A MN Winter Storm

The weather forecasters have been talking all week about the big winter storm scheduled to hit MN over the weekend. It's predicted to be the worst of the century - which is only 7 years old but still...

With great hopes this will be my last MN winter, I decided to document the storm for myself. Above are two pictures I took on Friday about 5:30 in the afternoon. Yes, I know, it was already a little too dark for good pictures but that's when the idea struck me so that's when the pictures were taken. I work from home and don't usually but on this particular Friday I took a 'lunch hour' and went into town to stock up on groceries, gas, a little wine and get to the Post Office to mail two packages. As luck would have it the LP gas company came out Friday afternoon to fill my tank. So by this time on Friday we were all huddled down for the perfect storm.

And although you can't see it in the pictures above, I'd like to add that my yard is perfectly clean here, all my 'sins of omission' during the bitter cold weather the past 10 days or so have been pooper scooped away!

I had Dak entered in obedience trials in Minneapolis this weekend and went to bed Friday night figuring on not being able to make it. However, when I woke up this morning there was almost no new snow and although windy, conditions seemed good. I decided to make a go for it and took a quick shower. Yikes! When I stepped out of the shower just a few minutes later, my windows were coated in ice and the dogs I had left outside were barking and scratching at the door to come in. Had conditions changed swiftly! The ice was quickly coating every thing and it hurt just to stand outside and let the ice and wind hit your face. No way was I driving in this stuff.

I am ever so fortunate to work from home now after commuting from 45 to 62 miles one way for the last 22 years. I've nothing to prove to anyone these days about how tough I can be and what awful conditions I can drive and survive in. I've lived in Minnesota or Alaska my entire life and made more white knuckle car or airplane (yes, I had my pilot's license while living in AK) trips than I care to recount. I was staying home.





Here are roughly the same two scenes on Saturday afternoon about 5:00 PM. The ice finally turned to snow about 3:30 this afternoon. These pictures do not show the heavy coating of ice on all the tree branches, windows and power lines. I'm saying my prayers my power doesn't go out as it so frequently does out here. So far so good. I've been filling up water jugs during the day and cleaning up after myself, washing dishes after I made a pan of brownies this afternoon and even cleaning the skillet I used to make my supper before I sat down to eat tonight. It gets cold when I lose power and it gets dark. I can't knit or read or listen to music, but what I always miss the most is not having running water.

By 6:30 this evening the snow fall and wind were significantly stronger. It's looking as if the weather forecasts where right about this storm.

Meanwhile, I made great progress this afternoon on my bi-cable sweater and hope to have pictures for you tomorrow. It's exciting to see it finally coming together.

Mr. Moby

I mentioned scanning in a picture of Moby and here it is. Isn't he a handsome guy? Ok, Moby is 5 generations of my breeding so I could be just a bit biased. Moby is co-owned by me and my good friend Sherry and he lives with Sherry in IA. Sherry allows me to borrow Moby for the show ring from time to time and I am most grateful. In his "real" life Moby is in training to be a great obedience dog.

Jeanne asked me about the yarn I am using for my Nantucket Jacket. I am knitting with Mission Falls 1824 Wool, color Mist. It's ok. I find I am splitting the yarn more than I normally do. I can't decide if it's the yarn or the Inox needles I am using. The Inox have very sharp points and I'm not sure I like them as well as the Addi Turbos I normally use. But the Inox were in my drawer full of knitting needles so I could hardly justify purchasing new Addi Turbos in the same size.

I was wishing last time I posted that I knew how to create separate blog pages for each of my projects or that I had a Flicker or some such account to display the finished objects and all the details, like yarn and needles used for the project. My life's been busy lately but hopefully I'll soon have a weekend to sit down and figure this out. I have my dog Dak entered in obedience trials this coming weekend but the weather forecast is not looking so good for traveling to Minneapolis on Saturday or Sunday. Perhaps this weekend will be a snow/ice weekend and give me the time to make a better blog.

I was browsing the web today and I found a Nantucket Jacket KAL. Gosh, some very interesting comments and experiences here. Lucky for me I am knitting the smallest size so sounds as if I won't need to make too many adaptations, but it's a shame the pattern is not working out for some. Still, everyone, including me, seems to agree it's a fun pattern to knit. After seeing other Nantucket Jackets I'm wishing I'd done mine in a brighter color. I doubt I'll join the KAL, I just never know how much time I am going to have for knitting projects and am afraid I'd fall way behind the others. It's sure a great resource though.

A little knitting and a little dog news

Here's my finished socks, getting ready to be shipped off to my mom. I meant to have them ready for her birthday (February 1st) and then for Valentine's Day (February 14th) and I think I finally mailed them February 15th. What can I say, I had the best of intentions.

I think the socks turned out nicely, one is a bit larger than the other despite my attempts to block it. I believe it was caused by all the ripping and re-knitting I did on the first sock. In the end, I had the pattern figured out and the second sock came along very nicely. I will definitely knit these again sometime.


Here's the progress I am making on the Nantucket Jacket. I've completed the arm hole shaping and just need to knit up about 5 more inches to complete the back. I'm happy with it, it needs a good blocking and then I think I will be very happy with the results. However, once the back is completed I promised myself I will get back to the Bi-color cable sweater and finally finish it.

I travelled to Des Moines this past Sunday for a one day dog show and Moby picked up a Best Of Winners win for another point. He's such a fun dog to show. He lives in Des Moines with my good friend and obedience training mentor, Sherry. He's a great little show dog but will be an even greater obedience dog because Sherry is such a good trainer. I'll have to scan in his winning picture from the shows at the River Centre in St. Paul back in January. The picture is just super and shows off the dog so nicely.

But not tonight, I'm too tired.

Whisper Went Herding

Unfortunately I did not bring my camera along but I did bring Whisper along to herding lessons this morning and after working my other dogs, we gave Whisper a try at herding sheep. Honestly, I had little hope for her, she's a true hot house flower at home and after her long illness this past autumn, seems to have become even more "wimpy-ier" than before. Still, it's an 85 mile one-way drive to herding lessons and I always want the time and mileage to be worthwhile so I figured, what the heck, let's bring Whisper and see how she reacts.

I'm proud to say Whisper showed tons of interest and intensity on sheep. The instructor worked with Whisper mostly and at one point the sheep escaped from their pen and Whisper, on leash with the instructor, worked to bring the sheep back. Of course none of this means she will be a great success at herding, or even a little successful, but as a breeder I was very happy to see her sustained interest and intensity. It was especially heartening to see her being so physical and healthy after her ordeal at the end of last year. And good to know it was money well spent - because it was, after all, just a wee bit of cash spent to bring her around. I'll definitely continue with lessons for Whisper and see how it goes.

As for me and the other dogs, well, we were scolded as usual. I don't know, either the dogs and I can't catch on to herding or we're just not in tune with the instructor.

Speaking of instruction, I had the very good fortune recently to have a few private lessons with Connie Cleveland. You know, I've lived alone and made my own way in this world throughout my adult life and I've been successful at it but I do recognize it's made me a bit cynical and hard. There's just about no one I idolize. However, this lady is one class act. I brought her two dogs, one with a big time retrieving problem and another with a very serious aggression problem which had caused me to toss in my sleep more than one night thinking seriously of taking him to the vet for the final needle. Now, the one dog is on her way to being a good (not great - yet!) retriever and the aggressive dog, well, he's not only on his way to being an excellent obedience dog but most importantly, on his way to being a very nice house pet. And she did all this without ever raising her voice at the dogs or even at me, who certainly deserved it more than the dogs. I aspire to being this good of a trainer some day.

Geez, I guess I should talk a little about knitting huh? Let's see, yesterday I made a trip to the Target in Owatonna for all those things you buy at Target - toiletries, laundry detergent, batteries, kitchen stuff, I'm sure you know. I decided to take a side trip to Waseca and visit Smitten With Knitten. It was a nice shop, lots of great yarn and a big crowd of folks. Still, I left without buying a thing. Kind of hard to believe. I took the back roads home, mainly gravel, and am proud to say the Silver Slacker (Passat) performed wonderfully. Good thing too as I had forgotten my cell phone - something I haven't done since purchasing this d**n new car.



Today on the way home from herding I stopped at my favorite (not exatly local) LYS, Knitters Palette and picked up a set of short, size 2 dpns and just for fun, this cool sock yarn. I am so in the mood for summertime and thought this would look great knitted up as socks to wear with cropped jeans. I'm thinking of a plain sock with a nice picot or lace top. We'll see. I've still plenty of WIP before I start these.

Shame On Me

Well shame on me! I think if you are going to blog then you had better blog regularly, which I have not done lately. So sorry, I will try harder in the future. A big part of my inertia has been the cold weather. I do not think we've seen temps above zero for more than 2-3 hours in a row for the last 2 weeks. I'm just a bit sick of it. See these lovely pheasant girls? They obviously agree with me and have been visiting one of my bird feeders for easy pickings the last few days. Cold temps and lots of snow cover make every kind of beast look for the easiest way out.


Speaking of the easiest way out, I actually finished one of my vine lace socks only to discover as I took a picture of the finished sock I had made a major mistake in the lace pattern. It was so unacceptable I won't even show you the finished sock picture but instead the rip-it-out-now picture.


I do still wonder how I could have missed such a mistake until I took a picture of the FO but whatever, here's the first finished sock. The second is well on it's way though I think I will save the picture and commentary until tomorrow or the next day so that I have something else to blog about. I must say, the second sock is coming along much easier than the first sock. One good thing about making all your mistakes on the first sock...