It's a lovely night to stay inside

Well, that was the plan anyway. You see, the Bavarian Lodge is closed on Mondays and they aren't making an exception for New Year's Eve, so we decided to stay in.

It is also snowing and the roads weren't very good earlier (see, Mark is smiling because we are finally home safe), so this all works out. Not that we were going to drive, we would have walked to the Bavarian Lodge, but whatever.

We were actually told to go home about an hour early today from work. Which also was helpful considering the snow. Mark picked me up and we went out to take care of Tony. If you haven't met Tony- here he is. Not to alarm anyone who may be reading this, but when we got to the apartment there were two fire trucks and two police cars blocking the way. Don't worry- it wasn't for your apartment. It was a bit unsettling to drive up to that though!

So now that we are back, we have been celebrating the end of 2007 with some cheeseballs I made last night, fondue, and some beverages we would have found on the Bavarian Lodge's menu. Ahem.

Knitting?

Oh yeah, last week I finished Tuscany. Currently (as can be seen on the right side of the screen) I'm working on a second sock and my first entralec project. Despite my other pictures tonight I haven't bothered to take a picture of that.

I also had a sweater I was staring with my Christmas present yarn from Mark. I have the main yarn, but I need a contrasting yarn with it and am having some issues. The main yarn is Classic Elite Lush in purple, which is just lovely. I tried using white Lush as the cc, but it just looks stripey which is not the look we are going for. So yesterday I went to Wool & Company where I probably made the yarn store owner snicker to herself after I left. See, I don't like novelty yarn, but this sweater uses a skein around the bottom, the cuffs, and the neckline. Like I said, the Lush in another color wasn't working. After much consideration I pick up a tape/ribbon yarn that isn't too terribly garish and check out. As I am paying, she asks me what I'm going to make with it. I tell her that it is "for a sweater" because it is. The thought of knitting a sweater with one skein of novelty yarn is pretty funny, I would have snickered. I actually did once I thought of how that could have been interpreted. Last night I cast on with said novelty yarn. I HATE IT. I actually threw it across the room. (Do you think Tony would like to play with it?? I can't return it now, I've already knit with it.) My next attempt involves not using any cc and just knitting it all in the main yarn. We will see how that goes and if it doesn't go well I will just find a new sweater pattern.

I think Mark and I are going to investigate this snow we got.

Our apartment currently smells like brownies (I made them to cover up the oil smell from the fondue) and pork and sauerkraut.

Is this all a little random? I apologize, but this is what you get on New Year's Eve.

I'm not even doing Christmas Knitting!

Is it just me or is time going insanely fast? I have far too much I want to accomplish before Christmas.

I do have this done. I made three of these mini Christmas stockings for my "team" at work. I'll put some candy in them. I am going to be a slacker tomorrow and not make anything for the food day. Last year I made an eggplant penguin relish tray. For Halloween I made the cheese log mummy. For various food days I have made a bunch of different stuff or brought in things I got at the store. I am just not participating this time- I have no time, energy, or motivation for it. I can't even manage to make icing for the cut-out Christmas cookies I have in my freezer.

Tonight I went to the eye doctor again to try a couple new types of contacts. The ones I had were all right, but I think there may be something better out there for me so I want to give it a shot. My glasses were in too, so now I can give my eyes a bit of a rest. I'm not used to wearing glasses though, so I'm kind of stumbling around a bit, my depth perception is a little off.

I also finished my Christmas shopping today, knit two rows on the Tuscany shawl while we watched a Netflix movie that had been sitting here for a few days, and I wrapped about half the Christmas gifts. Now I get to finish up everything else I want to do tomorrow night because Thursday night I just want to sit back and relax with Mark and have our Christmas celebration.

Also on the list of accomplishments tonight, I got the Ravelry progress bars to work for me! (I use "accomplishment" somewhat loosely, after all, there is a whole bunch of posts and help for adding the code, making it work with Blogger, and adjusted it to the preferred settings. Then again, Literacy is an accomplishment some days.

All is well

All right, they did a much better job of clearing the roads and the ice really wasn't as severe anyway as it was a few weeks ago. Honestly I wasn't even that worried about myself, I was much more worried about Mark driving out to DeKalb for his exam. We just had some freezing rain advisory, DeKalb had an ice storm warning. Nevertheless, he returned safe and sound and doesn't have to go out for another exam for a week.

I feel completely exhausted. Since we weren't sure of road conditions, Mark offered to drive me to work and just drop me off early. So I got to work around 7:30 this morning which meant I had some knitting time. (I can't really clock in that early because then I would have been putting in overtime and I can't do that without supervisor approval.) I knit until a reasonable time to clock in, and then at lunch I knit at my desk since I had no car to go to and our lunchroom is currently under construction. It really wasn't the knitting that made me exhausted, it was being at my desk for so long! Normally I'm there 7.5+ hours, today I was there for 9.5! I always really feel it when I don't get to leave for lunch, the afternoon drags. Anyway, that is what I'm working on.

It has been a long day all around, because then immediately after work I had an eye exam. I ordered new glasses! I'm excited about that.

If I die on these ice covered roads I am forced to travel today, my sister gets first dibs on the stash, but the rest goes to my SNB group.

I love you

It's Christmas Time

All week I've been meaning to follow up on last Saturday's post. Lucky for us, last Sunday I woke up to find it was about 40 degrees and raining, which successfully melted the ice and made it possible to have a life.

Anyway, this week the winter weather has continued. Also lucky for me, since Mark is in exam time and only occasionally needs to go to campus, he has been available to drive me to and from work. My car does not like slippery conditions. It works out for Mark too, because then he spends the day studying at Panera or Starbucks or somewhere where he can focus more than he can at home. Here is a peak at conditions on Tuesday morning. As long as road conditions aren't too bad I don't mind the snow. It helps the Christmas spirit. I've noticed that it snows a lot more in Illinois in December than I ever remember it snowing in Ohio this time of year. In Ohio, most of the snow came a little later, and usually the really heavy stuff was in late winter. At least that is how I remember it.

Speaking of Christmas spirit, we put up the tree last Sunday. Then I discovered that only two strands of lights were still working. Two strands of lights just are not enough, so we got 400 more lights a few days later and then we finally got around to putting the ornaments on the tree on Friday. This whole Christmas thing is taking me awhile this year, I'm not really sure what is up with that. Is it because I'm not frantically finishing Christmas knitting? I am giving some handknits this year, but two of those gifts were finished months ago, and the other two I finished in the last week. I'll explain more later.

With December comes the snow

Despite my hope that the winter storm warnings were just a bunch of hype, today had proved otherwise. It started with snow. The snow wasn't really bad, but it had me a little worried because the fine flakes and the quickness of accumulation reminded me a little too much of Christmas 2004.


I went home about a day ahead of schedule that year because of the forecast, and it is a good thing I did because I would never have made it home otherwise. Of course, that would have meant I would have had electricity and running water on Christmas and I would have spent it with Mark (we had only been dating about 6 months at that point so we weren't doing holidays together yet) but those are just minor details . Anyway, there was no snow when I left Toledo, no snow on 80/90, but as soon as I hit US 250 the snow started. I wasn't worried, it was just light flurries. Except that it started accumulating much faster than mere flurries should, and it made the road super slick and I nearly slid off the road at least once. I managed to get home safely, but then later that evening we got the freezing rain. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to huge crashes as tree limbs fell on our house. Picture one is from soon after I came home. Picture #2 is the same area of the back yard the next day. I'm really hoping I don't wake up tomorrow morning to see the same sort of thing. I don't like the sound of the wind.

Picture #3 is just because the ice can be beautiful too.


Anyhow, I think it is weird that the first real winter storm we got last year was on December 1 too.