Thursday, January 12, 2006

Busy Day Between The Raindrops

As the old year wound down and the new year got underway, the northern coastal and not so coastal communities in California got slammed with record rainfall. Rather than adding to the roads crowded with people trying to lay in supplies, flee from floods and massive soil erosion, and did I mention there was lots of rain?, Eggs and I stayed inside, dry, if not particularly warm.

(I pay more than I can really afford to heat that damned lizard so I don't heat anything but water and food for myself...and with the 40% increase in the cost of utilities, further stretching the stretched-to-the-limit ends to make them meet is about to become real interesting.)

Well, Eggs were likely warmer than I was as they nestled under their holiday hats, wrapped up in their blankie. I, on the other hand, wielded cold, metal needles, knitting them their new....sweaters! Yes, this blog takes a brief diversion from hats to sweaters.



Sist is wearing a lovely stone-washed denim pullover with a scarf. The scarf was actually knit horizontally and meant to be self-fringing (like the
self-fringing shawl, which it was, but the fringe ended up to be longer than the scarf, so I chopped them down. A lot. You will recognize the yarn (okay, so maybe not) as being from the same skein of yarn as my most recent pair of finished socks.



Uova is wearing a slip-stitched sweater in yarn I frogged from a hat that turned out so badly I can't really use the phrase "turned out". Fortunately, this sweater really did turn out! (Do I have to point out that this sweater has a turtle neck? Sheesh, where are your powers of observation, your sense of how my mind works?! Really, people, have you learned nothing from reading my blogs or sites??) Finally, finally, we got a break in the rain. Not only that, we got a break in the heavy cloud cover, so much so that the ground and stuff started to dry out a tiny bit, and I decided that, with the three of us getting a touch of cabin fever, we needed to be out and so went to run some errands.

Our first stop was at Vinnie's Rohnert Park Automotive to drop off some Florida oranges from the huge box my dad sent me. I felt a little badly about leaving them a box of brownies and drunken fruit cake before the holidays, so I figure I'd make it up with some natural sugar.



Here's the eponymous Vince Lagomarsino, who is looking a bit shell shocked as he holds Sist and Uova, apparently trying to figure out just how much of my own fruitcake I must have ingested to make sweaters (well, hats, too) for eggs.


Our next stop was my friend's yarn shop, Elf Hand Knitwerks in Rohnert Park. Check out the socks hanging on the rack of sock yarn - those are mine. The blue-and-green striped one I made way to small for some reason - probably not enough fruitcake. The red-white-blue striped one fits, but it's just so not me, even me on election days. The other one of mine is a white-brown-gold fair isle-y one whose colors are just so not me. Not even when they are covered by pants and shoes. Just knowing I have brown garments on bothers me.




Here's a close of Eggs, backed by yarns, including some that have gone into making an inside-outside hat for my nephew.




Home again we went, and settled in for the evening. Comfy in their bed, I sat nearby, settling into doing some final stuff on the computer, ready to put my feet up and start knitting.


And then the phone rang.


It was Polly, asking if Eggs could come out for a drink at Chevy's where Polly and Karen were stopping on their way home from a difficult week at work.

Soooo, since Eggs aren't old enough to drive, their chauffeur (that would be moi) had to heave herself up and get dressed again (well, into street clothes from at-home-grubbies), and off we went to Chevy's.


There, Karen and Polly were already working at boosting their anti-oxidants and improving their heart health: Polly with a glass of red wine, while Karen was using fruit and cactus in the tasty combination known as a cranberry margarita. Feeling somewhat in need of some oxidant suppression myself, Karen and I split a pitcher of margaritas. See Uova and Sist waving?
Or are they trying to check our nystagmus?



I would show you pictures of Polly and Karen unwinding, but, uhm, the photos didn't turn out well, so I am afraid that we shall have to once again go to Chevy's so I can re-shoot them.