by Kat | Nov 23, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
In life, as in knitting, don’t leave loose ends. Take the time to thank the people who matter in your life. — Reba Linker, Follow The Yarn
Welcome to the craziest Wednesday of the entire year… Thanksgiving Eve Day. If you have not begun T-day Prep, I am sorry because that means today is really crunch time for you!
As for me… I have just one pumpkin pie to make today. I am cheating on the pie crust and using a frozen one. I also need to toast up the bread cubes for tomorrow, but I can do that while I pre-bake my crust!
The Other Big Task for today is to get our lights up!
But before all that let me Unravel some Gratitude for you all!
- I am deeply grateful for those knits that require no counting, no charts to read, no increases or decreases. Just simple knitting that you can pick up and put down at a
moments timer’s notice. My Pressed Flowers Wrap is really the PERFECT Thanksgiving Week knit! I can even stop in the middle of a row and not get confused about ‘where I am’!
- This week has had a good bit of prep-time in the kitchen and all that time spent with an excellent audiobook is such a blessing! I have invited Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to join my feast preparations and they are the perfect companions! (Of course, Sherman beats them both because he is the Superior Tidbit Snarfler although they do make the wash up much less tedious!)
- Finally… and to circle back to the quote above…I wanted to take a moment to express my deep gratitude for each of you… readers, bloggers, makers, and this week… feast preparers! You make this community one that feels close, caring, supportive, encouraging, and inspiring. Without you all, my life would be lacking so very much. Thank you all for taking the time to read this blog, for sharing your thoughts, for giving me ideas for new books to read and new things to make… and for helping this Blog-community be the loveliest corner of the internet!
And with that, I want to wish you all the most blessed Thanksgiving. I will be back tomorrow with some Gratitude of Abundance.
If you wrote a post to share, please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Nov 22, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Today’s things I am grateful for are things I have absolutely no control over, but that does not mean I feel less gratitude about them!
Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart. ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
- This weeks weather…there has been an abundance of sunshine and more for today and tomorrow! And!! The mild(er) temps to accompany the sunshine. I am doubly grateful because these things (sunshine and milder temps) will make putting out the lights much easier!
- Speaking of lights, it was an absolute joy to watch my neighbors grown grandchildren come and put out their Christmas lights! They were as delighted to do this task as their grandparents had watching them do it! Bonus gratitude, seeing those twinkling lights lit up last night!
- And my final out-of-my-control thing I am grateful for is that Steve is working from home all week. (Reason why? Well, they had a bit of a COVID Super Spreader Event at his office and so… back to work from home!) No, I am not grateful that people are sick… but I am grateful that Steve is, thus far, not sick and home!
There you have it… three things I am grateful for that are entirely out of my control! What about you? How do you look at those things you can’t control?
See you tomorrow with some Unraveled Gratitude!
by Kat | Nov 21, 2022 | General, In This Moment
is for contemplating Gratitude!
Kym has invited and I will happily join in!
My plan? To post three things I am grateful for every day this week.
And before you ask….Yes, Unraveled Wednesday will be here… but a gratitude edition! (I mean how can one not be thankful that they are a maker and a reader?!)
Things I am grateful for today:
- My improving painting skills and finding a creative outlet that both challenges and inspires me!
- Sherman… every single day! But especially this week as he is my constant kitchen companion!
- Poetry… which I cannot imagine not being part of my day… any day. But most certainly a week that we focus on gratitude!
And with that, I am going to begin the housework portion of my day… with a grateful heart. Happy Monday All!
by Kat | Nov 17, 2022 | General, Poetry
It seems impossible that it is already the third Thursday of the month… and yet it is. And I have a poem to share with you all today (plus one to listen to, if you so desire!) I had originally imagined that I would find something to share from the stack of poetry books on my desk. I am working my way through Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind – again. And loving it more than the first time I read it! I am also reading a poem or two from Wendell Berry’s The Peach of Wild Things…which for me is Poetry Meditation.
I had a lovely list of poems to choose from, but then I discovered Carter Revard and I then knew that he would be the perfect poet for November. I have listened to this episode of Poetry For All multiple times… Revard’s poem What the Eagle Fan Says is so beautiful. And so I began the search for Carter Revard poetry… I first started here (which has not been updated, Mr. Revard died in January) and I was surprised that so little of his poetry was posted anywhere online.
No worries, because my library has one of his books and I picked it up this week. And so I began reading… beautiful poetry intertwined with equally beautiful stories. He was a Rhodes Scholar and I especially love his poems from his time at Oxford. The poem I am sharing today is from that time period… this is a poem that will linger with me long after I have read it. And though, I have never been to the Isle of Sky, Mr. Revard makes me feel like I have.
October, Isle of Skye
by Carter Revard
Wading up Brunigill’s rush
for a long time is a question
of where to place each boot
on a rock that will hold, advance,
of not slipping on moss-slime’s
green blackness under the swashing
of water past boots—
then eyes raise to a pool
too golden-deep for boots,
and before climbing around it, pause
and stretch and look down through
the amber lucence where
slow gold-lit ripplings touch
white crystals in rockbed,
till a rowan-berry comes bobbing,
red-round and lightly,
to ride through the pool—
then boots go up over sheep-paths
to the heathery ridge and
a bumblebee knee-brushed from
purple paper-firm bells
drops wet and stunned,
chill mist on her wings,
tumbles in browning blossoms
and on her back caught
in the jungle of heather her front legs
rise drowned and waking, hook
slowly a heather-twig, pull
the fur-body up as antennae wag
through green and amber sensing
late pollen, nectar
for bee-bread in burrows—
and light changes dazzling
in downstream mist,
blue brilliance,
cloudrush,
soft greyblue
sunfilled,
while newlit water
birdshrills and gurgles,
and down again climbing
bootplace by bootplace
to the stream and
its rowanberry raft
by moss-edge of pool—
that from scarlet seed
over amber movement
a green tree may sway.
October, Isle of Skye by Carter Revard from An Eagle Nation, published by The University of Arizona Press © 1993
I want to thank Bonny for providing the space for us to share our poems! And we’d love for you to join us if you have a poem to share…and I hope you do!
See you all back here on Monday!
by Kat | Nov 16, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
**If you want to listen, click the text above**
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try a yarn just fights you every stitch of the way. This is the story of such a yarn…I spun this really gorgeous, buttery soft fiber. I worked hard at consistency… and it is beautifully consistent. I paid attention when plying so that my twist would be the same throughout the skein… a better than usual achievement! And I had dreams to knit this yarn into a sweater because I had spun more.than.enough to knit a sweater.
But the thing I absolutely hate is yarn pooling… handspun striping, I don’t mind… but this yarn was pooling at every gauge I tried… in other words… it was not going to work by itself in a sweater. Sigh.
Some months ago (and by some I mean more than a year ago) I drew up a sketch of Pressed Flowers as a rectangle rather than a triangle that I would not wear as often. I even swatched a bit… but my colors did not inspire me. Meanwhile, a brilliant knitter knit one rather quickly. But even with that inspiration, I procrastinated long enough to forget all about it.
Until I had a dream one night a couple of weeks ago. I had vision of Handspun Yarn dancing in my head… holding hands with the yarn from this failed sweater and I sat bolt upright in bed! Okay…I did not actually sit upright, but I did grab my iPad and open a note and write down what I dreamed about for fear I would forget come morning!
Last week I began the swatching process again with that handspun yarn and the failed sweater yarn.
And my dream? A nightmare.
They both would be GREAT in a Pressed Flowers wrap… just not together. So I frogged the swatch and thought about what that handspun yarn needed to shine. And wouldn’t you know… the yarn I had originally planned to use as the “background” yarn was PERFECT for the handspun yarn. I knit another swatch, measured my gauge, did some knitter maths, and cast on while the excitement was high!
And I am so in love! Deeply… profoundly… just knit one more repeat… okay, I promise to stop after this next repeat love! Kirsten Kapur knit 1/3 of her wrap in the close patterning before switching over to the wider apart pattern…but my plan is a bit different. I want each end to have a border… one side a little deeper than the other. And so I knit… happily… gleefully… the knitting that dreams are made of!
…who am I to disagree. — The Eurythmics
Details: My gauge in pattern: Stitches 21 = 4″ and I wanted the wrap to be about 20″ wide so I cast on 107 stitches. I used the German twisted cast on (because it gives a nice edge to garter stitch) and then knit three rows. And then began the mosaic patterning… getting started took a bit of attention! I made some mistakes and had to do some negative knitting (thanks Jane for this AWESOME term!) to get back on track, but soon the patterning becomes intuitive… just one step up from mindless knitting. And ZERO pooling is happening! Woo!
How about a bit of my reading this week…I continue to be immersed in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Susanna Clarke is a master story-teller! I really love her writing style – which is a good thing because this is a LONG listen… 32+ hours! I am roughly 12 hours in with miles to go and I think I will be sad for this book to end!
At night I am *almost done* (I will be done by the time you read this post!) with Mouth to Mouth. This book… goodness. It is making me think about so many things! It is curious, a book with few redeeming characters, and yet I can’t stop reading it! I want it done though because I have The Marriage Portrait waiting in the wings!
I also picked up a fun stack of books from the library this week. Stay tuned tomorrow when I share a poem from Carter Revard… it is fitting I share something from an Osage poet for Native American Heritage Month! I hope you will enjoy my selection!
That is all I have for today… The next repeat is calling! What about you? Are you dreaming about knitting!?
As always, if you wrote a post to share, please leave your link below and thank you!
