Miscellaneous Monday

I hope you're all staying warm tonight. It's pretty darn cold here, but not as cold as some places. I'm glad I don't live in Minot, North Dakota--I saw on the news they had an air temp of -22 degrees and the windchill made it feel like -65 or something awful like that. We had a temp of -7, with a windchill of -35 when we left for work this morning; that was pretty hard to take especially since it was 43 degrees (above zero!) on Sunday morning. That little thaw resulted in our garage door becoming frozen to the ground, so there were a few anxious moments this morning as Mr. Johnson had to use the ice chipper to loosen the garage door so it would open and we could leave for work. For any of you that live (or have lived) in colder climates, you know that it's the wind that makes it feel coldest. Here's what a wind chill of -30 does to the bubbler in the heated birdbath on my deck.
I have what appears to be a little ice volcano over the bubbler. You can see that the water is completely ice free, but the air temperature is so cold that it freezes the spray of the water that's being pumped up over the rock, resulting in this covering of ice over the bubbler. The birds still come to the edge of this birdbath to drink, but they know it's too cold for bathing. Once the wind dies down, the warmth of the water should eventually melt this icy covering away.

To take my mind off the frigid weather, look what arrived in my mailbox today:

Yea!! My first seed catalog! I took a few minutes to look through it and think about the nice warm days of next May when I'll be planting my next vegetable garden.

Here are some pictures of several recently completed knitting projects.

This hat is a Christmas present going to my nephew Charlie in California. This pattern is called Ear Flap Kids Hat and can be found at Knitting Pattern Central. The pattern is for a plain hat, but I decided to knit in a little color. After I got done with the white design, I noticed it wasn't lined up exactly with the blue design, but I don't think Charlie will notice. I'll have to remember that for next time though. (In case you're wondering, my hat model is a squash!)

This next hat (entitled "A Pup Named Phil Hat") is from the toddler's clothing section of Knitting Pattern Central. It will be going to my great nephew for Christmas. You know, I've been knitting for a lot of years, but I can honestly say that I don't remember knitting anything as cute as this ever before. I can hardly wait to see how this looks on Ethan.

The rest of these aren't Christmas presents, just pictures of projects you've only seen partially completed before. Here's the shawl I made from the Noro Kureyon sock yarn. It's a small shawl, but adds a nice bit of warmth around my shoulders. I probably should have used a plain colored yarn, because I don't think you really notice the lace pattern with the color changes in the yarn. I'm also not totally happy with the edging. The points on the edge that pulled out very nicely when I blocked it are now tending to curl up. I'm thinking about adding some beads on those points around the edge to give the fabric a bit of extra weight and keep it from curling up.

Here's the other Tam O'Shanter I knitted from Angela Sixian Wu's "Three Tams" pattern. I really like how these colors turned out. The dark colored yarn is a 2-ply worsted weight wool called Regal (part of that yarn my friend Don gave to me last summer). As I was knitting with it, I thought the yarn was a little bit rough, but once I washed this hat and put in a little fabric softener, it dried so nicely (over the dinnerplate again) and is now really soft to the touch. I'll add it to my drawer of finished projects until I find the perfect giftee or silent auction to donate it to.

Top View of Tam

Bottom View of Tam

Have a good evening and stay warm! It's time for me to go sit by the fireplace and knit some more!