Knitting Iris

st. pat's

 

extremes

My new winter 2010/11 motto: "All or Nothing". 

It's seems it's either 40-50 degrees and raining or bitter cold and blowing.

Today* it's in the single digits, the winds started up yesterday, roared all through the night, and are continuing on through today.

That's our friend's truck, stuck this morning in the 2-3 foot snowdrifts across our driveway.  All that lovely snow that fell Tuesday making it look like the perfect winter wonderland around here, if only for a day before the artic northeastern winds kicked up.

The house is toasty and warm and bright, though.   One boy is fevering & reading on the couch.  The other is doing his math work, albeit a little reluctantly.  I am puttering away at the sewing machine.  C is over at the shop building cabinets for a client's kitchen.

We didn't even bother opening the coops, although a single hen escaped, slipping past me and out the door, until I found her hunkered down trying to lay her egg amongst the hay bale stacks and escorted her back inside.

The soon-to-be-mama-sheep are staying in today, too.  (We used to call this space home, ourselves, living right here for 3 and a half years in our old 50's travel trailer.)

Bo, the ram (I prefer to spell it Beau) has a pen by the shop, with his own little barn on the leeward side of the shop, just below the deck outside my craft room.

So, he's plenty cozy, even if a little lonely.

The horses?  Well, let's just say I was thinking about them the most as the winds howled through the night, but they've been let into the pen that allows them to stand downwind of trees and a horse trailer to get out of the weather, and they get extra big rations of hay when it's like this out there.

Back in the house, we're stoking the fire and I'm notfeeling guilty whatsoever for sewing away while the bread bakes, the soup pot simmers, the boys play and do their schoolwork, and the cat naps the day away.

* mind you, this was a post I put together on Thursday of a week ago but never managed to finish and post.  Since then, it has snowed several times more, rained on and off, and now it is sunny with temps  just above freezing.  Like I said, we're in the land of extremes. 

p.s. we have at least 2 sheep in labor!

not nola's slipppers

Playing catch up here on some things, starting with these slippers made in January when one of my toes was complaining loudly of the bitter cold with chilblains, for the second year in a row,

and my mind was complaining of the dreary grey skies and blah snow & icy conditions.

These are Nola's Slippers.  Only, they're not.  They're mine, and they're super cozy, made of scrap worsted weight wools, held double.  More details on Ravelry here.

(taken just before leaving for Mexico last month, with newly glittered toes underneath, ready for sunshine and heat, sand and ocean waves!)

The road south towards the airport outta here!