Knit Sisters

After five days of living in an igloo, we were amazed and delighted when our new furnace groaned to life around 4 p.m. yesterday. Its maiden voyage was a rough one, requiring the little-furnace-that-could to raise the temperature from a frigid 48 degrees (yes, that’s where it kind of permanently settled…which means it could have been worse, of course…although had you tried to tell me that on Friday I probably would have hung up on you) to a toasty 68 degrees.

You will never meet anyone so grateful to be in a home where the temperature is in the sixties. Comparatively speaking, I feel like I am on the isle of Oahu, basking in the sunshine on Waikiki and enjoying the “spirit of aloha.”

Pardon me for a moment while I summon Alex to fix me a Mai Tai with a miniature umbrella…

In practice, we were at the hotel for much of the past five days, but because of the animals’ needs and because we were unable to relocate all of our possessions, we were unable to completely abandon the house.

We all found this extremely inconvenient, except perhaps for Shelley, who enjoyed all the walking back and forth between the house and the hotel. And the subsequent sack-outs on the sofa in our suite.

A few tasty details from the furnace debacle:
1. The Paleozoic furnace was operating, we learned from our friendly Keyspan furnace professional, at a whopping 50% efficiency.

2. He also told us that there is a special place in hell for criminally neglectful sumbitches landlords who care so little about their property and their tenants that they fail to replace Paleozoic furnances operating at 50% efficiency.

3. When we asked him if there was a particular reason why the Paleozoic furnace died at that particular moment, he said, “Yeah, the same reason that that 114-year-old woman in Connecticut died a few weeks ago. She was old.”

4. The new furnace operates at over 90% efficiency. 90% efficiency, 100% satisfaction Chez Les Eskimaux!

5. It is warmer in this house than it ever has been. And I mean ever. This furnace just flat out has more juice. Go, little furnace! Do your stuff!

So I suppose that in the final analysis, this short-term cloud is bound to have a long-term silver lining. And yet…I still hope my landlord rots in hell.

Meanwhile, I took Wanda’s advice for getting out of the knitting doldrums and started a sock project:

Regia 4-Ply in red, black, and white. Faux-cable pattern over 60 stitches on US #1 needles. And highly portable.

And “Time” has not been out of mind. The lovely fit I spoke of formerly:

I have not yet ceased to be amazed that I got this part right!

How the sleeve is shaping up:

Upon consultation with my pals Kat and Kerry, it was decided that one central cable would be the most flattering sleeve solution.

And finally, a shot in which you can sort of see how the neck fits:

A woman with two-thirds of a sweater and central heating is a very happy woman indeed.

And last, but not least, many thanks to all who offered their support, commiseration, and warm thoughts during the Great Furnace Debacle of 2007.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Heavy sweaters, Sock it to me, Time out of mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.