Of wartime and thieves...

Well, after a wet and rainy Christmas, old man winter has finally made an appearance. I woke up this morning to about an inch or so of snow. The temperature has dropped and the wind has picked up considerably. Dave is at the cottage and he says the wind is just a-howling off Lake Erie.

I myself spent the evening curled up with my shawls and afghans, knitting away. What better way to spend a cold evening?

I cast on for a new project that will hopefully solve a little problem Dave and I have. Whenever we get in his car, he turns the heat on full blast - and I mean like 90 degrees full blast (this from the boy who can't stand summer). That wouldn't necessarily be a problem except for one thing. Neither of us can agree on where the heat should be coming out of.

When I drive, the heat is always turned to the floor. The only exception is when I need to defrost my windows, and as soon as they are clear, it goes back on the floor. The reason - I can't stand hot air blowing on my face, it makes me feel like I can't breath. In fact, I quite often drive with the window cracked in the winter to let some fresh air in. I similarly hate air conditioning in the car, but I can live with it.

Dave however, wants the heat coming out of the dash. The reason? "My hands are cold!" he whines. He won't let me close the vents, and even though they are turned toward him, I still feel the brunt of it.

I bought him some lovely fur-lined leather gloves, but he never wears them. He says he can't get a good grip on the steering wheel. Fair enough. Finally, at the beginning of December I had a brainwave - fingerless gloves!

I mentioned it to him and got - "yeah, that could work, but are they going stretch like my socks and my sweater?"

After I finished beating him for his insolence, I hopped on Ravelry and found a pair called "Trigger Gloves". The pattern was from the second world war, and as soon as I mentioned that, Dave's eyes lit up. "You mean it would be something like what the gunners wore?"

The boy is slightly obsessed with WWII. I like history too, but much prefer the mysteries of ancient Egypt, the innovations of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, the knights and chivalry of medieval times and the intrigue and ingenuity of the Renaissance. But I digress....

The pattern called for sport weight yarn - but I don't have any sport weight yarn that isn't girly. I also wanted it to match his leather coat - which is a lovely '70s hue of dark tobacco. I knit him a hat that matched perfectly last year (which he loves) out of Bernat Ultra Alpaca. I still have a skein left, but it is worsted weight. I found a couple patterns - but none were from the war.

And then I had another brainwave - why not use a regular glove pattern - I had a 'service man' glove pattern from 1942 - and just shorten the fingers?

Here it is so far...

...I had hoped to be a little further along, but I had a bit of a knitting emergency tonight.

You see, back when I posted the pattern for Nip Nuggets, one of my blog readers and her four beautiful kitties admired them. She doesn't knit and neither do her cats, so I thought I'd whip up a quartet and send them off.

With all the hours at work and Christmas knitting, I didn't get a chance to finish them until last night. I tucked them up on the shelf where MY cats couldn't get them... or so I thought.....

I came home today to this smug little turd...What gets me is 1) this is the fattest, laziest cat you will ever meet. He lays down to eat! If anyone was going to climb the shelf to get something, I would have put my money on Rocky, not Tux. 2) All four Nip Nuggets were in the same spot - and he only took the one.He may be a smug little turd, but at least he's not a greedy little turd.

So anyway, I really wanted to get them off to Amy and her family - they've waited long enough - so I spent an hour or so whipping up another one.

All four are l safely packaged up, cat proofed and will be posted tomorrow! And with any luck I can still gt Dave's gloves finished before the New Year, 'cause I've got some shawls to cast on!