I left out this photo yesterday. This is how the cowl is configured, when it is unwound. In case there was confusion about where to pin, where to stab.
Nervousy & with too much time on my hands during the ALCS game last night (do not get me started), I cast on a new cowl. The pattern is from Ravelry, the yarn is discontinued sale yarn I picked up at the yarn store last week. The town adjacent to Ballet Town has a yarn store and a fabric store. I know. Mari has asked me to please show some restraint, and then I bought this discontinued yarn, so immediately found a pattern for it and lo.
This came up somewhere else on the intersphere, and also comes up a lot in our real life at this time of year, that the reason I need an array, a wardrobe of neckwear for the winter is because I wear most of it inside the house. Mari & I keep the house, once we turn the heat on, heated to 62F, 57F overnight. We refuse to turn the furnace on before December 15, and frequently it is closer to year's end before we pony up. Conditions must be met:
- The days' highs must not exceed 45F for 14 consecutive days. That means if it is 34 degrees at noon for 13 days rolling and then on the 14th day it makes it to 49? No. Reset. This is the hardest thing to check off, because the weather is goofy here.
- It has to be below 55F inside, according to the first-floor thermostat.
That second condition is not as harsh as it sounds. We live in a 3-story gingerbread house that was built before there was central heating. On the second and third floors, it is possible to be warm enough. Not toasty, but not freezing. We have south-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the house (on the first floor, they are shaded by the porch roof, which I guess is to protect the furniture?) In a form + functional delight the sun pours in during the daylight hours in winter, but in the summer, the sun is too high and shines over the house, for the most part.
Heat rises, obvsly, so it is usually about 60F, without the furnace, on the 3rd floor, which is where the children sleep. 60F is plenty warm enough for sleeping and taking a shower. We are not running a spa here.
The rest of the house is warm enough, for people who are fully-dressed, wearing shoes, base-layers, and a sweater. One of the best things about keeping the house so lightly-heated (besides the fact that we get out of the heating season for about $600) is that we can be inside, properly-dressed for the weather, without being too warm, and then we can just leave when it is time to go, without overdressing in one big blubbery layer.
This idea that people should be able to wear t-shirts and be barefooted indoors in the winter is silly. Someone saw it on teevee or something. Because then when you leave the house, what then? Well, after living in the Midatlantic for 12 years, I now know, I have seen: you jam on some shoes and throw on a down parka over your t-shirt. Well, that is silly.
I have been battling this with the public about my children all of their lives, but here is the truth: when it is cold -- really cold -- outside, your clothes go on under your clothes. You dress from the bottom up in layers so that when it is finally at 5F (on a warm winter's day) you are wearing all of your clothes with your outerwear atop. So when old ladies tsk-tsk at the sight of my children "only" wearing a sweater & a hat all winter, what they do not know (besides how to be strong) is that the children are wearing silk long underwear, a couple of t-shirts -- maybe a thin wool jersey layer for Fille, who runs colder than her brother -- and then a sweater, plus the hat. The hat is really key. I scold the children all the time, "Hat first! First the hat! Before the jacket, you put on a hat! Then if you are still cold, you can wear your fleece."
I do not even buy them a coat anymore. They have a fleece jacket with a down vest to put over if it gets cold enough, which it did last winter, and we were out in it all day, every day, because I was flushed & in love. 13 degrees! So close to 9! Which also beings up an important point: if it is 13 degrees outside and you are out in it for 2 hours, tromping or running errands or bicycling or making trouble, 62F feels plenty toasty enough when you come home to it.
It does make the rest of the world super-hot, though. Lord, I was at the Met with Algren a few years ago -- and it was December in NYC, like in the teens, definitely. I was dressed appropriately for the weather & hoofing it all over the island of Manhattan. Well, museums are all heated to 72 degrees, which escaped me when I was getting dressed. So, we were in for Egypt & Medicine and Spirit Photography, we checked our outerwear like civilized people, and in Egypt, I started roasting, just so hot & flushed and I was going to combust. At one point -- because I was a little spacey and wandering because I was hot & confused -- Algren took me by the hand and dropped it, immediately -- Jesus, you are so warm! -- and I was mewling weakly, and he pointed out I was wearing two sweaters. So I was, two thin cardigans -- one merino, one cashmere -- layered atop one another. I took one off and stuffed it in my bag and was somewhat relieved.
We made it through the fairy hoaxes, and along the way I took off the other cardigan, which left me in a tank top -- a cashmere tank top, but still, so much of me was uncovered -- and I was still so warm. By the time we got to Prague (shiny!), I was just broiling and I really thought I was going to faint when it struck me that under my skirt I was wearing silk long-johns under my tights. So, I had to go to the ladies' room & solve that problem and spend time running cold water on my hands and swooning, and that is an argument for piling up all of your clothes on the outside, but really. It is not way to live in an Arctic-cold climate. Not that we live in an Arctic-cold climate, but what if the children find themselves in one?
I think that over time, this idea of expanding their ability to know what resources are at their disposal for weather issues has superceded our other reasons for the miserly climate control -- the fact that the weather here is so variably warm, the fact that we live in a big, drafty house that takes a couple of days to bring to temperature, the fact that, really, it is not all that cold here and are not doors, walls & windows enough?
We used to think the children's total relativity about weather was a little cutiepie, the way Baby Fille would fall to the earth and cry if she had to go out when the temperature hovered around freezing, for example. Or the way that the first morning it was a little chilly our son would put on cotton pants and a bulky woolen sweater. We realized when that guy died in Oregon because he abandoned shelter, that weather ignorance was elementally dangerous and the very opposite of cute. Would that he have known that never abandon shelter is a cardinal rule. Or any number of things about the relativity of cold, but also its reality.
I think that people outside of New England and the Midwest, Saskatoon, Siberia, seem to think that weather is something that is happening to them, but really, the weather is just something that is. There is an essentialism to living in it. The fact is that back home, when it is -45F, it is not toasty in anyone's house. Cold is relative, but so is warmth. Heating the house to 72 or cooling it to 74 just seems like escapism, like a fatal flaw that will be one's undoing. Not to be all Jack London, but seriously.
Mari and I sleep in the draftiest room in the house, and have an electric mattress pad. There is a space heater in our bathroom for spa-bathing, in which Fille is allowed to indulge. We talk about moving our winter quarters to the 3rd-floor, to the guest room and the 60F bathroom, but neither of us can ever be bothered in the end.
If I feel sad & weak about our paradigm, which I do sometimes (I swear!), I just read select passages from The Long Winter. Invariably, that reminds me of a night I spent in the North Woods of Wisconsin during a blizzard in an unheated cabin, and that was really cold, not pretend-cold like my 58-degree house. I figure it is for the children's best interest and at least we are not starving at the same time. Also, I have the cutest, softest winter accessories to wear around the house. And a pair of tall Uggs in pink! Plus, everyplace else is so heated. Trust me.
![](<a href="http://www.adfreeblog.org/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.adfreeblog.org/adfreebutton.jpg"></a>){kind=link}