It’s Winter Today!

I can’t show you any picturesque snowy pictures this year, but I promise you, it’s winter in the Gulf South today! And it happened all at once on Tuesday afternoon. I took the photo above as kind of a joke. I was sitting on the patio on Tuesday working on a colorwork swatch. It was so hot, I had to keep dusting my hands with baby powder to keep the yarn flowing through my sticky fingers. Round about 3:30pm this happened…

Pretty obvious THAT’S not goin’ anywhere pretty. This close to the Gulf (and here in Mid-City, we’re at the bottom of “the bowl” where the streets flood if someone overflows the bathtub), that kind of sky can be a bit scary. It blew through easily though, with steady rain and plummeting temperatures. People tease me all the time because I’m Canadian, “Oh, you must be used to this! This isn’t cold for you!” Oh, contrare, my friends! I’ve lived in some cold-ass places, so trust me…it gets cold in New Orleans, right down to your bones. I’m so grateful for my good Canadian winter woolies!

It’s lovely and festive and cheery and warm inside, though, thanks to Miss Laura’s considerable Christmas talents. She has decorated every nook and cranny, pulling out all the stops as we await the arrival of our dear friends Gwen & Phillip who’ll be joining us for the holidays.

There is no photographic angle that does justice to this tree. It is a miracle of decor, carefully pruned then layered with hundreds of shiny ornaments from large to tiny. It lights up the entire work room and it smells heavenly.

In keeping with the sudden chilliness (I complain a lot, but secretly I’m kind of enjoying the coziness of it all ;), there has been lots of mitten knitting. I think I mentioned in my last post that Christmas really makes me feel like knitting mittens and that I have a certain guilty fascination with KnitPicks Felici, the self-striping wonder yarn. It is superwash merino and incredibly soft. It’s available in worsted weight these days, so I bought a few skeins to try. How ’bout some kid’s mittens?

I’m making these to send to my little cousin, Rowan, who is very sweet and very much a girlie-girl. I’m planning to make a matching hat, then trim it with a bright pink faux fur pom pom. Miss Laura is planning to do the same for her young nephew, James, although in a much more manly color and without the pom pom. (I think I may have her talked into a tassel, though 😉 We cast them on at Tipsy Knitters on Wednesday night over a glass of wine. Rowan’s little set is the “Hopscotch” colorway, and we have “Treehouse” for young James. I’ve worked a rather long cuff ending at the end of a stripe, then put stitches on hold for an afterthought thumb. I wanted to keep the stripe width consistent, so I didn’t want to start adding thumb gusset stitches. The thumbs are such a small circumference that they work up out of a single stripe’s length, keeping them a single color, which I like.

I think I’ll take the rest of this cold rainy day to finish up the set so I can send it off to Canada in time for Christmas. (I think I smell Gingerbread!!)

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