Weather Woes

Dear Cynthia,

Perhaps we are zeroing in on the subject matter for our book. I loved your suggestions about having knitting stops along the sides of the roads. It would get us one step closer to our mutual goal of converting the whole world to knitters and thereby achieving world peace. Some working titles for said book might be, "Taking Knitting Beyond Garments and Accessories", or, "How I Achieved Sanity One Stitch at a Time", or, "Don't Make Me Get My Knitting!", or, "Knitting for Peace"... There's still time for us to figure this out...

Thank you for your responses to my query about which yarn was a different dye lot. The prize for accurateness goes to Lauren, because she figured it out, though you're all winners for trying, especially since the prize isn't very tangible. Also, Lauren has my deepest appreciation for being the first person to leave a comment on any one of my posts. It's sort of like the dollar which is framed and hung by the check-out register as the first buck ever earned by a new business...

My back was feeling better, so I was knitting for a while yesterday. It was a perfect day for it, because it was snowing, a lot. It snowed so much, in fact, that schools were closed, and at about 4:00pm they closed the university, something that rarely happens since most students here do not commute. In any case, I shovelled four inches of snow. Then, later in the day, I shovelled nine inches of snow. Then, even later in the day, I realized that shovelling snow can cause a back injury much, much faster than knitting can. And so, my upper back just really, really hurts, no matter how I sit or stand or lie down. Since I can clearly blame the shovelling this time around, I decided to keep knitting through the pain. (Possibly I was inspired by the woman skier who injured herself in her downhill run, and participated in the slalom runs in great pain. Never mind that she fell and disqualified herself on her second run. It was the spirit of the thing, right? In any case, my pain is probably no match for hers, but it gives me a great appreciation for people who have pain like this chronically.)

Where was I.... Oh yes, knitting through the pain. And so, I have the body portion of the Fana Cardigan off of the needles. It doesn't look like a cardigan yet, but with a little sewing machine action and with some front ribbing, it will. There was one glaring mistake in the pattern, which I found one row after I knit it, so not too bad to correct it, and all is better now.

The snow has been cleared from the streets and driveways, and is so pretty to look at, and there is soooooo much! I'd take a picture of it to show you, but the temperatures have dropped remarkably today, and even though we keep our house at 66F, the difference in temperature between inside and outside exceeds 75 degrees, even more if you include wind chill, and perhaps I'll wait until a day when I'm feeling more adventurous and less like a middle-aged woman who has gone soft.

I'm off to take some more ibuprofen. In the meantime, knit on!
Warm regards,
Laura (aka YarnThrower)