Every woman needs battery operated devices!

No, not *those* devices,this is a knitting blog! :)

After spending the last 48 hours without electricity thanks to Ms. Katrina, I have a renewed appreciation for all things battery operated.

Thank you blogger friends, for all the concern for me and my fellow Floridians (The P-Man and I are fine La and Margene)

My power went out about 6pm Thursday night and stayed off til Saturday evening around 9pm. Honestly, I have never been hotter or more miserable in my life!! Last year, some of the outer bands of Jeanne knocked out my power for about 36 hours too but I don't recall being quite this miserable! My fridge/freezer bit the dust a lot sooner this year too...I had to pitch just about everything. Now our thoughts must be with our friends in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi because what was a miserable 48 hours for me and my lil P-Man in a category 1 storm is now a category 4 storm headed their way!! Edit: Make that a category FIVE!!! storm OMG!! Please send good thoughts!!

Speaking of Pumpkin, this was his first hurricane and he did pretty well. He freaked a bit (as did his mom!) when a giant tree in the courtyard of my complex fell over and crashed into the pool, taking the power lines with it! Otherwise he was his usual easygoing albeit sweltering self. Here's a pic......

He was so listless, he kinda just layed around. He kept sniffing his catnip mousie, like it was his "smelling salts". He would have a good sniff, play for a few seconds and then remember how ^%$^&* hot he was!....I guess all the wet air refreshed his catnip and made it extra potent. Once the A/C came back on he was running all over the house with his mousie, and we had a special dinner of roast chicken (salvaged from the freezer thaw, how fortuitous, hehe)

So what did Fluffy Knitter Deb do for 48 hours? Why she KNIT of course!! During the day while listening to my battery operated radio I knit madly on my Shaped Triangle linen shawl. I'm now on row 183 (of 188!!) As an aside, this linen sheds like crazy, little tiny black hairs are everywhere! Now here I am, no A/C, sweating like you don't wanna know and I'm knitting this shedding black linen shawl.....so after many hours knitting merrily along I look down and I've turned into WOLF WOMAN !! Black, hairy arms from wrist to elbow!! EEK!! I'll spare you the visuals but I did use my battery operated digital camera to take this cool extreme close up of my almost finished shawl, see?


Now even I am not crazy enough to knit a slippery black linen shawl in the dark so by the grace of my battery operated Radio Shack Book Light balanced on my "front porch" (as Wendy would say) at night I finished these:


These are Go With The Flow socks from IK Summer 2005. I knit them with Elann Sock-It-To-Me Colori sock yarn in the Mexicali colorway and a set of 5 Aero #1 (2.25mm) teflon DPNs. This is a wonderful pattern and it makes a unique, stretchy sock that was a very fun knit!
I really love how these came out and I'm doubly excited because a friend and fellow blogger admired them so much when I posted them as WIP a few weeks ago that I got her specs, made the socks a custom fit and I'm sending them to her!! So heads up Heather, this sock's for you!

Thanks to modern science and battery operated devices, my stint as "Pioneer Knitting Wolf-Woman" wasn't as bad as it could have been! How did those pioneers do it? Wait, wasn't their life expectancy like 35??? Yup, they died of boredom at 35 cause they had no battery operated devices of *any* kind ;)

So today, the sun is shining, the tank is clean* and I truly am a lucky, lucky woman in so many ways!!

*easy movie quote if you have grandchildren, nephews under 4 y/o (I have 2!) or just love sweet, silly movies at any age!