Even dozen

Aidan celebrated his 12th birthday on Wednesday. It was a very low key celebration, as we are all suffering from nasty colds this week. (Everyone can blame me - I was the first to get it and apparently introduced it to James and Aidan.)

The birthday dinner, chosen by Aidan, was pork chops, homemade macaroni and cheese, and wedge salads. The cake was prepared by The Gingersnap Bakery, our go-to bakery for birthday cakes, and is a delightful confection of chocolate cake, chocolate mousse filling and chocolate ganache icing:

You can see in the photo just how sick and tired Aidan felt:

He did, however, manage enough lung power to blow out his candle:

Happy birthday, dear boy!

Winter Storm Vulcan

With patches of grass showing and the driveway clear down to asphalt, it was time to get a new round of snow and winter storm Vulcan obliged by paying a visit yesterday:

It was raining when we woke up but school was canceled in anticipation of the weather turning nasty. By 9:20 am, it was snowing:

10:40 am:

12:10 pm:

While perhaps not evident from the photo, the snow was heavy and the wind was blowing it around; the roads were getting very slippery. Local governments and businesses started shutting down early, which is almost unheard of here. Even James' employer sent everyone home but he was already on his way to East Syracuse for a meeting with a vendor and since people had traveled in from out of town for the meeting, they needed to keep it on the schedule.

1:20 pm:

3:00 pm:

James texted me at 3:20 to say he was on his way home. Around 3:45 I went out to the garage to put the door up so James could drive straight in, and realized that there were drifts around a foot and a half against the garage door. I was not sure he could get up the drive, even in his Outback, so I fired up the snowblower. I didn't bother to go back in to change clothes or put on my big boots, so there I was in yoga pants and cute faux fur boots, manhandling the snowblower through the drifts. The wind kept changing direction so no matter which way I angled the chute, the snow was blown back into my face. My eyeglasses had so much snow on them that I had to peer over them to see where I was going. I must have been quite the sight.

On most days, it would be deemed a lousy snow clearing job but yesterday, it was good enough. When I went back in at 4:20, the snow was already starting to cover what I had cleared:

James arrived home around 4:30, safe and sound and able to get up the driveway and into the garage. What normally would have been a 20-25 minute trip took James over an hour to make.

5:30 pm:

7:45 pm:

All told, we received 11-12 inches of snow from Vulcan, although forecasts had ranged as high as 18 inches. The wind had sculpted the snow so that there was only a few inches in some places, but then a foot and a half drift to plow through in another area. I dug out my car this morning while James cleared most of the driveway and one section of sidewalk before he left for work; I then used the snowblower to clear the other two sections of sidewalk (we live on a corner so we have LOTS of sidewalk to keep clear) and shoveled out the front steps. An hour and forty-five minutes after I went outside to battle the snow, I finished the job. Whew.

We can only hope that this was winter's last gasp. And if any of you have been praying for snow, please stop.

All done

GoldenSnowball.com is a web site that tracks the annual snowfall for Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, and bestows the Golden Snowball award to the city with the highest total. Here are the current standings as of 8:30 this morning:

If Syracuse receives an average of 123.8 inches of snow and we are now at 126.9, then we must be done for the season, right? RIGHT? (Pay no attention to the "normal average to date" statistic.)

Quick kick in the knitting mojo

I have been in a knitting slump for quite a while now. It is not that I don't want to knit or don't enjoy it anymore, it just seems that I don't make time to knit or when I do make time to knit, it does not hold my interest. There is a pair of fingerless mitts that have been on the needles for months that I have no idea why I am ignoring, and I started a scarf back in January that is very pretty but is lace so my eyes get tired very quickly.

But the straw that broke this knitter's back was a hat that I had to frog two weeks ago. It is a beautiful slouchy hat with an outrageous single cable and I chose to knit it from a deep purple yarn that has been in my stash for years. Gorgeous pattern, gorgeous yarn. I was almost done with the hat - on the decrease rounds for the crown - when I noticed a glaringly obvious error that I had made about an inch prior. (Well, not glaringly obvious when I made it but certainly many rows later.) This was in addition to two other obvious errors that I had made in other places on the hat but had decided I could accept. I could not, however, accept three obvious errors; I knew that I would always see those mistakes and never wear the hat. And so I frogged it, and put the yarn and pattern into timeout.

I decided that I needed a quick and easy project to be a knitting success. I had a skein of Malabrigo Merino Worsted on hand and found a free pattern for a very easy hat. Cast on, start knitting round and round and round, increase a little, knit some more, decrease and done. Yay!

 
Neither the style of the hat nor the colorway of the yarn suit me, so I will give the hat to charity. Whether I like it or not is really irrelevant; the important point is that I completed a project and I did a good job of knitting it.