Silly stuff
Monday February 13th 2017, 11:01 pm
Filed under: Life

For years I’ve parted my hair a certain way because of the way the divot in my scalp from the skin cancer removal made the hair go wonky otherwise. Straight up, it used to be. (Note to self: next time don’t wait nine months to get that spot looked at. I could have kept a lot more hair.)

This morning I thought, y’know, it’s been awhile since I’ve tried; I’m curious. And I parted my wet hair on, wait for it, the other side. Thrills! Chills! Excitement!

And it works now, too, if I want to keep it that way; the divot is much less than it was.

The only problem was that all day long, any time I walked past a mirror it was startling to see my face on backwards.



Waiting for morning light
Sunday February 12th 2017, 11:53 pm
Filed under: History,Politics

Been glued to the updates and saying prayers for the people below the Oroville Dam, where four counties are under mandatory evacuation orders as I type.

I remember the arguing over the need to reinforce the emergency spillway about a dozen years ago but the W. Bush administration refused, pronouncing it fine. With the Federal denial, there were too many owners involved to get them all to agree to pay for it on their own. The argument was made that water was too cheap and that there were real costs involved and that they needed to be paid sooner–or later.

Oroville Lake is where the water for the California Aqueduct flows from northern to southern California. It has the tallest dam in the country.

The main spillway broke wide open Tuesday and sent concrete barreling down the hillside.

Today, for the first time ever, the water went over the emergency spillway, which was simply an unreinforced hillside–at less than 5% of what it was certified to be able to handle, but instead with waterfalls churning down it it threatened to collapse from erosion from the bottom on up.

And starting Wednesday night that area will get 2-3″ more of rain.

The Sierra Club was right in suing to try to get that hill reinforced all those years ago.

This, this is the wall that needed to have been built.



It’s a toss-up
Saturday February 11th 2017, 10:21 pm
Filed under: Food,Friends,Garden

I sure don’t think the hawk dropped them, and the squirrels only tear an occasional one apart when they’re thirsty enough–when they do, though, you know from a distance that they did.

I was putting the frost covers on the mango for the evening when I happened to glance across the yard: say what?! My lemons aren’t that color and they sure don’t fall over there (or at all, until they’ve been hanging on the tree until the next crop comes in and there are none of those right now.)

I went and looked. I’d been outside earlier and they hadn’t been there then. I picked up one, more over there, finally six, a few of them cracked open from the impact. They’d been tossed a good toss.

Oranges.

Most people plant dwarf versions in their backyards; my Meyer lemon is probably older than I am but it’s not much taller.

But someone across the corner and down a bit at the fence line had planted a now-immense citrus that goes up nearly to the top of the power pole, and right now it is loaded, and since it was planted close against the fence, at least a third if not half the crop is accessible only to the other side. Free fruit!

And on that other side is my neighbor with early dementia whom I planted my Indian Free peach for. Our fig tree will spill over into their yard, too, when it gets bigger, if they want it to.

They’ve been anticipating those peaches and I have no doubt that Adele wanted to share back. She’s always loved knocking on my door in the summer and offering us some of her tomatoes.

I sent her husband a note telling him how loved it had made me feel that she’d made sure we could enjoy some of those oranges, too, if that was her–but I also mentioned still being in recovery from a serious head injury; maybe she could roll them gently over the top of the fence next time? (Hey, I could walk over there and visit with her and give him a reprieve for a moment, too.)

Just let me offer a gentle mutiny on the bounty, I thought. In the current delivery method, it’s the thought that klonks.

I think I need to go back to wearing that helmet in the back yard again, just to be sure.



Always the first
Friday February 10th 2017, 11:25 pm
Filed under: Garden

A few days up in the 60s and nights in the 50s, nice and warm, and the Tropic Snow peach tree declares it spring.

(Meyer lemon in the background looking a little waterlogged after all this rain. Today was the tail end of one storm and yet another is coming next Thursday-Sunday.)



Knitting diplomacy fail
Thursday February 09th 2017, 10:49 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knit,Life

I think maybe that was a mistake.

Yesterday we had our lupus support group meeting, and rather than have someone present info on some medical topic of the day it was requested that we come prepared to talk about our hobbies, our creative outlets, what we do that we enjoy.

I had no idea MR quilts, but wow does she ever. She brought some small ones to show us and I wished out loud that my mother, who also quilts, could have been there to see them.

The conversation continued around the room till me, the last in line. I said that if I took this out of its ziploc it was probably never going back in, and seeing the badly bulging bag coming out of my tote on that rainy day there was a chuckle around the room.

And so they dutifully admired the afghan project.

And then the leader of the group asked me the same question she’d asked the quilter: “How long did it take you to do that?”

“Well, usually an afghan takes me about an hour an inch but this one is taking two.”

Her eyes kind of bugged. “TWO HOURS an INCH?!” I could see any possible hope of interesting her in learning to knit instantly vanishing. Hard.

I knew that explaining untangling the balls of yarn and dropping and picking up every fourth stitch every sixth row down four rows certainly wasn’t going to help the cause, talking about five or six hour (or more) cowl or hat projects wouldn’t rescue it–I had already lost them all.

But hey, nice afghan.

(And now you have some context for yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek post.)



Have to use up all the yarn by then. All of it.
Wednesday February 08th 2017, 10:28 pm
Filed under: Knit

One week and two days till Stitches West. Not that I’m counting or anything.

Edit alert: Lisa is right and I had it written down wrong in my calendar–it’a the 23d-26th, not next week. You mean I have to wait longer?



You’re grounded
Tuesday February 07th 2017, 11:30 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Garden

Two years ago, there was this space, tucked between the fence and the end of the house, where I really didn’t think there would be enough sun for a fruit tree. But visually for us and in terms of not shading the other trees it would be a good spot.

We hadn’t planned on buying one for back there anyway but, hey, there it was. (I had, though, wished for one enough to ask my friend Ruth, who grows multiple types, what the best tasting is for our microclimate.) We were at the nursery way over in Santa Cruz an hour away because they were the only ones that had my English Morello sour cherry, which was going in at the opposite end of the yard, we got a Gold Nugget mandarin orange to go in near it because hey, we were there, bags of soil, yes, and then Richard heroically said to me, Is there anything else you want before we go?

It was the tail end of bare root season and everything was half off.

Seriously? Could I…?

And then his answer, as I marveled over the $10 price tag, of, Yeah, I like figs!

Coooolll…

And so I gave my impromptu new Black Jack tree an edge: I propped it up two feet sunwards by way of planting it in a giant Costco planter. That way if all else failed I could move it. I told myself the roots would be contained to help keep the tree small, but the variety I’d bought was a small one anyway.

Fifty figs its second year says it definitely gets enough sun back there. And it can reach upwards all on its own now.

Man, it felt good to see that (ugly–I confess it now) brown plastic finally kicked out of the picture and that trunk surrounded by good, rich dirt. It had earned the right to be permanently planted. No, I didn’t dare risk something that awkward, heavy, and with all the potential to smack my head on–I got some help and then stayed out of their way.



More and more and more and then more
Monday February 06th 2017, 11:11 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Knitting a Gift

Matched Saturday’s record: four repeats. Put on enough Joni Mitchell albums and I can plow through anything.

But I found myself daydreaming of a baby blanket done like an *Amish quilt: plain. Flat. Stockinette. The color wheel rendered in rectangles peacefully pieced together afterward. No untangling balls of yarn every time you turn it over to start a new row, no worsted-weight pulled up in circles against the size 5s (they really are. And all that time I was wondering why those 6s were coming up so tight on both yarn and hands–it’s because they’re not.)

Given how heavy and wide this blanket is and that I had more yarn and could continue, the question settled itself: this one’s for the parents.

Which meant adding 22 more repeats. The tall ones have to be able to cover their feet and pull it up to their chins. A good rule of thumb for afghans is to knit it to match their height.

And yes, Holly, I know I talked about wearing clothing to match the project to make it easier to get to it, and I do that a lot, but after a week of dutiful greens and blues my inner purple screamed to be allowed to come out to play.

*p.s. And then I found this. And it describes it as possibly the most time-consuming. Well then. We have a match.



On the day the first peach bud showed the first bit of pink
Sunday February 05th 2017, 11:10 pm
Filed under: Garden,Wildlife

Those huge wings doing a tight u-turn right in front of the window across the patio–even I heard the whooshing air from inside, a split second after the panicked dove hit the glass. The Cooper’s coming in caught it before it could so much as fall to the ground among the elephant ears and somehow then still headed out the other way again within that same space.

A cloud of prey feathers drifted into the yard as the hawk clutched its dinner tight and away. Those will disappear quickly, and have already started to. Nests must be built and babies must be cushioned.

Judging by the peregrine falcon reports coming in, our Cooper’s should be starting to lay and brood very soon.



Don your mark. Get set. Go!
Saturday February 04th 2017, 10:47 pm
Filed under: Knit

We went out to dinner with good friends Nina and Rod and parked behind a red Prius that had this on it.

Looking later, I didn’t find that one, but that’s why this one, a plain ball of yarn with needles, is now on its way here–just in time for Stitches West in two weeks.



Accelerating
Friday February 03rd 2017, 11:44 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Knitting a Gift

A new amaryllis, opening up all at once.

Just finished my third repeat on the afghan over the course of the day, again. For me, even though I know I do this and it bugs me and I always try to push myself past it, still, it’s easier to really dive into a big project when there’s so much of it already present, rewarding the eyes and hands; the whole thing speeds up the more I do.

Well, that plus I’ve got a deadline that’s sooner than the baby. It’s way too big to reasonably haul around Stitches all day in two weeks, but I’d really love to show it off to the Malabrigo folks to show them what can happen to their yarn after it leaves their mill–I’ve seen how much they enjoy that. Probably won’t happen this time, but hey, whatever gets my seat on that couch and those needles in hand.

Forty-five repeats so far.



A three-repeat day
Thursday February 02nd 2017, 11:11 pm
Filed under: Knitting a Gift

That solid green on the left is about to have stitches dropped for four rows and the white segmenting it back up into dots–it’s not a border. The pattern is a glorified stockinette stitch.

Pick it up and the whole thing shimmers in waves as it moves, all those popped-out bits of blues and greens highlighted by the white.

 



One bobbin
Wednesday February 01st 2017, 11:33 pm
Filed under: Knit

Done in the lace pattern in Karen’s Water Turtles shawl, just the instructions shown between the asterisks, since there are no side edges.

This project was bugging me. It was on a circular needle with a poorly-made join, the yarn was many strands of cobweb-fine silk and cashmere plied together on my wheel rather than all originally millspun as one, so little bits of that yarn kept snagging against that join. And then I’d have to try to work the silk (it was always the silk) back into its new stitch.

It was my thrown-in-the-purse mindless project for those times when I’d really rather be getting that blanket worked on which is really too big to lug around.

Said blanket was stalled out anyway while I waited for more Rios. It came today (wow Webs was fast!) and wonder of wonders, it matched, and I was itching to get to it.

This was somehow demanding to go first no matter how I felt about it. Just one hour, I told myself. Just do one hour. Sit down and who knows, maybe you’ll even finish it and that would feel great. (I knew it would be more than an hour, and it was–all it had needed was for me to get started so I could keep going.)

Bad photography aside, it’s turquoise and as it came off the needles stitch by stitch I thought, this is actually really nice. What was my problem?

It is blocking as I type and I need to cast on a different purse project. Let me find a different pair of needles first.