life lately: hazy skies, skeins, and checking the air quality on repeat.

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last week

Last week was a lot of beautiful outdoor time – hours at our neighborhood pool club reading ‘Wedding People’ and ‘Villa Coco’ and ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ on my Kindle (all of these have been very different yet satisfying reads – and “Mongo is appalled!” – iykyk), miles of brilliant blue sky and sun, more reading on the front porch with the evening light sliding down over the hydrangeas and our hanging fern baskets, weeding the hostas and setting up the new river stone birdbath and photographing Brandon’s family lilies.

This week – not so much.

I’m sure everyone with a news app (or eyeballs) is aware of the Canadian wildfires which are sending smoke plumes across a wide swathe of the US. In Detroit, we’ve had the worst air quality in the world for at least one day and it looks like that beat goes on into the weekend. We’ve had a couple of summers where we’ve been impacted by wildfire haze, so it wasn’t especially surprising in theory, but yesterday when I stepped outside, I was shocked. I don’t ever remember the skies being this hazy, obscuring the sun to a vivid mere pinpoint, such an intense odor of burning.

Coupled with several days of high temperatures near 100, it’s been unpleasant. I’ve shifted to indoor activities in my after-work hours, reluctantly. Summers in Michigan are brief and therefore precious, and having to lose any of it has been a ding to my mental health this week (along with the constant barrage of terrible news – ICE murdering another person, diarrhea lettuce, the war). I’ve had to make extra efforts to stay positive and look on the bright side.

The heavy haze has put our hometown festival in jeopardy. While safety comes first, I’m thinking of the vendors and organizers who rely on this weekend or have spent numerous hours throughout the year planning it. I could still hear the valiant beer tent band last night (we live close to the heart of our small downtown) but with little improvement in the air quality, the attendance will probably be much lower than previous years. It’s our own tradition to run the small 5k they set up along the parade route, and then spend a few hours watching the parade and enjoying the community gatherings – the suffragette parasol drill team, the old-timey brass band on the city hall lawn. At the moment, those plans are up In the air.

Luckily the Tour de France is grinding away on Peacock and I have way too many knitting projects. I finished (!!!) my Perfect Knit t-shirt and wore it to work for the first time, and having that off the needles has given me mojo to keep pushing away on my kiddo’s Bug Collection scarf.

I also have a goal to knit up another pair of mittens or two using stash yarn, to help out one of my favorite local nonprofits. Mittens for Detroit, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that collects, purchases, and distributes new mittens and gloves to children, teens, and adults in need in Detroit and other underserved cities. On June 26, a pipe burst in their 100-year old building and they lost thousands of pairs of mittens, so in additional to making a donation to help them repair and start to replenish, I’d also like to add a couple of my own pairs. If you’d like to also support, their link is here.

It’s all a reminder that while I can’t control the weather, I can control (or work to manage, at least) how I adapt. Stay safe out there. Whether we are able to enjoy the festival as planned or stay tucked inside with books, the Tour, and WIPs, I hope your weekend brings a little peace and comfort.

roots and wings

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If you follow me over on my public facing (i.e. heavily curated) Instagram, you’ll see that since the last time i was present in this space, I’ve read some books and done a little knitting and hung out with my cats. You’ll see some flowers (my peonies were really good this year) and some skies and a little wheel of changing seasons. 

However you’ll only see glimpses of the biggest events – those that involve my Person, my only child, as she finished her senior year in high school, went to prom, and graduated. 

She wore a stunning red corseted gown to prom (she didn’t like red initially but sometimes the dress picks you).

We gave her a party – not a big party, just for some of the people who are really important to each of us – which was a little stressful for me because I’ve never given a party before, but she had a vision and she curated it. (It was wildflower themed, and she picked all of the flowers for our planters, and she arranged all of the blooms we bought for the mason jars on every table. She set out her childhood Polaroid camera with her guest book, washi tape and paint pens, for all of our guests to sign. And she is painstakingly writing thank you notes on botanical themed cards. This is a project and a half for her but she is grimly determined to get them done.) We had a cappuccino cart with two amazing baristas who loved our Pride flag and our ferns and our front porch overgrown with Boston ivy. They paid us the highest compliment when they said that we live with “intention”. 

And just this past weekend, she was “orientated” at her university of choice ahead of starting fall semester. Her dad and I spent a day at Parent Orientation with her but not with her and saw where she will flutter off to from our nests. (I don’t remember anything like this when I went off to college. My parents drove our minivan the hour and a half to my school, dropped me off, and picked me up a few days later. There wasn’t any “parent orientation” and we were all shell shocked for the better part of my freshman year.)

All of this pretty much absorbed me for the past six months – on an almost cellular level – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I read a quote during this process – “mothers are the givers of roots, seldom wings”. Our roots are deep and that is indeed what I consider to be the work of my adult life. But I want wings for her, too.

Now the summer has really started with a heat wave swiftly bearing down on us. (I know no one cares to read about weather in blogs…) I feel like I am about to plunge into another phase of processing all of the change that is happening with people in my life. I just want to be quiet now and sink into a summer of anonymity and privacy. Talk to no one, sleep a lot and get sun in my bones. Read some old Anne Rivers Siddons books at our pool club, drink wine on the porch in the evenings and tend to my own self, at least for a little while.

us at the pool

end of march catch-up

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Hello from SE Michigan where winter is hopefully dwindling and allergy season has yet to start cranking. It’s a rare moment of quiet around here, Spring Break for our area schools and the kiddo is off in warmer weather and sunshine with her father. When she gets back, soccer and spring activities will come roaring back, and then – everything that comes with graduation.

My daughter has begun to finalize her plans for next year, and I’m so proud and excited (and sad, but trying not to let that show too often). This is the season where everything starts to become real.

We went to the Whitney Hotel in Detroit to celebrate and if you are ever nearby and want to splash out to celebrate something, this is a place to go. It’s a fine restaurant and bar in the home of a Gilded Age lumber baron, filled with its original woodwork, art, and Tiffany glass. (And possibly a ghost or two? The top floor bar is named Ghost Bar accordingly.)

I’m working on her college dorm room blanket (the Cozy Comfort throw) and her winter scarf (the Bug Collection scarf). These are both longer term projects and although I try to pull them out of my knitting basket multiple evenings a week, this past month they took a little backseat. I ordered a beginner embroidery kit from Clever Poppy and absolutely loved it! I finished it up and ordered another one.

I made some charm kilt pins, and also fell down the sourdough rabbit hole and although I haven’t had much success with my first couple of loaves, my starter is still pretty young. I’m following the Kelly Welk tutorials on YouTube and hoping for a good focaccia here very soon.

March was also a good month for books. I read “Coffin Moon” by Keith Rosson and although it’s definitely not for everyone- it’s horror, and pretty gory horror at that – it was one of the first books of the year that I couldn’t put down. I’m also progressing through Juno Dawson’s “Her Majesty’s Royal Coven” trilogy and although it took me a little while to get into it, by the second book I was hooked. I find a lot of fantasy formulaic and simply not very well written, but Ms. Dawson’s characters are interesting, very diverse and appealing, her stories move quickly, and I like her enlightened, progressive feminist and queer themes.

I hope that you all enjoy the beginning of spring (or autumn, in the Southern Hemisphere) wherever you are. And my personal opinion- even if you don’t celebrate Easter, there’s nothing wrong with crunching the ears off a chocolate bunny.

maker space: midori-style traveler’s notebook

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I fell down the rabbit hole with some recent videos showing how easy it is to make your own Midori-style Traveler’s notebook and had to give it a try. After watching several YouTube tutorials, I found one from Makesupply which immediately felt like the best one. I can’t recommend Makesupply highly enough – their tutorial was step by step and easy to follow, with a list of recommended suppliers for the materials, and they also offer either printable templates or full acrylic templates for purchase.

I chose to make the pocket size, which will fit a pocket size notebook such as Field Notes. Typically, a leather cover for a notebook of this size will range between $30-$90 depending on how fancy you want to get. I purchased a small roll of leather from European Leather Works for $33 and I will be able to make 3 leather covers out of this roll. Of course, I also had to pay for the elastic bindings as well as investing in a scratch awl, which brought my total cost up to around $60 for the project.

I’m not great at cutting the leather yet – you use an Xacto knife and I was a little hesitant with my cuts, which resulted in a bit of an untidy edge on my first cover. I think, however, since I purchased natural full-grain leather that will age and weather, those edges will wear with time and hopefully just lend to the overall character of the cover.

I made one for myself and one for my daughter, and we picked out our own charms from my supply – I already have a huge stash of beads, charms, clasps, etc. on hand from my beading hobby. Putting each little charm on lobster clasps means we can swap charms out easily and add as many as we like. (I fell down another rabbit hole and made a lot of these, which means I will also be putting some notebook charms into my Etsy shop.)

how was your weekend? the unseasonably warm and wet edition

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How was your weekend? We had some very strange weather here in SE Michigan, even for what is occasionally a month of weather extremes. I can remember heat waves and wind storms and ice storms all occurring in Marches past. Sadly, a tornado touched down in Three Rivers (a little over two hours away from us) with a resulting loss of life.

So Saturday morning was muggy and grumbled with thunderstorms, which was fine with us because we had firm plans to stay in and watch one of the opening events of the cycling season (we are cycling fans here), the Strade Bianche, where wunderkind Tadej Pogacar devastated the field, the same as he did last year (and as he probably will in every race he starts for this year). I tried to make some progress on the kiddo’s bug scarf but the double knitting requires significant brain power and when cycling is on all I can manage is the most mindless garter stitch. So I mostly worked on my Cozy Comfort throw which will be a blanket that the kiddo can take to college.

The kiddo had a lot of homework and a paper to write and was holed up in the library or a coffee shop all weekend, so Brandon and I had an evening out for dinner and drinks. We don’t do this very often – we’re both early to bed folks – and as a result it felt like we were out quite late when in actuality we were home by 9. We set the clocks forward and so we still had energy to cuddle up with some snacks and get started on the Paul McCartney documentary “Man on the Run” (so much bad hair in the 1970’s).

It was a nice weekend together and although we lost an hour, we made the most of it. I hate this time change, being a person who has to adjust to the increased daylight (sort of a reverse SAD). It will probably make me feel a little off-kilter this week. I hope you were all able to enjoy a similarly cozy weekend with friends and family and fill your cups a bit in preparation for another week ahead.

friday files – some recent links & pins

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It’s been a damp and dreary week here in Southeast Michigan and I am sure that we are all looking forward to a weekend where we may potentially hit 60 degrees (even with rain, we’re going to see a lot of people breaking out their shorts and showing off blinding winter-white legs, it’s kind of a Midwest tradition). I have to get my taxes done and I hope to get out for a run – I’ve been itching to get back to it. There’s nothing like being outside in the damp spring, getting my shoes sprung and moving my aging body more. This article made me even more excited about it. Harry and Murakami-san Talk Running

I absolutely love Jenna Park’s Substack and even though I am not an artist like she is, her recent newsletter Start Where You Are really resonated with me.

This week, several pins featuring penny loafers made their way to my boards. I sort of blame that show about JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. I’ve not watched it, but pictures of her are showing up everywhere and it’s caused a bit of throwback fever for her style. I always loved her fashion sense, and in the ’90s when I weighed about 100 lbs I could do a low-cost emulation of her style and sort of pull it off. I had sleeveless black linen dresses and black ankle boots and flared jeans and black turtlenecks and I still find a beautiful white button down shirt to be a never-fail choice (they’ve been ubiquitous in my closet since I was in high school). However, to be frank, in my eyes she and JFK Jr were a toxic hot mess and even her fantastic clothes couldn’t make me like her.

I absolutely love the red socks! Original pin here.
I can’t tell if this is a man or a woman but when the clothes are this good it doesn’t matter one bit. Original pin here.

As always, I hope you are well and happy wherever you are and gratuitous cat picture as a thank you for reading to the end!

how was your weekend? (the one with lots of parentheses)

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How was your weekend?

I had a busy Saturday (for me). I met with my brand new therapist (good and desperately needed in the midst of everything that is going on in our world right now which I don’t mention here) and enjoyed a girls night out with my daughter (excellent). We went to the Basement Burger Bar for messy burgers & fries and then ran across the street, dodging heavy wet snowflakes that suddenly swirled down through streetlights and neon, for a quick aisle scan at TJMaxx. (We ended up scoring a set of Snoopy sheets for her and a new Snoopy blanket for our den. We may have a Snoopy problem around here.)

I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for quite awhile but if there’s some sort of Gothic (or Regency or Victorian) epic sprawl playing, I’m up for it. (I think my last theater trips were for ‘Nosferatu’ and the big screen revival of the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ starring Keira Knightley’s collarbones.) My daughter was meh on the prospect of ‘Wuthering Heights’ but always likes visiting our retro 1920’s movie house and the idea of snacks and popcorn. She regretted her decision as she spent part of the film with her hands over her eyes and another part weepy (it was Heathcliff riding across the moors to Cathy’s bedside that did her in) despite my whispered protestations that these were really NOT great people and definitely NOT worth feeling sorry for. Her summary review through her muffled sniffles at the end: “Mom, that was two hours of bullshit.”

As for me, I enjoyed the movie much more than I thought I would, despite it being more “fan fiction” than anything else. Pros for me were the amazing costumes for Cathy, which felt very Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the almost Tim Burtonish set design, and Jacob Elordi. Cons were the romanticism of their toxic relationship, the massive changes from the book, and Margot Robbie. I like her a lot as an actress and thought she and Elordi were well matched, despite some criticisms I read of their chemistry, but for me, her icy and symmetrical loveliness was a miscast.

Sunday was another foray into bread baking. I’ve been nursing my starter “Charlie” for a few weeks, went out of the sourdough gate big and bold last weekend and ended up with a dense and gummy loaf that could have caused severe head trauma if dropped out of a second story window. This weekend I scaled back my expectations and did the easier King Arthur Rustic Loaf. There’s still a lot of room for improvement but Brandon and the kiddo ate several big slabs with butter before it was even cooled properly and gave it thumbs up.

In other news – it’s March! We have made it through the winter.

pins of the week – midwinter break & winter back roads edition

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We took our planned midwinter break but abbreviated it by a couple of days due to the kiddo’s illness. It was a 4-hour drive to our rented cottage through Michigan winter and we drove through a variety of weather – warming melt, rain, fog, freezing rain, snow. Everything except frogs fell from the sky. The kiddo managed to get in a few hours of snowboarding, and Brandon did two full days of skiing. The strange weather continued and one afternoon the ski lifts closed for thirty minutes due to lightning – a crazy contrast to last year’s trip when we were skiing in temperatures dipping into the teens Fahrenheit.

Light on the ski hills; the drive; our favorite ‘up north’ craft beer in the cottage hot tub; exploring local bookstore and coffee shop when the kiddo felt too tired to snowboard

So the drives there and back were stressful and yet compelling. I find the starkness of Michigan winter roads beautiful. I grew up among them. They can be bleak and sometimes despairing but since my Pinterest board has filled up with images that brought that same feeling, even if they are not technically Michigan made or inspired, I’ll let you decide for yourself whether they appeal.

Original pin here
Original pin here
Original pin here
Original pin here
Original pin here

As always, a bonus cat thank you for reading until the end!

friday files – the olympics make me cry

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Fri·day file (plural noun files)

/ˈfrīˌdā,ˈfrīdē /fīl/

A sometimes weekly roundup of things that made our five day grind more bearable (or bogged us down or were just simply on our minds).

  1. Starting with the worst – just to get it out of the way- I can only hope for that vile twat Pam Bondi, to paraphrase Taylor Swift, that karma is on her scent like a bounty hunter, step by step from town to town. I pray that her actions never give her a moment’s peace or rest in this lifetime and the echo of what she has done and continues to do with smug impunity follows her into the next life and the next. She’s got a lot of cleansing to do. Or – and this is a better option- she can rot, along with every monster she is protecting and shielding.
  2. Speaking of things that are sour – sourdough. (I know, and I in no way mean to make a jest, but how can you make a graceful segue?) I bought a sourdough starter from King Arthur (named “Charlie” by household vote) and spent 3-4 days trying to coax him to life. He was alive but unresponsive. I did some troubleshooting and some temperature testing and realized that my kitchen in the depths of February, despite being south-facing and one of the warmer spots of the house, is too cold. He wasn’t warm enough! I considered putting him in my daughter’s bathroom (which is definitely the warmest room in the house) but quickly discarded that idea because, you know, hygiene (there is such a thing as a fecal plume and while my daughter would murder me for saying it, it’s not unique to HER bathroom, it occurs in EVERY bathroom). No one wants that kind of culture in their sourdough. So I ordered a cheap mug warmer from Amazon and in the meantime he is snug in his sourdough crock in the microwave with a hot water bottle and my friends, he is bubbling away!
  3. Sporting events making me cry. Firstly, I’m going through some adjustments with my anxiety medication so I’m experiencing a wider and less predictable range of emotions, but every time Ilia Malinin takes the ice to skate for the US at the Olympics, I get teary-eyed. (He and my nephew also bear a slight resemblance to one another.) The way the Japanese figure skating team supports each other in the box and their overall graciousness and dignity makes me feel emotional. The US athletes who are able to verbalize their love for their country, their pride at representing it, and their distress at the actions being taken by the current regime (they’ve clearly read the memo about the freedoms the US is supposed to be based on) only to be disrespected by the overstuffed mouthpieces of said regime – makes me weepy AND furious. Breezy Johnson’s hand knit headbands. And last but certainly not least – Bad Bunny’s halftime show. I don’t even think I can talk about that explosion of joy and vibrancy and community and culture, culminating in parallel messages of love and hope and inclusion, without bursting into tears. Chapeau, Mr. Bunny, and thank you for showing us what America truly is and can be.
  4. Lastly, my stats are showing that there may be a few new faces visiting here – if that’s the case, welcome and feel free to visit my “About” page to get a feel for what I am about. If in reality these are just bots slithering around, ew.

We have a few days off for the kiddo’s midwinter break and were supposed to have a nice extended trip up north to see my mom, run a frozen 5k, and then go further north for skiing but sickness has (again) become a plague upon our house. We’re hoping to salvage a couple of days of skiing early next week if nobody else comes down with it but we shall see.

finished objects – melt the ICE hats, full & minis

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The Melt the ICE knitted hat pattern started making the rounds several weeks ago. A yarn store in Minneapolis, where ICE agents have wreaked so much misery, drafted the pattern and offered it for sale for $5. It’s based on a historical Norwegian knitted hat that was used to protest the Nazi occupation of Norway in the 1940s, and proceeds are being donated to Minneapolis immigration aid. The pattern has raised over $250k so far!

I used Cascade 220 worsted superwash merino and mine came together in about a week – the seven inches of 1×1 ribbing took the most time. It’s a fun and easy pattern, and now that I have the feel for it, I think I’m going to make a second one with a few modifications. I’d like a longer cuff (despite the distinctly unappealing concept of spending more time on an additional two inches of 1×1 ribbing). I’ve also seen some knitters making them longer and pointier and I’d love that aesthetic for my next one.

I also had a skein of red fingering yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners in my stash that was perfect for tiny ICE melter hats. This is a private pattern not on Ravelry that I saw on the Antifascist Knitting subreddit. (You can find it by searching for “A Pretti Good Hat Keychain” on Ravelry – the pattern drafter posted it as a project and provides the full pattern in their notes). They suggested making keychains out of them, although they also would be really cute just pinned to a coat or a bag. I made three, and they each took about a half hour of concentrated effort.

Knitting like this has been criticized as performative, but this pattern has raised real money for a community that has been under siege and desperately needs support. What is happening in our country is not acceptable. We are seeing the rapid increase of brutal authoritarianism and a masked, untrained, heavily armed police force that has no oversight. Despite being on camera taking struggling women into portajohns, beating and kidnapping men, women, teenagers and children (many of whom actually are American citizens), using children as bait, and outright murdering two protesters, the federal government has told us we can’t trust our own eyes. The Vice President has even stated that they have full immunity for anything they do. Which leads me to ask – what would any of us do if we saw an ICE agent raping a woman? Or harming a child?

We know what the administration will do. The men who murdered the protesters have been protected and taken to safe houses, rather than being immediately jailed and required to stand trial in accordance with our justice system. These are the actions of an authoritarian regime and untrained, violent vigilantes who have been armed and mobilized for shows of political retaliation, fear and force. The people they are terrorizing, racially profiling and targeting are not criminals or drug dealers (Trump has pardoned too many of those for anyone to believe that has anything to do with it) and the protesters are being demonized by the same administration that pardoned the violent offenders of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. (Don’t even get me started on how this administration has tried to rewrite the history of that horrific event.)

Knitting, donating, calling my representatives, and speaking out – it feels woefully inadequate but at the moment it’s all I’ve got.

Melt the ICE hat Raveled here.

ICE melter minis Raveled here.