Storms, socks, and spinning

Still no Internet connection at home, so I'll just stay late at the office and do this.

That was one wild evening. We ended up heading for the basement at one point, because the sky turned that scary green, and when I see that I head for cover. (The Xenia, OH tornado in 1974 passed right over our heads. I don't like green skies.) We don't have actual tornado sirens in our teeny town, but the police were driving through all the streets with their sirens going, so that was good enough for me. We had lost our power, so we had no radio or TV until we found batteries for the portable radio. Yes, I know--that's not good disaster preparedness.

Missy grabbed the baby and some diapers, I grabbed the milk and water from the fridge, and we shooed the dog downstairs. We couldn't find the cats (not a good sign) so we had to leave them to fend for themselves. I also got my violin (couldn't carry the new wheel down there) and Missy got her favorite stiletto-heeled shoes. I can't believe neither of us got our knitting bags! Meanwhile, hubby headed next door to make sure our 94-year-old neighbors were safe in their basement.

The worst part didn't last long, so we ventured upstairs after about 20 minutes. It was still pounding rain, but the cats re-emerged from their hiding places, so I figured all was well. From about 7:30 on the lightening and thunder never stopped all night, even when it wasn't raining. The power didn't come back on until 6AM, saving me from having to take a cold shower, so I was happy. But it was sure hard to knit by candlelight that evening!

In other knitting news, I finished the pink Tofutsie socks. They feel so wonderful on my feet. I do like that yarn, except for the fact that it tends to split, so that can slow the knitting down a bit.

Since I finished those, I've been concentrating on the Dale sweater. I'm done with the hem and the bottom colorwork, and have done three rows of the body. I've been having trouble with it because one length circular needle is just a little to small for comfort, but the next length up is too long. So my hands can't take knitting on it as long as they can on another project. I'm also having trouble getting the gauge right, but it's hard to say with the colorwork. I hadn't done that for a long time, so the stranding was a wee bit too tight on the first couple of rows. I got my hands to relax as they got more familiar with the motions of using one color in each, so by the last color row, things were going fairly well. It looks so nice. I have to spread it out and pat myself on the back every once in a while just because it's so pretty! AND I managed to follow the pattern pretty well. I only had to rip back one row. Did you know that it takes about twice as long to rip back one row as it does to knit it? I didn't. But now I'll really take care to double-check the pattern every row!

I finished filling two bobbins on the wheel with the walnut-dyed roving, and plyed and skeined the yarn. I really love this yarn. Good thing--I'm going to have a lot of it by the time I'm done!

Less than two weeks until Summer of Socks! Gotta keep working on these projects! I'd like to finish at least one more before the 21st, but I'm not sure if I can. It won't be either the Dale sweater or the walnut wool, that's for sure! It's probably a good thing I still don't have access to the Internet at home. Instead of spending so much time on Ravelry, I can be knitting!