Birki time?
Friday January 12th 2007, 12:03 pm
Filed under: Knit

When I was in college, we used to tease the kids from California who wore Birkenstocks in the snow; c’mon, guys, get a clue!

Now we live in California ourselves, and right now, we’re having quite the cold snap. The Red Cross called my husband last night: they were discussing opening an emergency shelter, since he’s helped run one before for them.

We got up this morning to find our pipes frozen. Such a Birkenstockian installation up there on our roof–I guess the pipes needed some long handknit tube socks?


5 Comments so far
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Make the pipe socks from self-striping yarn, ok?!
Our water system pressure tank was a little frozen yesterday. It has been -10 before with no problem. So after further analysis, it was determined to be my fault. Because… are you ready for this? I fixed the toilet so it didn’t run constantly. Therefore the pressure tank didn’t kick in, and froze. My bad.

Comment by Anne in Wy 01.13.07 @ 8:56 am

No kidding – it sure is cold!!! Yesterday my office was so cold I could barely type! Hopefully it will warm up this weekend. Let me know if you work out that pattern for pipe socks (is that the latest incarnation of tube socks?) I also have a question for you – in cleaning up for the new year I find that I have bought lots of different beautiful yarn that I’ve seen over the years without specific projects in mind. I seem to tend to buy between 500-650 yards. Too much for a scarf and too little for the standard shawl. You make such gorgeous things – any idea of a good project for that amount of yarn? Some is DK weight and some is worsted. I’m not too much in the lace weight yet but I think this year might be different. Thanks for your help!

– Allison

Comment by Allison 01.13.07 @ 9:22 am

Sitting here knitting wearing a thick, warm sweater, with my medicine blanket (see Oct 23 post) wrapped around me, my toes still went numb today. I found myself really wanting to launch into an afghan project; funny, that. As for the pipes, there was no running water till quite late this morning. Brrr.

Allison, the projects in my book mostly are circular shawls worked back-and-forth using fingering weight yarn, but there is one of them (a somewhat smaller one, 21″ long) done in four skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas’ baby alpaca/silk yarn, 50 g/146 yds/ball. I used about every last inch of those balls, and would have needed more had I made it longer. But that gives you an idea. Other than that, you could just go pick out a stitch pattern you like, cast on so many repeats’ worth, and keep knitting till you have a stole the length you like. For dk or worsted, I’d be using 9s, 10s, or even 11s on the worsted, depending on the pattern and how it looks with it. It really should be enough yarn, I would think.

Comment by AlisonH 01.13.07 @ 3:12 pm

Thanks for the ideas – my stash thanks you! Hopefully today will be a bit warmer. I’m anxiously awaiting your book.

Comment by Allison 01.14.07 @ 8:47 am

Cold cold cold. The hubby let the shower drip slightly all night so we could shower in the morning, which worked, but the kitchen pipes were frozen solid. On the nice side, there were a lot of women at church today wearing scarves I recognized!

Comment by AlisonH 01.14.07 @ 3:05 pm



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