Hot Colors on a Cold Day

It's cold and snowy across the south and Western North Carolina is no exception.  Only 25 degrees Fahrenheit, we've had about 6 inches of snow and it's still coming down.  One of the joys of the South is that a single flake of snow can cancel everything, but this kind of snow would give my northern relatives pause.  This is the view from my front door.  I'm seriously considering going out a bit later and clear a path, play in the snow, take a bit of a walk perhaps clean off my car.  But it's cold!

Since it's too snowy to go to work, I've been working from home today: getting ahead on my class that should start on Thursday (tomorrow's classes have already been canceled), I've played around on the new Library of Congress web page (http://www.loc.gov/index.html), even read a couple of journals.

I've been coping with the cold weather over the last few days by dyeing warm colors.  These are the reds and golds that are some of my stock colors in the Etsy shop.  On the left is 'Fire.'  On the right is 'Mars.'  Mars came out just lovely in the Blue Faced Leicester base top.  The last time I dyed it it was a bit dark and murky and I could not photograph it well enough to out it online.  This time it is just cheery and bright.

You might notice that the roving is drying in front of the solar hot water heater.  We will not be making our own hot water today as the solar panels are covered with an insulating blanket of snow.

So here are my choices. Option One: Stay warm and cozy. Drink tea or hot cocoa.
Option Two:  Go outside and play.  Come back in and have a cup of tea.

I'm going for Door #2! 

Snow Days

Today,

Photo from the Asheville Citizen-Times by John Fletcher

Tuesday,  is my first day out after the Saturday evening snow and very cold temperatures that decended upon western North Carolina.  Now I grew up in NE Ohio, where this kind of weather was no big deal.  I lived for several years in Erie, PA and in my last year there, this became normal.  Of course, that is when I decided to move.
But we Southerners are not used to it staying cold and we are not used to driving on snow and ice.  Snow driving is a skill, much like archery.  I have chosen to skip it.  But the dedicated teacher that I am, it seems that sometimes I have to show up.  So this morning I got out in the single digit temperatures, warmed up my little truckie and headed about 20 miles north to the little college where I had an 8 am final scheduled.  Once I made it out of my neighborhood, the only mishap was trying to use my windshield washer when a big trucked sprayed me as he passed.  On the driver's side, the nozzle was frozen.  This was a big improvement over the passenger's side where the wiper was too frozen to actually connect with the washer fluid that promptly froze on the windshield.   

The upside of snow days is that when you are trapped in the house you can get a good bit of knitting, spinning and dyeing done.  Now dyeing can be chilly work, as my dye studio is in the basement of my home.  Putting my hands into the water where the fiber has been soaking is not fun.  I have found that pulling the fiber out of the dye water is easier on the hands if you do it about 2 hours after the dyeing is complete, rather than waiting overnight for the fiber to fully cooled down.

On Sunday I spent some quality time with Little Otto, my drum carder.  I have a goodly collection of dyed fiber, some of which is overdyed, seiously uneven, or - face it - ugly.  But a pass or 2 through the carder changes everything.  I made up a set of batts in a very pretty reddish brown, but mostly I just carded fiber and put it aside for more creative work later.

But for being snowed in, almost nothing beats watching movies and knitting.  I have been working on a new design for a felted cloche, so I knit up a couple of new prototypes and felted them in the washer, knit at least 3 or 4 hats for guys and started thinking about knitting fingerless gloves for a Christmas gift.  A cup of tea, a pot of soup, a good movie and an extremely large quantity of yarn.  Ah, the perfect snow day!