Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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2 Comments:Oh my goodness! The lady's hat, and that fur scarf!!! Love them! I'm afraid by the time I was born, grown ups dressed in polyester clothes and had long hair and sideburns, hehehe. I forgot to say good luck with your la-di-da picnic! :) Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Wednesday, July 08, 2009 Finding ways to take the afternoon offWithout using up vacation time, that is. Our Friends of the Library summer author is Sheri Reynolds, of Rapture of Canaan fame. She speaks tomorrow to a gathering of book loving locals. But she comes tonight and she's invited to dinner at my house ... a casual dinner for the 12 members of the FOL executive board and the author. The idea was casual homey country picnic with a view of the river and a look in on Mr. and Mrs. Bald Eagle. Only it's been so long since I've had dinner guests who weren't blood kin relatives who have to ignore my housekeeping flaws I feel like a new bride entertaining her husband's boss. Everywhere I look are Things I Would Like To Fix (Clean or Change or Hide). Eh. I will have to depend on the hospitality of Jack, Priss and BD to cover for me. But this is just a little pricking feeling. I know I can entertain people and I know I will be fine. This is one time when Mind really has to take over from Emotions. Besides, it's hump day. The weather is lovely. There is actual grass growing in the yard. The garden is full of blooms, even if you have to view it from afar. Blackberries are ripening. Truly - a perfect summer day. And there is something fun to look forward too. This Saturday LD is going to take my dad and me and possibly another friend, up to DC to see my dad's old stomping grounds. La! I haven't seen that old Harrison Street house in decades!
So. Who remembers when all grownups looked like this? posted by Bess | 6:48 AM1 Comments:Love the socks, especially the fair isle pair! You are quite the industrious knitter! You had a wonderful mini vacation and just the thing I would do (minus the cleaning, lol) if I had a few days to spend as I wished to. Hope you have a good week at work and more of the same at home! Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Sunday, July 05, 2009 Full summer beginsThank you all for the kind comments about my socks. Much progress was done over the weekend and now I have another pair completed, allowing me to cross off 3 of the 14 on my list. There are photos of the Finished Objects at the end of this post. What follows next is a little catch-up of what has been going on at TheCastle. Prepare to be sprung from your prison. Expect, soon, to be given the key to your cell. But be ready too, for a reluctance to leave the familiar comfort of your old environment. You have been unhappy with a situation for a long time. You are in the habit of complaining and of getting nowhere. Shock may be your first reaction when the door that you have been pounding on opens up. You may suspect a trap. But, slowly, you'll come to like the inspiration and the opportunity that presents itself to you this week. It's going to be an amazing month... Thank you MrHoroscope. You have been promising me a pleasant change for a long time. I've been waiting for this since oh... January? Yeah – about that long. I am completely ready to be “released” and looking forward to an amazing month. I am also pretty doggone relaxed after 3 and a half days of doing exactly what I wanted..... which wasn't much, barring a marathon cleaning burst on Saturday. I'd cut out early on Thursday, a day of perfect summertime weather: sunny, breezy, clear and dry. Somehow, I just couldn't make myself stay at work till 5 and with a bank of vacation days saved up and plenty of staff on hand ... well there. What would you do? Well, what I did was go buy enough groceries to make it through the weekend, pick up the first 2 Harry Potter movies from the rental place and zip on home about 2:30. The air was so sweet and tempting I convinced BD to join me on a walk out to Robert's Landing and, for me, at least, a swim. Oh how the water felt – so silky and sweet as it flowed past me on its way to the sea. Tide was going out and little leaves and floating bits slipped past me as I dug my toes into the sandy bottom. BD is not much of a swimmer but he never minds sitting on the bank and talking while I'm playing in the water. Virgos may be earth signs, but I must have many planets lurking in the water signs. Water is my medicine of choice for whatever ails me .... drinking it, swimming in it, bathing in it ... I adore water. Friday I rented the Rug Doctor from a store in town and cleaned the rugs and upholstered furniture. It's exhausting work because the heavy rugs have to be vacuumed, flipped, vacuumed on the back, flipped and vacuumed once again, all the while the year's worth of dirt tracked in off the farm by man and dog must continually be sucked up off the floor too. That is a heckuva lot of flipping and vacuuming. Then you start using the wet vac. The products that go with it are remarkably effective, though, especially the pet odor remover which you can use as a spot treatment or dump in with the soap and hot water. In particular, that is needed on the blue couch in the den where three dogs think they are welcome to lounge no matter what swamp they've been sloshing through. I went to bed Friday with aching limbs and stiff fingers but the rest of the weekend it was fun to wander from room to room, sitting on clean furniture, lying on clean floors and saying “No No Out” to begging dogs at screen door. I will relent after Wednesday, when we have guests coming, for dinner but for now, no dogs in the house. But after all that effort I just didn't have it in me to do another thing all weekend. At least, not another thing that required getting dressed. I've been in my pj's for 2 whole days and it has been delicious. I didn't even take a walk! I just knit and read and watched the first 2 Harry Potter movies and the second disc of TLC's What Not To Wear. What a fantasy that is. $5,000 to spend on a new wardrobe with fashion experts to tell you how you really look in what you're picking out. Yum! Also, I really like the guy who does the hair for the victim's makeovers. BD wanted to be close all weekend and the best way for us to do that is to let him read to me while I knit. I had recently picked up Mort d'Arthur on tape, read by Derek Jacoby. Oh what a grand job he is doing too – with his perfect classically trained voice. Ahh I wish there were more Brother Cadfael DVD's out there. I, alas, have seen them all at least twice. A discussion with BD about Mallory lead to talk of Spencer and his Faerie Queen and the next thing you know I'm listening to this complex and sexually latent tale as I knit socks. What fun it's been, especially since I know I'd never read it myself. I have enough dyslexia issues with normal spelling as it is. I could never plow my way through the secret code of Spencer's Spelling. BD, with all his years of 17th century research and also his perfectly visual way of reading, can breeze through the strange pronunciations and keep the elegant pace of the poetry. Much knitting was done as these photos will attest: I finished these plain jane stockinette socks for me. This is a beautiful Spirit Trail sock yarn knit on #3 needles.  This is a Trekking sock yarn I bought at Stony Mt. Fibers ages ago ... it's what I call a "guy" color and these socks are intended for BD. I'm not sure what happened since I bought this stuff at least 4 years ago, but I don't think there was a full skein here. Fortunately, this color, #66, is still available. Neither BD nor I care if the dye lot matches all that well. These are, after all, men's socks. They will be felt, not seen. Again, plain stockinette sock knitting.  Of course, I like to have an upstairs sock and a downstairs sock going and though there are still at least 4 more half knit pairs in the queue, I couldn't resist starting something different. This is another Spirit Trail sock yarn combo - an almost solid green with a beautifully coordinating handpaint. I've been waiting for just the right inspiration to knit these two yarns together. The yarn is still from the downstairs stash I inventoried a month ago so it's legal to knit it up this summer.  I'm using the first reticulated pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. It's the blue and yellow pattern - but look at the color match between the book cover and the sock yarn! Pure coincidence, but isn't it ... coincidental?  I chose the other pattern because this particular yarn isn't truly self striping and I wanted to be sure enough bits of the handpainted colors showed up. And now it is Monday and it's back to work. A busy week with a guest author, dinner guests at my house as well, and prep for the coming library board meeting. Yes. It's July again. Happy Monday to you all. posted by Bess | 3:58 PM 5 Comments:
Oooh! I love those cabled socks! Eye of partridge is my favorite heel stitch for yarns with color variations. I have a stand of obedient plant, too. It's just gotten more abundant every year (like my sock yarn supply). I think I'm going to have to impose some harsh discipline. It's disarmingly pretty, though, isn't it? I love the color of your socks. We don't see such tender green very often. The flowers are charming :) Your socks are beautiful...so are your flowers! Happy 4th! Happy 4th of July! Hope you have lots of fun :) Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Monday, June 29, 2009 Summer of Socks progress and some Garden PhotosKnitting up front this time. I have completed the green cable cuff socks for BH.  Her birthday is July 24 so I'll wait and give them to her then. I really enjoyed this cable pattern but it's too small for my leg. I'd have to put in more stitches.  This is that decorative heel stitch. (I think it's called 'Bird's Eye' or 'Eye of the Partridge') It's very pretty, particularly in these lighter toned handpainted yarns.  BH wears a 6.5 narrow and has slender ankles so these socks are quite small. I am knitting now on a pair of plain vanilla socks for BD. Beautiful dark blue yarn with a few other dark colors seeping in now and then, adding richness but not changing the overall hue. That is my upstairs sock, though. I may start working on a downstairs sock too. That is it for knitting, but for your delectation, here are some garden photos. You must keep in mind that I have abandoned my garden for nigh on to 8 years. I had intended to plow it under this spring but a broken finger and lots of rain postponed that task till later. I was once fond of claiming "I garden with invasive plants", largely because I thought it sounded clever, but also because it was true. I have always had limited funds and even at that I poured $$$ into the ground out back. To fill in the gaps I would let spreaders do their thing among the more prissy perennials. These sturdy things have several things in common. they come back year after year. They're resistant to diseases and insects. And evidently - they are all either lavender pink or vibrant orange: This stand of ecanacia is a surprise - I had thought they had all died out. The double daylilies were a gift from a woman who used to live around here - I am not sure where she moved but I remember her vividly. She also painted silk scarves.  It took me forever to get sweet peas to grow in the garden but my goodness they have taken over now!  Double daylily - up close and personal.  Horse Thistle - most people would call this a weed - but its blossom is so pretty! I haven't the heart to dig it up.  Phlox - a gift from Penny Dudley lo these many years ago.  Sweet peas up close - alas - these are unscented.  Obedient plant has obediently spread all over the place.  A sweet scented favorite of mine - a native wildflower called Bouncing Bett  Yes. there are other colors of bee balm but this is the one that survives my humid hot summers.  0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, June 26, 2009 It's in the starsToday marks a turning point within a professional situation that has a lot to say about you personally and your own sense of identity. You may be in two minds about how you should proceed but I suggest you dig deeper to find the source of your indecision. If you feel blocked, ask yourself if it is not your own self-imposed restrictions that may be getting in the way. It's one thing to strive for perfection, but recognize there is no such thing. Focus on your dedication to a great dream that fuels you forward even in the face of your most raging fears. Find your own sense of integrity and allow it to lead you forward in confidence of your own strength to see something through to fruition. Sometimes one of these horoscopes is so uncannily on the mark I really begin to wonder if there isn't some hidden force trying to prod me in the right direction – a guardian angel, one of my departed beloveds, cosmic truth – I will not presume to say. What I will say is that I know that the above advice is something I truly need to take. I'm looking at a situation at work that I did not devise, that is not on my personal time table, an opportunity that I'm not sure I want to take on. I am finding all sorts of “less than perfection” excuses for avoiding making a decision at all. It has hung like a pall over my life for the past 6 weeks. It's one of those things that is laced with opportunity but which demands enormous amounts of work to bring to fruition. I'm glad to work hard, but I'm not sure this is the hard work I want to do. It's funny how, not choosing, not deciding, not either leaping into this or politely declining, has made me deeply unhappy, somewhat frightened, and constantly anxious. Funny – since in this economy, most people are being asked to give up opportunities or at least post pone them and I have been offered several choices. It's time to search my soul and plot my personal course and quit imagining the expectations of others, and their possible disappointment in me, have such power over my choices and even my emotional state. Hmm. Too Much Information. I ought to have said, above, that MsHoroscope hit the nail on the head today. Which she did. Or ... her substitute astrologer did. Ha! But I shan't erase the above either since this is my blog and I actually go back and read it now and then. I'll be glad, in my incipient senility, to remember what it was that had me so cranked up. What is not TMI is that I'm motoring down to the end of those pretty green cabled socks. I plan to finish them this weekend. Photos on Sunday. I know the next socks I want to work on are the red lace ones .... the ones I had to rip out because the heel flap was too short. After that? Probably some deep blue socks for BD. Then there are two simple socks for me and then I will tackle my first pair of knee socks. Yes! I am going to explore calf shaping in socks. ... Or I may take a hiatus and knit a baby gift for the sweet girl who gives me manicures every other week. Happy Friday! posted by Bess | 6:19 AM 1 Comments:
Hmmm! I have left comments on this blog and it looks like they didn't make it! Let's hope this time they do. Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Thursday, June 25, 2009 I'm back at last - with photos at the bottomThe past 10 days have been so demandingly busy I hardly have time to remember what I have to do next. I like to have plenty to do but this is not my idea of fun – this crazy busy time with nothing wonderful to show for it. This is frenzy for routine stuff, not scrambling around to throw a marvelous party or put on a fantastic production or preparing for some exotic trip. It's budget design, it's loading quickbooks with invoice numbers and then shifting funds from here to there to cover them. It's sitting, gratefully, but bored, in doctor's offices. Truly, not the stuff of read-worthy blogging. I'd have bored myself before I could finish a post, most days the past week or so and since the readership of this site is so low these days I'm likely to be the only one stopping by TheCastle anyway, there seemed little point in chronicling daily dullness. Not that every moment has been so stultifying. There have been some sweet moments in the past 10 days , including a visit from a dear cousin who remembered not only being terrified of our grandmother's attic (for me, spooksville was the basement) but also being saved by my dad when she choked on a marble as she lay laughing on her back on my bedroom floor. It's a funny thing about memories, because as she told me this story there was a slight tremor in my chest, a shaking from somewhere deep within ... who would have thought the memory lived in the body though if it had been so deeply buried in the mind I couldn't bring it to the surface even as I heard the story told? But I do remember a proposed overnight stay or weekend visit when I was very very young, a pre-schooler, I'm sure, that was suddenly canceled because my cousin began to cry and wouldn't stop. I am sure that was the occasion. My god – if parents knew how many ways children would risk their lives none of us would ever have gotten born. In addition to seeing beloved family, we got super news at the doctor. BD does NOT have to have surgery on his good eye! The dr. said if he didn't have the proof of identity on BD's chart he would have thought a different patient had walked in the door. Happy happy news, that this could be taken care of with medicine and not invasively with knives and needles. There will be another surgery but it is less invasive and won't take place till late in the fall or early winter. Some things are such glorious gifts there really aren't words to describe how grateful we are for them. I had a hot date last night too – with my neighbor, a rising 4th grader who simply had to introduce me to Transformers II – an animated crash and bangfest that was almost as entertaining as the audience. I remember when LD began collecting Transformers more than 20 years ago. Any of you remember the TV theme song? “Transformers....More than meets the eye!” The movie is everything a boy would love – trucks and fighting and a hot girl who changes into a robot. And a nerdy hero with the ultimate in weird parents who are still lovable, if embarrassing. The 20 somethings sitting both behind and in front of me, the target audience for the kissy parts, (my date and I closed our eyes at those bits) were primed for every battle, explosion and transformation. Truly, it was complete entertainment and my neighbors have invited me to come over and see the dvd of Transformers I anytime I want to. Another magnificent treat has been the weather. Baring a Saturday of unimaginable heat combined with the sort of humidity that melted your face off, we've had lovely weather. Father's Day was simply beautiful – and combined itself with my cousin's visit ... after I'd vacuumed up 3 weeks worth of dog hair. Monday, the long doctor's day, was equally lovely if a little warmer. I've had several crack-0-dawn meetings that got me to work early enough that I skipped out early yesterday to just go home and enjoy perfect summer weather. It was so beautiful I took photos so, come join me on the lawn, in the deep emerald green of a perfect June afternoon.  Won't you sit with me in the garden?  A bit of rustic architecture.  Step into the woods for a bit of cool shade.  Or join me down this path to view Mr. and Mrs. B. Eagle  1 Comments:
Go, Sock Knitter Supreme! I, on the other hand, have to remember where I put mine when I tidied up last week... Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Summer of the Sock Spiritual & SnapshotsYes. Well, I am feeling particularly silly I suppose but how's this for some lyrics? (Think Paul Robeson) Go down, go down, Way down in TheQueen's stash Tell that Knitter To let those Addi's go Thank you Cathy for the inspiration. And here are the promised photos – since the $13 card reader from Walmart did the trick and now I can load pictures again. Here is the completed pair of socks, knit in the springy Spirit Trail sock yarn, in a wonderful pattern of knits and purls.  I hope you can see the difference between the sock knit on #2 needle and the one on #3. It's always difficult to photograph dark yarn.  This, alas, was a candidate for the frog pond – at least, half of it. I knit the heel flap too shallow, although I did knit it the requisite # of rows (I think. Now I will have to go count. This is the sock I knit while BD was in surgery a month ago)  See how it bulges out below the ankle bone. Not a pretty thing. Ugh. Those toes are not so pretty either, but both of them, sock and toe, can be fixed.  Here is the sock I am concentrating on now. This lovely yarn was purchased in July 2008 – a birthday present for BH. She will get the socks in July 2009. She has tiny tiny feet and slender ankles.  This is a First Sock, though – lots of knitting left to do on these. Can I finish them by next weekend? We shall have to wait and see. 0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Monday, June 15, 2009 Play before WorkEvery now and then I like to remind you that having Saturn in your sign has its good points. They come when you get some kind of pay off for the hard yards you've been putting in. And looking only SLIGHTLY ahead in your chart, I can see that one of those pay offs (or even two) are just around the corner for you. So remember the Saturn 2009 Rule: "Thy shalt not regret the hard work thy putteth in now, for foorsooth, soon ye shall prosper!" In other words - keep nose to the grindstone, rewards lie ahead. Okay, MsHoroscope. I shall putteth mine nose to said grindstone. Sigh. Besides – I had the most perfect day yesterday to buck me up. The dry air followed us home from the mountains and gave us crystal blue skies, even if only briefly. It is grey and rainy again today. “40% chance of rain” say the weather dot com guys. I wonder – does that mean it will rain 40% of the day or over 40% of the scattered shower area. Right now it is what I might call a heavy mist outside. You'll come in wet, even though you may not feel any raindrops. But yesterday! Oh! Yesterday was so beautiful. The air felt like a caress on my skin. Every living thing in the fields, forests or sky was busy about his business and chatty about it too. It was all chirps, tweets, keees, snuffs, peeps and croaks as we walked through the woods, down the lane, over to Roberts Landing. And yes – I got in my first swim of the summer before noon. That first plunge was chilly but it took less than a second to get accustomed and then the swimming was delightful. There was knitting too – I did complete that pair of socks – the purple one with the pretty designs. I also took photos but the jack in the camera is truly disconnected, inside the camera body and I can't download anything at all now. I'll be off to see if I can find a media card reader that takes the old large size cards – I think I've seen pictures of them on-line but I am going to have to see one in person to be sure. I also had to rip out an entire sock foot after I tried it on and saw I had made the heel flap too short. I know I made it the “normal” number of rows long ... as many rows as there are stitches in the width ... but it was still too short and the sock looked ridiculous. (took a photo of that too – you'll see, maybe tomorrow) So though there was one step forward, there was one step back too. Ahh well. Happily I am a process knitter and besides, D had the wisest thought of all – that it is fun to discover so many beautiful projects that are almost done! So. Progress was made. And crossword puzzles were completed (BD and I do them together and laugh a lot at the puns, the puzzles and the silly definitions). A second walk was taken. Dogs were petted. Meals were consumed, all to the accompaniment of talk and talk and talk. Evidently we were as chattery as the rest of the animals here on the farm. And now it is Monday and we must get back to werk – werkwerkwerk. But we have yesterday to remember and smile about and be glad for. posted by Bess | 7:12 AM |
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