How do they know..?

Like a good little energy-conscious homeowner, I turned the furnace down while I was away to celebrate the holidays, my mom’s birthday, and the fortuitous in-town-ness of several friends late last week and this weekend. So when I walked in this afternoon and it felt a little chilly, I didn’t think much of it – I was too preoccupied thinking about the ice-packed-snow-plow-debris that I’d just spent 20 minutes chipping out of my driveway* and the bit that I finally decided would have to wait until after I unloaded the car. Even when I walked around the corner to turn the thermostat back up and it was blinking at me that it needed new batteries (and while I was at it a new filter) did I register the fact that the other thing that it was blinking was that it was 45 degrees in the house. I scavenged in the desk for new batteries, wandered down to replace the filter.. and then noticed that one of the fans was running but the furnace wasn’t lit. Some quick investigation confirmed that it wasn’t just chilly, and that I wouldn’t be able to stay in the house without rectifying the problem. Fortunately, my furnace guy** was able to come out and fix it lickety split and the furnace has been running for the last hour trying to bring the internal temperature of the house back up.

In the mean time, I did the bits and pieces of dishes that got left in the sink before I left (mostly work travel mugs and other stuff that was safe to sit for a few days without going rancid), started a load of laundry, put away all the bits and pieces from the trip (including the Sipalu bag/pillow kit!), and made tea to go with the mango chutney and the last of the naan from friends. My fingers are still chilly (hence the tea), but it is getting warmer, so hopefully I’ll soon be able to just curl up under a blanket and watch a movie while working on mom’s socks*** some more.

* Really need to remember to call the guy about arranging for them to clear the sidewalk and driveways when I won’t be around.

** I sort of love living in a small town where I actually have *a* furnace guy – the same guy, every time – who knows my furnace and its history better than I do since he installed it several years before I bought my house.

*** Still not finished. Farther along, though – almost to the heel turn – so pr’bly in the next couple weeks. As a related aside, my sister commented on Christmas that she really liked a particular pair of socks that I’d gifted her a few years ago and after some back and forth where she tried to describe them without them ringing any bells for me, she went to get them: they were some socks I made out of Cascade Fixation and she loved that they were stretchy *and* lacy. I told her if she wanted more, to just order the yarn and send it to me, so she and mom spent about 20 minutes on the Webs website picking out yarn for about 10 pairs of socks. *smile* Looks like this will be a sock year.

It’s all over but the seaming.

Right then.. so, for reasons recently explained, my knitterly ambition has been somewhat scarce this year. All the same, I’ve been working on a blue v-neck cabled sweater intermittently for the last several months and last night I finished the last bit of knitting:

(As usual, clickable thumbnails. The flash in my camera tends to over-expose things, and I pr’bly corrected a smidge too much in this one; the next one is more color accurate on my monitor.)

Jali thought that it was just fine that way:

..but it still needs side and underarm seams, and to have the ends woven in, both of which I’ll pr’bly do tonight. This was my first foray into saddle shoulders and while it was a bit of a surprise not to be done with the sleeves when I thought I should be, I like how they turned out:

(Sorry for the blurriness of that one.) I also am pleased with the neck, which I was afraid was going to end up *way* too large.

Unfortunately, the Coriolis socks have languished while I worked on the sweater, partially because I’m afraid they’re going to be too big, even though I’m getting spot on stitch and row gauge (which makes me think I was too generous in my measurements).

These are for mom, though, and she knows about them (and that they’ll be late) so I’ll have her try them on tomorrow night to see how they’re fitting. I haven’t wanted to keep working on them if they’re just going to get ripped out, so the sweater was a good diversion.

Return of the light

It’s been a hard, dark year for many, myself included. I’ve not posted about much (any?) of it here, but as the initial court filing either happened Friday or will happen today, making it public for any who might care to look, it’s time. In early summer, J and I decided to separate; he moved out in August and we decided to divorce somewhere in between. I won’t go into any more detail here, other than to say that the increasing darkness from the summer solstice to now has been for me more than the noticeable shortening of daylight hours.

We seem, as a species, to have an amazingly phoenix-like ability to rise from the ashes, to rebuild from the rubble and reshape ourselves from the raw clay of our very beings, stubbornly believing that there’s a silver lining even in swirling storm clouds of a hurricane. So, over the next few weeks in honor of the longest night, I’ll charge a glass (or two) and drink a toast to the return of the light. And like the gradual lengthening of days, I suspect it will happen slowly and at times without my noticing, but all the same, it will happen.

*laugh*

So it’s a dinosaur and not a dragon, but still.. might need this one. *smile*

Vocabulary, redux, redux.

Utterly and amazingly gorgeous. In ever sense of that word.

Remember.

See also:

My connection.
This challenge in response to Starbuck’s RED campaign.