Hooray for February!

I’m really psyched it’s February. I’ve designated this as my official catch-up month. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s all snowmen and cupcakes–my catching up involves some VERY heavy lifting–but it does mean I don’t have any event-type commitments breaking up my mindspace.

Did I just say mindspace? What the hell kind of talk is that? Sheesh.

Anyway, so January was chockablock with all kindsa busy busy crap, so my ongoing craft goals from the old Überlist are a bit neglected. But considering how jam-packed January was, it’s a small triumph that I achieved any of them, and I will definitely be making them up.

Here are the ones I kept up with:

8. *FIX: Mend or eliminate an item of clothing every week. I mended a skirt and 3 pair of jeans!

57. *MAKE: Sweater a month. Convertible Hoodie for Craftzine.

58. *MAKE: Spin a pound a month. I spun this dk-sh 2-ply from a 1-pound Decadent Fibers Jellyroll Corriedale batt, bought Rhinebeck 2009. It will become a sweater of some sort. I also spun 4 oz of thick & thin from some Marilyn Pickle merino from the 2009 Spinsters Christmas swap.

from

63. *ORDER: Destash NET 100 balls and 10 pounds of fiber I’m down about 40 balls between destash and knitting.

101. *TCB: Submit a pattern to an online or print magazine every other month. I missed the knitty & Twist deadlines, but I successfully pitched a great new sweater pattern for Craftzine. It will be coming out in March.

And on these I fell behind:

47. *MAKE: Knit 2 feet a week on the building scarf I worked zero feet, so I’m behind 8 feet!

50. *MAKE: Photograph and document each foot of building scarf and make a giant scrolling panorama page for it. Haven’t yet started.

56. *MAKE: Sock a month. (Mitten = sock.)  Nope.

60. *MAKE: Write, photo, make a pdf and publish a new free pattern every other month. While I did have 2 free patterns published this month, I didn’t make their pdfs and self-publish, no coutsies.

104. *TCB: Write, photograph, make a nice pdf and publish one pattern for sale each month. I did write and photograph a couple new patterns, but I didn’t seal the deal with a new pdf in my ravelry store, so no countsies there, either.

And here are my crafty Überlist plans for February:

8. *FIX: Mend or eliminate an item of clothing every week. This month, I’ll be darning a big pile of socks, plus a pair of mittens. I plan to photograph and write up a nice how-to.

57. *MAKE: Sweater a month. This will probably be my Craftzine sweater for March.

58. *MAKE: Spin a pound a month. I’ll be spinning the rest of this:

and this

(Both from Triple R Farm, bought at Rhinebeck 2009.)

These will either become nice, sturdy socks, or I may spin them together and make a vest or little cardigan or something. I really need to get back on Weight Watchers so I can keep making smallish sweaters…

Plus I’ll spin up my Spinsters Club batt from last weekend. Those three together equal a pound. I originally planned the Spinsters Club batt as sort of an art yarn, but I recarded a little strip as a test, and I kind of love it reblended, so I think it has a future as a pair of mittens!

Plus I need to double up to escape my January craft debt.

February has begun with a big snow storm. Odds are, it’s impacting you in some way if live in the U.S., either by snowing you in or at least delaying your flights or package deliveries. After a day of freezing drizzle yesterday, I promised I wouldn’t whine about piles of snow if the ice stopped. Snow’s a bitch, but it doesn’t down the power lines. Winter’s too dark for too long to be without power, and I HATE hooking up and babysitting the generator.

It’s quite snowy but it’s really really windy. The problem with the wind (besides freezing your tits off) is that it fills in the ditches and obscures the road, so it’s very easy to wind up in a ditch. I don’t plan to do any driving until this thing’s over, but I worry about other people who must travel. I hate those terrible stories of people freezing in their cars a couple hundred yards from a store or something.

The wind also makes it impossible to tell how much snow there is. There’s really nothing to stop the wind out here, so between the back door and the barn, there are big swaths of bare ground, and waist-high drifts. When I went out this morning, the sheep were thickly dusted and there was a ton of snow swirling around inside the barn, so I stapled a bunch of empty feed sacks over all the western gaps and some of the southern ones, and it was instantly much snugger. See, I’m not a crazy person, folding and saving all my empty feed sacks. They’re very handy!

The gaps in the chicken coop were much more insidious. Earlier in the season, I used the feed sack trick on the north and west coop walls (the dominant wind directions in winter) and I made a sort of false ceiling out of more feed sacks (to keep more heat inside) but there was still a bunch of snow coming in from who knows where. I stapled some pieces of sack over the spots I could find, and moved a wooden box inside to hopefully make another little sheltered spot, but the hens still seemed discontented. Even inside the coop, it was well below freezing, and their treats (including half a brown avocado, normally a favorite) froze before they got very far with them. I’ll probably bring them some warm porridge or some bacon fat tomorrow and Wednesday morning, since our overnight lows are scheduled to be 0°F/-17°C and -7°F/-24°C, respectively.

On my way back inside, my path had already been completely filled in, and the snow was so thick it made me think of those Little House on the Prairie stories of people going out to the barn with a rope tied to them so they wouldn’t lose their way in the blizzard. That was Little House on the Prairie, right? Those pioneers were so ingenious.

I would have been an awful pioneer.

Ma, the wi-fi’s down. Pa, we’re out of Diet Coke and I can’t find my #7 Addis. Mary, where’s the remote? Oh, right. You’re blind. No help. And um, where exactly am I supposed to pee? In that thing? This sucks.