Redirection

There's nothing more important than being prepared for all possible interruptions! Yesterday morning we woke to snow. We really didn't expect as much as we got but it was very beautiful until about 9:30 when the power went out. We are so glad that we got the generator installed last summer! 

By 4pm the skies started to clear and this was the view in the front yard. I can't complain about some amount of inconvenience (and later exorbitant expense to refill the propane) because we go this beautiful view of the front yard. This morning we went for a walk around the yard, down to the river, around the pond, up the hill and back across. There were lots of deer and rabbit tracks everywhere. It was absolutely beautiful.

You may have heard that Virginia is kind of a mess. Road are blocked everywhere and lots of people got stranded on Interstate 95 between DC and Richmond for over 12 hours. One was even one of our state senators. Our rural power company has 72,000 out of 170,000 customers without power and are saying that the earliest people will start getting power back is Wednesday. With the roads such a mess they probably can't even get out of state crews in to help. 

We planned for this and have lots of wood to keep the house warm and the generator for basic power needs. I'm not sewing because I will not turn on the iron so that means reading and lots of crocheting because we have to have our hobbies prepared for interruptions too. I can't work on one project continuously so it's been a good excuse to start a whole bunch of new projects. 

They will all eventually get done.

Fist up was to finally start the duster. I got the kit from Lion Brand but you can find just the pattern through a google search. This is my first garment that needs to fit so I started this one 4 times before I got the gauge right. This yarn is going to blind me from eye strain so this will be a slow project to be worked on only in bright light.

Last week I was organizing yarn and found this yarn that I bought in a kit from Herrschners. It was on a DEEP discount. The whole kit (7 jumbo skeins was something like $17). I got it out thinking that I wouldn't like is and I should donate i. But worked up a swatch and determined that I didn't mind working with it. On a M hook it will go pretty quickly. I did this little swatch using a new BagODay tutorial. I have 2 colors of this yarn so I thought it would make a nice textured stripe with the drop down stitches.

I made this much progress during Monday Night Football. A local charity has put out a call for large blankets so I'll donate this as soon as it's done.

Last week I decided on yet another new project! I generally don't like make-along projects but a crochet along project came up in my blog reader and I thought it might be a good use for some yarn that I bought for a failed project. Do you remember this failed flower hexagon project from September? Well, I bough a lot of Lion Brand Pound of Love for that project. By a lot, I mean 6 or 7 1-pound balls! Plus I had 2 balls of Navy from another bad idea. After my wash test I realized that I do not love that yarn but I can always make a donation blanket with it. 

During the last week of December a CAL project popped up from Moogly. She apparently hosts these every year and I looked over previous years and decided that this would be a good project that I can approach like a class. There are lots of techniques that are new to me. New blocks come out every 2 weeks. I tested it out with the block above. It was the 1st block from 2021. I don't' love it for an afghan but I did learn a lot doing it. I'm going to give this a try. The first block comes out January 6. If/when I finish the blanket I will donate it to one of my local charities and this yarn will get used. Everyone wins!

I have 5 colors and the balls are huge so I made a giant project bag for it. I even added interior pockets. One is big enough for a plastic folder to store the patterns and the other is a zipper pocket for my tools.

We don't expect to get power back before Thursday or Friday so I'm likely to start another donation shawl with this yarn and I'll also get back to making some dialysis sleeves on the loom. I'm listening to a good book and a couple of good podcast series so we are just treating this like a vacation.

​I'll check back in tomorrow or Thursday.