Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]



Sunday, August 29, 2004  

Now my house is ready for company. Spick and span and all the laundry, not just done, but put away. I invite you to come walk barefoot on my floors. (That’s as high as I aim, mind, and it’s no small achievement, when you live at the end of a half a mile of dirt road)

We had the strangest weather yesterday. It was quite hot and the air felt humid - about average for this time of year - but it looked crystal clear - like an autumn day, with every leaf on every tree etched against vivid blue sky, not a mote or a droplet in the air - It was so strange to gaze out across the porch and see October while you felt August. Here’s hoping today, with no vacuums to heft, no mops to wield, no baskets to tote between house and clothesline - I get a repeat!

The day started slowly, with BD reading passages from Rowing to Latitude, about a woman who rowed a boat from Seattle to Alaska. I love sea adventure stories - the scarier the better. I don’t have any desire to attempt them, but ooo, ooo, I love to shiver while listening to them. They are my DarkAndStormyNight thrill. The most vivid, and as such, my favorite, is a story in a collection gathered by Alan Villiers, and printed in My Favorite Sea Stories, about a square rigger carrying a load of grain (loose) in it’s hold, from Australia to England. Blown up along the west coast of Chile in a Cape Horn gale, the cargo shifted and the boat began to sink. The tale of how those men managed to right her makes the hair on my head stand up and I still get that quaking feeling when I remember the vivid descriptions of 30 foot waves crashing onto a listing hull, while men frantically shoveled wheat below deck. Ahh - Give me a ship to dream about.

Anyway, while Darling BD read to me I spun samples of stubborn, slightly felted, handpainted merino from my stash on the Golding and that is a great way to begin a weekend. But I am very disgusted with my early attempts at handpainting. I don’t like having to tear away at these matted strips of roving. My hands are always flirting with stiffness now that I’m 50+ and the difference between really carefully dyed fiber that hasn’t felted a whit (like my blue faced leicester) and the grabby stiff stuff I handpainted last summer, is geometric. From now on, if I handpaint anything I’m going to be dai-gone darned careful about it.

I’m pleased with myself for finding the two items I was looking for, while relieving my house of the accumulated grit of a typical week in summer: my copy of the Big Book of Knitting and the instructions to a sweater I want to do. The latter was on loose pages, far more easily lost, and it was no small sigh I heaved when I found it. I did finish the i-cord edging on my blue hat - when BD&GF show up for lunch today I’ll ask her to model it for the photo. She’s a blonde and this is a blonde’s blue. Or Snow White’s. I do have to sew the two ends together and I spent some time dreaming about that in the twilight state one traverses just before waking. Fortunately, it’s only 3 stitches.

And today unfolds before me with all the options open. There is knitting to do. There is spinning to do. There is a sleekly clean house. There is a refrigerator full of food. There are no demands beyond the urge of the moment. What a wonderful day. May you have the same.

posted by Bess | 9:50 AM
links
archives