Yes, We Got Snow

Or,
What I Did This Morning Before Coffee

Usually, what I do before coffee is shower, dress, wake our son up for school, get him dressed and fed, make his lunch, eat breakfast myself, and deliver him to school.

This morning, what with --

"Lake effect snow showers will continue to develop this morning and afternoon. Additional snow accumulations of 2 to 5 inches are likely today. This will bring storm total snowfall by 7 pm Tuesday into the 8 to 12 inch range with locally higher amounts expected."

-- first I checked to see if my husband had braved the weather and left for work. His car was gone, so I turned off the outside light. Then I turned on my computer to check for school closings. Before the modem had finished dialing up, the door opened, and my husband said, "You turned the light out on me!"

He had tried to get to work, and after spending 40 minutes driving as far as he usually gets in 10 minutes, he gave up and came home.

So what we did this morning before coffee, after it started to get light, was shovel the driveway so he could get his car the rest of the way up to the house. Then I went around the house with the roof rake and raked the roof again.

Let me tell you, with weather like this, aerobics are not necessary!

And yes, school was closed, and our son put on his coat and snowpants and came out and romped around in the snow while we shovelled, singing, "No school, no school, no school!"

I made enough progress on the Pi shawl border that it is now easier to take a picture of what is left to knit on the border than what is already knitted. Only 8 more lace repeats and the border until I'm done!

I will definitely have enough yarn. See those three little balls in the upper right hand corner? As I knitted to the center of the cone, I had already come to one end. No knots, not in a cone, just a loose, dangling end. Darn it -- well, at least it will be knitted into the border and not the middle of the lace pattern, I thought.

But I thought I would wind off the rest of the yarn into a ball so I could weigh the cardboard cone and see if my guess about how many grams of yarn were left was anywhere close. And I came to another end! Then another! Finally, I had not one but four little yarn balls, weighing from 11 to 15 grams, wound off the very center of the cone. Sheesh.

When you buy coned mill-end yarn, that's always a possibility. But the price was right, about 1300 yards of yarn for $7, so I'm not complaining (much) if I have to overlap ends and knit with two strands of yarn for a row or so.