It's About Time

You'd think I had no Internet access last week, because I did not post at all. You'd be wrong, though. I have been surfing around, but didn't feel like writing up anything myself. I have been busy, though.

In crafty goodness, I have finally (!) knit myself a hat. Jennifer sent me some nice heathered green Cascade 220 for Christmas last year, and a nice book of hat patterns. I never did get around to knitting one up for myself. I promised myself that as soon as the holiday knitting was done I would be making myself a hat. Last week the weather forecast pointed to some cold weather coming, so that put me on deadline to have something for my cold head that was presentable in daylight. I'd been wearing one of Samantha's old hats, covered with pills and lint and very unflattering, but warm, and adequate for walking the dog (in the dark). By chance I ran across "Le Slouch" in Wendy Bernard's free patterns. It's cute enough that I was not but off by the idea of knitting up the whole thing in seed stitch. I may make another in stockinette with whatever scraps I have about the place. I was a three-nighter, helped along by an assortment of junky TV goodness, including a back-to-back showing of The Stand miniseries last weekend - about 6 hours of junk TV in a row, plus Volcano, a made for TV movie which features the very odd pairing of Anne Heche and Tommy Lee Jones fighting a volcano under Los Angeles.

Our bad weather is here in the form of what was forecast to be a terrible ice storm with power outages combined with frigid temperatures for the next week. So far we have received a couple of inches of sleet on top of some light freezing rain. The roads are awful, but we still have power. Apparently the first round of ice passed over us and has Eastern Oklahoma under ice with no electricity. The next wave is coming now, and we are crossing our fingers and wishing for more sleet. There should be another wave of ice tomorrow. Like everyone in the city, we have stocked up on everything we need for the weekend, so if we keep power we'll just have a nice weekend indoors. We've already been out for our fun drive on the ice before the traffic got out today. I was driving, although it's Shana who likes to drive around on snow.

The reason I was in the driver's seat is that Shana is now wearing unsuitable footwear for good driving. An ill advised encounter with a piece of furniture in the dark led to a broken foot. She was rushing downstairs so as not to miss a moment of the Ohio State Miami bowl game and fell over a foot stool. I need hardly add that the game was not worth that kind of pain. That may only be from my perspective as I think she may actually have been cheering for Miami. I was disgusted. Anyway she woke up the next day preparing to go to a funeral and found that she could not walk. Off to the doctor she went, and came to the funeral hobbling along in the special boot.

Lest you think that it's not all socks all the time here chez Cinderellen, I have completed a pair of socks and most of another one for myself, and later today I will be working on the Wildefoote socks. I'm hoping to finish the first Wildefoot sock and get the second started before the weekend is over. One thing standing my my way is the mitt issue. After making a pair of mitts for every living being on the earth but myself I prepared to start on a pair for me. It seems I had lost track of my #5 dpns. After an intense search I decided to make them up with the #6 dpns that the pattern actually calls for. I finished them, but they are too large and I'm not happy with how they fit. Shana can use them, so after a quick trip to Hobby Lobby during our ice driving festival for some replacement #5's I'll start over.

Last weekend Shana participated in a chili cook off at the church and won a second place trophy. It was a lot of fun and the fact the one of our friends was stuffing the ballot box did not in any way decrease Shana's pleasure in winning.

Jennifer went to her back doctor this week and has been given permission the remove the giant back brace she's been in since the first week of November and do anything she wants as long as it doesn't hurt. The fact that she will not need surgery is such a relief . Now all that's left is the get her insurance to pay up. Her health insurance will not pay until the horse owner's insurance pays, and the horse owner's insurance will not begin to pay until the owner starts a claim. All will be resolved in time, but it's so exasperating and the bills are, of course, very big.