WoW

It's amazing; put one foot in front of the other, just carry on, and the most unexpected person rocks your world. Laura agreed to help me out today, and so I picked her up at the usual time and asked the usual question, "How's work?"

Well, she doesn't work there any more. Her news was delivered in the style to which I've become accustomed, first I must ask the right question. Here's the Reader's Digest version:

Laura resigned her job at Chipolte, and has fallen back on her weeding route to pay the rent until she moves on. There is an organization, WWOOF, and she will work at one of their jobs after she finishes a job in Texas. She is packing up her apartment as we speak.

She laid out her plan for me and I couldn't see any faulty thinking. I did ask if she'd told any of her siblings, and she laughed and said they all were too busy to listen to her, except Bekka. We shared a mutual laugh over the old memory of the next two oldest spinning a big plan of relocating to Seattle to become the next programming wizzes, and Laura could tag along.

That's my big news. Except yes, she has green hair this week. She says it was orange for a while, but I'm spared that.

So, I may have enjoyed our last shopping trip for awhile. It is spring, but still far too early to plant mandevilla. When the monumental overnight rains had subsided to a hard sprinkle, we did plant the seeds I'd saved, and my birthday gerbera daisy that the cat made himself sick over. 

Laura told me she had her second vaccination shot yesterday, and I thought she was a real trouper to turn out and devote a day to me. "Oh, I'll be fine!" she said. "The last one barely bothered me!" 

On the way home I was hungry. "Would you like a hamburger?" I suddenly asked. I was in a through lane and needed to be in the right lane for the hamburger or the left turn lane to continue taking her home. She knew where we were and recognized my dilemma. I could hear the wheels turning in the passenger seat.

At the last possible moment she said "No, I need to go to bed."

So I will return to my job of weaving towels. I reached the half way point of the grey this morning.

And look, it's Saturday

 Whenever I think I should write another post, the thought is crowded away with another, what on earth should I write of?  There is a new normal for all of us, deadly stifling, stifling difficult to write about. What new subject to whip to life this time? Oh, yes, it is Saturday!

I went to the grocery store this morning. I've made my life incredibly easier these last many months by shopping for a month of groceries in one go and enlisting Laura to carry it up the steps. Then she cleans my whole house and does her laundry in the time it takes me to shelve the goods.

Sometimes we have a five week month. Actually, four times every year the "month" is five weeks. That's like leap year; it's necessary to keep the world on schedule. And for old retired people, all the scheduled money comes to the bank sometimes four weeks apart, and sometimes five. 

The rent payment may be late this month; I'll make it the same day May funds become available. Since the business disordered management cannot move to the modern world of electronic funds, it arrives at the whim of the post office. Sometimes the payment is a week early, sometimes a week late. 

I will not budge and move funds from savings to pay the rent on time. It's far more satisfying to see if Theresa has the nerve to assess a late fee, whereupon I will report her sins to New Jersey and the late fee is erased. As long as she continues smoking and the smell oozes from every orifice of that building, I'll be safe from late charges.

Where was I?

I went to the grocery store. Now I'm back. The extra loaf of bread and pound of butter are shelved. How I need a haircut. Monday.

Here is the amaryllis we're tracking for the Weaver. When I shelve mine, she'll shelve hers. Mine had five leaves. In turn they drooped to the table, turned brown, completely limp and snapped off at the bulb. The next leaf to go will be the one on the right. It will be awhile; the leaf feels sturdy to me.

My job for the balance of Saturday is to hem the black towels. Not the fun part. At the end of the first weaving project you learn now it must be finished. The several hundred raw threads from each end must disappear somewhere. Sigh.

Then back to weaving. I've scheduled a run of dark grey towels next (bobbins already wound!), and I'll finish the warp with lavender. And that's what I'm doing on Saturday.

A mere four inches

A lot of us went to bed and woke up expecting snow. I pulled the curtain aside and saw the grass covered with snow. Eventually, after cat duty and breakfast, I got out to see what I could do with the broom.

This load of snow was so wet and heavy I could only leave a streak of bristle marks along the top. Of course the snow shovel, as well as the tote of salt, is in the shed. I was expecting a delivery and common decency meant I must clear the way. I puzzled for a minute, and remembered the short, short shovel behind the door. Don't ask.

After I'd pushed a lot of snow through the rails I thought to put the camera down by the deck and take a picture. It's about four inches of cold, wet stuff. Enough I was not about to go in for a ruler. All I have to say is, this time last year my bulbs were up and in bud.

I expect to read a lot of blogs tonight with the topic of the Chauvin trial. How far there is to go, but justice was met here. The distance to go is the change in policing tactics. And so much more. What can change to make decent housing possible and good parenting possible, and good education possible. 

A sea change is still required.

In for a dime, in for a dollar

What do I do all day? Sometimes I wonder, myself. I'm not anti social; I'm fine with solitude but enjoy being with people, rubbing shoulders, chatting, knowing what friends are up to. But, I'm covid-cooped. This is the first time in my life I've sat back and followed orders. It's time to take covid the shoulders and shake some sense into it.

Winter essentially is over; I've made it through the need to remove snow just to go up the road.  A hopefully long and wonderfully warm spring, summer, fall waits. I stand on the deck, breathing it in. This spring I have no doubt what awaits. Work. My happiest occupation.

I'm exhibiting at all Peninsula Flea events this summer and fall. I signed on tentatively, wanting very much to participate, but needing everything to fall into place. And it has. A space in the barn became available. I can set up by myself and cover the booth myself. I can do this!

To that end I've begun accumulating equipment I need and that I can handle. The biggest score to date:

Look at that chair! When I saw it I dutifully scrolled to the end of the page, in the event an even better chair was available, then hastened back up the page and bought it. It is so light I can carry it myself. It is so firm I can stand up like a person, not like a struggling old lady. Look at the amenities. A table that can be a desk. On the other side, an array of pouches to hold everything. Hooray.

The chair arrived at the beginning of the week. I set it up, surveyed it, and realized I am totally in exhibitor mode. Back to the computer to begin accumulating all the "stuff" I need to be an exhibitor the first Saturday in June. Thinking of all the towels I must weave, that is the same as tomorrow!

I am so in the need of cherry blossoms of my own that on a run for toothpaste and toilet paper, I made the last second decision to drive through the cemetery for the trees. I was past the main entrance, and elected the service entrance, a fast and crazy left hand turn onto a dirt drive. 

Bump, bump, thump, thump, I was glad I was not and never will be the occupant of a coffin. The dirt tract went on forever to meet up with a concrete tract. Even on a grey day, the pictures were fine, though.

Good morning

The morning inbox was awash with Boye steel hooks of every size. Thank you; I am so grateful, especially to know their original owners may have left off using them, but they still are in the collections of new owners, and probably will be attracted to another at the proper time. The Boye size 0 is on its way from California, View from my Window in Tehachapi.

I must add a probably long remark about what I do when I knit. I watch television. I am not sure how this works. I have a 17" television, to the sheer dismay of most who have seen it. I think it simply keeps things in perspective. 

The service is called Roku. It's like cable, without local news, which I miss. The amount of money required for television "entertainment" is staggering. But that's not where I was headed.

Of everything available on Roku, I use Netflix the most, and have enjoyed watching so many shows that have been recommended. For a time I was watching Last Tango in Halifax. I know it ends somewhere, but I haven't checked that out. I had to quit watching; every episode was a new disaster, and even reducing it to 17" was no good. Every show another fight, another death, another relative.

I quit Last Tango for Outlander. I watched a couple of episodes prepared to scoff at all the mistakes in presenting the lives of 18th century rural peasants. But what I do know about dress, about the history of clans, which the British treated rather like Americans treated Native People, was ringing true. 

Every episode of Outlander is a new adventure, and most are fairly rough. It was a rough time. I was in for the long haul when I saw the tax collecting episode. Claire, the female protagonist is commandeered into the tax collecting group for her skill as a nurse. Claire wanders into a group of woman in one village and is fit into the group "waulkin" the wool. 

A length of woven woolen fabric is being fulled by waulking. The length is rolled or scrunched its length on a long table and the women on either side pick it up in unison, slap it on the table, pick it up again further down its length, slap it on the table and so on, in time to a waulkin song, like a sea shanty.

I have omitted so far, the rest of the fulling process, which is moisture and heat. The wool has been saturated in warm urine. And so we have the three components of fulling, heat, moisture and agitation. Claire even has a pee into the communal pot of new heat and moisture. And this is how waulking occurs, to my knowledge.

The show goes intensely into the infliction of pain between two warring cultures, and there came a time when one show's action kept me awake far too long. And then I realized Outlander had become as predictable as Last Tango. Each new episode was another murder, kidnapping, extreme loss.

I had to know where it ends. I took to friend google and wound up on my other friend, Wikipedia, which has a one line synopsis of each episode. I read and read and read to catch up to where I am, and then read ahead a bit, then scrolled to the end. Yes, there are hundreds of episodes. 

For the present, I'm off Outlander, too. Picture from Google.

Unexpected

 Two projects currently underway are nearing completion. The amaryllis is looking forward to its "long winter's nap" and shedding leaves as fast as it can. See how much chlorophyll is gone!

And soon I find the leaf totally resigned and happy to be gone.

When I put the bulb into this pot, I squeezed it gently and it felt very mushy. I wondered for a minute if I should even keep it, but put it in the pot and carried on. Now when I squeeze the exposed bit, there is resistance. The fertilizer, the water and the sunshine have done the job.

I wonder how long it will take the bulb to learn it is in the northern hemisphere and really should be blooming come spring, not hibernating to bloom at Christmas.

The other job at hand is a different way to close the toe of a sock. I invented my own way years ago.

I've always worked a wedge style toe, but instead of grafting, I crochet the remaining stitches together. After the obligatory decreases on both sides of the top and the sole, I put the top and bottom stitches on two needles.

Holding the two needles together and using a small crochet hook I took off the first back and front stitches and pulled front stitch through the back. Then the next front and back and pulled the back stitch through. Then the next back and front, and so on. Pull the end through and work in.

That crochet hook is lost, missing from the knitting bag when I went searching to finish that last pair of socks. It is an old steel hook, with a softly rounded tip, size 0 or 00. Still available in my childhood. Now they all seem to be aluminum or bamboo, and do not slip easily through a size one yarn loop.

I thought I'd try some decrease that would leave fewer than the twenty ending stitches I currently have, so I could simply pull the yarn through the remaining. I've done that now, using a wedge toe, and it's almost too ugly to show.

So, I will rippit back and try something else. And finally, I intend to find more interesting topics for future essays.

Where have I been this week?

This week has been unlike April! Temperatures in the high seventies. Blue skies. Mild, mild breezes. All week every window is open, creating a notable current of that air in every room. 

If I were outdoors, I'd throw myself to the grass and succumb to the soporific effect. It's like my first spring in college, falling on the green like all those other bodies, and giving way to...spring.

But I'm indoors, and certainly not near any patch of grass, from which I could not rise unaided, in any event. I will not throw myself on the bed; I surely would not rise until someone said it was time for dinner. Dinner, alas, from my own hand. 

So I give over weaving and retreat to my easy chair, between two open windows, to watch the news for a bit and then back to the loom. And when I open my eyes, and again make words of the voice of news, it's two hours later. I make a late lunch and return to the easy chair, feeling spring air on all my exposed skin.

I've moved the tiny Gerbera daisy to the porch. It fascinates the cat. I brought in a Gerbera to overwinter a couple of years ago, and flowers and all, it had no attraction for the cat. Not so this Gerbera, the identical color as the overwintered plant. No mind they are not toxic, dear Mr. Cat's stomach finds them intolerable. 

I find cleaning the morning mess intolerable, especially as Toby does not appreciate he could help by selecting tile over carpet. The Gerbera is out, but cannot take its appointed place in front of Pig until I put it in a heavy clay pot. So, the Gerbera is tucked in a safe corner (barring a big storm).

The smell of gardening is in the air. Laura brought my bag of potting soil and trowel from the shed on her last visit. I didn't think to include the watering jug. I just added it to my running list of light bulbs that need replaced, and other things I cannot reach.

Back inside, I'm still following the progress of the second declining amaryllis leaf. Less and less chlorophyll in that leaf, but still resistance to my finger, so it remains on the job. 

I've spent my afternoons, on awakening, with Netflix. My algorithm has enough building blocks now to hold my interest in the row of suggestions along the bottom of the screen. I've watched some amusing trash, and have left as much dangling. I did watch Philomena with great interest.

Well, Judy Dench and Steve Coogan and why would I not watch it!  

Over the last very few years I've followed the unfolding of the Irish mother and baby hospitals scandal (for want of a better word), always hoping for a clue to the marriage of my Irish paternal grandparents and the fate of five orphan children abandoned by the church of their mother. 

Of course, my story of interest unfolded in this country, but, The Church remains The Church for much of its time in this world. Its solution to mothers and children it found improper was living as penance for unworthiness of existing. My grandmother, it also advised to sue her husband for child support, a radical idea in 1914.

She did so, and at once her Presbyterian husband jumped bail and went west, where he died, under an assumed name, without paying any support. His family and hers made little or no effort to assist the mother and five children, though some effort was made toward the three girls. And The Church did nothing. Involuntary penance.

The breeze through the window is light and sweet. I have two paperwork problems to work through, and then I will see what Netflix has on offer this afternoon.

Kiwi, loom waste, living in Australia, and amaryllis

Kiwi, done and dusted. Although I wound all the periwinkle bobbins and wove a bit, I really kept my nose pointed to the kiwi towel job. It is not good to let oneself be distracted. That's where little unfinished projects begin, occasionally with a note, but more often not. And a year later, there it is in the back of a drawer.

It was a good thing I turned my back on that lovely bit of periwinkle! There is someone in Australia who I've corresponded with just a little bit. She bought towels more than a year ago (back in another lifetime), and was so enchanted she bought a loom. 

Jennifer has what is called a rigid heddle loom and is weaving a fabric called Buffalo Plaid. Take a peek; she is a fine weaver! Buffalo Plaid is the Rob Roy plaid. That is another great story and there is a link to it.

One weaver to another, I wanted to show her my cheap and dirty approach to a quick  fell line. I used to weave row after row on my tie up, until the separation filled up and I could weave a header and get started. One day I saw what a waste that was, and switched to weaving a few rows, just to say I'd been there and then weaving a header and getting on with weaving.

Here is Jennifer's Buffalo Plaid on her rigid heddle loom. You can google all those words and have a fine Looms 101 class.

I've lost the first leaf from the amaryllis, and here is a short tutorial from this amateur to anyone who is interested.

Here it is with six leaves. The bottom left was creeping along the table. I slid my finger down between that leaf and the one above. Plenty of resistance, so I quit and went to weave. 

I tried it again the next day and so help me, my finger slipped between the two leaves a if they were greased, right to the beginning of old growth, where it folded over.

I took off the leaf as if it were a sheet of perforated notebook paper!

And now there are five leaves. The opposite bottom leaf is about where this leaf was a day ago. Slow but sure.

Interesting trips around the sun

This past week included my birthday, and was celebrated by phone calls from relatives and children and friends. Ann and I began putting together duplicate coincidences. It is my birthday. It is Easter. It is cold and snowing. A duplicate of the day of my mother's funeral.

Ann and I chuckled and pieced together the events of that day, twenty four years ago. The scramble to find warm clothing and boots for those unprepared, like my cousin in from Texas, and Ann, and my brother and his wife, in from southern Ohio, and the children, and my niece, and on and on and on. We looked like rag-a-muffins, and that surely amused mom, who specifically forbad the notice we put in the paper.

Such a send off. A beautiful eulogy from Mom's beloved pastor, the floating, dancing fingers of the woman who signed for my deaf niece. Mom left a life time of friends. So many came to her interment that two escort cars were required to direct traffic. And we delayed her burial to the day of my birthday to not interfere with Easter weekend.

What goes around comes around, as they say, and my daughter's fiftieth birthday included her Uncle Walt's funeral. Interesting markers. Mom was 79 when she died in 1997. My father was 70, twice my age that year he died. My brother Mel's life was so confused, I pegged his death as the thirty third of August. My sister says the coroner gave him a date.

I hope you're still with me. It really did snow yesterday, a lot more than that. Or the day before. I don't remember which day it was.

I literally have been out of the house once in the last two weeks, and that was to sweep the snow from the deck and put the trash in the cans. I should go stand on the deck and deep breathe a lot some time today. The sun is blinding. Maybe when Cathy comes with the mail this afternoon.

My accomplishments this week include finishing the current length of towels, and knitting the current sock as far as turning the heel.

Kiwi. I love this color. It's in the dryer as I type, and will be towels before the weekend is over.

I love knitting socks. They are simply a set of math rules. For a long time after the head injury I believed I never would reconstruct the meaning of the math. But when I found the half finished second sock in the knitting bag, next to the finished first sock, I found I could do it, and so I did. So, I'm half way to trying the new toe.

There is not one thing new in my little house, except the Gerbera daisy I was gifted for my birthday. It was sampled by Mr. Cat overnight, the night before last. It made him act extremely unwell yesterday morning, which I did not find the cause of until he deposited some green leaves and orange flower petals on the floor. Later he added his entire breakfast! He has lived with a Gerbera in the past, with no incidents.

The amaryllis simply continues to nourish itself via leaves. The leaves are beginning to droop, and I don't want to cut them off yet, until I can make a good, close cut to the bulb. That seems to be the way it was groomed for at least the last ten years, if I'm counting correctly.