Winter weather

More Knitting Accountability and 1st Ground Cover Snow for Winter 2022-23

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

Trying to stay on task for my knitting accountability. I am ready to start on the sleeves of the Tin Can Knits Flax baby sweater, then to weave in ends, wash the sweater and then gift it ;). I’ll get one more picture when it’s done before I gift it. The 2nd picture is another Dandelion Headband. I should have taken the picture on a dark background but it’s already been gifted, so sorry :P. I think I am going to make her a cowl with this design for next year. I need to keep working on the hats for warmth project.

The last picture is the first ground cover snow we had a week or week & 1/2 ago. It didn’t stay long our weather was cold for about 3 or 4 days and then back into the middle to upper 30’s and 40’s. 🙂 I know it’s coming, but every day winter is not fully here yet is one less day of winter before Spring and one day less you have to hear me ask “Is it Spring yet?”

Hope everyone had a good time with family and friends and enjoyed some Thanksgiving dinner. Even the alpaca at my son’s farm got to have carrots for Thanksgiving (one of their favorite snacks) amazing how friendly they are when they know you are bringing them carrots, lol.

Yep, More Snow and My Christmas Cactus is blooming.

/ LDSVenus

Well my Christmas cactus finally started blooming, hehe, better late than never :P.

The 2nd picture is before our newest snow storm on Friday 1-14-2022. I took this before it started, we had just had our mid winter warm up so a lot of the last snow was melted. The 3nd picture was taken about 3 hrs into the snow storm. It ended about midnight on Friday, we got about 5 inches of snow with this storm. This coming week on Wednesday and Thursday we will be in the single digits Fahrenheit during the day and 12 to 18 below zero on those nights. The rest of the week at night will be mostly below 0 temps, our hard winter is here. Below 0 temps in the day are coming, sigh.

I’ve been working on going through storage totes that haven’t seen the light of day in I don’t know how long and tossing things I will never use and shredding old paperwork, lol I will be shredding for weeks or months. I just keep telling myself, look at all the room you will have for new spinning fiber :P.

I have started working on the scarf again and hope to be finished with it by the end of the week so I can work on a hat I promised a friend. Trying to juggle going through the totes and knitting. I should have the correction on my Little Lace Cat’s Paw Scarf toward the end of this week. When it’s done, it will say corrected. The correction will be on row 5 and I will be inserting a knit row and pearl row right after that so the pattern row numbers will change after row 5.

Hope everyone is enjoying their winter, I know some out in the North and East and way up to the North West have had very heavy snows, stay safe and warm.

Happy New Year, and I thought Mother Nature was Done :P

/ LDSVenus / 3 Comments

I hope everyone has had a very Happy New Year. Mother Nature has given us entrance to the New Year with a snow storm. It started about 11 am and will continue until about midnight tonight. They said we should be getting between 4 to 7 inches. I’m leaning on the 7 inches. Feeling lucky it isn’t the up to 10 inches that those south of us are in for, lol. We will be somewhere around -28F in the morning with wind chill. I know this is just the beginning and that by the end of this month and beginning of Feb we will be hitting -40’sF with wind chills even to -50 with wind chill, is it Spring yet?

Everyone stay safe and warm. 🙂

First Real Snow in 2021 and Late Christmas Gift and Fixing that Pattern.

/ LDSVenus

Our first real snow this winter season hit us yesterday. They predicted a trace to 2 inches, we got 2 1/2 inches of snow. Snowing more this evening they are predicting a trace to 2 inches again, it isn’t snow as hard as yesterday so I figure less than 1 inch. But they said a bigger storm is coming on Saturday, yea :/. They said we will be about 10 below zero on Saturday night and might hit 20 below zero (Fahrenheit) with wind chill, yea :/. We are bouncing around between upper 20s to lower teens (above 0) in the day. -20 F = -28.888 C. I’m not good at knowing this stuff, had to look it up :P. Suffice it to say the mid-west USA winter has begun and we will be seeing much lower temps and more snow as it progresses, sigh. Is it Spring yet?

The second picture is the scarf I have started out of my hand spun baby alpaca fiber, and it is now a late Christmas gift, but along with knitting it I am fixing one of the lines on my pattern, Little Lace Cat’s Paw Scarf. I will be uploading the fix in the next week so stay tuned for that, I will mention it on the pattern that it has been updated. The scarf doesn’t look like much right now, lace never does until it’s blocked, but it is a long skinny scarf and tho after blocking it will be a little longer and a little wider, tho not a ton, the lace however will look much better :p.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you much peace in the New Year.

Another FO and a WIP Plus Our First Snow Flurries of the Winter

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

The FO (finished object) will be the last of the striped Flax baby sweaters. I will still knit the Flax baby sweaters but I have decided to go with muted or mottled colors so I don’t have color management on the sleeve stripes to have to fool with. It will make them faster and less fussy to knit, less weaving in of ends and more enjoyable since I knit so many of them :P.

My WIP (work in progress) is another charity hat, a simple 2X2 with a fold up brim to give extra warmth to the ears. I know it’s a simple stitch and hat construction but I always try to use pretty yarn colors so the recipients will enjoy it in warmth and looks. I should have this done by next week and ready to send a package out to our local homeless shelter with a few hats in it. If any of you knit or crochet or sew and feel so inclined, this would be a great time of year to make some hats, mittens, or scarfs for your local homeless shelters. There is always a need.

I have another WIP that I need to get to, I will get a picture of it after I get started on it. I’m finishing it for a friend and I need to get my head around where she was at in the pattern and what the pattern is all about. I keep telling my self it’s a hat, it can’t be that hard, we will see :).

I knew that this would eventually happen, I mean it is November and Winter is almost upon us, but I was hoping for a few more weeks or months :P. No accumulation just flurries but it’s a reminder of what is coming soon. I know out west they have already been bombarded with that white stuff, ugh. Next week we will be back up into the 40’s but colder nights, most below freezing. I will enjoy those warmer days for as long as I can before our much colder sub zero winter weather gets here, brrrr. I did get my car tuned up, new battery, tires and brakes in prep for winter this year. I hate when all of those come due at the same time for winter because here, if any of that is due, it’s a must. Just a heads up too, my mechanic said tires may be harder to find in the next few months, so my advise is, if you need them, don’t put it off.

Wishing everyone a blessed day!

More Snow and Mandalorian Stitch Markers and Progress Keepers

/ LDSVenus

As you can see we had another snow storm this past Thursday, also notice how bare it is without the trees that were taken out with the Derecho we had last year in August, the yards look so sad :(. We got about 5 or 6 inches so I have to ask, is it Spring yet? It snowed again today for a bit, about 1 inch and we are due more snow tomorrow, but what makes it not nice is our temps have finally dipped into sub zero weather. It’s -13F right now with wind chills, ambient is 6 degrees. Tonight without wind chills it will be -17F and -34F with wind chills. ugh. I know the ground hog said 6 more weeks, but that doesn’t really apply to IA :P, we may get snow storms into April.

I got the new Mandalorian stitch markers and progress keepers I purchased and couldn’t be more happy!! Those of you familiar with the Mandalorian series on Disney+ will know exactly what these are (if you don’t my previous post explains them)!!! She even threw in a Grogu, aka baby Yoda, progress keeper, so cute!! I also bought a valentine Snoopy progress keeper with a heart stitch maker, I love Snoopy and these are perfect. I got all these from AdoreKnit on Etsy, I love her stitch markers and progress keepers, she has soooo many to choose from and you can choose the whole set or just the stitch markers or just the progress keeper! I want to start a new project so I can use one of these, but UFO’s (Unfinished Objects for my non knitting friends) first, sigh, I don’t like to have more than 2 reg UFO’s and one mindless UFO on the needles.

Hope everyone is fairing well during this winter season. Take care of yourself and try to do something you enjoy everyday that makes you smile, and do something kind for someone else that brings a smile to their face, winters are hard on everyone, well except maybe Santa :P.

Flax Infant Sweater and SNOW

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

I am working on the Flax sweater for an infant for a friend (size 6 months to 1 year.)  The Flax pullover sweater is a free pattern by Tin Can Knits and it’s a really easy sweater to knit and goes from sizes newborn to 4XL.  I am at the bottom ribbing on the body, I will be starting the sleeves tomorrow :).  It’s done from the top down so there won’t be any sewing things together.  🙂  I am using I Love This Yarn by Hobby Lobby and size 5 (for the neck ribbing) 16″ circular Knitter’s Pride Karbonz needles (I am loving the Karbonz they are mostly carbon fiber with brass tips so they are not super slippery like metal needles, I am not a fan of reg metal needles tho sometimes that is what I have) and size 7 16″ Knit Picks Radiant Wooden circular needles for the body  (wood needles are always my first choice), and a size 7 9″ Circular Chiagoo bamboo circular needles for the sleeves and size 5 9″metal Chiagoo circular needles for the sleeve ribbing..  All are fixed needles and not interchangeable, the interchangeables of the needles I like are pretty expensive :P.

You can also see from the pictures that we have had our first and 2nd snow for this winter, sigh.  The first snow was 3 inches on Monday night and the 2nd one was 2 more inches last night.  Monday nights snow mostly melted on Tuesday because it got up to 40F.  Last nights snow is still on the ground because it only got up to 34F.  Poor trick or treaters, it’s in the upper 20’s right now and is suppose to be 20 over night :(.   I am not ready for winter, fall isn’t even over yet!!!

If you live somewhere where it’s already getting cold, stay warm!

Still More Snow! Working on a Project

/ LDSVenus / 1 Comment

More snow mid Feb 2019

Yes more snow!  It’s been snowing since sometime last night and they say will continue until sometime tonight.  We are expected to get between 4 to 6 inches.  I left this picture a little bigger than normal, so you could see the snow flakes, I could have made the picture bigger but you can still see all the white dots in the picture :).  I can’t believe I actually got a picture of the snow falling!  But, you know there is always a but, it’s because they are huge flakes :P.  I took this a littler earlier around 1 pm.  Also it looks like more snow this coming week and next Sunday, sigh.

I am working on a project with the yarn I spun from the rolags, but won’t comment on it yet.  When it’s done and safely in the mail, I will post a picture.

Hope if anyone else is getting snow from this rather large storm, that you are safe and warm :).

Cold Temps and Another Hat

/ LDSVenus

jan2019snows This is a picture of the back yard of a friends house so you can see all the snow we have had this Jan.  We also got another 2 inches today, that would make about 19 inches this month, sigh.

We also had some pretty low temps the past 3 days.  Tuesday night got down to about 25 below zero Fahrenheit and with wind chills was about 40 to 45 below zero.  Last night we broke a record with a low of -30 below zero and with wind chills it got down to about 55 below zero.  Our daytime temps were in the lower 20’s below zero  and with wind chills close to 40 below (that is in the day time!), On Wed the post office actually closed and said no postal deliveries.  We got up to -1 today!  Tomorrow should be 18 above and by Sunday we should be around 40 above, a heatwave!!!!

Another Basia Hat

The hat my daughter chose for me to knit from the alpaca I hand spun (a fingering weight) for her was the Basia hat, unfortunately it calls for sport weight, so I added my last skein of the polypay yarn (a sport weight) from the last fleece I sent in a couple of years ago.  I died it brown and tho it is much lighter than the alpaca (I knit them together) it is a very pretty marled color.  I think she will be pleased.  She could have used it this week :P, but it will be done hopefully by the week end.