These scarves are too heavy to juggle

I've been a knitting fool lately. Been making some scarves as presents this year. I really like the wavy one on the left. I may have to make one of those for myself. I got the pattern for that one from an online magazine called Knitty. Lots of interesting patterns there. They're out of Toronto, somewhere on Queen Street. I probably walked right past them last time I was up that way.

I'm blogging from my sister's house. I'm here until a few days after Christmas, then it's back home for a week or so. I'm not going back to work until the 8th of January. I figure I'll be fairly stir-crazy by then and ready to go back.

Merry Christmas from Amish country!

Do-it-yourself snow

The high temperature for today is supposed to be 57°F. That's just wrong. It should be snowing.

So I've decided to make some snow of my own at Popular Front's snowdays site. And then a few moments later I made some more. It's oddly addictive.

Anyone wanna join me? If you do and you want to share your snowflake with the other three people who read this blog, you could post the link for it in my comments box.--the site gives you the opportunity to send yourself (or anyone else) a link to your work.

If you wanna sing out, sing out...

Last evening one of my neighbors was out walking his dog and singing:

"I'm 'Enery the Eighth I yam,
'Enery the Eighth I yam I yam.
I got married to the widow next door.
She's been married seven times before
And ev'ry one was an 'Enery ('Enery!),
She wouldn't 'ave a Willy or a Sam (no sir!).
I'm 'er eighth old man named 'Enery,
'Enery the Eigth I yam!"

I couldn't stop myself. I flung open the door and shouted:

"Second verse, same as the first!"

And slammed it shut really quick so he couldn't identify the shouter.

Got a chicken where?

I wasn't able to go to dance class last week, as I was on a bus heading back from Thanksgiving with my parents for most of Sunday evening. I'd told my teacher that I wouldn't be there, and (little teacher's pet wannabe that I am) asked for another rhythm or two to practice on my zills. She'd already given us five different ways to do triplets, and a rhythm that she called "3-5-1-3" because, well, it's that many beats with pauses in between: 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5,1,1-2-3. So anyway, this time she gave me 3-3-7, and 3-7-3. Since you get 8 beats when you count from one to seven out loud (go on, try it), they've put this rhythm to words. Instead of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 it's: "Gotta dance, gotta dance, got a chicken in my pants."

Yep.

And of course, 3-7-3 is, "Gotta dance, got a chicken in my pants, gotta dance."

Best of all was when she was telling me, she couldn't help doing a little wiggle and shoulder shimmy when she got to "got a chicken in my pants." To which I replied, "well, thank you for the blog post."

I was practicing the zills earlier today, and when I stopped I heard a noise behind me that I quickly identified as the cat, snoring. My first thought? "Oh, God, I've deafened her!" To test this, I went into the kitchen and said very quietly, "Would anyone like a cat treat?" I turned around and she was at the door of the pantry, watching me expectantly. So apparently she's just used to the noise and has learned to tune it out.

What's next, locusts?

The weather forecast for today has predicted just about everything except a rain of poisonous toads. It's supposed to start out with a high of 62° (Fahrenheit), then about 1 o'clock we're supposed to start with rain and high winds -- there's a flash-flood warning until 10 pm, I think -- and then we're supposed to get a little bit of snow. Is Mama Nature a smidge angry?

The rain and wind have started right on schedule, and I just heard a siren in the distance. It sounded like a fire engine. The lights flickered slightly a little while ago, which makes me wonder if a power line is down.

Vacation was nice & relaxing, by the way. Nothing earth-shaking happened, though I did take a few pictures at the kitchen table with the laptop. I'll post them soon.

Now comes the part of the year I dread: Christmas shopping. It's very hard to get any information out of my male relatives about what they'd like for Christmas. Some year I'm going to take a pottery class, make bizarre lumpish objects (that's all I can do anyway. Ever made a pinchpot with corners? By accident? I have. I still don't know how that happened), call them I-don't-knows and give them as presents. Then the next year when I ask what they want and they tell me, "I don't know." I can say, "No, I gave you that last year."