It is the first day of several chilly days here in the D.C. area, so I thought I’d wear my brand new shearling coat — a birthday gift from me to me. 🙂

As is my wont, I pulled the coat out of the closet this morning and draped it over a chair while I finished getting ready for work. Five minutes later when I returned to put my coat on . . . well, you can probably guess what I saw.

Lucy very kindly consented to re-enacting the scene when I got home this afternoon.

It was pointed out to me that removing Lucy and putting on the coat was heartless on my part. So of course I have ordered a sheepskin pelt for Miss Lucy. I ordered a black one because I thought the contrast with her fur looked so pretty.

Because I’m planning on taking my yummy warm coat with me to Minneapolis next week, I’m hoping Lucy’s sheepskin arrives before that!

It’s been a crazy-busy week so far and I’ve not done much work on the Hanging Garden Stole, but here is a pic of it anyway. Just because.

Great pic, huh? 😉

First of all, a heartfelt thanks to everyone who came out of lurkdom to say hello. I love “meeting” people who read my blog, and I love seeing old friends who’ve commented in the past, be it once or many times. You are always welcome to drop in and say hello. No need to feel shy — we are all friends here, connected by a common thread, be it knitting, or kitties, or both! Or whatever reason you stop by. 🙂 If you prefer to lurk and never comment, well, that’s okay too!

I will confess that I am guilty of lurking myself. It’s so easy to be a lurker when you read blogs in a blog reader. I use Google Reader. I used to use Bloglines, but last fall, Dani turned me on to Google Reader and I haven’t looked back. (By the way, Dani’s ill, poor baby, with strep, and feeling lousy. Pop over to her blog and give her some love.)

Anyhow . . . yeah, I read in Google Reader all the blogs on my list that publish a full entry rather than an excerpt. Nine times out of ten, I’ve not been able to go to blogs hosted at blogspot, so I’m afraid I almost never leave comments there. But I can read the blog posts in my reader.

But I’ll try to do better. Some days I’ve just got too much going on to take the time to comment, but on the days that my pace is less frantic, well, I try to leave some comments here and there.

Y’all asked a number of questions in your comments to yesterday’s post. I think the most frequent question was how the Inauguration will affect my day.

Next week I have Monday off from work (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday) and federal offices in the Washington DC area are closed on Tuesday for Inauguration Day. So I get a four-day weekend. Not too shabby, eh?

A goodly number of roads in Washington DC will be closed down on Inauguration Day. Here is a Google Map that shows the closures for the parade. (My office is smack dab in the middle of that.) A number of highways and bridges will be closed to all but emergency vehicles, so the only way to get downtown will be via public transportation, which is supposed to be overloaded.

The news media has been doing their best to whip everyone in this area into a frenzy. No cellphone service due to overloading! Grocery stores will run out of bread and milk! Don’t leave your homes! Stay away from your vehicles! Treat this the same way you would a natural disaster, like a hurricane! (That last piece of advice was sent in an email alert to residents of Arlington County, VA.)

Will I go downtown for the Inauguration? The answer is a resounding NO. Since I slog into the city every day for work, the last thing I want to do on a day off is slog into the city. Watching it on television is fine for me, thanks.

So, I’m off from work on Monday and Tuesday, I will go to work on Wednesday (assuming I can get there and the city hasn’t imploded from the sheer number of people there Tuesday), then on Thursday I’m going to Minneapolis for a couple of days, for the opening of the Bohus exhibit at the American Scandinavian Institute.

So it’ll be an odd week.

Speaking of Minneapolis . . .

The temperature here is supposed to drop a bit over the next few days. That means highs during the day right at freezing or a bit below, and lows in the teens. That will be the coldest we’ve seen so far this season, and slightly colder than usual for this area.  It doesn’t get really cold here. So I’m wondering how the Minneapolis temperatures will affect me. I see that it’s really cold there right now, and by the end of next week, when I am going there, I think it’s supposed to be a bit warmer, but still a heck of a lot colder than I’m used to here.

Good thing I own a very warm coat . . .

Oh, and the sunrise picture I posted yesterday that I took at 7:30 am? I’d been at the office for an hour and a half when I took it. Yeah, I go in to work really early. That’s one of the perqs of where I work — you can pretty much make your own hours, as long as you work the required number per week. I go in to work so early because of traffic. Even when I get on the train (at 5:15am) there are a lot of people there. But I do get a seat. Getting up and going to work that early sucks, but I leave work pretty early in the afternoon, which is a good thing.

Oh yeah, the contest. 🙂

I asked the random number generator to choose 6 comments to receive sock kits. It chose comment numbers 207, 287, 400, 599, 638, and 850. These comments belong to:

207 – linda-kay
287 –  Cindy K
400 Jeanne
599 – greta
638 – Sarah O G
850 – chandra

Congratulations to the winners! If you are one of these folks, please go to my pattern listings at The Loopy Ewe and pick a pattern you want. (It’s okay to pick one out of stock.) Use the “contact me” form here to email and tell me the pattern you’d like and let me know your mailing address. I’ll make up a kit and send it to you. 🙂

Again, thank you to everyone who left a comment!

Lucy sez:

“I liked the comments that talked about how pretty I am.”

I was reminded by reading Chris’ blog that today is delurking day. So please feel free to delurk and leave a comment today!

To entice you to do so, I’ll ask the random number generator to choose a comment at random tomorrow afternoon (January 13) at 4:00pm, and I will send that commenter a WendyKnits sock kit. Heck, maybe I’ll send out a few.

Now that we have that covered, here is the view from my office window at about 7:30 this morning.

I thought it was a particularly cool picture, with the sunlight reflecting off the building.

In other climate-related news, I noticed that the hallways in my condo seemed a bit cooler yesterday, so I set a thermometer out there for a couple of hours. The hallway temperature was only about 74 degrees! I was able to get the temperature inside my condo down to about 66 degrees yesterday afternoon by having the window open. We’ll see if this is a fluke or if the condo board actually lowered the temperature in the common areas. I’m probably not the only person who has complained to them about it.

We are supposed to get some chilly weather later this week so this may be the week that I actually turn my heat on. Stay tuned for more exciting developments in this story!

Meanwhile, here is a close-up of the Hanging Garden Stole:

And a peek at Miss Lucy as she preens. 🙂

Lorrwill tagged me (and Lucy) for the Five Things Quiz, so here we go.

5 things in my bag:

1. cell phone
2. iPod Touch
3. compact digital camera
4. wallet
5. transit card

(Lucy doesn’t have a bag so she doesn’t get to answer this one)

5 favorite things in my room:

1. my beloved iMac
2. Lasko Tower fan
3. knitting in progress
4. television and DVD collection
5. from Lucy: furry rat toy

5 things I have always wanted to do:

1. visit Scotland
2. eat whatever I want without gaining weight
3. write the screenplay for the biopic of my life (self-involved much?)
4. stop worrying
5. from Lucy: get into the stash room and wreak havoc

5 things I am currently into:

1. social networking: Facebook and Plurk!
2. decluttering and simplifying my life
3. designing sock patterns
4. collecting British movies from the 1940s and 1950s
5. from Lucy: catnip, baby!

There you have it: answers from Wendy and Lucy. If anyone reading here would like to take the quiz, consider yourself tagged. 🙂

Lucy and I have had a quiet weekend. I’ve done some unbloggable work, but I’ve also done a bit of work on my Stole. It’s perfect television knitting, because it’s mindless enough that I don’t have to constantly pay attention, yet it’s interesting enough so I don’t get bored. The perfect balance!

Crockpot Cookery

Do you have a slow cooker? Check out this fabulous blog that one of my Plurk buddies posted a link to this morning: A Year of Crockpotting. A year’s worth of crockpot recipes! What’s not to like?

Lucy’s Furry Rat Toy

Lucy’s current favorite toy is a large furry rat. She’s had it for several months, but in the past several days, she has become obsessed with it. Remember in the Peanuts cartoon strip when Snoopy would get in vulture position on top of his doghouse? Well, Lucy will get in vulture position over her rat and stare at it intensely for five minutes or so before she starts to attack it.

Here you can see she has subdued it to her satisfaction. For now.

In response to my giveaway on Monday, there were 544 comments. The Random Number Generator chose comment #514, which was left by Denise, who has been emailed. A big thank you to everyone who left a comment. 🙂

So for the first time in about a month, I worked on the Hanging Garden Stole. When I abandoned it for pressing business, I had completed about half the stole, so I’m now a little beyond the halfway point.

As I mentioned when I started working on it, the yarn I’m using, Tilli Tomas Demi-Plie silk, is a joy to knit. And even though the color is, well, beige, it’s a slightly variegated beige that I find quite enchanting.

HELPSudan Pencil Pouch

Remember when I posted about this project last month? The post is here.

If you are on Ravelry, you can see a photo of a pouch made from my pattern (available on my free patterns page), in Texas-Yellowrose’s projects, here. Cute!

And this is what happens when I throw my coat over a chair instead of hanging it up when I get home.