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Showing posts from 2012

All Done

Last Tuesday, our little Princess graduated from UNLV a semester ahead of time.  This brings to a close our college years.  Three kids in, three kids out.  I'm so proud of all of them. We spent a couple of days in windy, cold Las Vegas and watched as our little girl received her degree along with about 2000 other people.  Yes, it was a long ceremony, but I had brought a little something to do, which worked fine as long as the lights were on and I didn't mess up.  After messing up, I put the sock back into my bag and did what everyone else was doing, sitting there.  Or texting someone. The sea of red in the large arena made it hard to take pictures with my little camera, but I got a couple recognizable ones. The entertaining speakers of the bunch were an undergraduate honoree and Guy Fieri, who received an honorary doctorate.  Guy, of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives fame, graduated from the same UNLV school of hospitality that the Princess attended.

If I Only Had More Hands

When the spam comments dry up, I figure it's time for a new blog post.  I've been home in Seattle for a couple of weeks and now I'm remembering why it's nicer to be in the desert at this time of year.  Rain, rain, rain....I know, it could be worse, but it's pretty gloomy. So this weather leads me to my activity of dreaming up projects to knit and spin and then trying to figure out how I can do all of them at the same time.  That leads to this: The WIP pile of doom.  Being on my own for awhile leads to my habit of spreading out various projects over the sectional in the basement and working on multiple things.  Tired of the sweater?  No problem, pick up the mitten...or the fingerless mitt...or the blanket...or the sock...or plan tomorrow's cast on of the stash-busting Color Affection Shawl...or print out a pattern for a hat that would make a nice gift.  Then spin for awhile with the handy miniSpinner that I can put right onto the sofa with me.  And I sti

A Tale of Two Hummingbirds

First of all, let me apologize for being in a place where the sun is shining and there's barely a breeze, let alone a hurricane.  I pray for everyone in the storm's path and sincerely hope that it passes quickly and the damage isn't too severe. That being said, I wanted to share what I was treated to today.  I was sitting out in our little courtyard, where we have a few potted plants and a hummingbird feeder.  DH has set up a twig along the wall and the little birds like to perch there to be ready to defend the feeder.  I noticed a little hummingbird sitting there.  Then another came along and sat down beside the first.  From the markings, I assume that the first bird was female and the second was male.  They looked around for a couple of minutes.  Then another bird approached.  The male flew up to chase it away, then returned to the perch.  This happened a few more times.  Then the male began to hover over the female in some sort of mating ritual? Dance to impre

Endless Summer

For those of you who are already in the thick of fall cold and storms, sorry.  For those of you who are enjoying extended fall colors and a nip in the air, I envy you. I left Seattle for the desert on October 9th.  We had had so much nice weather that the leaves hadn't changed yet and there hadn't been any rain or wind to knock the leaves off.  I was still cutting roses and picking grapes and raspberries.  I should have stayed a week longer, but who's to know? I arrived here to find temperatures in the high 90s and low 100s.  I wasn't impressed.  It was too darn hot! Just this week we've had morning temps in the high 50s and 60s and highs in the mid 80s.  Now we're talking.  Today is the first day that I think I won't demand AC on.  I shouldn't complain and I shouldn't say this out loud...but I want to see rain.  I'm sure when I get back home in mid November I'll see more than enough rain, so I'll just have to suck it up and enjoy thi

No End to the Bountiful Harvest

More plums (Italian prunes this time), raspberries, and one of the two kinds of grapes from the yard.  Will the harvest never end this year?  The cake is made with some of the plums and is ready for the oldest boy's birthday dinner tonight. The weather here in the Seattle area is unbelievably beautiful.  In fact, I'm thinking that a rainy day would be nice but the forecast just says sunny, sunny, sunny.  I think we must be in some parallel universe. In knitting news, I finished some socks.  These are basic, ribbed, self-striping socks with an afterthought heel.  The yarn is some I bought at the last Sock Summit from The Amy Lee Show .  I like the sparkle!

How I Spent My Saturday

It was an intimate luncheon for 3000 people with some special entertainment.  The fundraiser was for Jay Inslee, who will hopefully be the next Governor of Washington.  In addition to President Clinton, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell spoke and some other notable locals also took the stage.  Musical entertainment was by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.  All in all, a fun and interesting afternoon. Tomorrow I get to see Huey Lewis and the News at an outdoor concert at a local winery.  A busy weekend for this little old knitter.

It's Always Something

I did nicely at the fair this year and I went to pick up my entries on Tuesday.  Each entry is returned with the judge's report and that can be pretty helpful.  Sometimes they give comments that really explain what could have been done better and I like it when they do that. Both of my shawls won blue ribbons and also best presentation ribbons that are "awarded at the judge's discretion to items of most lovely and eye catching appearance."  Cool!  I never actually thought about what I might do with my Pi shawl but I folded it in half and tried it on yesterday and it sits nicely on my shoulders.  Might be wearable on occasion.  Side note:  I like knitting shawls but rarely wear them.  Anyone else do that? This was the Gull Wings pattern in the Elizabeth Zimmermann anniversary shawl series by Mwaa Knit. The other shawl I entered was my Stephen West mystery knit Earth and Sky .  I mentioned before that I just grabbed this at the last minute to enter because

What's With All the Plums?

We have some dwarf fruit trees in our yard and they usually have a moderate amount of fruit on them.  The cherry tree - birds eat them all; the pear tree - a few small pears that don't get ripe; the apple tree - if I don't put little socks on the apples they usually have apple maggots; the yellow plums - there's usually quite a few of those but they're small and don't get much attention; the little old Italian Prune tree - I love these and pick and eat as many as I can.  This year?  Lots of everything.  I've brought in some pears to try to ripen them up and picked some apples to see what shape they're in.  The Italian prunes aren't quite ripe, but it looks like I'll get some. The yellow plums are amazing.  There are so many plums on this little tree I don't know how it stands up.  I've been picking them and giving them away for a couple of weeks and today it still looked like no one had picked any.  So I found a local food bank to give a bu

Cast On Frenzy and Fair

The Evergreen State Fair started yesterday here in Washington.  For the past few years (2 or 3?) I have entered knitting and spinning into the needle arts competition.  I love to go and look at everyone's work and it's cool to win ribbons, too.  Even though it's a point system like school (90% is blue ribbon, 80% is red, etc., so there might be a bunch of blue ribbons in your category) it's still very fun to see your work adorned with ribbons.  However, it's best to see your work adorned with "special" ribbons - the big, colorful rosettes - and I only have one of them, for "presentation".  And I don't know what that really means. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I drove out to the fairgrounds to turn in my entries.  I entered a Pi shawl made from Wollmeise lace and my Earth and Sky shawl, also made from Wollmeise, into the knitting category.  My plan always is to enter my sock yarn blanket and really wow them (big rosette, yeah!) but somehow

Recovering

I know I've been MIA these last two months. and I'll have a lot to catch up on at some point.  Aside from the Tour de Fleece, which I participated in and spun every day during, my attention has been taken up with the wedding of the Princess.  Yes, my little girl was married last Sunday, July 29th.  It was a spectacular event down to the smallest detail and was amazingly beautiful and fun.  My introverted personality was tested as I had a houseful of people for ten days, hosted a rehearsal dinner for 40 or so people, and then hosted the wedding.  I was lucky enough to have great help and was able to enjoy myself all the way through to the "after party" planned by one of the bridesmaids that continued after the wedding at our house into the wee hours with many young people and a big bottle of tequila.  Who says knitters don't know how to have fun? Professional photos aren't available yet but a few of the kids have provided iPhone photos.  You can get an idea o