It is 34 degrees outside, and everything is starting to melt. The birds are singing like crazy – I even heard a raven crowing. They’re mobbing my suet feeder, and it looks like they’re having a much easier time of it. (Yesterday I saw a few holdouts, pecking away at the frozen block of fat and seeds with great determination.)

I’m warming up a pot of water on the stove for a celebratory sponge bath. I might actually make it out into the world today for a little while, and man, am I squalid. (Maybe later today the well filter will thaw, and we can have running water again!)

The only down side is that the tree overhanging the cabin is dropping huge chunks of ice and snow on the roof. The cats aren’t too thrilled about this. They are alternating between “cozy nap on the couch” with “SHEER TERROR!” and then back to “cozy nap on the couch.”

No power outage so far, and no substantial wind predicted, so we should stay lit for the near future. If things keep up this way, I may even drive in to work from the office tomorrow! Wouldn’t that be nice? With the hot and cold running water, and them fancy toilets what flush, and everything!

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I have troublesome hair. No normal, everyday hat can hope to contain my hair. Thus Doris was born, from a hat spotted on a barrista in Mount Vernon.

Gently falling snow sold separately.

Doris is worked in super-bulky yarn, which makes her sturdy enough to win the war against Troublesome Hair. Doris has a garter stitch brim, with the main hat worked in seed stitch, for extra warmth, and that air of vintage cool. (As an added bonus, it seriously takes only about an hour to knit a hat at this gauge.)

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick, Rowan Biggy Print, or any other super-bulky yarn that works up at two stitches per inch. You will need about 60 yards.

Gauge: 2 st/inch in seed stitch.

Needles: 8mm/US 11 circulars (use a pair no more than 20 inches long – 16 inches is ideal) and DPNs or another pair of circulars for the final stage of decreases.

Dimensions: Doris is 24 inches around, and 8 inches high. Special note Doris is a bit bigger than you might expect. If you have troublesome hair, you want a hat with a few inches of positive ease, meaning that the hat is a few inches larger than your head. Otherwise, it won’t fit properly over all that hair.

1. Cast on 43 stitches and join, (all together now) being careful not to twist. (If you change the number of stitches in order to accomodate a different size/gauge/needles/yarn, be sure to cast on an odd number of stitches. Makes it much easier to work the seed stitch.) Set a stitch marker at the join.

2. Work six rows – three ridges – in garter stitch. Remember that you will have to alternate knit rows with purl rows, in order to make garter stitch in the round.

3. Switch to seed stitch (*k1, p1* – if you have cast on an odd number of stitches, this will automatically make seed stitch. If you insist on an even number of stitches, alternate a round of *k1, p1* with a round of *p1, k1*). Work 8 rounds – 4 inches.

4. Begin decreasing as follows:

Round 1: *k8, k2tog* k3
Round 2: *k7, k2tog* k3
Round 3: *k6, k2tog* k3

Continue in this fashion until you have about 15 stitches left on the needles. Switch to DPNs when things start to get awkward, or just knit from one set of circs onto the others.

5. Cast off these stitches, leaving a long tail. Thread the tail through the cast off stitches, then draw it tight to close the hole. Weave in ends, and admire a hat that you can finally wear over your big ol’ hair!

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So I’m standing aimlessly in the middle of the living room, admiring my latest scarf, and half-watching “Bones,” when from the kitchen comes a racketa-racketa-racketa-BANG!-SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH and outside the window I see gouts of steam rising from beneath the cabin.

Yesterday morning when the temperature dropped to 20, I started running the taps to keep the pipes from freezing. Unfortunately, when I went into the bathroom, I found that the hot water pipe had apparently already frozen, because no hot water came out. Apparently, the pipe finally gave way. Or a… I don’t know… a sprocket or something broke. (I refer you to my earlier post, wherein I confessed that I once had to ask the hardware clerk for “a pinchy thing” while making a pinching motion with my fingers. Pliers, I meant. Whatever.)

I snatch up my flashlight, leap outside, and see water spraying out from what would be a crawlspace, if it was enclosed. (My cabin is safe from flooding, like one of those bayou shacks. Except we’re not on a floodplain or anything. Basically, it’s outdoor storage.) I determine immediately that there is absolutely nothing that I can fix – or know – about this problem, so I ran at top speed through the snow, in my slippers and t-shirt, over to the main house. Except that there’s eight inches of snow, and I’m wearing slippers, so really, my top speed was a sort of hasty waddle.

We turned off the main water supply, which did indeed stop the water-related event going on down there. Unfortunately, it also means no flushy and no washy.

In other news, another winter storm is looming ominously on the horizon. I have been watching it creep closer all day long, with a growing sense of dread. The wind has started picking up. I’m pretty sure we’ll be losing power some time in the night, so I am trying to savor my electricity while I have it.

I’m headed directly for the couch, and I ain’t moving for the rest of the night.

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From Kathleen’s blog comes the news that a grad student is studying the speed of meme. To participate in the study, just link to his post and ping Technorati (more instructions can be found at the link). He’ll be mapping the spread of the meme, and relating his findings in a speech to the MLA. Exciting, no?

Linky linky!

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Yesterday I left the house for several hours and ran some errands. It was glorious! Then temperatures dropped down into the teens overnight, and it’s started snowing again today. Maybe I will be able to leave the house tomorrow. Hard to say.

In the meantime, I have been busy, as you can see from my coffee table.

I completed the scarf for T, which turned out rather well.

Aside from that, today has been insanely frustrating – everything which could possibly gone wrong, has. As well as a lot of odd little things that never happen (e.g. my card was declined at the grocery store, even though I had enough money to cover the purchase. When I got home and checked the account, I found that the charge was actually processed. Long story short, I have neither my groceries, nor my fifty bucks).

Enough. Enough with the frustrations, enough with trying to do three things at once (and doing all of them poorly), enough with this freakish lapse into “real” winter. Now I remember why I moved from Alaska in the first place – all this snow and cold is just so damned inconvenient, with the layers of clothes that must be donned and doffed, and the impasable roads, and the big clomping boots. I will be happy when we’re back to Pacific Northwest winter, where it’s 50 degrees and raining. It just makes life so much SIMPLER.

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