Eating junco food
Monday May 31st 2010, 11:47 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

We have a lot of housefinches at the feeder, and one of the things I’ve learned is that at this time of year, the males feed the females to show they’re good stock to choose from and as they’re raising a family.

Which leads to the daily sight these days of pairs of them at a time hanging off a single oval-shaped perch on the thing, both of them struggling for a grip while I think, honey, you could grab that seed yourself and not have to flutter your wings quite all so pretty like that if you only knew; there’s plenty of sunflower there.

And just every so often you’ll see a male ignoring some strange chick’s entreaties.

I always wondered if it was the same one, if perhaps she’d lost her mate?  We do have a hawk nearby. You never know.

And I wonder if that’s the one I saw today.  She landed on the narrow outside of the window sill–I have never seen any bird do that before–and looked in right at me. (And later, down at the empty Corningware measuring cup on the floor that was just inside that I fill the feeder with. I got the hint.)

But what was even more surprising was what happened next: a junco followed her there and looked in too.  Quite close to her.  That got me to stop and watch them.

And what I saw was that junco staying near her this afternoon and going out of his way to feed that female finch.  The juncos tend to be ground birds here, being peaceable birds, not liking to fight their way in like the finches do over the feeder; fallouts will do.  He would pick up a seed off the patio and feed her with it, and if he found one behind her, would hop around in front of her to get her attention and stretch up just slightly to give it to her.  Over and over and over.

In front of my window. On the chair. On the table. On the ground. Those two were clearly a bonded pair, staying close to each other, and when one flew off the other went with, when one came back the other did too.  It was the oddest thing, seeing a small brown bird and a different small brown bird with a black head and chest out there in the world taking care of each other regardless of their differences because it seemed to them the right thing to do.

And somehow it filled me with just the greatest sense of hope.



Twenty years
Sunday May 30th 2010, 11:32 pm
Filed under: Life

There was a visitor in church today. I didn’t recognize him, he didn’t remember me, but he really took me back.

For his 40th birthday he and his wife had decided to go do a road trip and visit where he’d served as a Mormon missionary as a young man, and our ward was a place he’d remembered fondly.

For twenty years.

Twenty years ago last month I was diagnosed with SLE, ie, lupus. (The Crohn’s add-on with SLE cells came nine years after that.)

My kids were 2, 4, 6, and 8, and I had no idea if I would live to see them grow up.  My mom’s cousin had died of lupus a week before her wedding date.  It did not help when I read outdated literature that described some of my complications and stated baldly that five years was the outside of such a one’s life expectancy.

I had severe rheumatoid-type arthritis the first six months, to the point I had to use plastic utensils to eat.  My ear doctor, to whom I will forever be grateful, figured out when I had a horrific day of complete, utter stone-cold deafness in reaction to naproxen that my progressive hearing loss had been an allergic reaction to aspirin all along–thank goodness it came back to what it had been when the med wore off.

So no NSAIDs.  No pain meds other than tylenol, and even that was out later when I went on chemo for the Crohn’s.  I was severely allergic to Plaquenil.  I utterly refused for years, until it was a matter of life and death, to try potentially mind-altering steroids–let me at least keep control of my brain, if I can’t control anything else! (And then my brain handled them just fine but they had not the slightest effect on my disease.)

I was on my own with this.  Well, heck, I got through childbirth, now we were just going to have to have lifebirth.  I invested in Corelle and set the stoneware aside.  I began to learn how to give up the outdoor life–while wondering what on earth effect it would have on my kids!

I started to learn to cope.  I’m still learning to cope.

I have no idea how we got through it. I have no idea how we did it. But look at us now; I think we did okay. Actually, to be honest: I think this helped me grow up far more than I ever could have without it, shaped me into a more compassionate human being, shaped my children into being more compassionate human beings, and I am intensely grateful for the experience.

I’m also unspeakably grateful that right now, it’s in the closest thing to remission I have had in all these twenty years.



No ruffling her feathers
Saturday May 29th 2010, 10:36 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

So we had Maya snoozing behind the peregrine nestbox, enjoying the warmer day. Wake up, yawn, stretttttttch–and suddenly she was flapping crazily, falling off the ledge backwards, going down down down flapping still facing the building as she fell out of camera view.

You know, I have that kind of graceful sure-footedness myself.

Clearly, she came out of it okay.  Kekoa was later seen staying close by her side, hanging with his peep. I so wish there were a video of the two on the end of the ledge watching something overhead: their feet danced and their whole bodies twirled in a complete circle in perfect unison together with their gaze straight up, then their heads turned in exact sync, side to side, side to side.

They’ve been touching beaks when they greet each other and occasionally just because. It’s absolutely adorable.  When they seem satisfied, or that they’re reassuring themselves, their tails do a quick sideways waggle as a last or nearly-last step in settling in to wherever they’ve landed.

They’ve been spending the last few nights on the louver, and were settled there tonight I thought for the night with Clara having just taken up her sentry duty above, when Clara suddenly took off.  One by one the little ones did too from down below.  One came back–briefly, and took off again.

For the last hour or so, Clara has been standing on Kekoa’s favorite spot on that louver, tapping her talons, looking at her watch, waiting for those teenagers, looking out over the city.

And once–just once–I saw her open her beak and yell. Now she’s back to her usual patient sentry duty.  It may well be that she moved to where she could see them wherever it is they’re perching tonight.

And a white bit of fluff from their chickhoods just floated down gently past her from the nestbox area above.



One thing after another
Friday May 28th 2010, 11:30 pm
Filed under: Knit

Okay, got it that direction, I really like that. That one, not so much. Oh, epic fail!  Okay, let’s see, if we do one from that angle…

Let’s just say peregrines, which have been clocked at 241 miles an hour, can fly faster than I can design them in lace.



Feather fan
Thursday May 27th 2010, 11:29 pm
Filed under: Knit,LYS

The peregrine fledge watch officially ends tomorrow and there’s a touch of empty nest syndrome already.

Meantime, at Green Planet Yarns, I found more of the Joseph Galler baby alpaca that I didn’t buy at Imagiknit and had regretted ever since: undyed brown plied around white, the colors of a young peregrine’s chest till their adult feathers grow in. (This is for their safety; it keeps strange adults from thinking they’re looking to take their territory while they meander around exploring their new world.)  This time I bought a skein.

When I saw it across the room last month, I almost didn’t bother to check it out: oh, yeah, that brand, they’re old-school alpaca, sharp guard hairs ruining the good stuff mixed in.

Yeah well. Shows you how long it had been since I’d seen or felt any.  What Peruvian Tweed is now is what I’d always wanted it to be, something you can put up against your face and still think it soft. (Note that I did that to pick out the softest skein, though, and there was a slight variance. Worth checking out in person if you can.)

I think I know what it wants to be–I had plans, all this time I wished I’d bought it earlier. But once I actually sat down with it, they just weren’t quite it.  I think I’ll have to give it a night’s rest and see what my brain comes up with by morning.



Hear it is
Wednesday May 26th 2010, 11:25 pm
Filed under: Crohn's flare,Life,Wildlife

First, the evening peregrine report I gave to my fellow falconistas:

Clara showed up a few minutes before eight and paced the inside of the
nestbox back and forth, finally stopping, head bowed with Little Boy
Blue's remains just in front of her. Her beak opened wide a moment, her
head went down, and she appeared to be trying to push it all down, down
into the gravel with the top of her head bowed way over. She came back
up with her empty beak closed.

Then she hopped out of the box. Flew to her sentry spot. She preened
just a moment, and then was away and out of sight.

Kekoa and Maya continue to hang out on the louver, Kekoa's face to the
building, Maya's in her back--wait, now she's looking around again. But
she's clearly no longer afraid of heights nor of standing on the edge
looking down. Cool.

Meantime, there was a two-hour hearing health to-do at our clinic today and I was curious to know what the latest and greatest hearing aids might be.  I decided to go.

I made it through the first 35 minutes of, this is what hearing loss is, this is what hearing aids are, and this–I guffawed out loud without meaning to, having gotten my first pair at 27–is why they won’t make you look old. The statistic appeared on their PowerPoint: 65% of the people who wear them are under 65!

Granted, I’m not new at this.  But I was disappointed that when the speaker talked about speech sounding like mumbling without hearing aids, she didn’t say outright that the reason is because consonants are higher pitched than the vowels because they’re made with your tongue against your teeth instead of vibrating in your throat. I remember what a revelation and how extremely helpful that one piece of information was to me at 18 when I was told I was going slowly deaf (it was an aspirin allergy, we eventually found out).  It all made sense now why I could hear someone and not process what they were saying.

Can you imagine some person there who IS old–the conference room was packed with old–who thinks they’re going senile when that’s all that’s the matter? I wanted to exclaim, Be merciful, woman, don’t dumb it down!

I escaped.  When one of the audiologists stepped out the crowded conference-room door in front of me, I followed her. She’d gone to the end of the hall to direct incoming human traffic if need be. Well, so I was the traffic, then: I had questions to ask, definitely, and no patience to sit through another 85 minutes of that, not even with my makes-me-look-old knitting.

The best thing to do, she told me, was go talk to the vendors set up outside in the courtyard.

Greaaaaaat… We peeked through the blinds together and she pointed out a particular table in the shade near the door–I later went to the guy and said, I can’t be out in the sun at all. You’ve got two minutes. He used his three minutes well. And I went home with the usual two temporary very small spots of white-out in my vision that are my first sign of sun overdose. Worth it. They have a music setting now… I need to learn more, but I’ve got the brochure and I’ve started.

Meantime, upstairs, as she and I talked, I got the impression she was enjoying being able to be really helpful and informative for someone who was motivated and who knew what she was talking about.  For me, I was thrilled at being able to talk about the health stuff that is part of the context without having a new person get all sorry about it–it just is, is all, move on.

She told me what I needed to know about cochlear implants should I have to have that next surgery (I’ve spent the last four or five days getting over yet another blockage) and should I again lose hearing from the pain meds–tylenol. I can do tylenol.  Which is not so good in the scalpel department.  I described the dilaudid going into the IV and the voices of the medical personnel around me going out.

I am a musician. A fairly deaf musician, but a musician. She told me the implants wouldn’t give me music quite well enough–but they would give me back speech. She talked about having to retrain the brain to hear again amidst noise, and I was like, yeah yeah been there done that a couple of times now I know all about that. But then, she said: for speech, my hearing would be normal with this.

She said it again for emphasis.  Normal.

I very nearly burst into tears on the spot. Which totally surprised me.

But would I give up music, really hearing music at perfect pitch, for life? No.

Which is fine because they wouldn’t give me the implants at Stanford without putting me through a bajillion tests to make absolutely sure I can’t manage on the hearing aids. And I can.

At least until that next surgery.

But now I have a backup plan for something that had had me in such great fear.  After having been told over and over in  years past (before the surgeries and the reaction) that cochlear implants would do me no good.

They would do me unfathomable good should I come to need them.  Again, I have a backup plan, now that I need one.  And I cannot begin to tell you what a relief that is.



Singin’ in the rain
Tuesday May 25th 2010, 11:14 pm
Filed under: Life,Wildlife

Another peregrine post–they grow up so fast, the season’s so short.

Maya made it into a palm tree this morning but was being harassed by some crows. (Note that one of the San Francisco fledglings died on its first flight last year while being chased by ravens.)  Her mother tried to help out.  Her father finally decided he’d had enough of that and buzzed them: Don’t you mess with my daughter!

They didn’t let up.  He divebombed them–at which point they backed off and gave her her space.  She flew out of that badbird neighborhood.

I noticed the peregrines did indeed eat crow later at lunch. So there.

Maya flew around near City Hall, bit by bit, losing altitude perch by perch as she flew without quite making it home. One report said she’d climbed five flights of outside stairs! You know, you *are* a bird, there’s an easier way to do that…

Finally she ended up on the ground right in front of the main door of the Rotunda at City Hall, exhausted, a peregrine protester, declaring emphatically that it is indeed true: you can’t flight City Hall.  Binoculars on the ground had been following her, City Hall was notified, and so it was that the facilities people surrounded her in a circle till the rescuers could get to her.

And then like last year, it was a hat, a box, a trip up the elevator, a dousing on an already-rainy day just to make it clear she was not to fly off in a panic while the rescuers fled the roof but was to sit there and take it easy.

And she did.  Real easy. Mostly she hid her face from that scary edge, still not used to this heights thing, staying in one place and snoozing her fatigue off.  Meantime, her parents–and her brother!–did flybys around and around overhead, screaming warnings to the two-legged intruders in their territory.

Kekoa couldn’t keep it up too long with his still-short wings, though. He took a rest, then eventually a short hop up to where his sister was and stayed right by her and kept her company like a good little brother.

But the little scamp couldn’t resist sticking his head over the edge, watching the camera following him, eyeballing it and playing peek-a-boo again.  Oooh, is it still there? Is it still moving? Does it taste good? If I sit on it again will it hatch?

At one point, EC flew into the nest when none of the others were around and hopped over to where the remains of his son Little Boy Blue still lay.  He stood there, head bowed towards it as if considering, for several long moments.  Then to my great surprise he tried to bury a part of it in the gravel in the nestbox.

Then he flew.

After something like six hours, finally the parents brought food down to the runway area and that did it:  Maya came down and got a good bite. The cameras switched to her just seconds before and caught her going over and most of the way down, wings flapping properly. There now, dear, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

She is on the upper ledge behind the nestbox for the night. Kekoa is on the louver where he can keep an eye on her.

I’m grateful to those who took the time to be the boots on the ground ready to rescue as needed. (I can just imagine the crick in one’s neck after doing that all day.)  They were needed.

And all is well now in falconland.

(Added later) Okay, here’s something new: it’s 10:30 pm and *Clara* is in the nestbox! With her daughter standing sentry!  Clara has a classic spot where she spends her nights where she can see her young in the box, once they’re old enough and it’s warm enough that they don’t need to be tucked under her wings but she still wants to watch over her flock by night. The city lights fill the upper background, the runway below; it is the iconic shot of her.

I watched. She came out and flew up to her usual spot.  There you go.  Maya, who earlier in the night had been pancaked flat like a young falcon does, is standing there, too, at the end of that same ledge. Watching over her brother below.



Smile! You’re on can-do camera
Monday May 24th 2010, 10:18 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

This is a picture I took last year of the top floors of SJ City Hall. The nestbox is at the top of the jutting-out concrete somewhat to the right, the louvers are the lines across the windows to the left.

Remember last year’s incident? This year’s fledging process isn’t finished yet, but here’s what we’ve got so far:

—————

This is a perfectly good nest. I see no reason to leave.  I’m not going to, and you can’t make me!

(Dear, this is getting ridiculous.)

(Here, let me try.)  Lunch is served, kids, come and gettt itttt…  Down here, Maya.

Kekoa hesitated till the pigeon was nearly gone, then made it safely down to the louver and joined in. Maya watched. Finally, it was just too much and she, as Channon put it, let freedom wing. (That link is a successful video capture of her first flight. It is very cool to watch, and you get to see the boingy-boing effect.  She made it! Yay!)

She’s been there ever since, mostly huddled away from looking down. At one point both of them had their heads pushed up against the building: if we can’t see it, it can’t scare us.

Maybe tomorrow her mother will deliver food to the nest area to make her come back up.  It would require going upwards, but it might still be the easiest thing to do next, at least in terms of confidence in this whole idea of being a flighty young thing.

Meantime, awhile after eating, Kekoa flew to the one place the camera absolutely could not reach him: he sat on top of it.  Then he winged it to the far end of the building to the right, and the camera, angled up and across, showed the corner on the diagonal–and that little scamp played peek-a-boo!  Leaning his face way out and eyeballing the camera, ducking back, leaning out again, from above the point of the triangle effect, below the point, turning away and out of sight, sometimes showing his backside, sometimes not at all.  Hah!  There you are!  I see you! Can’t catch me!

And then he took off from there to the end of the ledge and down and bounced and flew over just a bit to the louver.

Hey. I can’t leave my sister all alone like that.

He has stayed with her ever since. He knows by now that he can make it back up to the ledge behind the nestbox, but she doesn’t know yet that she can. So he’s staying on that louver, and they are snuggled up for the night.

Dad, Piz’za Chicago…?

NO.



Don’t make me come over there!
Sunday May 23rd 2010, 11:17 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

Let’s see, (male teenage peregrine) flying is fun. But flying means being hungry all day.  Forget that, I’m staying home. Hmm, maybe rent a good movie, how about “UP!”?

Let’s see (female teenage peregrine) HE got to do it, why can’t I?  It’s not f  AIR!  (Flappity flappity flappity. Watch out, she’s on edge today.)

Um, pigeon, my favorite.  Thanks, Mom.  Hey, bro, you want some? Lemme think about it.

KIDS–DON’T SQUAB-ble.

Let’s see (both) let’s charge at Mom or Dad on the ledge and make them fly off and have to circle back. Hah, madeja blink! (But note that neither of them does this to the other. There are rules to this game.)

(Both) I didn’t go to bed last night and I’m not going to bed tonight and you can’t make me!

(Kekoa parks himself on low ledge behind nestbox, tail to the wind. Stretches occasionally. Maya sits on the end of the upper ledge close by: last night, flapping from time to time. Tonight, she has her tail going off the ledge too, being daring like her brother. Both seem to be snoozing rather than pulling an all-nighter this time.)

Hey, Piz’za Chicago is down the street and they do delivery. Dad?

(Parent)  (grumble) (Talk about a pie-in-the-sky plan.) Kids!



Watching the fledgewatchers watching for fledges
Saturday May 22nd 2010, 10:19 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

Another falcon day: Kekoa was spotted first thing this morning by people who get up way earlier than I do, safe and sound. From the Rotunda to the Brise to the various ledges at City Hall, he was making his way short flight by short flight, bit by rest by bit towards home. It’s the going upwards that’s the hard part, but he was doing reasonably well at it.

His mother finally dropped some food to him and with that energy booster after a long day, he made it back home into the nestbox area while I was in the kitchen finishing up melting bittersweet into cream.

I went to where the fledgewatchers were having a party, coming at the last minute when hopefully the sun was okay, a chocolate torte (recipe there) in hand–two, actually, since I didn’t know how many there were going to be–and met some more of the people who are as crazy about peregrines as I am. My excitement over Kekoa’s majestic, strong flight last night was sobered by one person’s telling me about another juvie from before I started following them who took off strongly as well but then who didn’t survive.  How worrisome this nighttime fledge had been.

Oh goodness. Well, then, all the more wonderful that he’s fine.  (And stay that way, you two up there, y’hear?)

The thought suddenly occurs to me that I tend to cheerfully assume that since I survived last year, everybody and everything will survive everything thrown at them, too.  Right?

When I got there, all four peregrines were at home and in sight, a juvie at either end of the upper ledge. As far as I could tell from my perch, they were watching us watching them.

Hey Mom! Those funny big prey down there–do they taste good?

They’re best with chocolate, honey.



I’m not afraid of the dark! I’m not!
Friday May 21st 2010, 11:15 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Wildlife

Okay, here’s a funny picture of a young male Cooper’s Hawk new at this flying stuff.

It was quite windy today and the juveniles seemed to sense it wasn’t the best day to totally wing it off a perfectly good solid surface.  But that didn’t stop Kekoa from playing push-the-peregrine: he took great delight in scurrying down the runway towards an unflappable parent and making them fly off, again and again. Eric, one of the fledgewatchers, caught pictures of one such episode here.

Kekoa’s favorite spot was on the eastern end of the ledge, with his sister below him most of the time. Although Maya got in a good one: she made it up to that top ledge herself, walked towards him, and then looked she was going to keep right on going.

HEY! His beak opened and one could just hear him squawking, STOP IT! Or I’ll tell MOM on you!

She stopped just shy of shoving him over. You know, enough to get a rise out of him (almost!) , not enough to get herself in trouble.

Siblings.

The parents have again spent the day watching over their young, ready to swoop down alongside and show them how it’s done should they go over.

There’s one there right now: on the louvers below the little guy, who joined his sister in the nestbox but scrambled right back out again. I didn’t fly! I can’t go to sleep yet!

He is as I type on the lower ledge behind the nestbox, the parent present and watchful as ever. It’s quarter to nine.  He just snuggled against the wall. Cold concrete–not a warm sister.  Not even the wood of the corner that they like to put their heads into.  Crum. His eyes closed a few times.  He turned and looked dowwwwwwwnnnn, straight down. He turned back and huddled away from that for now.

It’s dark. How do I get back home! He’s thinking, but he’s outside the box.

Okay, I typed that and stopped to watch instead of doing the intermittent glance. He got up and started pacing that low ledge. C’mon, piece of cake, I’ve done the ledge-to-ledge thing before. He made it up there despite the dark, (yay!) walked along it till he could peer down into the nestbox where his sister was settled in for the night. Safety. At last.

And then suddenly he wheeled and flew off into the dark, wings spread wide and flapping.



A Peregrine Fledgling’s Cry
Thursday May 20th 2010, 9:02 am
Filed under: Wildlife

Riffing on the line “They are other nations” in the Henry Beston poem that Evet sent.

A Peregrine Fledgling’s Cry:

I fledge allegiance
to the clouds
in my excited state of euphoria
and from the nestbox
which in them stands
all Nature
under God
the whole world visible
now liberty!
and free-flight
for all time.



I fledge allegiance to the clouds
Wednesday May 19th 2010, 10:07 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

Or at least they’re flapping their wings and fluttering around making plans for the party. The ground crew has gathered below with binocs and a sun tent and, I am told, much chocolate to celebrate the eventual liftoffs. And, I assume, a box and water, if you read last year’s story in that link about the rescue.

There was some excitement I missed this morning: Clara fighting off a Golden Eagle. You stay away from my babies!

The peregrines’ nest area is at the top of a multi-stories-high HVAC enclosure.  It has about a four foot high ledge along their runway and low ledges at either end, one side of which is now blocked off by the nextbox.

The previous years’ box had room at the sides for the juveniles to get past it and to look out precariously at the city lights below, where likely no one would see them tumbling in the dark.  It was replaced at winter equinox, the time least likely to disturb the parents.  They inspected the new after some protesting at installation and found it acceptable.

Maya and Kekoa, our surviving juvies, have to stray from the comfort of home and all the way to the far end of their enclosure if they want to read a book under the covers with the nightlights on. As far as I know, they haven’t.

I look at the top of the eyases’ world from those cameras and think, whoever did the cement work up there–if they only knew.  Always, always do your job well, for your own sake, even if nobody will ever know but you.  I’m sure they thought nobody on earth would ever see or care from the ground what this ledge was going to look like at 18 floors up.  They had no idea cameras would be trained right on their work every spring for weeks on end.  They had their chance to be stars!  A ledge-end in their own time! Instead, they decided that was for the birds. On the other hand, maybe the fact that the concrete is not well smoothed is a plus for the birds’ grip; I don’t know.

Putting that aside.  As usual, since Kekoa only had to grow to 2/3 the size of his sister, his featheration has been maturing faster. That boy wants to go! He flew to the upper ledge for the first time today and then raced up and down it: LOOK!!!  Did you even KNOW there were all those things down there?! This is just SO cool!!!

And yeah, he knocked a guarding-angel parent right off the wall in his eagerness.

There’s no flashlight reading going on tonight. They had a big day. They are zonked.

Meantime, the nest on the 33d floor of the PG&E building in downtown San Francisco had no surviving fledglings the last two years.  Yesterday, the first of their four took off into the air and he made it!  He flew again, to prove his point.  At last, a surviving new falcon.  There has been much cheering going on among their fans.

And to all a good night. It’s a big day ahead tomorrow and the next.



It’s one thing after another
Tuesday May 18th 2010, 11:36 pm
Filed under: Knit,Wildlife

(It rained today and someone clearly got dumped on. Squirrels’ tails turn into mouse-laughingstocks when wet. This is after it was halfway dry again!)

Had a great idea. Found an old swatch.  Wait, that’s what I was going to–! And another.  Well now. Great mind thinks alike.

Some Grant Circle-colorway pink yarn had jumped out at me today, enough to get me to go look up the site of the lovely woman I bought it from at Stitches East a year and a half ago to make sure she was still around. Yes! Cool. (She will perhaps remember me as the woman who picked it up in my hands and guessed the base on the spot. I grinned, Hey, I’ve knitted a lot of lace.)

So many things I want to do, so many things in the queue.

Meantime, my Mother’s Day present finally snuck past that rude, belching lout of a volcano and jumped across the Pond today and eagerly rang my doorbell.  Cashmere/silk/merino (watch the yardage carefully on those, they sell a lot of yarn that is great for practicing plying on a spinning wheel) in the limestone colorway, which as far as I can tell is undyed or close to it; the grayishness in their original picture showed the mill oils more than anything and it pretty much washes out. I have some leftover from a previous project and took the picture with that ball on top vs the oiled cone as it arrived.

My daughters bought me the new stuff.  Coooooool.  This knitting thing–I think they’re on to me.

So it is now hanked, scoured, and I am impatient.  I’ll just go knit up this little bit of pink while it dries, oh, you know, about 900 yards’ worth or so…



The swatch-acity of hope
Monday May 17th 2010, 10:48 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Knit

You know, before I launch into finally doing that edging, I ought to go doublecheck that first shawl I knitted from this pattern idea just to make sure it’s exactly what I want…

Oh.

Huh.  Well, count that one a redesign for that bottom part.  Better I decide now, at least.  I remember now, I kind of squeezed the rows on that first one, writing down as I went what I was doing, because I never did find its last ball of yarn so I only had so much yardage–not a problem on the second shawl.  I made sure of that.

I never do this, but by golly I am so tired of wanting to get to the next project that I’m going to just go launch into it before I go to bed.  I mean, this is really pretty yarn but I am just so ready to look at other colors. (My get-well afghans have tons of colors, and hey, they certainly worked.  You all don’t know how grateful I am every day for those.)

And yes, that’s my Dancing Queen bud on its second day.  When it wants to come to be, it makes it happen!

Oh–wait…  Okay.  I’ll swatch.

It *is* nice, when I think about it, to be able to re-write the endings any way we want at any time when it comes to knitting. Just like you all helped re-write mine.