Here with the Wind

Now that winter is almost gone, I'm finally getting some pictures of the thermal gear I made for my family this winter. Here is the set I made for Adam. It uses the honeycomb stitch (I've also heard it called the "thermal stitch") which produces a double-layered fabric for extra insulation. This also provides better protection against the wind than standard knit or crochet. Have I mentioned how strong the wind gets here? I'll have to tell that story in a minute. The embellishment is double crochet through the front and back posts with a second layer of single crochet on the inside to keep the thermal and wind-blocking properties. The back of the muff is a double layer of single crochet through the back loop only, stitched in a circle around the edge of the front panel.

As for my South Dakota wind story: One afternoon, shortly after we moved here, we were coming out of Panera after lunch. The wind was blowing so hard, I actually had to press into it to walk. Adam was walking a few paces in front of me and our daughter was between us. Each time she picked her foot up to take another step I worried that the wind would just pick her up and blow her away like the queue of potential nannies in the movie version of Mary Poppins. I called out to Adam (several times before he heard me) to please take her hand and hold tightly. He turned his head slightly to take her hand and the wind whipped his glasses from his face. Like the iconic scene of a man chasing his hat, reaching down to retrieve it only to have the wind send it a few feet farther on, he had to follow his glasses across the parking lot, daughter in tow, before he was able to reclaim them. He set them back on the bridge of his nose and quipped, "And they call Chicago the Windy City!"