It’s been a quiet couple of weeks around here, at least until we went “Yellow” last Friday.
Yellow for my house looks a lot like Red. Unlike my neighbors, we are not racing out to dine in a restaurant, shop at the mall, or get our hair done. It will be interesting to see in the next few weeks if the cases in the county reflect the colossal stupidity I see happening all around me.
But enough with the rant, how about some distractions!
While I have been gone, I have been doing lots of thinking about this blog and how to make it feel fresh to me. Some ideas are percolating around, but nothing concrete yet. For the time being, I will continue stopping in here at least a couple days a week.
Yesterday, we had a swarm of special visitors (who were welcomed, admired, and applauded). This immense swarm of honey bees is festooning on our trimmed bushes waiting for the Bee Scouts to come back and direct them to the new location of their hive! Somewhere in that swarm is their Queen, who left her previous colony and took about half of her workers and set off to find a new place to live. In a week of absolute shit news, this swarm lifted my spirits. I did not know that swarming is evidence of a healthy bee colony…yep, they don’t swarm if they are sick! I wish you could see the size (and weight!!) of these bees – the size of the swarm is about 15″x10″ in size and they are weighing down the sturdy branches so much that they are resting on my neighbor’s chain link fence!
My iPhone does not quite do justice to the magnificence that these bees are!
As you can see above, sweater knitting is moving right along, I have divided for the sleeves and am now just mindlessly knitting body. I am hopeful to have this done by next Wednesday!
These past couple of weeks I have been mourning the loss of singing – specifically choir singing. The realization that there won’t be any choir, or singing in church (if and when ‘in-person’ worship resumes) makes me very weepy. Who ever thought that singing would spread germs faster…certainly not me. So I spent a good bit of time watching all the “separate but together” choirs on YouTube – and there are lots of them, but this one kind of sums of how I am feeling…
I also have been practicing with “the big camera” this week. However, the weather conditions were either too windy, too sunny, or today – too rainy!
Lamb’s Ear makes me smile
Even in the rain, they don’t let go of each other. There is a lesson here for all of us!
That is all I have for today. I will be back next week to share an update on my word next Tuesday with Honoré! Have a good weekend everyone!
Another week… another Friday…and joy of joys, it is snowing in Pittsburgh this morning. Yes, that’s right… snow! On all the tender new leaves. On the lilac blooms. On the magnolia blooms. Sigh.
Today is day four of my 100 Day Project and these moments of creatively stitching have been rays of sunshine in my day! You can follow my journey via Instagram, which I think is the perfect platform for sharing my days progress. I am happy that the plan in my head is flowing beautifully into my stitches.
To avoid any new temptations, I have been **trying** to avoid Ravelry this week. Key word…trying! LOL It seems that it was a “cloudy” week there! Did you see Cloudesley and Cloud Cover? Yeah…they are awesome, and both have been rattling around my head a bit. I also cannot get Mary’s inky navy sweater out of my head and I might have identified a “hole” in my warm weather wardrobe! However, I have not begun looking for any inky navy yarns…yet.
It was a week of lots.of.baking! Yesterday I made these brownies…and yowza, they are so good! And today I am baking my first loaf of sourdough bread! (I have my fingers crossed that it rises!)
If you, like me, are doing all kinds of Zoom get togethers… I found these tips and tricks to be exceedingly helpful!
Yes, this weekend will be one hour shorter when we turn our clocks ahead in the wee hours of Sunday morning. (or are you an entirely digital household and need to change no clocks manually?) My house is a mixture of digital and manual, so I will have a few things to change Saturday night before bed. However, there is no quick fix for changing the clock in Sherman… he operates on one time and one time only: the ‘is it time to eat yet’ time!
This week was really lovely – bouts of sunshine, punctuated with temps in the 50’s… and boy, do I suddenly have spring fever…bad!
I struggle with exercise and I beat myself up all the time because of those struggles, but then I listened to this Life Kit episode and I am not going to beat myself up any longer… it was wonderful (and so freeing!!) to hear that ALL MOVEMENT COUNTS!
I spent some time yesterday sorting through my stash of hand spun yarn to put some choices together to knit along with Vicki and friends as we all make Nightshift shawls! I think I have a pretty good start on where I want to go! But!! I curbed my enthusiasm to cast on because of those so.close.to.the.finishMiss Lime socks and this morning I only have the toe to go! (Rachel Maddow and Elizabeth Warren are fantastic knitting companions, just saying!) The absolute insanity of this all is that I knit these socks in eight days! Vera…I think you have created a monster!
And these “think spring” things caught my eye this week:
First, Jana Huck’s latest pattern, Three – simple texture, LOVE IT!
Finally, the winner of Ravelry this week (for me at least) is the Stockholm Slipover Mini (English translation is on its way…) but really, this picture was the thing that said knit me now:
Is still the weekend, at least for some of us… I find it curious that Steve does not have MLK Day off but he does President’s Day…
Anyway, it was a good weekend, one with tulips for Valentine’s Day and, thanks to Sarah’s Saturday release, a new sock was started (and holy cow, look how much I knit on said sock on a size ONE needle!!) This yarn has been marinating in my stash for more than a decade, but I think it was waiting for these socks! It is perfect!
A frosty start, but we have blue skies!
Today, more sock knitting as I watch something on Netflix that my son, Sam, told me is MUST WATCH TV (which is rare for him, so I am starting today!)
