Baby, It’s Cold Outside

7 F/-13.9 C, to be exact.   With snow on the ground.  And a predicted low of 4 F/-20 C.  I’m doing the only thing a reasonable human bean can do in such a situation.  I’ve got two layers of fleece on top, fleece leggings, socks under my snuggle slippers, a lap robe, a carafe of hot tea to hand, and a loaded chili cheese dog waiting for me to tuck into it.  Not to harp, but to put things in perspective, my town is at the same latitude as Casablanca, Morocco, which is to say, we’re freezing our appurtenances off just at the moment.

The title is a bald reference to this little treat from those colorful days of yesteryear when singers could actually sing and songs had melodies, . . . and lyrics ( . . . not to mention subtexts . . . ) . . .

Now that the Canadians and other denizens of the Norther Climes have had a good laugh at Texas’ little valentine from climate change, I am sorry to report that nothing much else has been happening apart from same-old, same-old, which is why I haven’t been blogging much.  I did have my second COVID jab last Thurs, and apart from a sore arm and a big knot, it was unnoteworthy.

My chili cheese dog is ‘licious, BTW.  I didn’t have any hot dog chili, so I’m using Wolf Brand Chili w/o beans in lieu of same.  I make my chili dogs open-face in those large shallow bowls that used to come standard with sets of dishes and were intended to be used as soup bowls. (Because they’re large in diameter and shallow, the soup cools quickly enough that you can eat it within a reasonable amount of time of its being served, so the footman can remove the bowl and serve the next course and we can keep get through dinner in under two hours.)  Making a chili dog open-face means (a) because you don’t have to pick it up to eat it, you can really load on the condiments and melt the cheese, and (b) you can’t pick it up without it getting all over you so you have to eat it with a (knife and) fork.  I cut the wiener in two long ways and put half on each side of the bun.  Fair is fair, after all.

I eat tamales that way, too, which is to say, in a soup bowl loaded down with condiments like refried beans, black olives, chopped onions, salsa, sprinkle cheese.  The way I eat them, three tamales is a meal.  Pedro’s come in packages of 12, which means I can get four meals out of one package of tamales, 1 can of refried beans, one little can of sliced black olives, a small package of sprinkle cheese, and a small onion.  Tasty, filling, and economical — !

A few highlights from my trip to the dumpster Thurs after I came home from getting my COVID jab.

 

 

 

 

 

At left is the volunteer locust tree at the side of my house (those durn beans get EVERYwhere!) .  The branches on all the trees in town were coated with white, which was really kind of pretty, especially against the clear blue sky.  The house across the alley has some kind of vine growing all over their back fence.

Where I live, the houses usually sit at the middle of the lot, with a fair-sized front yard and a back yard that’s usually half again as big as the front yard.  You’ve got a paved street and houses facing each other along it, but in between the houses on one street and the houses on the next street there is an alley that is typically just bare dirt.  Everybody’s back yards are fenced in, so the alleys have fences down each side.  There’s also about a 4-foot wide “verge” along either side of this dirt alley.  The people who live in each house are supposed to maintain (keep clear of junk and mow) the strip of verge along their back fence.  Dumpsters are set at intervals on the verges along the alleys for people to put their trash in, and then the city’s garbage trucks come along and empty the dumpsters twice a week.  The alleys also provide room for utility trucks to access the utility poles (electricity) and the underground pipes (gas, water and sewer) that supply utilities to the houses, and the verges provide places for meters for the water and gas.  The electric meters are attached to the house at the point where the “war” from the pole enters the house.

So, we got a good little bit of snow overnight (2-3 inches?) and it’s supposed to snow again on Tues, but it’s also supposed to warm up to 22 F/-5.5 C Tues, with a low of 18 F/-7.7 C .  I’m supposed to go to cardiac rehab Mon and Wed, but I doubt that’s going to happen if the streets are not clear.   I didn’t go to cardiac rehab Fri either because it was too durn cold and windy and icy.  I don’t like driving when the road conditions are not ideal, not because I lack driving skills, but because there are an unfortunately high percentage of idiots in pickup trucks in this town who apparently learned to drive by watching monster truck rallies.

Teal asymmetrical shawl

In the knitting news, I’m still basically working on three projects:  The teal asymmetrical triangular shawl in Malabrigo sock yarn, the infinity wrap, and the semicircular shawl, but I’ve got this gloriously magenta, turquoise, teal, purple variegated yarn that is just begging to become — I think — a semicircular shawl.

infinity wrap

But I’m still gestating the ideas

semicircular shawl.  I really like the edge I put on the semicircular shawl at left, with the “eyelet join” of yarn overs  between it and the body of the shawl.  It’s a wider, thicker edge (5 stitches wide), but it’s ribbed (k1, p1), which keeps it from rolling quite nicely.  I’m thinking about having an odd number of stitches in the body, and starting every body row with a knit stitch, which is your basic seed stitch.  The fabric it makes is not as thick as garter stitch, but it has an interesting texture.  I have worked out a way to use Turkish cast on to make the top borders look like they were knitted on, which is my main quarrel with doing garter tabs.  You can always see where the tab is.

for it.  I really like the edge I put on the semicircular shawl at left, with the “eyelet join” of yarn overs  between it and the body of the shawl.  It’s a wider, thicker edge (5 stitches wide), but it’s ribbed (k1, p1), which keeps it from rolling quite nicely.  I’m thinking about having an odd number of stitches in the body, and starting every body row with a knit stitch, which is your basic seed stitch.  The fabric it makes is not as thick as garter stitch, but it has an interesting texture.  I have worked out a way to use Turkish cast on to make the top borders look like they were knitted on, which is my main quarrel with doing garter tabs.  You can always see where the tab is.

 

But I’m still gestating the ideas for it

I will leave you with this funny, brilliant, and vaguely unsettling thing: