by Kat | May 6, 2022 | General, In This Moment
When April steps aside for May, like diamonds all the rain-drops glisten; fresh violets open every day; to some new bird each hour we listen. ― Lucy Larcom
I thought this quote was fitting, especially for the weekend weather forecast Pittsburgh has… lots and lots and lots of rain-drops. I am not complaining because with the weather we have had, it could as easily be snow (which I would be complaining about!)
However, it is May and that means Macro May! This month I am going to play a bit with my iPhone and see what I can learn. Of course, Apple had an article that was both inspiring and overwhelming. I think I need to get my tripod out..lol. Good thing I nabbed that photo last night, this morning that blown dandelion is just a stalk.
A bit of a sofa update for you all… yes, I have a chair to sit on. No, the sofa issue has not been solved (i.e. no new sofa, no new parts, no repaired light post…) And yes, I am almost a raving lunatic at this point in time…But!! Steve fixed the storm door… so there is that.
This is not really a find… but perhaps a reminder… many of us (myself included) have put off things during the pandemic but one thing you should NOT put off is a colonoscopy. I called this week to schedule mine (I am now on the 5-year plan because my family history has a vibrant thread of colon cancer running through it… sigh) I think this colonoscopy will be the 5th one I have had (my first was at 30) and it amazes me that not much has changed since then… at least not that I have noticed. I confess I am not eager for that evening with a gallon jug of NyLYTELY, however I don’t need to worry about it until August. I chuckled at the scheduler who said she would update me on the COVID protocol closer to the date (as if COVID might not be a thing 3 months from now, lol)
Now how about a find or two?
First, I wanted to share a new podcast I discovered thanks to Ada Limón…As She Rises. This is from the podcast description:
“As She Rises is …from Wonder Media Network. It brings together poems from artists throughout the US and territories that depict the effects of climate change on their home and their people. Each episode carries the listener to a new place through a collection of voices, local recordings and soundscapes. Stories span from the Louisiana Bayou, to the silent tundras of Alaska to the receding coastlines of Puerto Rico. Centering native voices and women of color, As She Rises personalizes the elusive magnitude of climate change.“
I listened to season two while in Erie and it was really amazing. The poet reads their poem then there is a bit of a discussion with the hostess, Amanda Frances, that was both interesting and enlightening. I thought you all might enjoy listening to some beautiful poetry and a bit of a discussion on climate change with the poet. I have queued up season one to listen to this week!
Finally, it is #MeMadeMay which for me is really #MeMadeEveryDay! Yes, that is right, I have arrived at the point in my life where almost my entire wardrobe has been made by me. (Jeans and under garments are the only not-me-made items left in my wardrobe) I have been so inspired by the #MeMadeMay2022 thread on IG… it is my one guilty pleasure for the month! And, yes… I will be doing some sewing in May! Kym has inspired me to sit down and sew some knits!
There you go, Gentle Readers… have a great weekend! See you back here on Monday!
by Kat | May 4, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
I wish I could be perky and cheerful today… but I am not. The leaked news this week was a gut punch… although I was expecting that very outcome, reading the leaked brief made it a reality that I don’t want to accept. In my life, I never imagined that I would lose rights… and it is just so damned wrong and it makes me mad as hell that the SCOTUS and the GOP believe women are not capable of making their own decisions about their own bodies. It feels very… dystopian … and so effing wrong…sigh.
Anyways, I did finish last month’s Gnome and I thought I should show Bonny that her arms are now attached!! Meet Gnorwen! I made one last year for Steve’s mom and I really liked her so I am thrilled now to have my own Gnorwen sitting on my mantle now. I do not have plans to make ice cream cones for her to hold… rather I think she is perfect as she is! (although, to be completely honest, I am contemplating knitting a tiny uterus for her to hold)
Apparently a bit of angst is apparently good for knitting… because I am one very short sleeve away from a finished Tegna! Woo! I should have the stitches picked up today and a completed sweater shortly after that! I need to weave the ends in and give it a nice bath and then I am ready for summer! (now if spring would just stay here! ha!)
On the reading front, things are moving slowly. I am still making my way through The Books of Jacob. I have about 200 pages to go and I really don’t want it to end! I did have one finish this week… I raced through another Allon book… they are hard to put down!
The Other Woman by Daniel Silva
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Whatever hiccup happened in book #17, The Other Woman is back on track. It was full of intrigue…someone’s service has a mole and people are paying with their lives.
It is fast paced and Allon is back in excellent form!
I highly recommend this series!
That is all I have today, what about you? What are you lingering over?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | May 2, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Greetings!
In the Weekend From Hell Category, I (we?) scored a ten. Although perhaps that should be a negative ten…because hell. Ha!
We have “been on the lookout” for a sofa for some time now….but most sofa’s are too big for our living room. So when we discovered the perfect sized sofa while in Erie last month. Steve did some research and found that.exact.sofa. at Wayfair.
- Right size: check
- Right color: check (the requisite grey…don’t ask)
- And the right price: check… it was on sale…although perhaps the on sale bit should have given us a heads up but I digress
The perfect sofa! And we knew it was comfortable having “test-seated” it for 10 days! We ordered it! (mistake #1…)
I no longer thought about said sofa until Steve got an email letting us know delivery would be Saturday… and as the week progressed, they refined that time to “10am-2pm” on Saturday. Then came a most reassuring email… I suppose… of their “strict COVID policy for No Contact Deliveries” The email had a list of things that we must do to “keep their employees safe”…things like Masking, Distancing, etc.
And so on Friday we disassembled our old sofa… yep, disassembled and removed from the house. (in hindsight, this was our second big mistake…)
Saturday… I’d truly like a do-over please! Heck, I’d like an entire weekend rewind… sigh! LOL Anyways, that 10-2 delivery window soon became 12-4pm… and 4 pm came and went with no hint of a delivery and by this time Steve was off the charts angry… and I am just keeping my mouth shut in our now sofa-less living room.
When the delivery people (boys? Seriously, I wonder if either of them were old enough to drive) finally arrived after 7PM… maskless, by the way… they wrangled 2 boxes from their truck and in the wrangling, they rolled the largest box into our front light post. The angle of it this morning is most lovely… really… if you live in the Crooked House, on the Crooked Lane! And before they were done, they had broken our front storm door… So now we have a Crooked Light and a Broken Storm Door!
And in case you are thinking that… whew… at least you have a damned sofa to sit on. Well, that might be right if those boxes had contained the correct back pieces to attach to said sofa.
And Customer Service closed at 8PM on Saturday (because, of course it did!) and Sunday’s Customer Service was… well… exactly like the sofa they delivered…it was missing the important parts (like actual customer service!)
The moral of the story is if you buy a sofa on the internet, you may need a new light, a new door, and perhaps another sofa.
Happy Monday from my Sofa-less Corner of the World!
P.S. The photo has nothing to do with a sofa and everything to do with a lovely little African Violet I got from TJ’s last week…a bright spot for any Monday!
P.P.S. I am thinking Wayfair’s new jingle should be “you don’t got what I need.”
by Kat | Apr 29, 2022 | General, Looking Back
As I shared on Monday, I did not take my usual number of photos on this visit to Presque Isle in Erie.
But the lack of images does not diminish the memories…at all. Rather, I think, the lack of photos has sharpened my memories because I spent my time looking all around me, not through the lens of my iPhone.
We stayed at a new Airbnb… and it was a big improvement! Cleaner…updated…with all appliances in working order! Ha! I know, but having a working oven was nice… it meant I could make a frozen pizza…and at the end of a long day of walking around Presque Isle it made for a easy-peasy dinner. It was lovely…and in the back yard was a cemetery. We even had a couple of sunset views from the back yard!
Last June marked the centennial of Presque Isle State Park and it was so much fun to see the gallery of images from the last 100 years at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center. We were fortunate to visit on a day with little traffic and a park ranger spent some time talking with us…and I learned something I did not know! In 1966 there was a UFO *and alien* sighting at Presque Isle… and the U.S. Air Force investigators came to…well investigate. The ranger said it was perhaps the most curious bit of history connected with the park. Of course I took a picture and sent it off to Sam (Sam and I have a running Alien Dialog) and he thought perhaps the aliens might have been gathering water, lol! But maybe that is why Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes! Haha!
UFO and alien sighting…oh my!
We spent the better portion of a day hiking out and back from Gull Point. It is still a sanctuary for shore birds and terns and it is a trek, the downed trees make the going… challenging… but once you get out to the point it is just spectacular. We were a bit early for Piping Plovers, Ruddy Turnstones, and Sanderlings. But we saw Caspian Terns, Fosters Terns, Common Terns, and – of course – lots of those raucous Killdeers!
Over the course of the 9 days we were there, I saw 19 new birds… it was really kind of awesome. And really thanks to the Merlin App, hearing a new bird… and then knowing what to look for helped me to find them more easily in the trees, which were thankfully still bare! Perhaps the best birding though was all the Osprey watching! There are two nesting pairs on the peninsula this year and we saw them almost every day. We even saw them fishing, which was truly spectacular to see! If you have never seen an Osprey fishing, once they have caught the fish they position the the fish head first… streamlining it to make flying easier! It is a fun sight to watch and they are really such magnificent birds!
The weather was cold (and so windy) but I am not upset by that at all. We took advantage of the colder weather to hike in the woods almost without fear of deer ticks…most days it was chilly with a brisk wind (thank goodness for hand knits! ha!) and we hiked so many new areas. A fun trek was the historic trail from the lighthouse to the bay – about 2.5 miles long round trip – and it has a lovely but narrow sidewalk. It was the way the lighthouse keeper and his family got from the lighthouse to the bay where there was a ferry to Erie. The trail now runs along a pond which I am not certain was there when the sidewalk was built but it was one of our easier days of trekking! For such a small space, okay 3,200 acres really isn’t that small, but the terrain is so diverse and we still have not seen all of it! After reading Gathering Moss, I was amazed at how much moss and lichen we saw…everywhere! We also saw lots of evidence of beavers, but never saw one though I looked for them fervently! We were not sure what happened to all the birch trees, but over the winter they all have lost their branches. It was really quite eerie to see.
But perhaps the best thing of all about Presque Isle is what it does to time…it makes it stand still. Really. We would look at our watches and be shocked at how much time had passed although the hours spent there coupled with all the miles we walked say we spent a good chunk of each day there!
Dramatic skies, wild winds, and a spectacular place to wander in made for the best get away. If you live in Western PA… you should head to Erie and visit Presque Isle. It does not disappoint!
On my way to Gull Point!
I hope you enjoyed my brief but spectacular vacation. Have a great weekend and I will see you all back here on Monday!
by Kat | Apr 28, 2022 | General, Poetry
Today is one of my favorite days…it’s Poem In Your Pocket Day!
It’s a day to carry a poem with you… and perhaps you will even then invite poetry into the remaining days of the year.
I debated about what poem should I share this month. I contemplated Joyce Kilmer’s Tree’s or Carl Sandburg’s Fog… poems that my grandfather loved deeply. I also considered one of the many poems by Derek Walcott. So many choices. Really. There are literally hundreds of poems one could pick to put in your pocket today and not one a bad choice!
But earlier this month I heard a poem by Jane Kenyon and it has stayed with me. I have thought about her words almost daily, and have since printed it out and put in my journal. I have contemplated the words as I began my April chores in the garden – and especially when I saw those rhubarb leaves as they thought their way up through the soil… a certain sign of spring.
I think this poem will fit well in your pocket… enjoy!
April Chores
by Jane Kenyon
When I take the chilly tools
from the shed’s darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.
The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.
Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
Jane Kenyon, “April Chores” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon.
Please make sure you stop and visit Kym, Bonny, and Sarah today to see what they have for you to tuck into your pocket as well. I cannot thing of a better thing to fill your pockets with than a handful of poems!
Thank you all so much for reading along with this month… and especially I’d like to thank Kym for including me!
See you all here tomorrow!
by Kat | Apr 27, 2022 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
I did practically no knitting on vacation, although I took two projects…sigh.
But!! I came home to find three blooms on the new lilac shoots that have sprung up from the dying bush Steve trimmed back last fall. (I began the discussion of digging the lilac bush out, but have made no headway… yet, lol) I brought those three blooms inside for me to enjoy…and I wish you could experience how lovely they smell!
Since our return on Sunday I have managed to get some inches done on my Summer Tegna, in fact I have about an inch and a half to go to the “great divide”! Woo! I am extremely happy with my yarn choice for this Tegna…Hempathy. It is such a work horse yarn, I have a sweater I knit over 8 years ago that I still wear regularly…and it is a toss in the washing machine and dryer knit!
We had a little burst of warm weather, however bitterly cold temps are on their way… grrrr. I am really over the freezing temps, just saying.
The reading was as slim as the knitting this week. Vacationing with a “non-reader” means not much reading time for me. However, I did have one finish. Not the best book I have ever read, but at least a finish! Ha! But I should finish The Books of Jacob today, if I can carve out some reading minutes today. It has been a true reading commitment and I am really enjoying the writing and the story!
Outside by Ragnar Jónasson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I have read other Ragnar Jónasson books before and I enjoyed them but, sadly, this book was a real miss for me.
The story is told from the viewpoints of the four “suspects” and unfolds slowly as each character reveals a bit more. You begin to see that each character has probable cause and I began to settle in to allow the mystery to unfold in this manner…. and then suddenly it ended. I mean the book ended… not the story. I am wondering if the ARC does not have the actual ending… because I am left feeling very confused.
I would encourage you to read any other Jónasson book and give this one a pass.
I would like to thank Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Minotaur for the ARC.
What about you? What are you making and reading this week?
I will see you all back here on Friday with a bit of a “What I Did On My Spring-ish Vacation” post!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
