Friday Gauge Check: Wait, What?

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

Okay, who let December in here?  It seems like only two or three days ago it was mid-September, and now there’s terrible Christmas music everywhere you go, and exhortations to buy, and evergreens in every empty lot.  Christmas is coming, ready or not, and that terrible harbinger of Christmas, Black Friday.  Which was last week, and, as I told you then, I didn’t do anything about.

But then there was Cyber Monday.  Cyber Monday doesn’t involve crowds, just sales.  Sales, I can get behind.

You know who had a sale on Cyber Monday?  Yeah, Knit Picks. So I finally got a sweater’s worth of yarn, a bag of Swish DK in the colorway Jade.  I also grabbed a few skeins of Felici in the Time Traveler colorway, so I can make Jack the pair of fingerless gloves and socks to match his Second Doctor Scarf I’ve been promising him.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the delivery, and I can’t show you a picture of the test sock I finished yet, so here’s a picture taken out my kitchen window the other morning.  That’s a thick coating of frost on the neighboring rooftops, and it was gone in a few hours, but it’s gotten pretty cold, at least by my standards.

(My standards are admittedly not very high.  Or perhaps I should say they’re not very low, since it’s the temperature we’re talking about.)

I’ve been wearing my handknits with great gusto, though – fingerless gloves and a hat nearly all the time.  The Gretel tam is very warm, garners compliments everywhere I go, and is making me think about knitting similar sorts of hats.  The Grace Lace Beret, for example.  I love me a good slouchy hat, and I can wear them with some style.

Hats have so much potential, you know?  They’re fairly quick knits, don’t use a lot of yarn, and they’re super-versatile, at least up here in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains nine months of the year.  (I’m guessing at that, actually.  It could be more.)  Keeping your head warm (and dry!) wasn’t much of a concern in Arizona.  But I’m a hat person, have always been, regardless of the temperature, so I didn’t realize how very important a hat was up here until the day I failed to put one on.  The walk from the car to the door of the office has never been colder.  I’m just glad it wasn’t raining at the time.

Fingerless gloves are like that, too.  I didn’t think about how much warmer my hands were when I had them on until I left them on my desk when I went to get lunch.  (Mostly, I thought about how cold my fingers were.)  Now, I have at least two pairs of fingerless gloves in my purse at all times, usually the Codename: Garnet gloves and the alpaca pair I picked up at Sock Dreams and embellished.

Some years ago, I spent a couple of winters in Pennsylvania, and when I was there, I learned the fundamental purpose of the scarf.  As a desert child, I’d always thought about scarves as decorative objects, worn to add flair to an outfit.  It wasn’t until that first snowfall in State College that I understood that a scarf was a necessary article of clothing to keep your neck warm.  Somehow, I didn’t figure out hats or fingerless gloves during this time.  Then again, I wasn’t a knitter yet, so that may have had something to do with it.

It isn’t cold enough that it requires a scarf all the time, at least not yet.  On the other hand, it’s very early December, and it may get colder.  When it does, I have a smart black-and-white wool coat, and some lovely shawls that will wrap charmingly.

How is deep fall treating you?  Are you warm enough?  Tell me about your favorite cold-weather accessories, or just check your gauge, in the comments.