Deja Vu All Over Again

Last Thursday, I titled my post Stormwatch and it would be an appropriate title again today. Last week we got about 4" of fluffy snow, very light weight & easy to shovel. Today, the prediction is for up to 9" of heavy wet stuff. I'll spare you another photo of my backyard with the lilac bushes bending down from the snow and the birds mobbing the feeders, but there are some similar photos back in the archives - probably February or March. It's nasty enough out there that I stayed home instead of going to the K4 meeting. OK, I'm a wuss when it comes to driving in bad weather, nothing new there. {g}

Yesterday was dedicated to running errands in advance of the predicted storm. We stopped by The Michigan Animal Rescue League in Pontiac to pick up our yearly supply of Christmas cards and visit the kitty rooms. Everytime I go there, I'd like to bring a kitty or two home with me. This time it was a huge yellow tiger with white markings named Moose. There was also a lovely Himalayan in another cage.

We also went to the post office that was on our route over by Rochester where I picked up two of the flat rate priority mail boxes. These have to be one of the best kept secrets around. The boxes are good sized and you can mail anything you can fit into one up to 70#s for $7.40. I stuffed them with books and the hand-knit sweaters plus some little goodies and we got them to the local post office this morning before the snow started getting bad. The boxes were heavy enough that regular priority mail would have cost over $14 each, but with the flat rate boxes it was only around $15 to send both - plus the boxes themselves are *free*..

There's an Indian market right next door to the Rochester post office - if you need any of the spices that normally go into Indian dishes, these markets are the place to shop. Seven ounces of turmeric for $1.99 instead of not quite an ounce at the grocery store. The market smells so good when you walk in with all the spices. I stocked up on crushed chilies, the tumeric along with a package of curry powder (extra hot) and garam masala. There's more curry in our future.

Around all this activity, I really have been knitting. The Big Bad Bag's Big Brother is almost finished. I should be able to finish binding it off this evening, then it will be on to the felting project. I'm on my third hat & scarf set for the K4 project and I have enough yarn for two or three more sets. I know what I'm getting for Christmas!! Last night, we sat down and ordered books we wanted as our gifts to each other. Tom is getting The Minimalist's How to Cook Everything & I'm getting A Gathering of Lace & Folk Shawls. We're getting Mom the Million Word Crossword Dictionary.

I had a comment on a past post asking about recycling sweaters. The How To Recycle A Sweater site explains it far better than I ever could, but the main things to avoid are 1) serged seams anywhere but at the shoulders & 2) wildly multicolored patterns. The latter do provide more shades of yarn, but it's not worth the hassle (IMHO) of taking one apart. Unless you want to do some lace knitting, I'd also avoid fine knit sweaters as the yarn is closer to lace weight. As a rule, yarn is usually thinner than it appears in the sweater. One color bulky sweaters are ideal if you want to recycle the yarn into felted bags.