This past Friday and Saturday, the Snowicane took out our power for about 28 hours.  For someone who knits or reads or enjoys other activities that require no electricity, I wasn’t too inconvenienced.

Taken For Granted

Don’t get me wrong…there were a lot of inconveniences in the 28 hours.  I can’t tell you how many times I turned on a light switch when I entered a room, or looked at an electronic clock to see what time it was.  And even though our furnace and stove use gas, they won’t turn on without electricity.

I also missed my espresso machine and not being able to watch cable television and on-demand movies.

But unlike Thaddeus who doesn’t have a lot of non-electric activity, I was able to enjoy my quiet time with my knitting and reading.

The lantern was LED, so I had quite an advantage over the knitters of times gone by.  I have tried to knit and read by candlelight, and it wasn’t as easy.  And I even went full Luddite and hand-wound my ball of yarn.  I could have used a swift and ball-winder, but I enjoyed the serenity of winding it by hand.

There was a lot of gratitude that we could still use our stove-top.  Lighting it by match took us back in time, but we were able to boil water for tea and heat up food (the old-fashioned way without a microwave).  I was grateful that our hot water heater works without electricity, so showering/bathing was available.  I was also grateful for the lovely silence of a power outage.  It was blustery and windy outside, so there was some noise, but it was incredibly serene.

I didn’t like not having heat.  Fortunately, it wasn’t bitterly cold out and I had a lot of knitwear I could use to stay warm.  And it was cold enough to be able to store our refrigerator items outside to keep them from going bad.

All-in-all, the power outage reminded me of how grateful I am for the ease and leisure of my current life, but I was still glad for the brief visit to what it used to be like.

Current Knitting

Making more headway on Silky Wool Cardigan sleeve.

It’s at the point where it’s almost wide enough and long enough to start the sleeve cap shaping.  I’m hoping to finish this sleeve today.

I also started a new “lifetime project” of simply beautiful knitting.

Since I outlived my original “coffin cover” blanket, I thought I’d start a new one in a simple biased garter stitch stripe, using lots of muted colors.

To give readers a bit of perspective, this project is being knit on US 00 (1.75 mm) needles at about 9.25 sts to the inch.

I imagine this beauty will take quite a while if I decide to make it the size of a queen size sheet (90″x102″).  Since the diagonal length (corner to corner) of a queen size flat sheet is about 136 inches, that will mean I will continue to increase stitch count until I reach 1, 258 stitches in a row.  I’m current at 103, so I have a ways to go.