Rainfall Warning

If I'd known how often we were going to get Environment Canada rainfall warnings in Greater Vancouver this fall/winter I would have kept count - we're under yet another one.  Now I do realize that I live in a temperate rainforest, and that it is supposed to rain, a lot.  I'm okay with that, as a general principle, although I personally prefer snow (I usually don't broadcast that fact, but my readership isn't very wide yet, so maybe I'll get away with it!).  The trouble isn't so much that it's raining, but how much it has been raining at one time.  We've had single day rainfalls recently that rival a year's rainfall in places like California.  My main complaint is that during the heavy rainfalls of November my classroom developed a leak.  There's an exterior door in my room that lets in rainwater under the right conditions.  The water comes right in under the door and soaks into my carpet... my very aged carpet that smells rather unpleasant when it get soaked and then lies around for a while.  Every effort is being made to get this situation remedied, but in the meantime I wish it wouldn't rain quite so much!

In knitterly news - I did finally manage to cast on the first Monkey sock.  I ended up being pleased with the Channel Islands cast-on, which is stretchy yet decorative.  If you haven't tried it there are good instructions here, and there are many video demonstrations to be found on-line.  I got a bit of knitting done today during my lunchtime knitting club - the students are getting more proficient, so I now get to finish my lunch most days, and even knit a bit!  It's a lot of fun - the students really get into the knitting, and it's so great to see them wearing their own hand-knits at school.

Here are the last top-down socks I finished, and my first completed project of 2010:

This was the 34th pair of socks I've knit.  I like keeping track of such things - it's just the way my mind works!