Adiraindacks

We Had planned to tackle Mt. Marcy today, but the weather conspired against us. Tomorrow promises to be clearer, so we changed our plans a bit.

We spent the day wandering around a soggy Lake Placid. One highlight was the Winter Olympics museum -- I was fascinated by all the examples of medals and relay torches they have there. Plus, they had a hand-knit stranded warm-up sweater that used to belong to figure skater Sonjia Henie -- cream with red and gold yolk and cuffs. I took a picture with my "real" camera, so it will have to wait for later.

I also dragged Jeff into Adirondack Yarns on the north end of town. It was a very warm and welcoming place, with coffee and some of the best store samples I've ever seen. Ah, to be able to dress oneself in garments like that for 9 months out of the year!

I thought the be-mittened bear out front was a nice touch. Here's to not running into any tomorrow, mittens or no.

Knitting on the Road

Not much knitting happening while on our Northeast Holiday. We've seen yarn shops from time to time -- Bee's Yarn, Sweaters & Candy in Bar Harbor, ME, for instance -- but they've all been closed.

Today, I got lost trying to find a laundromat in Stowe, VT, and looked up to see I was in front of Stowe Fabric & Yarn. The nice proprietor pointed me in the right direction, and after I got my load started, I went back to visit before closing. They had a nice selection of yarns, including some locally grown alpaca and Romney wool. I could sit on that porch and knit all day...

Oops. The dryer beckons.

107

One hundred and seven. It’s the 28th prime number, the element number for Bohrium, and darn close to what the temperature around here has been lately.

It also has other magical properties. Turns out, it’s exactly what one of my new placemats weighs in grams. And, after making three in one color with brand new balls of yarn, the three small leftover balls add up to…..107 grams. So I should just be able to squeeze out a fourth placemat in both of the colors. If it gets close, I can always cheat the final placemats by a few rows. We’ll see.

In a few days, Jeff and I are going on a trip out of town for a few weeks. I imagine I’ll stumble upon a yarn store or two. If so, I’ll post reports. I don’t know how much (or if much) knitting (or posting) will happen on the road, but I plan to take a few sock projects along just in case the opportunity arises.

I’m so looking forward to climes with temperatures below 107.

Swealebrity

At my men’s knitting group on Sunday at the Knitting Nest, we had a surprise (and delightful) visitor. I just have to share.

We had noticed some people sitting and talking at the big table, and thought it looked awfully like an interview. Afterwards, one of the group, came by to ask us what we were all knitting. The topic of stranded knitting came up, and she pulled out The Sweater.

The maker of this fine garment was Adrienne Martini, author of Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, which outlines her crusade to complete an Alice Starmore fair isle sweater in a year. The pattern she chose was Mary Tudor. It’s gorgeous – all the more amazing to realize it was her first big stranded knitting project. Talk about go big or go home!

I’d first heard about this book and this project when Adrienne was interviewed on Brenda Dayne’s Cast On Podcast (Episode 77). And there it was in front of us – we got to put our grubby paws all over it. So amazing to see an actual artifact that’s been documented so fully. Kind of like all the sock samples I saw from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks at the sock summit a few years back.

It was great meeting Adrienne. She had been in Houston giving a talk, and decided to come by Austin to see old friends and grab a bite at Threadgills.  She was witty, knowledgeable, and friendly – like most excellent knitters. Now I really need to read her book .

Oh, and last night, when we were deciding where to go for dinner with Jeff’s parents, the first thing I thought was, “Threadgills.” It was de-lish.

Perfect Fourth

Not much to report knitting-wise this week. In between reading classic science fiction, preparing for an upcoming trip, and working on de-cluttering the office, I’ve managed to squeeze in a few moments of knitting on the Twill Stitch Placemats.

This week, I managed to crank out two more. Placemats seem to be the “it” project in these parts. Check out the nice granny circle placemats that Meg is making. Nice – nobody takes better pictures of her craftiness than Meg. And those colors she picked for the edges are perfect. They remind me of a set of anodized aluminum tumblers my grandmother used to have.

Back to my vivid brown masterpieces. I have four complete, two in each color. I’m trying for eight, at which point, I’ll need to get a card table, pick up some canapé recipes, and learn how to play contract bridge.

A Place for Everything

So far, the placemats are turning out great. They’re fast to knit, easy to pick up and put down without losing one’s place, and, being cotton, they’re not causing my thighs to break out into a heat rash while knitting in this horrific heat. Which is probably more detail than you wanted, but there you go. The Espresso color look especially good with our Silver Pine china. I can’t quite get the pale turquoise color to come out right with my camera, but it looks especially nice against the dark brown.

Now that I’ve got the system down, it’s just knit, knit, knit. Actually, this pattern actually has a lot more purling in it than knitting, now that I think of it. I bought a ball for each placemat that I planned to knit, three of each color for a total of six. But I think that with the leftovers from the first three, I may have enough to knit a fourth in each color. That way I can set the table with alternating placemat colors, or go all in with or the other. We’ll see if I’m still as gung-ho after knitting six of these things. But two done so far!

Fur Piece

My vacation got off to a rocky start.

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, I heard a hissing sound by my garage. Not a snakey hissing (which would be bad), but a watery hissing. Either my house or the front yard retaining wall shifted, breaking our main water line right where it enters the house. It wasn’t exactly spewing, and I’m pretty sure that it hadn’t been doing that when I’d left in the morning, but it was pretty disconcerting. Jeff got a plumber out (at after-hours rates, grrrr) and we had it fixed by 8. At 10, we were able to turn the water back on, so all’s well that ends well. Still, scary.

Jeff and I went out for breakfast this morning, and then, while he headed to campus to finish up his grading,  I went to Joann’s to pick up some more Lion Brand for placemats. I accidentally turned down the wrong aisle and ran into a wall of “fun” fur. Yikes! It was all so weird looking. And funny. And sad. I like to think I’m not a yarn snob – knit with what you want, I say. But I just do not get the appeal. It may be fast, and you can use giant needles with it, but how they heck can you see what you’re doing? Any beginning knitter starting on this stuff isn’t doing him or herself a favor.  I think fun fur’s time has come and gone, but it can still be found. It almost always seems to be on clearance, though. That’s gotta be saying something.

Back to the placemats. They only had three more balls of the Clove color in the dyelot I’d purchased earlier. And the dyelots were radically different. So I’ve decided to knit three placemats in Clove and three in a new color I picked up, Espresso. You can see what I’ve got so far, here. I’m hoping that the Clove and Espresso will go well with each other and the widely divergent colors of plates that we have.

So things are much more relaxed today than they were yesterday evening. Here’s to calm days ahead.

Plan B

The Tunisian crochet just wasn’t working for this yarn. It was taking way too long and it was way too fiddly. I’m blaming it on the cotton. It’s still a really cool technique, but not for this yarn.

So I’ve switched to knitting and using the twill stitch. It’s a four-row repeat over a multiple of four stitches plus one. For these placemats, I cast on 49 stiches. It turns out they they are only about a half-inch narrower than my existing placemats. I’m knitting these from the side across. I may do all of them sideways, but I’m also toying with the idea of making half of them from the bottom edge up. Here’s the pattern:

First Row: KPKPKPKP…….K
Second Row: P
Third Row: KPPPKPPPKPPPKPPP…….K
Fourth Row: P

Not too complicated. Easy to read in the work, and great for mindless TV knitting. The yarn is Lion Cotton in a semi-solid color called Clove (136). The website describes it as a “dark burnt orange,” so it makes sense that my local Joann’s in Austin had tons of it. My goal (which is really more of a wish at this point), is that I can squeeze one placemat out of one ball. I’m about a third of the way through the current one – and it looks like I’m a third of the way through the ball.

This could be a race to the finish…

Tunisian Uprising

So, sweater finished, it’s on to other projects.

First up, a set of new placemat. I’ve been using the same old raggedy placemats for too long. Time to knit new ones. But how?

Ever since seeing the video by my good friend Staci, I thought I’d like to try this crochet technique called Tunisian (or sometimes Afghan) stitch. Tunisian crochet uses these freaky frankenhooks that are basically crochet hooks, but really, really long and with a stopper on the end. In Tunisian stitch, you pick up stitches across the face of the fabric, and then chain back across. Here’s a one of Staci’s helpful videos that shows you how to do it.

 

Tunisian Crochet

 

Simple, right? Except I figured out how to make things difficult. Because I want to be able to wash these things, I decided I’d make them out of cotton. And it’s just not working for me. To start with, the cotton wasn’t very forgiving when trying to cast on – which involves picking up stitches from the spine of a crochet chain. And since then, I’ve just not quite gotten the hang of it.

Here’s what I have so far. It’s not bad, but it’s just not good. It’s hurting my hands, and it’s going very, very slow. Crochet is supposed to go fast. I still really love this technique, but I’m thinking it may not be the way to go with this project. I’d like to make at least six of these things, but I’m just not feeling the love.

I’m considering switching to knitting and using the twill stitch that I used when making my Whitfield Jacket. What do you think?

Sweater

Was there ever a more appropriate name for a 100% wool garment worn on a day when it’s projected to reach 104°? Or the person modeling said garment?

By the time we got outside with the camera, just before 10:00am, the heat index was already at 92° with 67% humidity. Not to mention the mosquitos. It’s not even summer yet! I suppose we must suffer for our art…

But the rewards are great. I’m really happy with how this sweater turned out. Long stretches went by without working on it this spring and the whole project took entirely too long to complete, but I’ve got quite a sense of accomplishment now that this is finished.

The place I originally wanted to get buttons had either shut down or moved (I got conflicting reports), so I went by an LYS. They had nice buttons, but not any appropriate for a nerdy cardigan. So I went by Hancock Fabrics, which had a surprisingly wide selection, plus they were having a 30% off sale. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I freaked out several fellow customers by soliciting their opinions. After they calmed down, we eventually all agreed that I would go with wood. Nice, no?

Now, like any project, there are a few flaws. There is a school of thought that, kept to oneself, these flaws will never become apparent. But I’m the type to be wracked with guilt unless I confess, so here we go:

The buttons are not evenly spaced – they’re a little closer together at the bottom than at the top. The button band isn’t quite even with the bottom edge on the right side. I knit where I should have purled (or vice versa) in one place on the sewn-on button band. The necks or shanks behind the buttons are a bit tall; I did that so that they wouldn’t bite into the button band, but they look a little funny and dangly when not buttoned.

I feel better.

Now to put this away until it gets cold, if it gets cold, many many months from now. My plan is to wear this at work in my chilly corner of the library. Now to obtain and learn how to tie a bow tie…

I Got the Beets

Another slow week of knitting – meaning I didn’t knit a stitch during the week. But I did manage to work a bit more on the Chocolate Spiral Socks during my knitting group on Saturday morning. This morning, I buckled down and finished the button band on the Kerouac Sweater, while catching up with a bunch of PBS episodes of Frontline, Independent Lens and Secrets of the Dead that had been cluttering up my DVR for a while. I’ve tried it on, and it appears that all systems are go.

Two things left to do. One is blocking. There are some areas around the sleeve cap that need special attention. I think I’m going to go the steam route rather than full immersion. Secondly, I need to go shopping for buttons. The last time around, I had Snowden to go shopping with. We went to Silk Road and got some great buttons for my Whitfield Jacket.  Sadly, she’s moved away, so I’ll have to be a big boy and pick some out myself. The holes are kind of small, so I should have plenty of options.

This afternoon, I got to knit with some of the guys from our men’s knitting group. It had been WAY too long since I’d done that, and it was good to get out. I always have a good laugh and learn something. Those guys are always trying out something new – a pretty fearless bunch as knitters go.

Oh, and one more thing. A picture of food. Yummy, yummy, food. My knitting buddy Jene had some extra food from her CSA this week. I was the proud recipient of some peppers, potatoes, and these delicious beets. I found a recipe for Sweet-and-Sour Beets with Apples in The Joy of Cooking, and voilà! Very tasty, indeed. Thanks, Jene!

I’m Still Knitting!

Um, hi.

Yeah, it’s been a while. An embarrassingly long time, in fact. And the reason is, I haven’t really been knitting.

I’ve only been knitting in fits and starts. I’m kind of monogamous with my obsession. Usually, I’m either knitting or reading. However, my reading and knitting were both recently derailed by a chance genealogical breakthrough that grabbed my attention for quite some time.

A class and get-together with some knitting friends seems to have shaken me out of it for a bit, and even though the thermometer hit a hundred today (before a freaky much-needed thundershower), I picked up my wool Kerouac Sweater and worked on the button band a bit more. I’m at the part where you have to sew the band on a bit, and then work a buttonhole, then sew on a bit more band, etc. I’m sweating like crazy, but it’s nice to see some progress. A few more hours of sewing and knitting, and then it’s all over except for getting some buttons and a bit of blocking. Just in time to put it away for six months while I wait out the hotbox that is Texas in summertime.

Last month, Jeff and I made a short trip to Big Bend National Park, one of our favorite getaways. We did some hiking, saw some spectacular desert scenery and wildlife (no bears this time), and I cast on for some toe-up sock. I’m using the yarn I dyed with Doug and plan to use my first afterthought heel, courtesy of some excellent videos posted by Janelle. The pattern is the Broad Spiral Rib from Charlene Schurch’s More Sensational Knitted Socks.

So I’m back at it.

Resurrection

I feel like I’m starting anew on my knitting, perhaps finally climbing out of what appears to be my annual spring knitting slump. Easter seems an appropriate day for it.

I’ve been working on the button band for the Kerouac Sweater. It’s knitted separately, and when it’s about 3/4 done, it’s sewn on. Then, buttonholes are added as it’s sewn so that you can get them in the right position. I’m a little nervous about that, but I’m getting a pretty consistent row gauge of 8 rows to the inch, so I should be able to estimate when the time comes. It was fast to knit – kind of like a very skinny ribbed scarf – but I just haven’t been able to get excited about sewing it on. I got started this morning. I’ve already put it down, but at least it’s a start. When it’s in the 90s outside, I don’t feel much of a sense of urgency in finishing a wool sweater.

And, because I needed something a bit more portable and less fussy to knit on away from home, I finally started back on the Woodland Winter Mittens. Well, they’re still fussy, but at least they’re more portable. I finished the Right February mitten, and I’ve begun on the left. This one won’t be as complicated and should go by pretty quickly. I was surprised at how quickly I remembered all the little things about the increases and patterning, despite not having touched this project for over a month.

I don’t know what it is about spring, but there’s always so much that takes me away from knitting – lots of yard work, extra chorus rehearsals for our spring concert, big projects to wrap up at work before the end of the semester. After this week, things should start settling down so that I can get back at it.

Sit on a Cushion

This weekend, I managed to sew a fine seam, but it wasn’t all strawberries, sugar and cream.

I managed to seam up the second sleeve, and I did much better than the first. On the first, I had to do a bit of 2-to-3 seaming at the end to make everything come out right, due to earlier sloppiness. But I managed to get the second one to come out perfectly. If you look at the two edge stitches that got tucked into the seam, you can see that either my first or last stitch of each row is way tidier than the other. I’ve never noticed that before. However, the seam looks quite nice from the wrong side. These sleeves are rather slender and much more fitted than I’m used to, but they’re sure to keep me warm in my chilly wintry library. That’s the plan, anyway.

But sleeves don’t really work unless they’re attached to the sweater (with the possible exception of the look rocked by Brittany of Glee), so I still had some seaming to do. This was slightly more problematic. Despite some good advice I received, I still had an issue because the sleeve cap shifts from a selvedge edge to a cast-off edge. The sleeve caps were sewn into the body sides which are all selvedge edge. At some point. I had to shift seaming strategies, and there’s a little bump where there this shift occurred. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to minimize it with a bit of judicious steam blocking.

I got started on the very strange (to me) button band last night. That shouldn’t take much time at al to knit. But it’s sewn on, so there is another seam in my future. Here’s hoping I can manage to sew it finely.

Pup With Pups

Henry, the boy for whom I made the three Pile-able Pups back at the beginning of the year, made his debut about a month ago. Recently, Meg, photographer extraordinaire, took some pictures of Henry surrounded by and/or wearing the lovely hand-knits he hauled in at his shower. They turned out great and both Meg and Kristin (now known as  “Henry’s Mom”) gave me their blessing to post one of them here.

This little dude is a doll. I got to hold him a few weeks ago and he was just the proverbial bundle of joy. All stretchy and jerky and squirmy and sleepy and sighing and whimpering and all those things that little babies do. He’s definitely made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Although he’s already grown noticeably, right now the Pile-able Pups are almost as big as he is. But he’ll be in charge soon enough.

Welcome to the world, Henry! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.

Slow Going

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but then, I haven’t gotten much knitting done in the past few weeks. When it comes to extracurricular activities, I’m either reading or knitting. I hit a perfect storm of books that came up on my request list at the public library, so I needed to do a lot of reading in a short amount of time. I’m caught up, though; you can see what I’ve been up to literarily in the sidebar. So I’m back to knitting.

I’ve managed to finish both sleeves, and now I’m in the sewing phase. I’ve sewn up the shoulder seams. The number of stitches didn’t match on the two sides, but I made do. I was tired of reading the sleeve cap instructions and wondering whether I was getting them right. They might be a bit off, but they are at least symmetrical. There was no way I was going to re-do them.

This morning, I sewed up one of the sleeves. I need to sew up the other one and then attach the sleeves to the body. So far, it seems that the fit is going to be good. I’m looking forward to knitting the button band and collar, which is knit in a long strip along 15 stitches. I think I’m going to try and see if I can remember how to knit backwards so I don’t have to do a lot of sliding stitches and needle flipping.

Knick-Knack Kerouac

Give this dog a bone, cause this old cardigan is rolling home. There’s naught left to knit but the sleeves and button band/collar.

I’ve managed to complete the body of the sweater. Both of the fronts are now done, although I’m not entirely clear that I did it correctly. I was almost done with the right front part of the sweater, when I consulted a cryptic note that I’d made after completing the left front part of the sweater, reminding me where to begin a certain decrease. I was already well past that point, and by now I couldn’t see the logic of the original instructions – it had just been too long since I’d written it down. But I ripped back and followed my notes, and holding everything together, it appears I did the right thing. I’m just not sure how.

For something that looks so simple, I’ve had a dickens of a time trying to parse out the instructions. They’re quite clear, but the manner in which they are written doesn’t mesh well with the way my brain works. I kept forgetting that binding-off and decreasing, while having the same effect of narrowing fabric, are not the same thing at all.

I had to draw little diagrams for each row, keeping track of the binding off and the decreasing and all the various knitterly activities that I was instructed to undertake AT THE SAME TIME. These words are written in all caps to draw the knitter’s attention to them, but the my state of mind conjures up visions of someone leaning over my should and shouting those words at me. I’m not in any way faulting the designer for this – it’s just the state I’m in, I suppose.

But I’ve started the sleeves, and I’m feeling better about the whole thing.

A Bird in the Hand

It’s worth two in the bush, but still doesn’t quite measure up to having two in the hand. So to get my money’s worth, and to keep some poor soul’s two hands equally toasty, I better get started on the second.

Overall, I prefer the abstract design of the January mittens over these more figurative designs. I enjoyed watching the picture build as I knit, though that branch hanging over the bird’s head looks kind of like a claw hammer to me. Watch out, bird! And, of course, the brighter colors don’t sit with me as well. The effect reminds me of a sunrise over snow. I don’t have much experience of that, but that’s what I’m going with. These hues remind me of some jumbo-sized day-glo crayons that were available back in the 1970s. I never really liked them. Even then I was more of a traditionalist. Anyone else out there miss Raw Umber? Anyone?

The thumbs on this mitten, if anything, seem even tighter than the thumb on the previous pair. I’m going to try and remedy that in the blocking, but I really think the design could have stood to have 4-5 more stitches of room. Like the first pair, I’m drawn to the geometric design on the palm of the mitten. It’s quite mesmerizing.

I’ve got more wonkiness in my knitting going on with this pair than the previous pair. Maybe it’s just more visible because of the lighter background? But I have several stitches that lean in strange directions and places where the captured floats are quite visible. I keep taking deep breaths and reminding myself to trust in the miracle of blocking.

The second mitten features a jay or a cardinal in outline, and it takes up more of the mitten back. I’ll get it started on it soon.

Tonight was all about getting back to the Kerouac sweater. And messing it up. I did six rows of decreases across the middle of the back, counted, and found out I had one too many stitches. I patiently tinked those rows back, only to find that I’d started with one too many stitches. I’d messed up in the binding off a few weeks ago. I used a crochet hook to bind one more off at the edge. The gauge is small enough that I don’t think it will matter.

A Person Very Rarely Sees…

…a poem as lovely as 99 trees -- all covered in yarn.

Yesterday, our men’s knitting group (Ravelry Link) set up our contribution to Magda Sayeg’s art installation in the Blanton Art Museum’s courtyard entitled A Knitted Wonderland.

Now, I have to admit, right up front, that although I cringed and whined about the color spectrum that we were asked to use, I have to say that the effect is really quite stunning. If the color palette had been any less vibrant, I don’t think the effect would have been nearly as dramatic. It was amazing seeing all of these trees all gussied up in snuggly warm yarn. The range of techniques and ways of combining color were really quite amazing. Several groups included pockets, appliqued snake-like things and all manner of knitting and crochet stitch patterns. So I stand corrected – this really does look quite cool.

Doug and I got there around 4:30 and got to seaming our group’s contribution to Tree #65. I think that Guys in Austin with Yarn should be pleased with the job we all did. Ours was the penultimate tree at the northern end of the installation, really closer to both UT’s Jester Dorm and the Perry-Castañeda Library than the museum. The diagram to the left shows the area of the 99 trees, and the little yellow star shows where our tree is. In this position, we were uniquely positioned as unofficial spokesmodels for the installation, fielding questions from all the curious passersby. Several people commented on how the whole thing had a Dr. Seuss vibe. I have to agree. Magda came by at one point and told us how pleased she was that we had participated and what a great job we had done.

Doug was prepared, of course, armed with all the tools we needed for seaming our creation, plus a step-ladder. We came up with a plan for attaching the whole thing together and got cracking. It was a snug a fit in a few places, which was our plan. It only took a little over an hour of using crochet hooks to pull all the loose ends up through the selvedge edges and knotting strands together at the color changes to make sure that it all stayed put. I’m quite pleased with how it all turned out. All five of the guys who worked on this (plus Doug’s mom!) should be proud.

When we left, there were still a few trees that had yet to be bedecked. I’m going to try and get down there in the next few weeks to take some more pictures with something besides my phone. The pictures I’ve taken of this can all be found in my Knitted Wonderland Flickr set. It’s up until March 18th, so if you have a chance to check it out, do so.

Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up

Much like the weather around here lately, I grow weary of the grayness, and am yearning for a little color. Shocking, no?

I made great progress on the gray Kerouac sweater this week, finishing up to the armpits, and then the front left side. It was one of those patterns that has AT THE SAME TIME written several times, and many sizes with instructions written in parentheses – eg., bind off 1 (2,3,4,5,6) stitches 3 (0,2,5,6,7) times over the next 2(4,6,8,10,12) rows – that sort of thing. I had to map it out, and I’m still not entirely sure I got it right. But I made notes so that if I did screw up, I’ll be sure to screw up the other side in exactly the same way. Good thing,  too, because the instructions for the right front of the sweater are basically to do what you just did, only backwards.

Having made it this far, I just had to set this aside and work on something else. Normally  I’m pretty monogamous with projects, but I got an itch. I decided to turn to the next pattern in the Woodland Winter Mittens. I noticed this kit isn’t available at the Knit Picks website. Maybe they ran out of some of the colors? I’m tackling the February pattern this time around. It’s not one of my favorites, but I kind of wanted to get these first three done in the first three months of the yearn. It’s the librarian in me. I did start this in the last few days of February. So that counts, right? The back sides of these gloves feature two different birds. In the picture here, you can see some branches. I think the beginnings of the tail might be in the small checkerboard pattern on the right yellow (cornmeal) section.

The pattern that runs across the palms is quite nice. I almost like it better than the patterned section across the backs of the hands. I’ve managed to make it up to the third color change today, and the thumb stitches are already off the needles and waiting patiently on that pale blue scrap of yarn. There are some truly long floats in this pattern – I counted 19 stitches once -- so I’m doing a lot of catching of yarn as I go. I thought that the dark yarn behind the light would be more noticeable, but I think the light yarn shows more behind the dark. Also, I’m carrying the dark color (bittersweet heather) in my left hand to make the images and patterns pop.

Finally, some very good news, today! Little Henry, the boy for whom I made the Pileable Pups last month, has made his arrival. Welcome to the world, Henry! And congratulations to Kristin and Josh. That’s one kid that should never, ever be cold.