Monday Miscellany

Bits and Bobs that have built up.

1. Jeanne and Lisa spotted with their sharp eyes the little brown blob in the back of Carny the Goldfish‘s bowl.  Yes — my husband (the pet-scoffer) actually BOUGHT a pet, but only as a live cleaner for Carny’s bowl.  So it’s really an accoutrement instead of for its own sake.  Apparently it’s a plecostomus catfish (algae-eater).  It was dubbed “Typhoon” after a ride at Oktoberfest.
2. Unfortunately, Carny bit the dust sometime today.  So Typhoon is alone now with his algae.
3. There are a lot of orange pets I had forgotten about, that you guys think I should have.
4. I have been knitting stealth things and working on a third stealth project/pattern.  Besides working all weekend and into the evenings.  So I have little to show you.  I can perhaps show you one semi-stealth project tomorrow, since the recipient doesn’t read my blog that I’m aware of, if I get home during daylight.
5. Thank you for all the nice words about the Pioneer Braid Scarf!  And the coreopsis (which indeed are blooming away, Nora, though the echinacea are gone).
6. The Yarn Guide for colorwork, to carry two colors (or more) over the left finger, which I showed you in the last post, is not working for me at the moment.  I could use it, but it required some left thumb manipulation to position between one color and the other, which my thumb complained about.  So not in the cards right now.  We’ll try again some other time.
7. It was a gorgeous weekend.  After work Saturday, I went to Ewetopia Fiber Shop in Viroqua to pick up some Louet yarn which Kathryn, the owner, had kindly ordered in for me, and also some other local yarn may have followed me home.   The local yarn may be earmarked to see the world, or at least New York. . . . On the way home, I had time to take some gorgeous Saturday Sky/Coulee Region pictures.  I was a little bummed going there that no one could come with me, but at least that meant I could stop the car and get out and take a picture any time I wanted. Here’s a sampling:

Lastly, in the midst of all this beauty: life sucks, and sucks big sometimes.  I have nothing to complain about, but some of my friends are hurting.  May they get through hard times as gently as possible under the very difficult circumstances.  And may they find moments of peace and beauty even in the middle of pain.

Prickly yet Philosophical Eye Candy Friday

Prickly but pretty. Kind of like my Preteen.

I was trying to find a Scottish connection today as an excuse to post a thistle picture. I did find that, 405 years ago today, King James VI of Scotland was crowned the first king of Great Britain. You’ll have to make do with that.

More pertinent to me, but unrelated to thistles, I found out in researching the previous factoid, that exactly 30 years ago today, Louise Brown was born. The first in vitro fertilization baby! (She’s now had a baby of her own — fortunately, without needing extra assistance.)

And also more pertinent to me, unrelated to IVF or Scotland, but tangentially related to thistles:

I saw the first ragweed pollen show up in the daily pollen counts I get in my email inbox. Dang. Here we go.

Why can’t we train these guys to preferentially pick up ragweed pollen and take it home? It would be a win-win situation.

Sign from Above? One Hopes Not.

While out and about in the neighborhood, I spotted this sign.

If this were my church, which it’s not, I would gently suggest changing the sign. I know what the intent is, but the mental imagery is — unfortunate.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

While in Minneapolis the other weekend, I saw these actual street signs:

What to do?  I’m so confused!

Easter Sunday musings

Things I didn’t think I’d ever see or hear:

• Our pastor playing euphonium at Easter Sunday services today (not in the usual job description; brass emergency, apparently?)
• Our esteemed choir director saying, when rehearsal time ran out early this morning, “I guess we’ll just have to wing ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’!” umm, which we did.
• This on my doorstep: I believe it has something to do with Yarn Passover.

When I came back from church the other day, this piece of yarn was on my threshold. Is this simply marking the house of a knitter, or will this protect me from the forthcoming yarn famine?

Message From My Candy Bar

Good. Because I already did.

Driven to Chocotherapy by another cloudy Saturday Sky:

and Sunday also, though both days we had actual sunshine at dawn, which was obscured by clouds within an hour.

However, it was warm, which has led to a reduction in the snow piles:

(poor little Japanese maple!)

(but look, signs of thawing! Again!)

And then it rained Sunday afternoon, pretty hard, then a touch of icy snow overnight, thus interesting driving this morning, not to mention frozen car doors.

Yep, signs of spring in Wisconsin!

I’d rather have robins or crocuses, personally, but I know those will come.  Soon.  Very Soon. 

An Attitude of Gratitude

I am so very thankful.

I am thankful that my mother is doing very well so far, recovering from her surgery. (She and I feel that any surgery where you don’t vomit has a head start on being a good surgery, for one thing.)  (ETA: Ooops, spoke too soon!  Fine now, though.)

I am thankful that I have such wonderful friends, face-to-face and the blogosphere, new and old, “silver and gold”, as the Girl Scout song has it.

I am thankful that I will see two of those new friends in person tonight — Wound Too Tight Deb and Kmkat. (I’ll be the one with the Dream In Color Smooshy yarn to hand over, but I promise, Trinity the corn snake is staying at home. Besides, I doubt mice are on the menu at the restaurant. At least, I certainly hope not!) In the never-to-be-forgotten words of The Preteen when she was two (there’s something strange about that sentence): these are two “friends I haven’t met yet”!

I am thankful that I will be seeing another blog friend tomorrow, whom I HAVE met and bonded with immediately, another Deb, Wollmeise-enabler and generosity itself. (If you’re coming to the Knit Out & Crochet 2008, ask her to fix your knitting — she’s a knitting doctor Saturday from 11 – 1!) And I may see more Twin Cities knitters (well, I’m sure I’ll see more TC knitters, I mean, more that I know!) tomorrow, too, who knows?

I am especially thankful that tomorrow I will also be seeing my wonderful aunt Kathi, who probably made me my first hand-knit or -crocheted gift ever (well, she was perhaps competing with my grandma and her sister, but I still have the sweater she made me in high school, among other precious handmade objects). She was laughing the other day about how the yarn companies are making all these techniques seem like they’re brand new, when she was doing them many years ago. Well, they have to sell yarn somehow, I guess! I don’t get up to Minneapolis/St. Paul much these days since having children, and having a job where I work a lot of weekends, so I don’t see my extended family nearly as much as I would like. And along those same lines, I will also be seeing my big brother Sunday (whoops, better get a move on, on those Printed Circuitboard mitts; if you see me Saturday, I will probably have a green and gold project in my hand!).

I am thankful for sunrises

and sunsets

and all the other beautiful accidental moments in our life that make us (it is to be hoped) pause — and wonder. For example, the two photos above are not the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I’ve photographed: they just happened to be last night’s sunset as seen from my front porch, and sunrise of the day before yesterday, as seen from my back yard, on the way to my car.  Ambushed by beauty at every turn, sometimes, we are, if we just see it.

I am thankful that I have this blog to share with you all, and that I make Nora’s day! (Right back atcha, babe!) Nora and I are turning out to have an amazing amount in common, even if I was not a dedicated follower of fashion as much as she was.

And I am thankful that I have all YOUR blogs to read!! I’m sorry that the blogroll on my blog is so woefully out of date (like from the second month I had my blog!). (It’s not the only thing that’s out of date; I have completed some FOs in 2008, but you wouldn’t know it from the pages, sigh.) Anyway; LOTS of you make my day, including everyone I’ve already mentioned above, plus Stephanie, Norma, Lisa, Lisa, Vicki, Beth, Chris, Franklin, my Doppelganger Laurie, Susan, Wendy, Ann&Kay, Dale-Harriet, & Sarah-Hope — and many more. I’m not going to put you all on the spot to name 10 more bloggers, but rest assured that you are an awesome bunch, and I love reading what you write. Thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And — wait for it, here’s one of the secrets I’ve been hugging to myself, selfishly – I am extra specially, somewhat guiltily, thankful that in mid-April I will be flying to the Pacific Northwest, to Orcas Island, Washington, where I will be attending Blue Moon Fiber Arts Camp Crow’s Feet Sock Camp!!

Here’s what Cat Bordhi’s saying about it:

April 14-18, 2008, Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sock Camp – “Camp Crow’s Feet”, on Orcas Island, Washington
Details of this event are still being developed, but if it is anything like what happened last year, well, coherent words escape me. Underwater knitting contests, campfires, a whale-watching voyage, not to speak of more impassioned sock-knitters and beautiful yarn gathered in one spot than perhaps ever before . . . anyway, this year I am going to knit with my hands underwater the whole time so I don’t get disqualified. For more information, visit bluemoonfiberarts.com.

and here’s what Stephanie Pearl-McPhee had to say about it last year, here and here.

Even though I’m not really a sock knitter — my main qualification is that I just love sock yarn — they still let me in. (Shhh, don’t tell!)

Two months! How can I wait?!

By reminding myself of how much I have to be thankful for, I guess!

And I guess I’m thankful that even with Leap Day, that February is still the shortest month of the year. Half over!

Even if March is the snowiest month around here.

Distraction

I bet you didn’t even notice the lack of (visible) knitting yesterday.

Right?

And I bet, if I show you a snake, you won’t notice the lack of knitting today.

Hey, look over here, what’s that? A snake?!

Poor Trinity the corn snake is about to shed. I’m finally getting to the point (as a relative neophyte snake owner) where I don’t think she’s dead any more when she’s at this stage. But I’m always happy when she’s done.  (And she looks so pretty afterwards.)  Before the shed, she lays around, doesn’t move except for absolute necessity, looks dull and lifeless — Hey!  That’s like me today!

I went home from work early — skipped meetings — because I’m still woozy, and my brain isn’t working right.  Wish I could shed and be a brand new me soon.

She should be a vibrant new Trinity by the end of the weekend, for sure.  She’ll feel so much better, I imagine.   How not, to get that constricting, too-small skin off and be bright and colorful and lithe again?

Seems like a metaphor for Spring.  We need to get our parkas off and let our skins breathe.  It’ll be a while yet.  But the days are getting longer, and though the snow keeps piling up (it’s already snowing right now in the Twin Cities and heading here, with conflicting predictions about the total amount of snowfall), it’s still only a little over a month until the spring equinox.  I’m greedy for more sunlight, at least, and to see my first crocuses next month.

Trinity, you go ahead.  I’m hoping to be right behind you, getting that old winter skin off.

Happy Face

I didn’t catch it swinging by, but here’s the Happy Face ball hanging from the crane at work, here in the 5 minutes of sunshine we had today after it snowed and before it clouded up again:

Isn’t it cute? And happy?

I can’t think the construction workers were overly happy pouring concrete today, but at least it’s over zero F.

My husband, who was a cement mason in one of his many former lives, says that concrete poured when it’s cold generates its own heat as it cures, and is some of the strongest concrete around, as the crystalline structure is very fine.  Concrete poured when it’s hot cures too fast.  That’s what he says.

Me?  I don’t understand how my car can freeze to the ground while I’m at work.

(Needless to say, the door was frozen shut too.) But I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. Saturn is a frozen planet, after all…

(Groan!)

On that note, off I slink to do some more stealthy knitting, Gypsy Cold Care Tea in hand (just a touch of a virus, but it’s making me feel woozy). [Anyone else see the Veggie Tales videos? B.C., before children, I don't think anyone could have convinced me I would willingly watch musical videos about an animated tomato, cucumber and assorted other produce that retold Bible tales. But Veggie Tales are very good. One of their songs ("Pirates...") even has St. Paul in it. Anyway, if you have, every time I hear/say/type 'woozy', it makes me think of the French peas typing, as they declare they "air getTING a leetle wooZEE" in their Monty Pythonesque French accent. That's me. Well, this French pea is going to bed.  À demain!]

Happy New Year!

Here’s wishing you and yours

A Happy New Year.

May 2008 find you happy and healthy, surrounded by friends and family.

(And maybe surrounded by some nice yarn too.)