at knitspot help Knitters without Borders. (For any non-knitters reading this, Knitters without Borders is a subset of Doctors without Borders.  The money all goes to Doctors without Borders; it's just a way to keep track of how much of the money comes from knitters.) Go Anne!  Go help her!

I was getting to that!

Marcy asked, "Hey, I want an update on that sweater you showed a couple posts back.
How's that going?

"What brand are those sock needles?  I never saw sock needles in plastic
before."

Good questions!  I didn't have time to knit on the sweater for a few weeks, which was really bumming me out, but I finished the back this weekend and picked up the stitches for the second front yoke.  Today I was home sick, so I sat around in my bathrobe wondering what was safe to eat and got several inches of knitting done.  In three more rows I can start the neck shaping.

This isn't a great picture since I took it at 9pm and I'm not up to setting up the spiffy lights, but you get the general idea.

As for the needles, they were Susan Bates, but of course they weren't specifically sock needles.  They were just dpns.  I bought them...um...over 20 years ago?  People knit socks then, of course, but there wasn't the sock mania then that there is now.  I actually bought them to make mittens at the time.  I guess there wasn't the assumption then that if you were buying dpns, of course you were going to knit socks with them.  Is there that assumption now?

I seem to be old now.

Um, hi.

Yep, back in my day we knit our clothes out of woolly mammoth fiber.  I tell you what.

Why metal dpns are better than plastic dpns

So I finally finished my Gratitude socks (aka, my bus knitting socks).  Yay!  I really like them!

Now that those are finished, my waiting for stuff to download knitting becomes my bus knitting.  Saturday it looked like this:

I was working on it downtown tonight when it occurred to me that I should probably try it on to make sure it actually fit, so I took off my left shoe and sock and slipped the Jaywalker in progress onto my foot.  A little snug.  How would it actually fit around my ankle?  I carefully pulled the sock up and maneuvered the live stitches around my heel and ankle.  It felt a bit tight.  And then I heard a snap.  Snap?  One never likes to hear a snap from the vicinity of one's ankle.  That's just not good.  I looked down.

Oh crap.  Well, I wouldn't be knitting with those needles anymore.

Rather than knit on the way home, I frogged.

 

I'll have to find something else to knit on the bus tomorrow morning.  On metal needles.