warm ankles = good

On dry days, like today, with clear skies and no clouds and sunshine, the air is so cold. Last night we dropped down near freezing. Cold. But I am determined not to turn on heat yet. Our old house has funny (original) electric radiant panel wall heaters, a separate unit in each room. We can efficiently warm up one room without unnecessarily heating the whole house, but I'm still trying to hold out. I've been putting the boy to sleep in two layers of pajamas (a good idea anyway, since he kicks the covers off, cold or not). I wore a sweatshirt to bed last night. And when the husband said it was too cold to sleep, I said, "put on some socks, man."

Our winters are mild here, so when I say it feels like winter out there, it's true. It does. Which means we need to dress accordingly. I wouldn't wear a parka in July. But I'm so glad to have these ankle-warmers around this October:

Say you're not the super-gifted knitty sort, or the very talented crafty kind, but you have all these short pants, and your ankles are always cold and oh! what to do? How about felt up a large wool sweater in the wash, cut off the sleeves, pull them up over your legs. Ta-da! I've done this with several sweaters now. Okay, so the very first one was an accident: I was attempting to make baby pants for the boy, you know, back when he was still a little baby and when I sewed them up, I screwed up the rise and fat babies in big cloth diapers + low rise pants = no worky, so my girl snagged them out of the scrap pile and wore them as her own legwarmers. So I guess what I'm saying is she discovered them and has been utilizing the idea for a few years and I just finally rolled around to it yesterday. It's a very good idea.