from snowmageddon to icepocalypse

Despite the best predictions of the meteorologists, the winter weather continued throughout yesterday with both freezing rain/ice and additional snow.  We got a layer of ice early in the morning, followed by steady snow that put down another 4-5" or so throughout the day on Thursday.  This led to some interesting results, with all that wet heavy snow then encased in ice...

View out the back porch late yesterday afternoon, showing the (nearly) final extent of the snow. My estimate is that from Saturday through to Thursday night, we got over a foot of snow here at our house.  Certainly enough to keep us housebound for most of the week!

This is one of the crummy ugly semi-dead trees from the ravine, which started leaning threateningly over the driveway in the morning.  Usually you can barely see it behind the evergreens in the ravine, so it was way out of its comfort zone at this point!  We moved the truck out of the driveway just in case, and that turned out to be a good move because the tree came down around 8pm last night.

That's going to take some quality time with a chainsaw and a few trips to the dump to solve.  Thanks to Chris and our friend Brian, the driveway is passable on one side now (so we can probably get the Subaru out) and they're planning to take out as much as they safely can tomorrow.  I've already got a call in to the tree service we've used in the past to come take down the rest, as there's another small tree tied to this one which is beyond our skill to remove safely.  Additionally we lost a maple on the side of the house, though thankfully not the beautiful Japanese maple that grows next to and over our deck.  And of course, plenty of branches dropped throughout the night last night - nothing says "sweet dreams lullaby" like the gunshot sounds of branches snapping and falling to the ground below.

We also got some absolutely awesome icicles out of the storm.  Some of them were pushing 2' long or larger before they came down in the (relative) warmth and rain today.

I took some pictures from the laundry/cat room yesterday, and Onyx was very curious as to what I was looking at outside the window.  She is not impressed by snow, or really much of anything.

Both Chris and I have been working from home most of this week, and I'm very thankful we have the jobs, equipment, and managers to allow us to do so.  I'm not a fan of trying to drive in winter weather in Seattle, and I personally think it's prudent to just stay put and wait until it's gone unless there's a true need for me to go somewhere.  After I finished work today, I spent some time working on a baby quilt for a much-wanted little baby boy who was just born this week.  It's made from a fabric collection called Deep Deep Sea (with a few additions), and came with a panel of sea monsters that I've cut up to use as the centerpieces with strips framing each one individually.  I've completed 2 of the 7 panels, and done most of the work on a third so far.

 Completed and in-progress panels.

 Additional panels, cut strips, and uncut fabric.

And today I finished the second ball of yarn on my first knitting project, my simple garter stitch scarf.  I had to learn how to unknit to take out the last row I originally put in, as what seemed to be plenty of yarn only left a 3" tail which is not enough to weave in, or so I understand since I haven't done that yet.  I'm pretty happy that the knitting is nice and even, with another 9" of length gained from the second ball to match that obtained from the first.  I'm now halfway done!

 

I've also made biscuits for the first time this week, as well as a version of pain de mie, but I will save those for another post.  Dinner is just about ready - black forest ham and mashed potatoes - and I'm ready for it!