a little snow

Here is my obligatory Oh! My! Word! It’s! Snowing! In! Portland! picture.

It’s a little early. If we get snow, it’s usually in January or, rarely, February. December is unusual. Those of you who live in snowy places would laugh at us here. There has been nothing on the local TV stations today except Storm Coverage. They’ve been predicting this all week, and I can see a certain amount of satisfaction in their coverage that this time they were right.

They had actually predicted that it would start last night. I only hoped that it would wait until we were all safely home from the Christmas concert we attend every year, and it did. And this morning when I woke up, it was still just raining, with a little snow mixed in. It started to snow in earnest around 9:00 AM and it’s been snowing ever since. I would guess I have around 5″ right now at my house. You can see that Barry The Berry Bear looks a bit cold. He should be hibernating!

Portland Public Schools have already announced closing tomorrow, along with a host of other schools and some businesses. Chains or other traction devices are being required on all of the freeways, even in town. Yes, it’s funny. I grew up in a snowy place and so I’m in on the joke. In our defense, I can only plead that our snow is usually really wet and compacts into ice almost instantly when anyone drives or walks over it. And ice is hard to drive on no matter what.

I have a full pantry and need go nowhere for awhile, so I will be fine. And I don’t think I will run out of yarn any time soon…

On a different note, Archaeology Magazine’s top 10 discoveries of 2008 includes a mummy found near a busy street in Lima, Peru. I would not ordinary discuss such things here, but this mummy, gentle reader, was buried with balls of yarn and knitting needles. These would be used for single-needle knitting, more like nalbinding than what we thing of as knitting proper. But, still… Archaeologists believe that she was a master weaver because of the tools in her tomb. Maybe she just loved her stash and wanted to take it with her?