It’s been cold for the past week, like 37F, and 42F in the morning. Cold enough to close the windows, which we haven’t done much since it was too hot and we put the air on.
Thursday night I slept with two shirts on and my shawl wrapped around my head and shoulders.
Last week, when it was still 90F, I had called for an estimate to get our heater replaced. It’s quite old and we knew we would need to turn it on soon, but didn’t realize how soon we would need it. We have had two very different estimates, but the much more expensive one seems a lot more thorough, so we may decide to go with it. The same night the second estimator came was Thursday, and before he arrived, we tried to turn on the heat and no go. It was frakking cold in the house.
I almost think that the windows we just replaced are so efficient that they are keeping out the heat that the old windows used to let in! That, coupled with the complete lack of insulation in this house are just killing me.
At the same time, my husband, thank the Great Maker , has a new hobby that is finally up to a point where he can play with all his toys, but since his office/ham shack is at the back of our garage (which is a separate building from the house) he is freezing out there in this cold. The only other items he has ever asked me to knit for him are as skull cap and some of those Fiber Trends clogs which he loves, so much that he’s on his third pair.
So I started a pair of finger-tip-less gloves for him, in black Knit Picks wool, which is just what he wants. I started out with size 4mm DPN and 60 stitches, in a 3k2p rib, and increased for the thumb and as I was getting to the point where I wanted to close off the thumb, I consulted the book that I find I use the most of all of my books – Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book.
Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book is such a great book, and at under 10 USD, how can you go wrong? In the book, she has several mitten/glove patterns. She mentions using smaller needles on the fingers, which made so much sense after I read it, because that’s what I always had a problem with when making half-finger gloves. I always felt like the fingers were too fat in worsted weight. So I used 2.5mm glove needles to make the thumb and fingers, and had him try on the first glove at each milestone to check the length of the fingers. He wants to be able to use the dials and buttons on his radios, so if the fingers are too long, that would make him cranky ;/.
I hope to finish the second one this weekend.
Today though, we got up to go to an appointment and it was again freezing in the house. We sluggishly dressed and headed out the door, only to find that it was beautiful and warm out in the sun, it was at least in the 70sF at 9 AM. We came back from our appointment and went back inside to change into play-clothes, and headed down to the beach to take advantage of what might be the last warm weekend for a while.
We got down to the beach and it was beautiful. The water was so blue, reflecting the clear sky (well, except for the brown smudge) and the wind was slight but very comfortable in a t-shirt. We walked for about 30 min., and I caught up on some half-listened podcasts. Thank you so much majordojo for mentioning the Galactica Watercooler podcast, I’m loving it after listening to all the whining and nitpicking on CIC.
While we were walking, the wind started to pick up. Since it’s been so dry the past week, the sand isn’t moist enough to stay on the ground and starts dancing on the pathway, and starts to form a fine dust cloud about 4-5 ft high. The sand started singing too.
We decided to turn around, which made it worse because now we were walking into the wind. We ended up on the sidewalk instead of the path, otherwise we would have probably ended up blind from the fine dust. I wish I had my camera while the sand was dancing, it was quite mesmerizing.
It must have been in the high 80sF today, as I ended up beaking a sweat on our walk, and had a little sunburn (or maybe it was a wind burn?).
And another random thought, have you seen Green Wing? It shows up on BBCAmerica once in a while, and is completely over-the-top hilarious. I just received the season 2 box set and it is even more over-the-top than last season. We have a region-free DVD player so my husband can watch stuff from France that you can’t get over here, so I bought the Green Wing DVDs from the UK. They are broadcast as 30 min episodes here, but they are actually 50 min long! They are so severely censored that sometimes they don’t make sense. Anyway, if you get a chance to see them in full, take it. It’s like Scrubs without the patients, but way more funny.