A Finished Object

Here we have it.  I finished the hat I've been working on, and once again, the photo is weird.  

I think it might be the sparkles that's throwing the camera off, but I don't really know.  I don't get it, because the photo I took of the skein the other day turned out well.  I think I have enough yarn to do a headband like the ones I've been figuring out, but I think I'm going to set this aside for now and work on my charity hats for a bit. 

The plant already announced they'll be shut down tomorrow again, so I'll have plenty of knitting time.   The temperature only got up to 25° today, so nothing has melted.  This is what my road looks like, 

and that isn't snow.  It's solid ice from the sleet and freezing rain that fell yesterday.  It's not going to get any better before tomorrow, as the temps are predicted to get down into the single digits tonight.   But they're saying upper 30s tomorrow afternoon, so it might start melting a bit.  I know some trucks have been going in and out, but I wouldn't trust my little car on that ice. 

Before I went to bed last night, I got my fireplace shovel and cleared a path on my back porch so I'd have a place to stomp the sleet off my shoes before coming into the house. 

Turns out I needn't have bothered because the sleet in my back yard froze solid over night.  I walked out to scatter some bird seed shortly after noon, and it was so hard I didn't even leave footprints.  

While I was outside, I tried to check on my little bluebonnet seedling, but couldn't see through the plastic.  

I'm pretty sure everything else in that planter is toast.  We'll see in the spring if any of it comes back.  If it doesn't, I might try something different this time around. I do want to keep the lemon balm and the rosemary, but I doubt I'll re-plant the lemon thyme.  I don't know if I was doing something wrong, but I never got anything usable from it.  

Then I walked out and checked on my other bluebonnet seedlings.  The entire thing is covered in sleet, 

but it looks to be clear underneath.  I peeked under there as well as I could, and what plants I saw don't appear to have been damaged by the freeze, so maybe my bluebonnets survived as well. 

The only other thing I did was to finish that book I'd picked back up yesterday, Conflicted.   The story itself wasn't that bad.  The biggest problem is that the author is trying write a seven book series, but she doesn't have enough story for seven novels. So much of the book is empty filler and repetitious rambling that she added to stretch the story out. If she'd left it a trilogy or even a shorter series, it would have been much better. 

Next up, I think I'll finally get around to re-reading the Wool series by Hugh Howey.  I already know it's good.