Joyce is not screwing around

So it’s snowing. Still, more, again with the snow forever. We are trying to make the most of it. (Yes. that is a tomato cage on the snowmans head.) This photo was taken last night before we got another 15cm.

Snowdude-1

but I have to tell you that even if the kids think they can go on…(Psst…Elizabeth D. Check out the hat on Sam’s head!) I’m about ready to bury myself in a snowdrift and wait for the thaw to reveal me.

Snow

Here is an abbreviated list of things that I am sick of:

1. The bottom 10 cm of everyone’s pants being wet all the time. I hate this. I keep forgetting that the bottom 10cm of my pants are wet and then tucking a leg under me when I sit on the couch and wetting the couch and my arse. I have been doing this for 4 months. I am clearly not going to learn, so the snow must go.

2. Stepping in puddles of shmutz everywere I go. These slushy puddles of road filth, slush, snow, ice, salt and the spit of demons are at every single intersection and there is no defence.

3. Drying a perpetual and unceasing number of boots, mittens, scarves and hats on every single heating register in the house the whole day long. (This smells as good as you think it does.)

4. I would like to just go for a walk. I would not like to spend five minutes considering what paraphernalia I may need to do so, (Shoes? No, too cold for shoes, Boots? Yeah, boots, hat with earflaps? Scarf? Mittens or gloves? Thrums or not?) and then searching all of the heating vents to find my chosen garb, and then going outside and discovering that I’m cold anyway.

5. I would like a decent tomato. I do not know what winter tomatoes are made of, but it is not tomato. They are pink and strange and tasteless. The weak pink winter tomato is a metaphor for all that is wrong with late winter.

6. I am tired of dealing with the potential for “Snow Days”. Every-time there is a storm we get up and listen to the CBC in the morning with mixed emotions. I am praying that the schools are open, the children are praying that they are closed. There is no happy ending. No matter what the CBC says, someone will be heartbroken. (It is better if it is me. I only cry in the bathtub).

There are other issues, but let’s simply leave it at: There is no Spring here.

There is no reason at all to go outside, but plenty to stay in.

Carolyn sent me these

Stephaniep

which entertained me to no end. I also enjoyed that Carolyn pointed out that my name is an anagram for

Antisheep

which is really not true, but very funny. (We will not discuss how much time I spent trying to make my name spell other words.)

I started a little bit of mohair fun…It’s a scarf, but you’ll have to wait and see what kind.

Mohairs

I would have taken a better picture of it, but my backdoor will only open about 6 inches, due to the amount of snow blown up against it. Oh, wait…

7. I am sick of the weird vortex effect that deposits all snow in the neighbour hood on my property. There is a woman down the street that I believe has not shovelled (maybe swept…I saw her with a broom) this entire winter. Her share of the vortex is the wind whipping every single snowflake off her property and depositing it on my steps and against my back door. I toy with asking her to do a little snow removal at my house (it is her snow after all) and in some particularly bitter shovelling moments…I think about returning it.

Finally, Evelyn (fully understanding my obsessive nature and interests, mailed me this book…

Latviandreams

It’s Latvian Dreams: Knitting from weaving patterns By Joyce Williams. (Note: I have provided an Amazon link for illustrative purposes only…I remind you to support your local independent bookseller as you see fit, though this book is a little hard to find). I am obsessed with this book. Obsessed. The book begins with an extremely useful and interesting section on technique, and not a single paragraph made me feel confused or nervous. Very, clear thinking there, and well explained for even those of us who bore quickly and have a low threshold for this sort of thing. (Most tech articles and books leave me cold. It takes about three minutes before everything I’m reading stops making sense. I try and read it, but it all sounds like the teacher in Charlie Brown…”Whah wah, wah wah wah…”) This book would be worth it for the technique section alone. The sweaters are very, very cool, though not quite to my taste…but the charts? The charts are an opus. There are several that are just begging to be mittens (but really…what isn’t?) and there are some that are so stunning that I feel a thrill of Joyce’s brilliance when I see them. These are, no matter what your mind tells you…two colour charts. The shading effect is from the way that Joyce has charted the two colours.

Joycec2

Joycec1

See that? See how it’s…, well, the best word is “interesting”. Really, really fascinating. Doesn’t it boggle your mind? Don’t you wonder what the risk of stroke is, should you decide to knit this? It’s the whole big world if knitting, and people are up to the damnedest things. Behind these charts are page after page after page of beautiful, useful, completely do-able charts, should you think you’re not up to the above. Joyce is a goddess.

Joyce is not screwing around.

75 thoughts on “Joyce is not screwing around

  1. Can my snowman come over to play with your snowman? I’m getting tired of his face at the kitchen window. . . .

  2. Knitting from those charts would indeed give me a stroke. Imagine doing it after a glass of Screech?
    I hate the slush too. But today on my way to work I laughed while watching a teenager with Very White Sneakers. She was tiptoeing through the huge puddles trying to keep her sneakers from getting even a spot of muck. Her efforts were so sincere, in the face of total impossibility, that I had to stop and shake my head. Ah, adolescents. (The other thing of note that I saw on my way to work? A 20-something guy shoveling, at a busy intersection, with his back to me, with half his bum hanging out of his baggy pants. Yuck. I’m ready for spring!)
    Can’t wait to read the bookbookbook.

  3. I didn’t post a congrats yesterday because I didn’t have anything clever to add and there were so many congrats that you might get tired reading them. But then I thought, hey, if I just wrote a book I would read all the comments at least twice and not get tired. So congrats to you and congrats to us for being so lucky as to have two harlot books to readreadread.

  4. The solution to the wet 10 cm of pant leg is to change into pajama bottoms as soon as you get home. Kick off the boots, and rip off the pants as you’re walking to your bedroom. (Believe me, it feels more dramating and purposeful that way.) One of the great joys of winter is having an excuse to wear flannel pajama bottoms as often as possible! (Bonus if you have a bit of extra radiator space to store them on. That way they’ll be soft, dry, and *warm* when you put them on!)

  5. Stephanie – as another Stephanie I was greatly amused by the scrabble letters and would have done the same thing with the letters. Now, on to the snow thing. I would love to sympathize with you, I really would, but here’s my problem. I live in Wyoming, where we really should have snow in the winter – helps out all kinds of problems in the summer like terrible droughts and not having enough grass or water for the little cows, sheep, and horses to eat and drink – and we don’t have any (snow that it). We apparently are between 2 jetstreams and just aren’t getting any moisture. Now this in itself wouldn’t be too troubling, but the real kicker is that we’re still getting the cold and the nasty wind. To my way of thinking, if it’s gonna be cold and windy and wintery, then by golly it better snow because otherwise, what’s the point? I can understand your frustration with the need for so many clothes, but if it wasn’t cold and snowy, then you couldn’t wear all of your wonderful creations. Congratulations on the book (soon to be books). I can’t wait to read them.

  6. Ah yes, dreaded wet arse syndrome. At least you are doing it at home, I’ve been forgetting at school. Thank goodness my coat is a little long. Actually, that’s not even what bugs me so much. It’s when the salt they’ve put on the roads dissolves into the water, which then soaks up your pant legs. Not only are they uncomfortably wet on the bottom, when they finally DO dry they’re stiff with salt and have a white ring about 10 cm up from the cuff.

  7. I’ve been whingeing about all this nonstop rain in California. I only pay a fortune in housing etc to ensure sunshine. Then I read your wet arse complaint. You win.
    Come thaw out in California. You deserve it for finishing your book!

  8. I second what RK says, partly because I just came in from the snow and changed into my favorite (warm and cozy) pair of pajama bottoms. It makes not having to go into class (I’m a grad student not a high school kid!) a bit more bearable.
    If you were to add “I’m sick of parking bans and having to move my car around from parking lots in the middle of nowhere back to the street so I’m not towed” then I could have written your list myself. They say spring is coming, but I’ll believe it when I see it….

  9. *Adding* We got 30 cm from that system before it schmucked you guys. Although it was too cold here to make snowmen with it – we only get to do that in mid-March. It drove me crazy watching the Weather Network for news, because they’d go “…Winnipeg is warm and sunny, now moving down to Southern Ontario…” Hello! There’s another 3000 square kilometers you just entirely skipped over getting the SAME FREAKING STORM SYSTEM! *Rant over*

  10. Poor Harlot! Perhaps you should come and visit me in Vancouver..its rainy, but the temp today is 8C and the flowers are blooming. Hmm…crocus, tulip, daffodil…whats not to love! Look on the bright side..at least you get to wear your wonderful hand-knit woolies for another couple of months whereas here even mitts and hats are redundant!

  11. There is another 10cm or so here in Michigan-it just sucks. You know what they say, in like a lion….blah, blah, blah.
    Is the anti-sheep anything like the anti-christ?

  12. I have to, I’m sorry.
    I went for a walk with my family yesterday and noticed the forsythia has buds on it. Not yet blooming, but I bet in a week or less we’ll have bushes ofbright yellow forsythia shouting to the world that spring has sprung!
    I’m so sorry for your snow. And wet arse.
    Come visit! We’d love to have you, but be forewarned: there is only one yarn store within an hours drive. 🙁

  13. Come move to Vancouver! The rain is much better than the snow! You’ll get to wear trendy leather coats and boots.

  14. Tomatoes. I think I have a vague recollection … soft, complex, magnificently ripe? Not dried, not canned, not liable to bounce if dropped? Sigh.
    The best I can suggest is that you treat yourself to some really good dried apricots. 1) They are a lovely non-winter color. 2) They smell like summer. 3) They are sweet but have the zing of acid your tomato-starved tastebuds crave. 4) They go really, really well with chocolate.

  15. Joyce is not screwing around….and you are not spinning. You are on the computer. Typing. You’ve already done TWO FULL BOOKS WORTH of typing. Don’t you think it’s time to spin some yarn. For your LOVING HUSBAND. You remember him, right? He’s the big guy that warms up your bed for you every night.
    lovingly,
    emma
    PS Check your mailbox after 2:30pm today.
    PPS If you’re going to get serious about anagrams, do it digitally: http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/

  16. I wonder if rather than bringing on stroke, it might actually keep one’s mind young, like doing crossword puzzles. This I will tell myself again and again until it comes true.
    And: I have only one pair of mittens and not much need to knit more because I live in Seattle. Which is to say that you’d have no need for/excuse to use the Latvian weaving patterns in knitting without all that *!@!_)*$%^#? snow.

  17. Hey Stephanie, I love your stitch markers! We all know that you are not ANTI SHEEP, but wow, that is funny… my name does not rearrange to spell anything 🙁
    Hope the snow clears for you soon, and spring is on the way (hopefully!)
    Take care!

  18. I’ll join you in your fervent anti-snow sentiments. I’ve now reached the point in the winter where my mood gets progressively darker with every damn snowstorm, however paltry. Woke to 6 in. this morning, it’s been snowing all day, and lo, I am cranky.
    And to add insult to injury I *know* spring is on the way because whatever tree I’m allergic to is spooing it’s evil little pollen into my air and causing sneezing and general unpleasantness. Hi. It’s tundra-mode out there. You, Mr. Tree, should be DEAD.
    (Hey, I finally got to see a copy of Latvian Dreams when I wandered over to Harrisville to get yarn. Very cool book but some of those designs are eye-watering. The color pictures of the color fading/kaleidoscope sweaters should maybe carry seizure warnings.)

  19. I think you have all ths snow from my house, too! It has been 50 and beautiful. You’ll have spring soon…it’s almost over and that’s a promise.

  20. I’m with ya on the snow thing, Steph. I am *so* sick of wet, slushy puddles on the wood floors (no matter how many times I literally SCREAM “take off your boots in the garage!”). There is very little worse than padding around the house in my favorite warm and snuggly socks, only to step into a wet, slushy puddle somewhere… argggh.
    Oh, and I couldn’t resist the anagram thing:
    ‘TIS A PEN, EH?
    Alrighty, it doesn’t mean anything. But it was a darn sight better than:
    IN A SHE PET or
    PIT SHEENA or
    AH, PEST NIE
    p.s. we got another foot of snow here last night.

  21. I am SO with you on the evil blobs they pass off as tomatoes. They fill me with rage, these chewy, tasteless pink things. They could at least make them out of bubblegum if that’s what they’re going for.
    I go to great lengths in the summer for good tomatoes. I climb a rickety, 50-year-old ladder from my back porch through a small hatch in the roof of our 3-story house where I have a small garden. We had to build a chickenwire enclosure because the squirrels know a good thing when they taste it. I used to carry up heavy buckets of water on said ladder until I finally had a plumber run water up there. But hot damn, are those tomatoes worth it! I’m hoping to step up production and do some canning this year.

  22. Oh, Stephanie, you should be in for a wonderful spring considering the winter. We’re having a record breaking rainy season our first year back in California (after 12 years in Chicago–they specialize in depressing weather), but I’m not going to complain. I’m making Clapotis in intense jewel tones a la Noro Silk Garden to cheer me up.
    Did you not like how your clapotis was turning out? About the mohair thingy. Would it spoil anything to guess? Is it a hood/balaclava, once known as a fascinator? Like a smoke ring for the face.

  23. I vote for changing into PJs as soon as you peel away the winter layers, to combat wet arse syndrome (WAS) Also, Thank you for the compliment on my entrelac scarf in progress, as my blog comments do not let me respond. It made my day. Almost as much as Jess actually playing her accordian for me and it not sounding as if a flock of geese had just been flattened.

  24. Joyce IS a goddess! She teaches at Meg Swansen’s (Elizabeth Zimmerman’s daughter) knitting camps each summer in the-middle-of-nowhere-Wisconsin (I can say that having been raised in WI) and on top of being a genius is super nice. Latvian Dreams, as well as lots of other great books, is available at Meg’s site: http://www.schoolhousepress.com.
    The website has great stuff and camp is incredible.

  25. Forget Vancouver – its SUNNY and 12 degrees today in Calgary. The streets are dry, the sidewalks are bare. Chinnook winds are the absolute best thing and make winter bearable, if a little dusty.

  26. Tomatoes: we once were driving through California’s Central Valley, I-5, agriculture central, and there were these big trucks: piled so high with those tasteless blobs that it looked like a good bump in the road and we’d have had a pinkish vegetable hailstorm breaking our windshield. And this was in August! When real tomatoes should have been ready on the vines. There didn’t seem to be any boxes, just a whole semi’s worth piled way high. Can you imagine what rocks those things had to be for the ones at the bottom not to be flattened paste? Now can you imagine one of those going flying at your car at 70 miles an hour?
    Or eating one!

  27. I feel for you.
    Although we’ve been cheated out of almost all our winter here i Norway (winter wonderland my foot), and only *now* the cold has set in and still almost no snow (just some icing on the lawns) I feel for you.
    Anyhow: why not knit yourself some Latvianesque leg warmers to collect and protect your trouser bottoms when out there in the winter filth? 😀

  28. I feel for you.
    Although we’ve been cheated out of almost all our winter here i Norway (winter wonderland my foot), and only *now* the cold has set in and still almost no snow (just some icing on the lawns) I feel for you.
    Anyhow: why not knit yourself some Latvianesque leg warmers to collect and protect your trouser bottoms when out there in the winter filth? :]

  29. my eyes!! o my eyes!! those charts are making me all bug-eyed.
    things I am tired of b’c of the winter. people acting like it is the apocalypse every time we get snow. I know this seems like a very small thing, but listening to people talk incessantly about if we can leave work early or if we will have to go to work tomorrow etc etc (not to mention my very own milton of office space who works with me staring out the window about 846.9 times a day watching the snow rocking and making tsking noises) and then they drive off in their big honking SUVs over mounds of snow with nary a problem their worried little heads created.
    my favorite comments from the forcaster this morning: snow melting to slush creating a frothy meringue all morning. gutters will not be overflowing, but will make a suburban quicksand. freezing late tonite.

  30. About this time of year in Minnesota I begin to beg my family in Tennessee for pictures of spring, and in between I obsessively listen to the Guy Clark song, “Only two things that money can’t buy; that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.”
    Did you know Stephanie can also be “HIP SATEEN” or “HATES PINE”
    And Stephanie Pearl-McPhee can be “THEN SHEEP APPEAL CRIME” ?

  31. ooh, the dreaded wet arse. London got a lot of snow today, too, and to try and stave off WAS (thanks erin) I rolled my pant cuffs up to mid calf. so now I have a soggy stripe that starts about 20 cm up. Boo.
    That book looks scrumptious. I love charts. I love patterns. (I used to spend hours contemplaing the beautiful repetitions made by computer code…) mmm…..mittens…

  32. Guess you don’t want to hear me complain about the -16.8 �C we had this morning?? Snow isn’t too bad because the Germans start sweeping it away the second it hits the pavement.
    Temps aside, you should come visit for the Mediterranean tomatoes we are getting right now – yuummmmeeee on my Greek pita filled with tzatziki sauce and grilled feta cheese 🙂
    If it makes you feel better, I’ll think of you with my next ‘mater bite *grin*

  33. I was going to send you a pic of the daffodils blooming in my yard but I decided that would be unkind. Just come visit Seattle, you can sleep in my wool room.

  34. Okay, to solve the wet 10 cm probkem, you could always cut all pants off 10 cm above the ankle. I heard cropped pants are in. But somehow, I don’t think this a good solution. I think chaning into pajama bottoms sound like a great idea. Tomatoes! The only way to ensure a good tomato even in the summer time is to grow your own. I think you need a hot house attached to the back of hte house so you can grow your own even in the winter. I love the new book and know I have to find it. I am eagerly awaiting the release date for the first book. Will you autograph it for me?

  35. I’m with you, sister…winter tomatoes are absoflogginglutely disgusting.
    The only good thing about late winter is the garden-obsession that begins at my house. I pick, I plan, I pick more and re-plan, I chart and graph and diagram, I get all my summer recipies ready waaaaaaay too far in advance, and I just generally salivate over the thought of fresh Roma tomatoes still warm from the sun and basil bushes that will soon be pungent lovely pesto…*sigh* 😉

  36. Knitting from weaving patterns? Synchronicity! I’ve spent the last few days idly thinking what I’d have to do to adapt overshot weaving patterns for knitting. I *love* overshot patterns, but I’m loomless (except for a small rigid heddle loom) these days. Thanks for the tip!

  37. Tomatoes, when frozen at their peak ripeness, can make for an exceptional imitaton of summer when lightly sauteed with onions and served over pasta in the dead of winter.
    We are having unseasonably warm weather here in the BC interior and my tulips and irises are sprouting. Last weekend, I started tomato and pepper seeds. Don’t mock me yet, though, we have a last frost day of June 7th, so we still have 3 months before all of these stupid plants can go out in the garden. it’s not fair, I tell you. Winter will never end, and you can bet I will be complaining the loudest when we get to -40 again later this month.

  38. Okay, that’s not fair. I emailed you this morning to ask if I could send you a surprise next month, well, it was going to be either Latvian Mittens or Latvian Dreams (or both). I knew you already had Latvian Mittens, so I was leaning towards Dreams…
    Nuts. Oh, and the cool part was the books I was planning on sending would be *autographed*. (I’m taking a class with Joyce and Lizbeth in April.)
    That is some coincidence!

  39. Glad to see you back in the groove.
    I wore a heavy aran and a cabled scarf this morning to walk DD to the bus stop in the fog, but on the way back up the hill the fog burned off and it was suddenly t-shirt and shorts weather! Too hot! The last of the flowering crabs are in full bloom, the bulbs are finishing, and the big tubs of cymbidium orchids in the yard are setting spikes of buds. However, I haven’t seen a good tomato lately either.
    I’m lamenting that I hardly got to wear my mittens at all this winter, and you’re still making snowmen! Jealous.

  40. I forgot to mention tomatos:
    I visit our local Italian restaurant (the have a small market inside.) It’s a Neopolitan restaurant, so the tomatoes have to be imported from Italy (to have been grown in the ashes of Pompeii or something) anyway, even though they are imported, they taste divine! I don’t do it often, but a couple times during the winter I buy some there to get my tomato fix. Maybe there is a restaurant in your neighborhood that would sell you a few good tomatos?

  41. The techniques section of Latvian Dreams is wonderful! I learned how to knit small circumferences on two circs, various cast ons, and I don’t know how many other things from the first part of that book. Some of the sweater patterns scare me half to death. A very good book.

  42. “Anti Sheep” in the wool house? I don’t think so! I hate the slushy stuff too. Of course, I’m desperately hoping that I won’t have to worry about it for oh, another 9 months or so. I love my snow and all, but there’s a limit to everything.

  43. If you punch your name into the Word Builder on the Scrabble website, it will kick out all the words you can possibly make with those letters. I know it’s not nearly as much fun as the DIY version …
    http://www.scrabble.com/

  44. This is why I love living living where I do. I grew up in Colorado (so I do understand cold), but in Austin it’s warm. I didn’t think I’d like it, but when I realized that I liked snow in the “Wow, that’s lovely outside, dear, and it’s so nice to sit next to a fire with you. Would you like me to get you another rum and hot coco?” kind of way, and really wasn’t terribly fond of being OUTSIDE where there WAS SNOW, I was fine.
    The farmers market has REAL tomatoes already in. It’s 80 degrees outside and I’m wearing a t-shirt. The sky is an amazing blue and roses and irises are blooming.
    Just saying. If you want to visit someplace, Austin is a good bet ;^). We even have more than one person at the aforementioned Farmers Market that do hand-dyed hand everythinged yarn. There was some orange and red alpaca that was to die for.
    By the way, is there a reason that Tex@s is a banned word?

  45. March is not coming in like a lion. March is coming in like a pustulant slug.
    But what did the girls used for buttons on that amazing snowman? Any one of them could eliminate cabin fever.

  46. Stephanie, Come on Harlot! You can do it, I said to the weather gods just yesterday, “BRING IT ON!!! I know you will only be here for 4 more weeks at the MOST”…You can make it, I know you can. I met/took instruction from Joyce Williams at the Schoolhouse Press Knitting camp last year, she is the most patient, calm, quiet, regal, reserved lady. Her knitting is fabulous and she acts like it is just a little thing, she is marvelous and was so very kind to this beginning knitter. I want to be like Joyce Williams when I grow up.

  47. Can I name-drop? (Sure I can.) I got to have dinner with Joyce at a conference. She is a hoot-and-a-half. Not only that, but she wears these stunningly gorgeous, and extremely complex, colourwork sweaters she has designed. If you complement her on them, she says things like, “Oh, thanks, I might even chart this one out some day.” YIKES. She works them in her head!
    Sheeptain, I like that one! Here’s to spring and warm jammies and eating cookies and knitting, now that the book-the-second is in the hands of the editors. Congrats–you do realize that editors don’t usually buy a second book until they know that the first one is selling like hotcakes, right? This means that even corporate editors know that Stephanie Rocks. Whoo!! Go Steph!!!

  48. You make me laugh out loud often – the stroke comment did it today. 🙂 By the way, Woolybuns is having a color combination contest (alliteration!) – voting ends tonight! I won’t say which one is mine . . .

  49. OMG! Are those charts, or those drawings you buy at the Discovery Museum to stare at and they form pictures of dolphins and the like? Crikey.
    We’ve had our share of hellish weather here in California too. It rained today and I couldn’t wear suede. I know! Crikey.

  50. Congratulations on the manuscript. I love ‘anti sheep’ but ‘sheeptain’ is very cool too. I know just what you mean about reading until it all says ‘wahwahwah’ – that is what happens to me whenever I read about color, although I am conscientiously working on both Deb Menz books when I can make out what the words are.

  51. Phew, I’m glad I have two n’s in my name now–wouldn’t want to be labelled anti-sheep. But am sorta bummed that I don’t have a fancy anagram that has the word sheep in it.
    And yes, please send a note to “management” about the snow–I’ve had enough of the splushy stuff at every curb. My kids like to jump in it and add extra guck to my pants and coat.

  52. Hurrah for that bottom bit o wet pants. I love the snow and I wish I got more (send it my way please). What I don’t love is having to overturn an entire hillside of snow with my hands (thus hand felting my manos wristwarmers) because my husband went snowboarding with our neighbor and forgot to zip his pockets. His keys were buried at the bottom of the hill under the packed snow. We found this out after we dug up the hill. Both of us had sore arms today.
    I do agree about the tomatoes. Pink tomatoes don’t fly with me. I wish I could grow them all year long. Yet another thing to put on the “when I will the lotto” list. Snicker.

  53. I’ve got that Latvian patterns book, it’s heavenly to peruse on a snow-day with a big mug of tea.
    Wet pants bottoms? Don’t you have any lovely Santana waterproof leather boots to tuck your pants into??? Mine are also stuffed full of thick, 100% wool pile. Mmmmmm.

  54. I’ve got you beat on the Anti Sheep anagram. My name backwards (not even rearanged) spells Ah Satan. I guess that would be anti everything.
    Can’t wait to read the harlotness bookbookbook.
    I shouldn’t comment about the weather, but can’t resist. We got a cold front last night, so tonight will only be 18 degrees (65F). That’s why I move to Florida from Edmonton.
    Natasha

  55. 59 comments later, I just want to say that you gave words to my thoughts. I bought this book shortly after Christmas this year. I’m in awe of Joyce’s work. Totally. In awe.

  56. I only cry in the bath tub too. That is so interesting. I thought I was more alone in that habit…how ’bout that?
    Lovely work on the mittens!

  57. Ok, I just checked the scrabble site, apparently satan is not a word so my name spells nothing. I feel much better now.
    Natasha|ahsataN

  58. anagram on my name–I got inhaled soy, say old nehi (that’s grape nehi, right? Do they still make that stuff? Maybe we could saute pink tomatoes in it?)

  59. Hi, Stephanie — could you add a link to the TSF site that goes to the place to buy T shirts, etc? Or maybe they’re all gone. . .

  60. Coming out of lurkdom to say that I don’t know whether it has already come to your attention that you were listed in “useful links” in a Guardian (UK) article about knitting in Jan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1402029,00.html
    I only just noticed although the article has been on my bathroom wall for weeks!

  61. i followed here from a path that started at kerismith.com, but i had to say “hi,” and that i may just have to borrow the scrabble tile idea. and that i most definitely stole the photos because they are awesome. if i post them i will send people your way. : )
    i’m in arizona, so no snow here. hope your spring comes soon!

  62. That’s it. We’re coming up from the South to get you. Pack your things, kiss the kids, put some food in the freezer/front porch for Joe.

  63. I’m so happy I found this blog.
    ::: doing the dance of joy :::
    Congrats on the birth of book #2. Can’t wait to get my hands on book #1. I could have used it yesterday: snow day, me, five children, a foot of snow. Yup, I’ve had it with snow. As for the sickly pink orbs they pass off as tomatoes, the best I can suggest is letting them sit in a paper bag on the counter for a few days. Not the same as fresh from the vine but not as horrid as they could be.

  64. I can’t kvetch about the weather here, really, but I *can* laugh at all the people who really freak out when we have a heavy frost and expect to have schools closed for it. They flood the stores buying milk, bread, and toilet paper (must be an interesting recipe) when there’s even a hint of the s-word. Congrats so much on finishing your second book – I can’t wait to read it! I’m going to attempt to grow tomatoes this summer, but we’ll see how well that goes.

  65. Just popping in to say that I have missed you! I know *you* didn’t go anywhere, but I did. I have been so overwhelmed with school that I haven’t been reading your blog. Granted, there have been times when I could have quickly skimmed your pages, but your writing deserves much more love than a quick skim! Oh how I have missed the Harlot… 😉

  66. Love your comments about snow! That’s why I continue to live south of the Mason-Dixon line. We have “polite” snow….here for a couple of days at the most and then gone. So for once I am not concerned about someone not sharing their bounty with me.
    About the tomatoes….my favorite “tomato man” has his heirloom tomatoes started. So in April I can get some of the best tomato plants to grow some of the best tomatoes (and the strangest too).
    Can’t wait for your book to come out. Congratulations!

  67. Too funny! I just tried out the anagram website listed above (http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/) and my son’s name came out to be “a repent trim.” He just got a buzz cut from an overzealous barber and hates it!
    P.S. Can’t wait for bookbookbook #2! Wow!!

  68. I’ve been dithering about that book, had it languishing in a cart, and now it’s probably been snatched! I get to take some classes from Joyce Williams — and Lizbeth Upitis — in just over a month, and ‘twould make a good thing for an autograph, no?

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