And Still Snow

I had felt since the first weekend in this month that I probably caught a cold from one of the kinders at SMART on Thursday the 5th.  Each day it was a little bit worse, but not terrible, and I was congratulating myself on dodging that bullet - until Thursday morning last week.  The virus threw itself around my knees and wrestled me to the ground.

My regimen became one of read, knit, nap.  Maybe if I had felt better I might have tried to salvage this knitted hippopotamus but trying to attractively attach the 13 pieces together did not produce a smile in my mucus-addled brain and it went into the trash.  The birthday is only three weeks away and I'm working on Plan B with an adorable pattern I got from DIL Missy this past weekend.

I've also started work on the fruits and veggies I want to knit for Olivia and her birthday is six weeks away so no time to lose there either.

Ian has maintained his trail to the bird feeder where business is brisk.  The last I heard the official total for all three storms is 57.5" but it's more in some places and less in others.  We are pretty sure we've have 5' of snow here.  We had extreme snow in Red Rock but this is a first experience for me, this much snow lasting this long.

The weight of the snow is relentless.  You can see our willow bush is flattened creating a tunnel for Sammie's "poop trail."

And poor girl, once she finishes her business in her path she can't turn around so has to back up all the way to the porch.  She went through powder just once and hasn't tried it since.  She was almost buried and I think it scared her.  Driving is disorienting because there are 3' walls (sometimes more) on both sides of all roads reducing the visibility and sometimes the lanes and making a numbing sameness to every street.  I found myself having to pay close attention to landscape markers that I could identify because not all street signs are visible.

Icicles are an indication of an ice dam at the edge of the roof which block the snow from sliding off.  We don't have gutters so at least we don't have that to worry about.  We let these melt on their own since they're on the west side but Ian's been knocking the rest of the down.  Our roof has a steep pitch so we have just one area of concern but son Josh has a flatter root.  When I was out there this weekend, he was shoveling the deepest areas from his roof.  Everyone is exhausted and harried.

The roof of a school building collapsed before school started Thursday morning and caused the closure of all schools since then.  The remainder of that building has since been demolished.  Several schools have damaged structures and repairs are underway while inspections continue.  Missy went to her school last Thursday and they wouldn't let the teachers go inside.  Her school is one of those identified as at-risk.

This is today's newspaper and the hope is that some of the schools can reopen tomorrow.  The secondary concern is that rain and temperatures in the mid-40s are in tomorrow's forecast with expected flooding.  My weaving guild meeting tomorrow is cancelled for that reason.  The city has been a beehive of activity for the past two days as front-loaders are piling the mountains of snow into trucks and hauling it away from parking lots and intersection.

I had this warp ready to weave last week but was just too miserable to do a thing with it.  These are even more pastel than the first set.  If I ever deliberately acquire variegated yarn in the future I will be looking for more contrast in colors.

You can see that the top cone has more contrast in color and value including yellow.  I sure have a lot of it left - not the stash-buster I was hoping for.