Purple Means Something Different Here

Bloglines turns out to have another use: I can read blogs there that I can't get to today via direct link.

Haloscan seems to be messed up, so if your blog is using it for your comments, I either can't load your blog at all (except in Bloglines) no matter which browser I try, or else it loads without a comment link. I can't get to the haloscan website, either, but I emailed their support address.

I can see you, but I can't talk to you! (And Bells has such beautiful basil and tomatoes on her blog right now, not to mention her finished! steeked jacket.)

In knitting news, the Jardin sock heels are turned. Now I can get on with knitting the Fizzy sock heels.

I see it looks like I have two tiny holes on these heels, but that's light reflecting on the lightest part of the yarn.

Every so often I'll read something about turned heels not fitting as well as gusset heels, but I think either type can be fitted to the wearer. I keep knitting turned heels because they do fit me so well!

Follow-up: Dr. Mel has posted a "Thank you" from Phoebe, the dog who was run over by a snowmobiler, along with her master.

A while ago, Bells commented, "Is it just me or do you spend months and months shovelling and not doing much else?" and I posted one of these links on Marguerite's blog, but not my own.

Yes, this winter I've been shovelling a lot. It's been snowing a lot, but that's more usual than unusual for here. First I found this map at AccuWeather, showing the US Annual Mean Snowfall. Then I found the same map, with finer detail but no key, at Climate Source.
Coincidentally, Julie put up her article on the color purple today. But purple has a different meaning on the map.

Purple and dark blue areas get lots and lots of snow, more than 72 inches (nearly 183 cm) in an average winter.

If you click and look at the large image, in Michigan you'll see several dots of purple along the west side. I live in one of the purple dots.

That means my house gets about as much snow, on average, as Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Maine, upstate New York, the mountain west, and northern Wisconsin. And chunks of Alaska.

(I'm not sure I needed to know that with all of March still to come!)

But at least this has been the winter of the warm-up, so we don't have really high snowbanks by our driveway.

Three or four times so far, we've had temperatures in the high 40's or even 50's that melted the snow down to almost nothing. Of course, that's been followed by another 6 or 7 inches of snow.

The weather will have its little joke.