
Do check out the recordings on the BBC's website. They are quite special! Like the museum curator, I, too, got chills listening to their voices, especially of the seven-year-old boy singing.
A nice wool and mohair coat, $13.99. Jones NY, not exactly designer, but nice!
Gorgeous wool skirt from Talbots, $9.99
And a pair of jeans, which I'm wearing (paid $4.99 for them).
I've packed up the coat into my bike grocery bag for a trip to the dry cleaner -- I noticed a lot of hair on it (not mine) and it looks like it could use some spiffing up. It's a brownish gray, a nice neutral for all the colorful knit accessories I have. As for the skirt, it still had the original sales tags on it, and those fall colors of olive, maroon, and camel are totally my colors.
Thanksgiving morning O woke up feeling terrible. Not surprising since DH had been sick with a severe cold for over a week. So we ended up staying home for the day instead of having dinner down in Connecticut with my family. The good news? None of us are huge fans of Thanksgiving food so the disappointment on the food front was minimal. O felt better that evening so we drove down to my father's house and spent the rest of the weekend there -- taking long walks with my brother's Golden Retriever, watching Animal Planet, and I, of course, got a lot of knitting done, as well as discovered a lovely yarn shop not ten minutes away. The cat in the picture above is Purry, my father's lab cat; my father is a cat-loving chemist. My father let O name her when she was a kitten and it's a credit to his good natured attitude as a grandfather that he didn't argue about the name. Purry is a lovely affectionate lap cat, which was such a pleasure for me as our own two cats will only bear the occasional ear rub. Purry's only character flaw is an aggressive nature around yarn while it's being knit. Grrr.
When we returned to Boston on Sunday, DH was no better and then O started feeling crummy again. Both of them have this dry cough that gets worse at night. O ended up missing three days of school this week, and -- yahoo! -- today he returned. He seemed pretty happy when I dropped him off this morning for his student council meeting; I think he misses his friends.
I haven't gotten much work done while playing nursemaid ... certainly no time to blog. When O was cuddled up on the couch, he asked if I'd sit next to him and knit. Now how can I refuse a request like this. I ended up finishing a pair of cozy wool socks and starting the pair of Norwegian stockings from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks. I'm about 1/3 of the way down the leg; the stocking looks huge! But I tried it on and it's snug around my calf so ... I guess it's because I remember buying argyle knee socks when I was in high school and weighed about 110 lbs. Those 80s socks were certainly smaller!
(Sorry for the crappy photo -- O was pretty excited and jumping around. That's my husband's hand and bucket. He was urging our friend to jump in the bucket, not on the bucket. LOL!!!)
A flying squirrel! O and I both looked at each other and had the same reaction.
"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww!"
Yeah, we're nuts. Almost everyone who has heard this story says they would have run screaming from the house. O and I have such a deep love of animals and wildlife that I often wonder what our reaction would be if we discovered a cheetah sleeping on our couch. ("It's our lucky day!")
My second thought was how do we get him out of here without the cats seeing him? Weirdly enough, both cats were sleeping elsewhere and never came out to feed investigate. It took my husband about 20 minutes to get the squirrel off the curtain. First our visitor showed off a bit by flying from the drapes to the top of my ironing board back to the drapes and then flew to our hutch. Very impressive flying skills! Then he dropped the floor, ran through the kitchen, and out the back door, which I was holding open for him.
The next question was "How did he get in the house?" Our house is older and has lots of holes, nooks, and crannies, but up until now, we haven't seen anything except for lots of mice and one mole in the basement over the winter. I looked around the dining room for awhile, spotted my rosemary plant, and it all clicked. A couple nights ago, I brought the big potted plant inside because we were supposed to have frost. The pot has a large self-watering reservoir underneath it, so our little friend must have had a nest in there. For the last few days the scent of rosemary filled our dining room, which struck me as a little strange because rosemary only smells when something rubs up against it to release the oils. Now we know why I was smelling rosemary.
I put the plant back out on our porch and my fingers are crossed our little visitor found his home again. I did some research and flying squirrels are an endangered species, so I'm pleased they're living in our neighborhood.
Let's just hope we don't get more in our dining room.
... this little guy changed my life forever.
I can hardly believe he's eleven. He has grown into such a fine young man: caring, compassionate, wise, and funny. He's the boy you can count on to make sure a shy child feels welcome. Little kids love him. Big kids think he's pretty awesome for a little kid. He is a complete joy to be around ... well, 99% of the time.
He can do an amazing Steve Irwin impression and eat copious amounts of Jell-O in one sitting.
In fact, he asked for Jell-O for his "birthday cake" this year.
His knowledge of varied subjects such as Minecraft, big cats, domestic cats, Legos, Mac keyboard shortcuts, time travel, plane crashes, helping-Mom-understand-her-cellphone, and the Guardians of Ga'hoole is encyclopedic.
He delights in the absurd much to my delight.
He was the best early birthday present I've ever received.
Happy 11th birthday, O!!!
My husband and I, like many couples, don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. We're both on the same page when it comes to politics, raising our son, the pursuit of education, and world travel. But on a great many other things, forget it. Mr. Left Brain, meet Ms. Right Brain. He thinks rationally and rarely shows emotion; I am ruled by emotion and feeling, which makes for interesting "discussions." I pinch pennies (stingy!); he's quick to open his wallet (generous). He likes happy films with happy endings; I like my movies dark, filled with characters of ambiguous morality. Where I discover hilarity, he finds nothing funny. We are totally food incompatible. He is Mr. Meat and Potatoes, while my diet has ranged from strict vegan to semi-vegetarian in the 15 years we've been together. The mere whiff of garlic, onions, and coffee makes him ill; I can think of nothing more perfect for breakfast than a garlicky tofu scramble served up with a steaming mug of java. He doesn't understand why I like to knit and sew when I could simply run out to the store and buy a sweater or a skirt to wear. I don't understand how he can work as hard as he does and not have a hobby to relieve stress.
I often wonder what keeps us together.
Every day, I've been checking the bike trail to see if the trees that fell down have been cut up and moved away. I can bike most of the trail, but there's one part that's totally blocked so I have to take a secondary trail and walk my bike across a couple fields to get back onto the main trail. It adds about 10 or 15 minutes to my ride, and truth be told it's tiring when my bike is loaded with groceries and packages from town.
Every day I've been keeping my husband posted. One small tree was cut up and removed, but the rest remain.
Yesterday I came home and found an e-mail in my inbox. My husband had made phone calls to people all over town until he found the person who could tell him what the plan was for the fallen trees. It didn't look good; the town has other priorities, which is understandable. So my husband called around to pull together a group of townspeople who can get together and help him cut the tree apart (our chainsaw is electric; we need gas-powered to reach the damage). It's going to take a few more calls, but maybe by this weekend the tree will be dismantled (ETA - only one big tree remains!)
He has been so busy at work, under a lot of pressure to get a project done, that I was touched he spent that much time making sure his wife can bike without too much disruption.
And I'm reminded why we're still together.
© Interweave Press
Finished these a couple weeks ago. Just a plain "vanilla" pair of stockinette socks. I bought the yarn down in Houston this summer; each skein was something like $3 so I couldn't resist.
My son gave my socks a very rude name, so the nice name I picked for them is Unicorn Socks. We'll leave it at that.
Ravelry details here.
$140, my friends!
Designed by British designer Paul Smith, this pom-pom hat is knit from "lambswool" and has a fold-up ribbed brim. What I really like, though, is the play between the staid dark gray and the silly neon pink pom-pom.
This week I pedaled over to Wild & Woolly in Lexington and bought two skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca -- one in a dark gray, the other in hot pink -- and got to work. Two evenings of labor, using a free pattern I found on Ravelry, I got this:
I took this shot before blocking so the stitches aren't as smoothed out as I would like. (My ribbing always looks wonky before blocking.) I also have a small bowl under the hat to give it shape; when the hat's on my head, it's perfectly rounded instead of pointy. Shot of new hat in action TK as soon as my photographer returns home from school.
I do have to say, I like my version better -- my cables pop more and the hat doesn't look felted like the Paul Smith one does. My hat is light and soft, but thanks to the 50% alpaca blend, unbelievably warm ... warmer than just "lambswool," I'd bet. I will begrudgingly give Paul Smith the better pom-pom -- mine's not as full and puffy as his. I need to go back to pom-pom making school. Best of all, my hat cost far less than $140. Each skein of yarn cost $10.50. I used 64 grams of the gray ($6.72) and 10 grams of the pink ($1.05) for a total material cost of $7.77. Now of course there's labor. But I knit this while watching television at night; I start to fidget when I don't have something to do with my hands, so it's knit or bite my nails.
I'll be wearing my new hat on my daily hike through the woods. Next up: hot pink cabled mittens to match.
I just love this New England-y looking guy. Can't see my husband wearing this anytime soon, though. (Sad to say, my husband wouldn't wear anything made of wool.)
I have a lot of duplicate patterns, so I'll probably sell the extras through Etsy or maybe eBay, we'll see. I'll continue my search for the cardigan pattern, and in the meantime, start my planning for the aran sweater. So excited!
I finished my second Honey Cowl yesterday. Today I had good weather and a willing photographer. I love it when my son photographs me. He gets artistic shots and says nice things like, "Mom, you're so pretty." Awwww. (He totally knows he gets extra time on the computer for flattery.)
I used Malabrigo Arroyo again in the colorway Volcan. I told my neighbor it looks like autumn in a ball. Such a pleasure to knit with, too. Usually Malabrigo yarns pill terribly, but this yarn remains pill free ... and it's superwash, too.
Ravelry details here.
Sunday was my last day with my car, so around 8 p.m. I drove it over to the gas station in town, filled the tires up with air, returned home, and parked it in front of the garage where it is presently blanketed in soggy leaves. The week prior I'd driven it just once so I felt confident going into this year-long experiment.