Snowbound Some More

The forecast was for rain, which we enjoyed listening to last evening, but this is what we awoke to. This is the day I'm supposed to take a picture for my seasons file, and as of yesterday all the snow had melted. This is not proving to be all that representational of the weeks, maybe the season?
I have thrown myself into sewing and proving a couple of patterns so I know how wide I need to weave the fabric to make them in my own yardage. I don't want to weave and waste and even worse, I don't want to weave and come up short! I just got this email from Amazon:

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:
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Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal

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Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC) :

1 Brother CS6000I Sew Advanc... $169.99 1 $169.99

Shipped via UPS
And what is this, you might wonder. I went to Goodwill Bargain Bin last week where clothing is priced at $1.50 per pount. I was looking for blouses to cut buttons from and instead found these great cotton mens shirts in nearly new condition. I only cut buttons from the one Ian didn't like and there is one very ugly shirt with ugly buttons that we both agree must go back. So I got 10 shirts and a set of buttons for $7.37, which is a lot less than the $14.76 I spent for three sets of vintage buttons at Junkee.
We had Alexia this weekend. I uploaded a video which you can see here. I was so disappointed that the embedded code only showed half the video after taking an hour to upload. Anyway, she's pretty easy to entertain and so are we. She spent a couple of hours on the Wii Fit and I'm telling you, that might look like a game, but it gets the heart rate up.

I think she should get extra credit for playing while wearing her mother's outsized t-shirt and PJ bottoms that won't stay up. The towel is because she said she was sweating like a buffalo, and then she wondered if a buffalo could sweat. She will be staying with on week days including overnight, for a month starting March 21st. That's her break for year-round school. We'll see what this pair of grandparents are made of.

Nothing to Knit!

Yesterday morning we got an inch of snow.

This morning and sunshine. Welcome to a normal weather pattern in the high desert Sierra rain shadow. This is way we like our precipitation delivered. It sits where it falls and seeps into the ground with no run-off. It's much easier to live with than rain.
So the vest is completed and blocked, but I need to reblock is before I show it off. The bolero is also finished and assembled but the bands are knitted separately and then sewn on. Which means I need another knitting project. This is the next sweater on my list, but when I went to cast on the other night something was wrong. I don't know what I was thinking when I knitted the swatch for this sweater, but it couldn't have been this sweater.
I dug through patterns for quite a while yesterday and finally decided that this was the candidate. It looks like something knitted with handspun. I've seen the other style on a store hanger. The only hang-up is that I don't have the contrast yarn spun yet.
I think this light gray merino will look nice with the white. It's a 19 micron hogget fleece and what's in that bag is all that I have left but I'm sure it's enough to provide the yarn I need.
But the problem remains. I have nothing to knit! I have this cone of Bartlet sport-weight yarn that I had purchased about 20 years ago when Diane Soucy worked in the wool room at the Truckee Variety Store. I spent a lot of time looking on Ravelry and chose this pattern which I got on needles last night.

It's pretty easy going so far. I think the lace will be more fun, but it is also fun to see so much done in such a short time. I've decided to use the three buttons I cut off off a Goodwill vest. The sweater was beyond help so I bought it for the buttons. If I'm stash busting, it just makes sense to the use these buttons. Hope they will work!

Narnia?

We left Redlands about 10:00 Sunday morning and got to I5 and the base of the Grapevine about 11:30. Grapevine is nickname for the 4,400' pass over the Tehachapi Mountains. Traffic was quite slow and then we got into this unforecasted mess and 25 degrees. DS Josh pointed out that the crazy California drivers are tailgating, even on ice. Stepdaughter Margi informed him that it's just stop-and-go traffic.

The cars were zipping by us with just regular street tires, until they started sliding off the road and then they slowed to this crawl. The windshield wipers froze so Ian finally had to pull over and break off the ice. When we got back on the road, we were the only car on the entire stretch, clear to the San Joaquin Valley - eerie. We stopped at an In 'n Out Burger for lunch in Bakersfield about 2:00 and the whole buzz was how they had closed the Grapevine. Southbound traffic stretched for miles. Apparently we were the last northbound car through!
We spent the night in Modesto. The hotel had a writing desk and Alexia was thrilled to sit and draw at for an hour while we looked at our laptops. We didn't get home until mid-day Monday so my picture for week 11 wasn't taken until Tuesday. It snowed, then rained and then snowed again while we were gone.
We awoke to pogonip - an adaptation of a Shoshone word that means cloud. It is what meteorologists call freezing fog. It flocks the trees and is gorgeous to look at but nasty to drive in. It was 18 degrees when I took this picture at 9:00 in the morning. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day. I feel like the witch from Narnia has been here.
This was my travel knitting - it's the 4th time I've made this scarf but the first one I get to keep for me. The yarn is MadelineTosh fingering weight superwash Merino, very soft. I had worked on another scarf for about 4 hours and finally ripped it out after mistakes, reknitting and diminishing fun. Knitting is supposed to be fun!

Ian and I went to town this morning to see our doctor and go over annual lab work that was done in December. Both of our reports were excellent except for one thing. I've developed hypothyroidism and came home with a prescription for Synthroid. I start taking it in the morning and he assures me I will notice a change in my energy levels within the first week - a late Christmas present. Woo hoo!