mockery

So believe it or not, all the snow that was in the last photos has melted, in like a day and a half...almost two feet of snow was on the ground, and in less than two days it was gone...very strange weather we are having indeed. Last week, there was a tornado up north...in January? and we've had rain off and on with thunderstorms, and of course flooding because of the massively quick melt. As I sit, there is not a trace of any snow or ice anywhere in site, and the temperatures have been in the teens (that's celcius...think about 50-60 degrees F.) for the last week and a half. Dead of winter? or Death of Winter? I don't mind telling you friends, I am finding this all a little frightening.

I finally finished Cee's Christmas socks (yeah, I know but better late than never). He likes them, at least he said he does, and even modelled them for me and for your viewing pleasure:

Check out them sexy pins.

This pattern is from Favorite Socks by Interweave Press, and it's the Mock Wave Cable pattern, which should have been a dawdle, but turned into a great learning experience for me, because in my haste to complete them for Christmas, I not only knit the foot too short and finished the toe and grafting before I realized it, I started the second sock with the wrong size needles and knit 4 inches of the leg before I wised up. So I had to pull out the second sock and restart it, but decided to let Cee try on the 'finished' one so he could see, and then I saw that it was too short...and then I said a few swear words, one of them being bugger, and another being bollocks, and a phrase that may or may not have rhymed with 'clucking bell'. and I put that sock aside to be pulled apart.

I really thought I'd just end up yanking the whole thing out if I could even manage unpick the grafting stitches, because I didn't think I'd be able to rip it back to the end of the foot and get it back on the needles without yanking out all my hair and running out into the street screaming, but low and behold I did it! And with very little cursing or wringing of hands or hair pulling.

They fit now and that's all that matters, and now Cee has his Christmas socks, just like Mr. Bean.

clean slate

Okay, so I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and happy new year celebrations? Honestly for me, it seems like it all happened so fast it never happened at all. Why is it when you are a kid it takes forever for Christmas to get here already and when you grow up it seems like it happens every two months, or is it just me? My head is spinning.

Our new year's eve was a quiet affair, which is just the way we like it. We thankfully said goodbye to 2007, which in all honesty was a really horrible year for Cee's family in particular, and so for us as well, so many odd and horrid things happened, we were just happy to see the back of it, frankly. I feel hopeful for 2008, which typically is not in my character. Cee is remaining cynical as usual. I couldn't help but feel my incongruous light-hearted outlook was warranted when the very first thing I saw on January first was this view from our upstairs window:


The picture does not do it justice, literally everything was covered in white. A beautiful clean slate to start the new year. Not a car or person in site, just snow blanketing everything I could see. I was awestruck and felt a real sense of peace and calm...for like two minutes...until I remembered that someone would have to shovel all that....stuff....and then I remembered that Cee was sick and that 'someone' would, in fact, be me, and then I felt like doing what the killer shih-tzu did when he got his first peek at the snow:

If you can't make it out, he's cocking his leg, not even a foot away from the back step, which was good, because if he'd ventured out much further he'd have been stuck or perhaps have disappeared. Happy New Year.

P.S.--I don't normally make a habit of photographing the dog peeing, really I don't.