Holy cow!

It’s been a hell of a week!

Last Sunday was a tiny Harveyville Spinsters Club meeting, just me, Marta & Laura, thanks to the weekend’s first run of ice. Laura brought cookies and Marta brought tea, and I made soup, and we had much fun. Then I got my datebook printing back late Monday afternoon, just in time for an ice-storm and 3-day power outage Monday night. We did most of the hand-finishing for the first batch by the paltry, gloomy daylight, or by candles and the light of a little lamp we sneaked onto the fridge’s cut of the generator’s power (by Wednesday, I was disconnecting the sump pump and getting online in my 46 degree office; thank you, generator, for enablign my pathetic internet addiction, unhindered by the freezing room).

They calendars are great this year, bound on the short side and with a better layout to make them a less clunky, but still with sturdy cardstock pages and fold-out monthly calendars. I’ll get some pictures tomorrow, when the light comes back. I hate how cheated you get on daylight in the winter, and my pictures always look off indoors.

I also took advantage of the outage to do some baking (we have a gas oven), which helped keep me warm. I made a pumpkin pie for Ed & Marta (turns out Ed loves pumpkin pie & he didn’t get any this year); a sugar-free apple for Dick & Rita; and another special treat that we mailed off Thursday & I don’t want to mention and spoil the surprise, eh. And then another pumpkin that was supposed to be a present but ended up being for me & Ron.

The power came back on Thursday (though some of our neighbors were still without on Friday), which was about as pretty a day as you could ask for, and I got a ton of pictures of the melting ice against crazy blue skies:

(click for more ice)

Happily, Friday’s big storm didn’t amount to much, just nice powdery snow and plenty of electricity. And for the last couple days, I’ve been catching up on my shipping, working on a linen (first time knitting 100% linen) project for Shannon’s alt fiber book, and making batts galore! I’ve also added more Cuckoo for Cuckoobatts subscription options to the etsy site, and come up with some cute new cards/packaging for the gift subscriptions. Yay!

But aside from the momcho, I haven’t even started my Christmas knitting. Whoops. Or any Christmas shopping, really. I’m trying to go with as much handmade and Wabaunsee county stuff as possible, but with the storm and Ron having the car most days, I haven’t gotten very far. Maybe tomorrow we’ll drive around Wabaunsee and pick up some goodies.

What I have not done in the last 2 days is shower. And when I say 2 days, I think I actually mean three. Um, yeah. Yikes. I’d better go scrub up.

But first, new batts:

(New item, the Sock Sack, coordinated batts for plying or striping sock yarn. Or, you know, anything else you wanna do with ’em.)

(Been loving on the greens & purples. I’m trying to stick with one color family at a time so I have enough scraps to card into my dregs batt for my future art club sweater.)

And the new gift subscription stuff:

Okay, off to Cleansville!