Can it Be 2015? Seems Like Just Yesterday We Were All Freaked Out Over Y2K!

This morning when I did chores, it was -5 F outside.  Whiskers seem to develop frost quickly in that weather.  Read on for another frosty whiskery face, which I had intended for the top photo, but somehow, this face always wins out.

Yes, minus five and only one week into January!  Brrrrrrr!  I can deal with it if I bundle up properly.  Or sit by the woodburner.  I've been sitting and knitting a lot this week.

I rung in the New Year at Mom's in Dayton, where she "dragged" me to not one but two parties on New Year's Eve.  I wasn't too lively as I had only the day before flown from Columbus to Minneapolis and then driven to Dayton in our new truck.  So I was up at 6 am to go to the airport, and left the dealership with the truck around 2:30 (3:30 my time).  I got all the way through Wisconsin in extremely cold weather, filled the truck with natural gas at a station just south of Madison, and stopped for the night a couple hours into Illinois, before driving to Dayton the next day.  The truck is great.  I can plug in all my devices, phone, MP3, GPS at once.  Audio books make long drives so much easier!  Anyway, I arrived home on Friday afternoon after just about 1000 miles on the road.  The truck does not quite fit in the garage.  Of course in the photo above, it is in the bay that has the CNG compressor in it, so it can't go in too far.  But the side mirrors only clear the doors by inches.  I have some history with side mirrors, a truck (our Chevy), and garage doors, so I will power down the window and fold in the mirror whenever I drive this truck into the garage.  

We got our first measurable snow this week, about 4".  I'm waiting for enough to get out my new snowshoes.

 The alpacas and big dogs don't seem to mind the cold.  They all have lots of fur/fleece.  I did put a coat on Bodhi this morning.  He was shivering.  This photo was around 8:20 this morning.  You can just see the sun hitting the hills looking south.  It has not gotten into the valley yet.

Some of the water pipes in the house were frozen.  No surprise there.  It seems to happen whenever the temps fall below zero.  What did surprise me was that the water was still running into the trough at the boys' pasture.  The water comes a long way under a field in a pipe from a spring and I was happy to see it still running fairly strong this morning despite the cold.

I warped my rug loom in the last week or so of December and started a rug on it.  With my trip last week, I have not had much time to weave.   I did totally rip out the sweater I started knitting in November.  I had the whole body of it done and it was just going to be too tight, so I decided to start it over.  Sometimes things just work out that way.  

Meanwhile, here are some of the Christmas gifts I made over the last several months:

Yoga socks for sister-in-law Jill

Socks for Mom

Fingerless mitts for Ian, Michelle and Sam/Zac/Satchmo.  These were super fun and quick to knit and I think they were a hit with the "kids".

More next week.


And here is that other frosty face I promised.  Worth the wait, right?