Yesterday while I was outside stacking wood, I found some lovelies to share with you.

First, a hibernating yellowjacket. These damned things are all over my wood pile, which is why I don’t stack wood inside the house – I stack it near the door, then bring it straight into the stove as needed.

The face of a sleeping killer. (I’m allergic.)

Next, a hibernating… whatever the hell this thing is. Do grubs have stingers? Or is it some kind of butt snorkel? All I know is, I ain’t touching it.

Here it is with a quarter beside it, for scale. As you can see, it’s about the size of your pinkie finger.

Now, as a mental refresher, I bring you a picture of the most perfectest snowflake, which I discovered suspended mid-air from a thread of spider silk. Unfortunately, it was a bit breezy, and I couldn’t quite catch it holding still. Nevertheless, I quite like this picture. The snowflake goes “Zoom!” and also, “Whee!”

I spent most of Sunday sacked out on the couch, trying to get over a cold. However, I did have to bestir myself to drag my dirty clothes down to the laundromat.

Let me tell you, the laundromat is always an adventure. Always. I actually look forward to going there, because something incredibly interesting always happens. (Note to self: remember to blog laundromat adventures in the future.)

This time, as it happened, there was an entomologist in the house. Or at least an entomophile. (Is that a word?)

The wolf spider is a large, active spider which hunts down its prey. This much, you can learn anywhere. But what the scholarly articles won’t tell you is that wolf spiders have the trickster nature. One never sees a wolf spider simply run across the floor – oh no, they hide carefully, probably giggling, only to pop out when you least expect them. For example, the time when I flipped over a plate that I had set out to dry. Hello, spider! I swear, if you listen closely, you can hear them say “Boo!”

I’m unloading dirty clothes from my mega-hamper, when – “Boo!” A HUGE WOLF SPIDER. It pauses momentarily for maximum effect, then scampers down into a fold in the clothes.

I yelp loudly- “AI!” – and sort of stagger back, with my hands over my mouth. A man showing his toddler how to fold clothes awkwardly asks, “Um… everything okay?” (I don’t know where you’d expect someone to scream in terror, but it’s certainly not the laundromat.)

“Spider,” I mumble through my hands. “Big spider. Wolf spider. About the size of a quarter.” I am sort of staggering around in a circle, trying to work off the adrenaline.

“Ah,” he says. He walks over to my hamper, gingerly picks up the spider with his bare hands and lets it scurry around his hands as he calmly walks over to the door and sets it outside. “Boy, that really was a big one,” he says.

“Thanks,” I said. I was still feeling a little woozy.

Believe you me, I used a double dose of bleach in my laundry that night, just in case there were spider eggs in my clothes.

In other laundromat news: I keep my laundry detergent in the trunk of my car, and it had half-frozen into a sort of Purex slushie, which was pretty funny. I also met a fellow knitter, who confessed she had never knit socks, and asked if they were very hard (oh my no, 85% of the time you’re just knitting a tube). And a woman whose well pump had frozen and burst, the poor creature (I pointed out the unmarked bathroom door, and she was like “Oh boy, flushing!” and I totally understood).

Anyway, back to the couch now.

Comments (0)

Dear me, what a week. On Sunday we kicked off the week with International Pajama Day, of course. Alas, I did not realize that International Pajama Day would coincide with Guy Shows Up In Big Truck Full Of Firewood That Needs To Be Unloaded And Then He Backs Up Too Far And Gets Stuck In The Soggy Part Of The Yard Day.

As I was chucking firewood out of the truck, digging out the truck’s wheels, hauling around wheelbarrows full of firewood, and then pushing the (very large, very heavy) truck with all my might, all I could think was, “I’m a Linux administrator. I write PHP scripts. I wear a shirt with the Rebel Alliance logo. What am I doing here?!”

But I did wear my pajamas (sweats), and followed Celia’s injunction to “keep International Pajama Day in your heart,” and I was able to spend the rest of the night sacked out on the couch.

International Pajama Day left me unable to lift my arms above shoulder height for the next two days. Is that right? That’s not right. I have much higher hopes for the next one.

Monday was unremarkable, except that if something was on a high shelf or fell on the floor, it stayed there (see previous).

Tuesday dawned with the threat of “SNOW! SNOW! OMG WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!” As reported elsewhere, it did not snow. Not too much, anyway. But out here, the wind blew hard enough (about 50mph, so I heard) to take down the power. My power went out from about noon until 2PM, and then from 4PM until some time in the wee hours of the night.

It’s sad how everyday this occurrence has become for me. I had seen it coming, of course, so I had put up a pot of coffee in the thermos, and charged up my cellphone*.

When the lights go out, I move to the chair closest to the window, and switch to either knitting or reading. I have a really great battery-powered LED lantern, so these activities continue throughout the night, along with drinking coffee from the thermos, and (if it seems like it’s going to stay dark for a while) putting the contents of my fridge into a big plastic tub out on the deck.

By my count, we’ve had no power for very nearly two solid weeks, since the beginning of November. Kids in western Washington have missed so much school that administrators are planning to waive the state’s requirement that they make up the snow days later. This is unprecedented, and completely insane. I blame Al Gore.

Anyway, one of my lovely Christmas gifts was a set of Denise needles. On Tuesday night, I discovered that not only are they nimble in the hands and wonderfully convenient; they’re also good for knitting in a power outage.

The light gray color of the Denise needles contrasts well with almost any other yarn, making it easy to knit by battery powered LED lamp-light.

As I write this, the gray waterfall scarf is nearly done, although it looks a little… unpromising.

I’m hoping that a good blocking will sort it out, but it’s possible that this lovely soft yarn was not the right choice for this particular pattern. Plymouth Yarns Baby Alpaca DK is one of those yarns that’s a little tricky to work with, because the skein just sort of swoons apart after you’re about halfway through. It sure is warm and wonderful, though. Now that it’s long enough, I knit with the completed portion draped over the back of my neck.

Wednesday dawned, seemingly normal, and I headed into Seattle for work.

Now, I knew that there was a second storm coming in on the heels of the first. So naturally, once I got to work, I started checking the weather.com page for my zip code.

If you click that link right now, you’ll probably see it – the yellow box at the top that they set aside for Severe Weather Statements from the National Weather Service. Yellow box means bad things coming!

Okay, now think of all those big storms we’ve had so far. For each one, I have obsessively refreshed the weather.com page, checking those NWS reports in the yellow box. Okay?

Now picture what happened when I checked that page on Wednesday morning, and found that the box was ORANGE. Which means that everything to date had simply been a YELLOW ALERT. I DIDN’T KNOW IT WENT TO ORANGE!

People, I think it’s fair to say, when I saw that the severe weather alert system had gone to orange, I lost my shit.

Unfortunately, I was stuck two hours from home, and I had a Very Important Meeting scheduled for later that afternoon. You can pretty much script out the rest of the day in your head. It started snowing in Seattle at about 4:15PM, and it started snowing HARD. Everyone freaked out. We were all in the Very Important Meeting at the time, and 30 seconds from when the first person glanced out the window and said “Hey, it’s snowing,” all of the participants had scattered for their offices, and were fumbling for their car keys.

Eventually I made it home at about 9, and started a big ol’ fire, because it’s like 20 degrees out here.

Thursday I was just thankful that the power was still on. I spent the day working from home, stressing over one of my new work assignments, and trying not to worry about how much wood I’m chucking into the wood stove, because IT IS VERY COLD. (Thursday’s high temperature here was 22 degrees F / -5 degrees C. In a typical Pacific Northwest winter, temperatures only barely drop below freezing.)

Friday was largely unremarkable, except that the day was cut short by an off-site meeting, which added just a tetch more urgency to the need to complete a deliverable before I had to leave the office. As part of my new job duties, I have quite a lot of “deliverables,” which is office-speak for “something you can’t just pretend to have done, because it’s pretty obvious if it’s been finished or not.”

I haven’t made too much progress on the Shadow sock, because on lunch breaks I’ve been going for walks instead of knitting. It still lives in my bag, though, and I take it out and work a few rows from time to time. Friday night, during a break in our off-site meeting, I turned the heel.

Saturday I shuffled downstairs, threw a bunch of wood into the stove, then sat down at the computer with a cup of coffee to write the longest blog post of all time. Then I wrote this sentence. Then this one. And I kept writing, even though no one really cared. It made me feel like Doogie Howser.

Okay, I guess we’re all caught up.

In other news this week, I have completely lost any scrap of love for my Danica scarf. I accidentally left it at work three times in the last month, and like Freud says, there are no accidents. In fact, I have no idea where it is right now. Maybe it’s lost forever. I don’t even really care.

What I’ve been wearing in Danica’s place is my Panta, which works wonderfully as a neckwarmer. Really, it’s more of a gasket than a scarf.

Panta (scroll down about 8 posts for the pattern) may not be very flattering as a headband, but it’s just the right shape for a neckwarmer – narrow in the back, and wide in the front, and just the right size to tuck in your chin when the wind starts to blow. I think I need a few more of these!

* I thought I had, anyway. Mere minutes after the power went out, I found that I had plugged the phone charger into a power strip which was itself unplugged. That was a real shame, because power outages are a great chance for me to catch up on making phone calls.

Comments (0)

I am so so so busy this week, all I can manage to blog about is spam and consumer complaints, apparently.

Yesterday my blog registered a comment on this post which really has me stumped. I’m pretty sure it’s spam, but… I think it’s trying to COMMUNICATE. This is where I say, in my best Saffron Burrows voice, “The spam got smarter.”

Tammi you out to check your fanny no woder yournot into herbocology it;s in to you. And deborah buy a full length mirror in a thrift store,and take it over tofanny;s I mean anniescrypt ill bet theres no reflection you old sweater of trees.Avamp #### is the only one who felt sorry for you.being NEWYEARS DAY what the hellshears.

What the hellshears, indeed.

Comments (0)

This morning I ran down to the post office, then stopped in at the Pioneer Market (The Hating-est t Lil’ Market in the West) to pick up a copy of the Channel Town Press and a box of doughnuts.*

I know this will sound sick, but I’m really fascinated with how much hostility they have there. This time there was one woman in line ahead of me. She and the clerk were discussing life after divorce, and the clerk was beaming with happiness as she explained that it was a rough five years, but she finally found a new man, and how it turned out that everything really happened for the best.

Then it was my turn. I did what I always do – looked as cheerful and polite as humanly possible, and prepared to issue a compliment. (You can never go wrong with a compliment, right?)

When I stepped forward, the clerk’s face shut down like a castle gate, CLANG. When I delivered the compliment (“Those look really good,” said of the doughnuts) it took visible effort for her to smile a taut little smile. She said nothing.

When I got home, I realized that she had failed to put my copy of the Channel Town Press in my bag. Remembering back to the total amount of the sale (she had also failed to give me a receipt) I judged that she hadn’t charged me for it. Also, she had accidentally run my card as credit, even though I had said to run it as debit. This last was a minor trifle – although typical of my exchanges there, which always seem to fluster them tremendously, such that they start making stupid mistakes.

At any rate, apparently when I handed her the paper, she just picked it up and set it aside. It’s hard not to see this as a Freudian act on her part. You can’t have that paper! It’s only for people who BELONG here!

The whole Pioneer Market thing is so hilariously trite and predictable that I simply can’t help but stop in there about once a month. I tell you, I’m going to start taking guests there when they come to visit.

* I have scientifically determined that a box of doughnuts is the most optimal emergency planning food purchase.

Comments (0)

First thing in the morning, I dutifully did not change into “real” clothes (it’s sweats for me), to honor International Pajama Day. I decided that I wanted my first FO of the year to be for charity, since hey, we can all use a little more good karma, right? I nestled into the couch and finished up the second red scarf while drinking coffee and listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition, with the cats beside me, and the woodstove crackling, and was about as content as any single human being could be.

Nauseating, isn’t it?

Norma has been tackling the problem of taking digital pictures of red scarves for the past few months, in her efforts as Red Scarf Project Coordinator. She suggested photographing the scarf with some other colors in the frame, to help the camera get its bearings, and this did indeed make a difference.

The scarf still looks a little weird, but it definitely helped to have the official colors of the Pacific Northwest (grayish-green, brownish-gray, and greenish-gray-brown) in there as well.

This is Yarn Harlot’s one-row scarf pattern, Cascade 220 color #2413, two strands held together, on 6.5mm/size 10.5 needles.

Next – since I did want to get some activity in the schedule today – I washed all of the dishes. Every last one, including all the pots and pans, and every single item of flatware. Since I don’t have a dishwasher, this sort of thing is a Big Event for me.

Now that the sink was empty, I was able to wash and block the scarf, which I then laid out on the floor beside the wood stove.

Kimble’s helping. Foreground: Brady flank.

Knitters, I whole-heartedly recommend that you install a wood stove. Not for the heat – of course, one doesn’t want to dry one’s woolens with heat. But because when the wood stove is burning, it sucks every last bit of humidity out of the air. The last time I blocked a thick wool scarf, it took less than eight hours to dry. This may not seem remarkable to those of you who live in areas of low humidity, but for the Pacific Northwest, it’s simply extraordinary.

There are some down sides to this, of course. Your lips, for example, will chap in seconds. I drink a lot of water, and moisturize like a fiend every night before bed.

As for the rest of the day, I intend to finish up the last little bits of housework (probably. Maybe. Well, we’ll see), take care of a few other little lingering half-completed projects, then hit the couch for some industrial grade DVD viewing. Three cheers for International Pajama Day!

Comments (0)