Weekend Update

Druid Mitten

First of all, I just have to say, IT IS FRIGGIN COLD IN MY HOUSE. It is a balmy 15 degrees outside right now. And about 16 inside. Because my furnace has taken the day off. Again. We have a fairly new furnace. It's only about 4 years old. And for the first 3 1/2 years, it worked fine. But these last few month it has decided to take a vacation. It just flat out decides to put itself into safety mode and go to sleep. For no reason. We have had Ryan's-best-friend-Zach's-dad-Tommy, who is a furnace guy, look at it twice. He has taken it apart, cleaned it, inspected it, and CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHY IT RANDOMLY GOES INTO SAFETY MODE IN THE DEAD OF WINTER. The motor works fine, it produces heat, the gas readout is normal....we thought we had it fixed and then after about 2 weeks of blissful warmth, it is shutting itself down again. And so what I have to do, at 6:30 in the morning when I check the thermostat and discover that it reads 57, is go into the laundry room and flip the little switch to restart the furnace. And then it fires up, brings the house to a livable 69, and then goes back to sleep. And when I can't feel my fingers any more I check the thermostat again, discover it says 62, flip the switch again, and continue to go about my day. That is how I spent yesterday. My entire day. And then around 2:00 the furnace got off it's lazy ass and decided to actually start itself up and heated the house all on its own for a few hours. Until it got lazy and didn't do it any more. I think Tommy and I need to have a little talk at basketball practice tonight.

When I'm not busy dying a slow death from hypothermia, and lugging piles of laundry from one end of the earth to the other, and sweeping up sand from the laundry room floor that we sprinkled on the outside steps so we wouldn't fall and break our necks just getting to the car, I'm knitting. I'm knitting cupcake hats , I'm knitting socks, and, when I've been especially good and deserve a treat, I'm knitting my Druid Mittens.

How adorable are these mittens?! I'm using Knit Picks Essential Tweed sock yarn and size 1 needles, and each and every row of the pattern requires strict attention to detail which means that if I don't go blind they should be finished by next winter. But I love them. I love the little slip stitch pattern on the palm and I love the intricate braids up the sides and I love the fact that there is not one single solitary patch of straight boring old stockinette stitch anywhere on this mitten.

Nutkin

I've also finished one Happy Feet Nutkin sock. Which I would love to wear right now to keep my toes from falling off, but I only have one. So I'll stick to the double layer of socks that I'm wearing right now and hope I can keep the dexterity in my frozen fingers long enough to finish the other one.

Artistes at work

We did actually venture out and do some fun things this weekend. After our Dinner Group family Christmas party, Mike and I unloaded the boys on our sitter and punished ourselves by going to Target. On a Saturday. Before Christmas. After surviving the nightmare that is the Target toy department, we rewarded ourselves by seeing Quantam of Solice. And I have to say, I felt nicely rewarded. Two hours of Daniel Craig is a Merry Christmas to me.

The next day, while I was selling yarn to the masses, Mike took the boys to see Santa. While at the mall, they noticed a portrait artist had set up shop. Ryan was thoroughly fascinated by this and now we have a dual art studio set up in our playroom.

Today I have to deliver some hats and then do some Christmas shopping before the next round of snow hits tomorrow. Most of my shopping is done. Cards, finally ordered this morning. Decorations. Pretty much done. Outside lights, next year. Number of gifts actually wrapped? That would be zero. Baby steps, baby steps.