It’s not the fact that I’m on Clapotis #3:
It’s that colour rut thing happening again:
I’m not complaining. Even though the colours are the same, the blending keeps it interesting.
Guess who smells looks good, but feels miserable about it? What price glory? I think it’s the dumb bow that’s bugging her. Too bad I don’t have a before shot:
A make out scene. My son, the 17 year old actor, is getting paid for up to three days, to utter two lines and make out with a girl. Up to three days at say, $555 a day. My friend’s husband has offered to do it for $500. Like a good mom I’ve checked with the agent to confirm that the film is not rated R. Nobody prepared me for this part of motherhood. I need a photo to punctuate the unlikeliness of this role to my motherly brain. How about this one from last summer?
I think I’ll go knit now.
OK, all you English/speech teacher types, you know who you are, whine zone ahead. Doesn’t matter if you’re retired or working I’m sure you’ve noticed the newest trend in the spoken word.
A number of years back it was up-talking that felt like nails on a chalkboard? Every sentence transformed into a question?
Then "like" came back into vogue. Like I was going to my teacher,"Like my dog ate my homework?"
Now it seems the word "basically" is the mot du jour. I listened to a radio interview last night on an intelligent topic. He was basically a biologist, basically talking about speech recognition in mammals. Every sentence started with the word basically.
Ok, I’m finished. Forgive me, like it’s been basically a tough week at work? So now I’ll talk about another term I recently learned via the airwaves: simple elation. Simple elation as in the feeling you get from simple pleasures. For me it’s boxes. I know I’ve referred to this before, recollecting my first job at age15, as a gift wrapper at a suburban Lord and Taylor store. I loved the fact that I was paid to work with well crafted, pretty boxes. Many years later I’m still enamoured with boxes:
That’s my Neiman Marcus box, which once held Scottie salt and pepper shakers, and now contains my blocking pins.
Those are empty containers that live in my knitting area. They don’t hold anything yet, but I’m not throwing them out.
Canadian readers might recognize the Roger’s Chocolate box. You eat the chocolate and I get the box. I bet it would be just right for six skeins of Koigu.
Not a drinker of hard liquor (except Danish Akvavit twice per year, but according to my Danish relatives that doesn’t count as liquor), I have no idea where the Johnnie box came from. Jack, however, was the perfect duty free purchase at the Seattle airport last week. It came with a bottle for Chuck, a lanyard for Bryant and a box for me. A box tall enough for knitting needles.
As I write this I realize, that somewhere in my basement, is stashed a blue box from Tiffany’s. It held a gift from over 30 years ago, from the Donna of my Florida trip. The box lasted way longer than the relationship for which the gift was intended to celebrate. Maybe that’s why I like boxes. They are dependable and useful.
My high school math teacher, Miss Lahrman, would say "Simple minds, simple pleasures." Fine with me.
Hope your Easter weekend is filled with simple elation.
Let’s all sing along – those of you of a certain age will remember the tune: It’s my birthday I can buy what I want to, buy what I want to, buy what I want to, you could buy too…. Those were our lyrics on Saturday, Blogless Marsha and I. I didn’t really buy too much, but it was fun giving myself permission. Actually, Marsha gave me permission. We were talking, that at 50 something, we still felt special on our birthday.
And special it was, including a yarn crawl of five shops in NW WA. Marsha took me out to lunch at Bellingham’s Mount Bakery, named after the local Mt. Baker. Here’s a hint: great food, but pass on the iced tea. We both agreed it was nastiness in a glass. We arrived home to dinner, cooked by Chuck, with what has become my traditional birthday cake – Boston Cream Pie with strawberries and vanilla sauce.
I received the most unique present so far – Marsha’s Dave gave me new dryer venting pipe. You might think this strange, but understand, I especially appreciate gifts that make my life easier. Our dryer has never worked properly due to too narrow a vent. I’m presuming this "some assembly required" gift comes with installation. That might be a way bigger present than he counted on. Evil female laughter.
Here’s the spoils du jour:
A very special Scottie gift from my FL trip from Rosie and her sister, Betsy, our hostess:
And now for the yarn: some Blue Heron Rayon Metallic in Curry for Calpotis #3 and two more skeins of Koigu for a wrap.
I can’t believe it’s over, the seven day slumber party. As a group, the four of us have 40 years of history.
The weather didn’t cooperate, but who cares? We spent a day at a flea market and one at St. Armand’s Circle in Sarasota. Donna forbade me to go home with the purse I’ve carried for seven years, so I bought one at each stop. Don’t worry the one from St Armand’s Circle had a store with a mission statement that included the words "inexpensive does not mean cheap." A step up from the flea market but way better than Brighton:
We had a day at Busch gardens where even the Ladies’ Room had a mission statement:
Betsy conversed with Beaker the flamingo and Rosie was introduced to her namesake elephant. We learned that another of their elephants, a pampered pachyderm, was 66 years old and had exceeded her life expectancy of 45 partly due to a diet where she lost 700 pounds in one year. What did they feed her – Purina Elephant Chow – Fit and Trim variety? Whatever it was, I want some of what she had.
I saw two alligators in the wild. I know that’s not a thrill for Floridians, but I guess we all have our pet predators. My neighbourhood bears don’t hold a candle to an alligator up close and personal. Can you spot her eye in Betsy’s pond?
How about now?
Donna met her dream car and dressed up to match, in hopes it liked her as much as she liked it. Betsy’s husband is babysitting it until its 90 something owner reclaims it after recently regaining her driver’s license.
Then there were the beach pictures. Meet the quintessential beach bum and a classic Tampa Bay sunset.
There was even a bit if knitting going on – Clapotis #2 – 70% finished:
Can you tell we had a good time?
Thanks to Betsy and her mostly hiding hubby for hosting us.
Hello from sunny Florida!
Need I say more 🙂
I bought the yarn for my first Clapotis thinking how beautiful and original the colours appeared. Time to break out of my rut, never used those colours before.
Or have I. Clapotis yarn, meet Lady Eleanor.
And then there’s the Silk Garden Poncho from way back when.
Even the bugs in my garden are fitting into my rut.
I vow that the next addition to my stash will not contain any combination of greens, turquoise, rust, and burgundy.
I’m taking a break from the other routines of work and mothering and, by the time most of you read this, will be on my way to Florida with two friends from grade school. I’ll be back in time to celebrate a birthday of historic proportions, as it will be the first time in my lifetime that the Ides of March will fall on the 2008 designated St. Patrick’s Day. Who knew? Could be fun…
"Clapotis, c’est fini! ‘ It’s a scarf:
"It’s a wrap!"
I have to confess, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I had bad thoughts about Clapotis prior to knitting one. I approached it with great trepidation and was equally rewarded. It’s prettier than anticipated and the dropped stitches don’t get caught on jewelry and buttons like I expected. Even the pooling and flashing evened out as the columns opened up.
Not sure I’d use a silk blend again; the stitch dropping part was interminable. No more than three stitches would run at a time, due to its velcro-like attachment. I’m afraid of future pilling as you could hear the stitches tearing apart from each other, leaving behind a trail of fuzz.
The size is perfect for 600 meters of yarn, stopping at half way through the sixth repeat in section two and adding two repeats to section three. I’ve done a lot of knitting and this is probably one of my most favourite functional items. # 2 is on its way:
I know I complain at times about our seemingly endless rain, but as our thick clouds begin to break, we do have a beautiful sky. Not bad for February, eh?
One of the benefits of an astronomy/physics major daughter are wonderful eclipse photos. She took this one last week. Just another example, that as in knitting, the right tools make all the difference in the world. And the moon, apparently:
If someone didn’t know what was going on, and overheard the teacher in the class area of Vancouver’s Birkeland Brothers yesterday, some eyebrows might have been raised. "Poke the butt, poke the butt, poke the butt" she called out, reminding me of the nurse midwife of my past, fervently shouting out her orders "push, push, push, push, push." Just what was going on back there?
It was a needle felting class, of course. First we made a felted fried egg. Never know when that might come in handy.
Then came the mouse, the one whose butt received repetitive pokes. I think he’s cute, cute, cute considering we didn’t have a model from which to work. Kind hearted Pearl, the instructor, gave in on the previous afternoon, selling it to a woman who claimed her toothless chihuahua couldn’t live without it.
Really, I have no need for felted eggs or mice, but I might find the need for a felted Scottie dog or two. It’s from the book Fleece Dog, the one both Sandy and I bought during our visit to Patternworks last summer.
Life's a Stitch 
