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I may not be very coherent for the next week or so. But before I whine, let me show you the pretty pictures.

The gray behemoth made it to its new home...

Niece seems to like it...

(If you want to say "hi" to my niece, you can find her on Instagram here and here.)

The rest of this post is me venting. It's been... Yeah. Consider this your warning. You might want to get out now.

Ahem.

1:15 AM. Saturday. I don't know what it was that woke me. But as I drifted awake, contemplating if I really, really needed to use the restroom or if I should just go back to sleep, I heard dripping. Kind of like rainfall. But the sound was wrong...

I jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

From that light, which was part of a ceiling fan just over my bed, was water, dripping onto my bed.

And then the dripping sped up.

I grabbed a couple towels to help sop up the water. Not sure what to do, I looked about for a bucket of some sort. I noted the time.

As the water sped up more, becoming a stream, more water started falling from a different part of the ceiling.

By the time I got my roommate (who owns the place) involved (yes, I woke her at 1:20 AM-ish), water was also streaming from just outside my closet. Landlady called it a waterfall. I called it a deluge.

Luckily, we had access to the water shut off for the building. Unluckily, the emergency line we contacted didn't send a plumber overnight (even though they said they were).

The water stopped after about a half hour. The plumber arrived 12 hours later.

I pulled all the sheets off my bed and put them in the bathtub. That's when I discovered that my mattress pad was awesome. My bed was basically a pool by the time the water stopped, but my mattress was only wet in a small spot right where the water had been dripping.

If I had been thinking, I would have taken pictures. I wasn't thinking.

Anyway, the plumber tried to replicate the issue. Above my room is a bathroom. He ran the shower. He flushed the toilet. No water. And this was after turning the water back on, and nothing happened.

(In other words, we turned off the water to our whole building--I don't know how many units--on a Saturday morning for nothing.)

What the plumber did find was a sopping wet bathroom. Wet floor. Wet clothes. Wet towels. And a stopped up sink.

The tenant above us? Yeah, he says no leak. No issue. Nothing happened.

Uh... Really? Apparently I'm a miracle woman, then. If only I'd known when we were in full on drought a year or so back. I could have single-handedly ended it.

So, it's now Sunday night. I've commandeered my other roommate's room. (She's out of town visiting friends.) My room has a dehumidifier going. Last I checked, it's 83 F in there. This is the stopgap measure until they can get someone to remove the ceiling.

They checked with their sensors, and the ceiling is wet. It's probably in the insulation. And we don't want mold.

I'm around. But my routine has been shot to hell. Hopefully I'll make the usual rounds this week. But we'll see. I'm taking things one day at a time right now. I have a bed tonight. I'll figure out where I'm sleeping tomorrow night tomorrow.

And hopefully things will get put back together sooner rather than later.

How was your weekend?

The Gray Behemoth, End

So, yes, I finished it...

And I'm still learning my camera, so the pictures could be better.

It's about bed-sized...

And in case you're curious, the back side looks like the back side of stockinette stitch...

I finished it up last Monday. Now it's just a matter of getting it to my niece.

Hey, it's only 20 pounds. Not too bad.

Finally, I had to pose with it, just to give you an idea of how big it is...

And now I can go back to focusing on my other projects.

Middle nephew (one of niece's little brothers) is raising money for the American Heart Association. If any of you are so inclined, he would be most grateful for your help. (This link will take you to his page.)

The Gray Behemoth

Because knitting takes time and effort, and because I don't want to become one of those aunts (the kind that gift things the kiddos hate), I'm establishing a request system for gifts. That is, I ask the kiddos what they want, and then that's what I make.

Niece asked for one of those large knit blankets for Christmas.

Yes, I know it's January. But, I'm still finishing up two scarves from Christmas 2017, so I'm not that far behind.

I already explained some of this when I showed off the yarn for this beast...

I even went and bought three more skeins. Turned out these six weren't quite enough.

I finally got around to starting the project. I have knit all six of those skeins, plus a seventh.

(Niece requested a blanket 75 inches by 90 inches. The six skeins got me to a length of 56 inches. That'll stretch, but not quite enough. Yes, this is huge.

So, I'll let niece know that this blanket is: Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Congratulations on your Graduation, and Happy Birthday. She never told me what she wanted for her birthday last year. She graduates from high school this year. And suddenly I'm caught up gifting for her. Yea!)

It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the thing. I played with the yarn a few times before devoting a whole day (January 1st) to just doing it. I discovered that I don't like knitting on my arms. I almost broke and bought needles to use. It turned out that one crochet hook was all I needed to figure out the tension.

This was the first attempt to cast on. Too many stitches. Too tight. I eventually loosened it up again, but I ripped this out at least three times before I got it going.

Above is just about one skein in. (Keep in mind that the width is about 70 inches--just a bit under.) You can kind of see the crochet hook I used to get thing started, plus the amount of that first skein left. Alas, my camera was being difficult with the focusing (and my phone camera isn't uploading to my computer), so the pictures aren't ideal.

Once I got into a rhythm, I discovered that I really liked knitting off my fingers. It turns out my thumbs are just about the right size for the stitches, so I used them to measure stitches.

At two skeins, the blanket looked like this...

I used my TV remote for a bit of scale. At about three skeins it looked like...

Finishing up a skein took me about an hour, depending. It was shorter when the TV was off, but that got boring quickly.

I'm not sure if the above photo is of five or six skeins. At some point I lost track. I only got four skeins knit that first day. (It wasn't the whole day. I had to switch over to another project, and then it was night.)

As of the writing of this post, I had completed knitting seven skeins. This picture is of six skeins knit plus the seventh skein I was about to start...

Yes, it's huge. And warm. And heavy.

It's kind of a fun project, now that I'm into it. I wouldn't mind making these as throw blankets or lap blankets. And I totally get why they're so expensive to buy. (I could totally justify charging $400 for this particular blanket. And that's what they're going for.)

Will I make them for my shop? Maybe. I'm more likely to do one if specifically requested to do so. (I would charge at least $100 for one, but likely more depending on how many skeins of yarn are required.)

I should have finished photos for next week, depending. It'll be a challenge to figure out how to get a good picture of it. Staging and such. I only have two more skeins to go, so it'll be finished.

(And as for my cold, it's pretty much gone now. Thanks for all the well wishes.)