Day 290 - Toasty

I sit here with my wool hat on and Nagano sweater, stubbornly refusing to turn on the heat on this chilly and wet fall night.  The house was a whopping 61 when I got home tonight.   Actually there is a fire in the fireplace and it has driven the temperature up several degrees in the last couple of hours. For a about an hour when I first got home, I was starting to wonder if I had lost my touch with fire starting. 

Any one who has every camped with me has learned that I have a true gift at being able get a fire going pretty much regardless of conditions.  I like to be warm. Fires keep you warm.  If you want to stay warm learn how to build and maintain (responsibly on all counts) a fire.  I even wrote a research paper in grade school on how fire works and what it takes to make it happen, complete with photos of arson fires.  It helped that my dad was a firefighter and knew who to ask to get me photos.  It's simple, you need heat, fuel and air.  Get it hot enough and almost anything will burn, even rain soaked firewood.  My problem was just that, it has been raining all day, and most of the firewood is really wet.  The house is cold, and I needed to get the starting fire hot enough, to ignite the wood and keep going.  Gotta love paraffin/tealights.  Almost anything will burn if you put hot wax on it. 

The heat doesn't get turned on around here until about November 1.  This will make 68 degrees seem really warm in the evening this winter. 

No, I'm in no danger of freezing.  I own plenty of wool, go figure, and a down comforter to sleep under.  I'll be fine.  And that heavy afghan I've been wanting to finish.  It's getting fairly large.  Well it's amazing how warm that puppy is to put in my lap while I work on it or even sit and read.  Any excuse to sit and knit.