having a great life in spite of everything

We all trooped up to Kansas for Christmas to visit my husband’s family—me, husband, daughter, and all three dogs. Thanks to ipods and audiobook CDs, the 10-11 hour trip doesn’t seem so bad, and having the dogs along forces us to take frequent breaks. I got to experience my first blizzard while there, wheee. I know I’ve been told, but boy, actually getting whipped in the face with snow and ice makes you go, oh, this really is very painful! Now I get it! Our stupid fake-SUV rental got stuck in the snow in a relative’s driveway (long drive on couple of acres), we just left it and BIL (with 4-wheel drive truck) drove us home. There was just no way it was practical to try to dig that damn thing out at night during a storm. The next day (Christmas) the sun was shining and it was very simple to get it moving again. 

Takeaway lesson: SUVs are really just silly, overgrown station wagons if they don’t have 4-wheel drive. Actually, I already knew that, it was really just a lesson reinforced, but if you didn’t know, now you do.

I was clever enough to take plenty of yarn with me, I finished a bag with a cable band top (pattern coming soon), a simple rolled brim hat, and I even started a lace shawl in a fingering-weight sock yarn. I decided to do another half-circle shawl, but with pi shawl increases this time. I started off with garter drop stitch, thinking I’d whip it all up in that and it’d be easy. As I worked on it, though, the bands created by the drop-stitch rows reminded me of tire tracks in the snow. Not a very lacy or romantic image, but when you’re trying to get around in a crappy fake-SUV that can’t handle snow at all, tire tracks in the street are a great relief, it decreases the odds that you’re going to get stuck again. So that inspired me to do a snow/Christmas-themed shawl.

After the increases on row 32, I switched to cat’s paw lace, reminiscent of the dogs’ paw prints in the snow. In the next section after the row 64 increases, I wanted to do Christmas trees, but hit a snag—all the stitch patterns I could find were worked from the bottom up, and I’m knitting from the top down. So I had to write a new stitch pattern myself, I’m working on that part now. I don’t know what I’ll put in the next section, I’ll figure that out when I get there. Maybe horseshoe lace? Or some metaphorical imagery like, dogs grumbling about having to go out in the snow to pee? Car stuck in snowy driveway? Kids overdosed on sugar? Ooo, I like that last one, it could be all spazzy and all over the place.