It's a new year

But it's the same old story here in central New York. It's snowing.

These pictures are actually from New Year's Eve day.





This is looking down my driveway. The tracks were made by my car as I came up the hill from work. In the second picture, you can see three flowering crab apple trees bordering the driveway. Then Scott got home from work, saw I that my car made it up the driveway and tried to get his truck up, too. Even with four wheel drive, the truck slid sideways into the topmost tree. The only way he could get the truck out was to cut down the tree. So we now have two crab apple trees.



I have been telling him to cut down this tree for threes years ever since we bought our first 5th wheel travel trailer. He backs the trailer up the hill and if he doesn't starting turning at just the right spot, he scrapes against that tree. Now he doesn't have to worry about it. Actually, we started out with four crab apples and he cut down the first one right after we started parking the trailer next to the garage.



I took the pictures of the tree and the trailer today. (The Jeep is Alek's and you can just see the end of my Kia Sportage.) It's snowing today, too. Yesterday was sleet and freezing rain all day. Tomorrow is flurries and another snow storm is moving in for Saturday. Normally the weather doesn't bother me but this year I really hate it. And the sad part is that it's only the beginning of January. I may be really crazed by April!

This winter has been very cold, too. I don't look good in hats so I usually don't wear them. Sometimes, though, I need to cover my ears so I decided to make a Calorimetry for myself out of Wisdom "Poems".

When this pattern first came out, I made three of them. They all seemed to be too loose so I frogged one and gave the other two to charity. This time instead of starting with 120 stitches, I started with 96 and only knit 9 rows of Row 5 and 11 rows of Row 7. This made a smaller headband that fits fairly well. The 2 x 2 ribbing makes it feel a little loose, though.



So I thought maybe a tam would look better on me. I got out my copy of Ann Budd's Handy Book of Patterns, a skein of Wool in the Woods Star City yarn in "Lottery", and made a tam.



The tam fits okay but I'm not sure I like it on me. But it looks well enough that on really cold days, I'll wear it.

Both the book and the yarn have been in my stash for a couple of years, now. This is the first pattern I've used from this book.

This is a good way to start off 2009, I think. I have another skein of the Star City and part of the first skein left so I might make myself a scarf to match the tam.

Right now I'm making toddler socks out of Patons Classic Wool for charity. I hope the two skeins of Malabrigo Worsted I ordered come today so I can finally get a pair of lined mittens made for Scott. I'm going to do the outer mitten in the Malabrigo and the inner mitten in the alpaca I bought at the craft fair. The mittens are hanging over my head so I want them done!