I couldn't decide which picture to use so I went with both of them today.
Picture wherein the colors are *close*
There's a bit more green in person, though
There's a bit more green in person, though
Slightly more artistic shot with book in background
Name that book (or series)
Name that book (or series)
This is a great sock. Really great. I'm knitting it with Koigu (my first Koigu socks!) on size 1 (US) dpns and the cast on was 72 stitches so there are a lot of stitches involved but I really like this sock. Wish I was there.
Yeah, I could use a bit of a break from here. It's been very cold and while we had a delayed opening of just about everything on Wednesday due to the invasion of the wintry mix, we haven't had a lot of honest-to-goodness snow. What's the use of having cold without snow?
And I found the natural gas bill in the mailbox yesterday afternoon when I came back from Hot Lunch duty at Neatnik's school. I almost had a coronary.
We have four appliances
It isn't really the furnace's fault, mind you. Our trusty furnace is doing what it is paid to do: heating the water in the pipes and pumping that hot water around the baseboard units in an attempt to warm up our living spaces. And it does: right up to about 67°F and I just can't set the thermostat any lower: my fingers turn blue when I am on the computer and I have been wearing two shirts and a sweatshirt all month long as it is.
The problem is, we live in an older house. Along the lines of a 70+ year old house. Let's face it, peeps, our house is a senior citizen. Back when our house was
That's where we are now: no insulation and it's cold outside. You see, it is quite a bit colder this year than last year. Hang on a second, let me see if I can dig up some numbers...
Ah, there it is. The average temperature around here last January was 34.7°F. This year it has been hovering at about 8°F less than that. No wonder our gas bill is through the roof. Or should that be right out the windows and walls?
Anyway, we try to keep all of this in perspective. Yeah, we didn't plan on spending so much on heating the house. But at least we have a house to heat and are paying the heating bill on time, right?
Maybe I need to learn how to knit faster: at this rate, I'm going to need more woolly socks.
Posts
16 yarns:
Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, but I'm not sure which one...older son has made off with my copies, and I rather think I haven't gotten all of them (I get confused when I read some from the library and purchase some...)
I have not read the book but I read what was visable on the pages, (yeah I ahve NO life) but I really have no clue. I saw goblets and crystal wine glasses and a red Court... thought maybe it was that vampire series going aorund, but what do I know?
What I do know about is OLD houses and OLDER furnaces. My house could be your houses grandparent. My gas bill is $500 a MONTH. All winter long. It's killing me. And the furnace is so old it doesn't work half the time. {{sigh}} Don't have the $5000 to replace it yet, but I bet when we do we will save a ton in NIMO bills.
Maybe you could shove sweaters in the walls? From Goodwill? We got new windows and new siding for our 30 yr. old house and our bills went down a lot. Money well spent. Gorgeous socks.
Blame it on Global Warming! Start taking old jeans and cutting the legs off and stuff them w/beans. Draft Buddies! Then layer up the window sills and doors!
Cute socks, I like the pattern up the sides!
The house we're in is from the 30's-40's and is insanely drafty.. not to mention that if it ever HAD insulation of any kind it was probably newspaper which has long since turned to dust. With the fact that we've had to use electric space heaters all winter I've been opening my power bill VERY slowly and making sure that I'm sitting down first.
I'm sick to death of being cold- most of the time my hands are like ice blocks (I have really bad circulation problems to begin with) and it makes it very hard to knit! Our living room temp. hovers around about 60-63 because apparently the house is too drafty to hold it at anything higher. We close off the bedrooms until about an hour before bedtime so we aren't wasting our time trying to heat areas we aren't in... The best solution we've found so far is to use curtains to block off the living areas and make the spaces easier to heat. Good luck and stay warm!
I have a sneaking suspicion that our monthly budgeted amount for our building is going to soar...
Nice job, Anonymous!!
(Who isn't me this time....)
NG
Ohhh. Cold here too. You are right... knit more socks.
Our utility bills are almost twice what they were a year ago, and they were outrageous then. Last month I compared our usage, though, and it's dropped since last year. That's when I realized that more than half of each bill is fees and taxes that are determined based on a customer's "historical usage", and which therefore does not change, no matter how much you conserve. And these fees and taxes keep going up. For my single family of four, our gas and electric bill is nearly $400 a month, and our water bill is over $300 every other month. And I can't do anything to effectively reduce either one.
Ah, Anonymous beat me to it! I'm not sure which one either though.
Oh, ouch. And brrrr. You could maybe stuff yarn in the walls? Hang tapestries? Wall to wall corkboard? Naturally the bill doesn't come until NOW when it's a little inconveniet to even attempt to add insulation.
My house is in the 100+ years age range.......and sure enough, the only insulation is in the attic! None at all in the walls or under the floor, which sits anywhere from a few inches to over 2 feet off the ground. In fact, the only walls that have insulation are in the bathroom, only because we had to remodel it this summer and thought it would be a good idea to put some in there.
But, then again, I guess our house is special in the sense that it provides some of the local wildlife refuge. We frequently hear animals crawling up between the walls (oh, btw, another "older" house thing...they left a lot of walls open at the bottom) to spend the colder nights nestled snuggly up in the attic. Thankfully we only heat with gas (no furnace, just one floor heater which sits in the hallway)...everything else is electric. And, since we're on equal pay with our electric company, it's no "sudden" shock to our wallet, just a steady pull year round.
Debra in NC
I do believe I caught the name "Dresden" in the text there. Not sure which book it is, though...
I heat with propane but everything else is electric. Still, I've also seen a bit of a hike in the bill this season. I really should be taking a cue from you and getting a few more pairs of socks off the needles. It's gonna be a chilly winter!
It's Al Gore's fault.
Wish I could share some of our heat with you. The West is insanely hot, dangerously hot, and dangerously dry. You can have some of our 90°F days if you'd like! Or we could average our days and have a nice brisk 50° or so - that would be a lovely winter.
The gas bills here are scandalous, too! We have to knit and use more blankets and socks!!
We also have an older house, same era as yours. First thing we did when we moved in was to add insulation to the attic space. We use programmable thermostats and set the heat back to 57 at night - used to be 55 but we got older. ;-} About 10 years ago we upgraded to a more efficient furnace. A few years ago we replaced a lot of the windows and that made a huge difference - almost immediate. You can do a few at a time and the price is more reasonable. I can recommend an excellent dealer/installer in the area, too. Our next project is to replace the outside doors with more efficient ones. It's a battle to keep the gas bill down!
Anne
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