I hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend. We set up our firepit, a Halloween playlist on a radio in the garage, and our table of individually bagged candy at the end of the driveway, and the weather cooperated! We bundled up and enjoyed the fire and said hello to the intrepid folks who came by. We had a lot of trick or treaters, parents wore masks and respected social distancing, and all in all it was a very enjoyable evening.
I had been doggedly working on my Halloween socks and squeaked in under the wire, weaving in the ends at 2pm on Halloween. And they were on my feet for the festivities!
As a reminder, these are ‘Minecraft’ pattern by Heather Cox, knit on the Less Traveled 757 sock yarn in the ‘Slutty Pumpkin’ colorway. I did modify somewhat, replacing the pattern heel with a simple slip-stitch. I’m really happy with how they turned out – the pattern is squishy and comfortable and fun to knit, and the yarn is a perfect weight and not in the least bit itchy.
Now the Halloween decorations are put away, the yard is buttoned up for the season of long darkness, and things feel oddly empty and barren. The clocks are turned and I find myself without a pair of socks on the needles or a horror film to watch! The first will be rectified soon. I need to start on my Christmas socks and in the meantime, I’m just going to catch up on my vlogs and knit another careless stripe of garter on my never-ending Log Cabin blanket.
As a footnote, if I’m honest I’m dreading the week to come. I am prepared for the worst of Trump gaslighting and trying to steal the election, but hoping for the best that the results are so clear that they simply can’t be lied about or obfuscated. I hope that 4 years of the worst president in US history will soon be over and whatever we have to suffer this week will be the last of his poison.
I can’t wait to line up at the ballot box on Tuesday and vote him down.
What a week. I almost didn’t show up in this space today but I do have five things and I’m enjoying this little weekly exercise, so without further ado, let’s jump right in.
So did we need ANY MORE PROOF that Trump is a criminal, a liar, a bully and a racist who defends, protects, and promotes white supremacy? I didn’t. He’s been showing those things via his actions for years. The minute he appointed a poster boy for the Breitbart alt-right to his administration, that was all I needed to know, and by the time he defended white supremacists in Charlottesville (“very fine people”), the horse was waaay out of the barn for me. The fact that he could not wrap his fat mouth around the simple words condemning a fascist, alt-right, Holocaust-denying organization is no surprise to me – but when people tell you who they are, believe them. The sad thing is that his base doesn’t care. His time in the White House has given credence and a voice to a segment of the US population that should be living under rocks, in the boondocks, being generally scorned by the civilized public and allowed to die a toothless death on a sagging couch under a stained Confederate flag wall-hanging. Instead, our President, our Commander in Chief, has them on standby when he refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power. What the ever-loving FUCK, people. (Although I did love the suggestion from one Tweeter that said that if he were Biden, he’d open the debate by putting a tin cup in front of Trump and flipping a quarter into it.)
I will always be here for the Biden / Barack bro memes. 🙂
2. If you are on IG and NOT following Quentin Tarantino’s account @quentin.quarantino, you are missing out on some extremely funny shit from someone who hates MAGA and the right-wing and has an amazing sense of the bizarre, the incisive, and the hilarious. Also some great merch in his shop, and I think he donates some portion of the profits to charities although I can’t find any verification of that (I think I remember him posting a Story about it?).
3. On a complete 180, I’ll move into television entertainment and say that we were excited to see a new ep of The Great British Baking Show on Netflix. It is more subdued than previous seasons, but Noel, Paul, and Prue were a breath of fresh air and although we miss Sandi, Matt Lucas seems like he’ll be a fine addition. It’s such a nice show to have for family viewing times with Miss L and when she’s with her dad, Brandon & I have been dipping into Season 2 of The Boys which is just as totally off the hook as Season 1 with just as many crazy “WHOA” moments.
4. I am making hay while the sun shines. Working from home has given me no excuse to get my shit together so this week I made dentist appointments and flu shot reservations for me & Miss L, went to the doctor for a physical and a prescription refill, had the chimney swept, and bought firewood. My car is completely up to date with service, and I am going into the winter with a new furnace and water heater. And yes we broke down and turned the heat on yesterday. Bring on the winter.
5. I’m hoping to get my Halloween socks finished to wear for Halloween but although my progress has been steady so far, I know that my sock-knitting productivity can take mysterious hits at any given time, so I am really trying to (see above) make hay while the sun shines. These are Ravelled, but just as an FYI I”m using Less Travelled 757 sock yarn in the Slutty Pumpkin colorway and using the Minecraft pattern by Heather Cox, which is also on Ravelry. This is resulting in a very satisfying knitting project and the Less Travelled yarn is lovely to work with.
I hope you’re all getting ready for a lovely weekend full of fall fun – pumpkins, woodsmoke, yummy treats, warm blankies and leaf piles. I’m going to be decorating the yard for Halloween with a variety of tombstones and a scary pumpkin-headed ghoul (that Miss L, in withering 12-year old fashion, thought was “a little tacky”). DON’T CARE – BRING ON THE GHOULS. xoxo
The mailman has been so good to me this week. I received my copy of Nomadic Knits issue 7, featuring our beautiful Mitten State. I haven’t read it thoroughly yet but just browsing through it, it’s full of beautiful patterns and stunning photographs. I think my next sweater project (after Pink Memories) may be in there.
But first, I need to pick a pattern on cast on for my very first pair of Halloween socks – using one of my other bits of happy mail this week. Two preordered colorways from Traveling Yarn came – Turning Leaves (the pink tones) and Slutty Pumpkin (who can resist that name???)
2. Miss L was very disappointed not to get placed into an art class at her middle school this semester, so I signed her up for a small, socially distant weekly community ceramics class. It’s held at a local park which is the site of an historic homestead, a beautiful old house, stables, barn, a forest with several trails, orchard, a nature center, etc. The art studio is in the old stables and while Miss L threw some clay, I rambled around the trails, admiring the hazy sunshine, thickly overlaid with high altitude smoke from the West Coast, and did some knitting. It was a very peaceful way to spend an hour, watching the archery class and martial arts class meet outside, six feet apart. I can’t wait to see these trails in a few weeks, when darkness rises and fall color blazes.
3. For someone who very rarely paints her nails, I sure love nail polish and look of a beautiful, shiny manicure. It’s one of the first things I notice and admire in women. I ordered a Cookies & Creme polish set from Olive & June and did my nails this week. The colors seemed to go on a bit thin, but I’ve been overall pleased with them, and they’ve lasted 4 days without chipping so far, just using the Olive & June topcoat (usually I use Orly topcoat, which is the only thing I’ve tried that can preserve my manicure). I’d love to get back into the swing of having painted nails.
4. This week’s only real spot of bad news is the water heater. See last week. Sure enough, the diagnosis was imminent death. So Monday was essentially spent with a plumber. I’m out a nice wad of cash, but it is undeniably pleasant to have hot water whenever I turn on the tap without having to run down to the basement to relight the pilot.
5. I went into the office yesterday. I’ve gone in about once a month since the pandemic hit, but the mood yesterday was different. I’ve had some tough moments working from home this summer, even though I prefer it overall to being in the office. But this time the sun was shining and the leaves turning, and I had a feeling of wistful nostalgia walking up the stairs, unlocking my door, smelling the office smell, turning the calendar another month. Will we ever be back? The office is comfortable; it makes me remember that I’ve got this. Things that feel like a huge deal sitting alone in my home office slash spare bedroom are shrugworthy in the office. Being there reminds me that I have a pretty good track record of handling shit and a pretty strong emotional bandwidth, even when I am not sure that I can take one more thing when I’m on my own during a pandemic. I feel alone sometimes but in truth, I’m not. Two of my colleagues were also in, and we chatted behind our masks. They reinforced that they’d had the same moments of self-doubt, malaise, isolation, and loneliness. It was so nice to see them, to laugh about the fact that we couldn’t hug after six months, share our stories, catch up, and then go our separate ways with best wishes until we meet again. I needed that boost because, as my colleague said, it will be dark soon. Winter will bring the darkness, the days of grey will come, the cold will come, and it will be hard again, here; short days and long nights and a second wave. He’s worried about how we will all deal with that. But somehow, yesterday, being in the office reminded me that we are all in this together and will get through this and although our politicians and our bad actors will continually try to point out how different we are, how much we should hate and fear, in my experience, the people in my circle, work and personal, even with ideological differences, want to come together and find a middle ground and do right by each other as best they can. I hope you have those people in your circle as well and I hope wherever you are this weekend, you have a moment of remembering them, not just in your mind but in your heart and your soul. xoxo
So it’s been another week. A pattern of storms bounced us from high temps earlier this week to a Saturday morning that feels almost autumnal. Everything enjoyed the heavy rains, including Bunter the yard rabbit who sat out in the downpour almost all Wednesday morning.
Bunter is the little brown lump in the lower left.
There are a few bright red leaves on the admittedly stressed maples in the front yard. I’ve been reading up a storm and my home office was peaceful and productive this week except when I had Skype calls and then the jokesters I live with would try to entertain me.
Brandon keeps asking if I want to hang this up anywhere and I think he’s only half-kidding…
School starts on Monday and no one is happy about it. Teachers are stressed and I have enormous sympathy for them. Parents are stressed because the instructions, schedules, and learning platforms seem confusing, and in some cases have only just been released / received at the end of last week. Miss L is not best pleased although I’ve tried to get her excited through a concerted effort to clean and reorganize her desk in her room, creating a dedicated space for learning, and school shopping for supplies that she may not need right away. We had a joint session doing our day planners together with some fun stickers, marking off the holidays and days off we know about. We’ll all just have to do our best and give each other lots of grace.
I’ve been knitting a lot and am excited to say that I am about to embark on SLEEVES for the Pink Memories sweater!
Very poor quality picture of a crinkly pre-blocked mess of a WIP – but it will soon have SLEEVES!
And the Log Cabin blanket that is now a several-years-old WIP continues to meander along at its own pace, mostly for mindless television knitting as it’s just garter stitch, garter stitch, and more garter stitch. Someday I will decide it’s done and bind it off and start a new blanket but I have a lot of rows left in me for this one, I think.
I hope you are well on this Saturday wherever you are – I have no plans except to at some point wander out into the yard and put up the birdfeeders that were raided last night and left on the ground empty, no doubt by our yard raccoon or a squirrel gang. Maybe a nap later.
(To quote Karl Pilkington, for any of my readers who are fans!)
Our second week of isolation is going well. I’m back into a good groove with my home office and Miss L has set up with me to do her online classwork. (Huge props to our school district for a quick move to online learning- they’re doing super cool things with Google Classroom assignments and keeping kids connected via Hangouts and video conferencing a couple times a week!) She has also been keeping us well supplied with baked goods from a cookbook for kids that my folks got her for Christmas- she’s made brownies from scratch and chocolate chip cookies this week.
Emmett has been our faithful home office companion and we call him out unpaid intern for as much time as he spends hanging out with us at our work table.
Although our governor has issued an official stay-home order, Brandon was deemed an essential employee by the company he is doing work for, so has to go into his workplace every day. He’s been a trooper about it but I know it causes him a lot of personal and ethical conflict and concern. We’re trying to take extra good care of him.
The weather has been nice (for Michigan) the last couple of days, with mild temperatures and sun. Brandon got Miss L’s bike out yesterday and we went for a walk while she rode. It was amazing how many people were out – hanging out in their driveways, on porches, doing some early yardwork, walking their dogs. Everyone maintained wide berth from each other but it was very reassuring to have some contact, waving and calling hello, sharing gratitude about the sunshine.
I only want to knit in simple, mindless, meditational garter stitch so I’ve pulled out the log cabin blanket I started a couple of years ago.
I hope you are all well and experiencing similar moments of goodwill and gratitude wherever you are, amidst all the worry and strain. xo
I cast off on my New Year’s socks and am proud to reveal them as the “Lost Cathedral” socks, following on my fondness for the literary. These are named after “Chimes of a Lost Cathedral” by Janet Fitch.
They are Raveled but I can tell you that I used Wendy’s Toe-Up Sock Pattern and the yarn is Six and Seven Fiber Alfalfa in the “Avonlea” colorway. As soon as they were off the needles, they were on my feet, and friends, this yarn is wonderful. It’s very warm, soft, and not a bit itchy. I plan on taking my mother to Wool and Honey the next time I’m up north so she can pick a color and I can knit her a pair – it is my new favorite sock yarn. My only grievance is that I did not cast off as loosely as I should on one cuff so it takes a bit of finagling to get it on but once it’s on, it’s fine, and I knit them a bit shorter than I usually do, as well.
My next knitting item for discussion is the Pink Memories sweater which I’ve been chunking away at for almost a year now. Friends, I need a stiff drink to tell you this, but after finishing the ribbing, I now think I have to frog it back to mid-chest.
You probably can’t see it as well in this picture, but I realized a fair way through that I had messed up the garter stitch just under the breast (I did two rows of purl which makes a strange compressed line instead of a normal garter stitch). Before that, there was a knot tie join in one of the skeins and it of course ended up on the front of the sweater with scraggly ends. I also dropped a stitch or did something wonky to one of the yoke-shaping stitches which makes it look gappy and strange. I thought I could live with these errors but I have realized that I simply can’t. I don’t want to wear my first sweater and constantly be self-conscious that everyone can see a strange bust line and a gaping stitch and a weird yarn join right in the front and think “yeah, I can tell she knitted that thing herself…”
…I think I have to tear it back and try to salvage what I can or entirely start over.
I know it will be worth it when it’s done – it’s a great pattern and beautiful yarn – but it’s a hard pill to swallow and I’ve been absorbing myself in all sorts of other little tasks to avoid tackling this painful process. I’m hoping it will now be finished and ready to wear for winter 2021.
We spent most of yesterday with our eyes on the skies and our weather apps as the forecasters had told us to expect an “unprecedented” winter storm that would “more than likely” result in power outages. We hauled our woodpile into the garage and then watched it rain, and rain, and rain, and then sleet a little bit, and this morning it’s brightly sunny and clear. Don’t get me wrong – I am NOT complaining.
Our sideyard always floods!
My mom got me this skillet cookbook for Christmas along with two hardcore cast iron skillets and last night I made a chicken and rice recipe. It was excellent and I can’t wait to try some skillet bread & other recipes. There’s something about cast iron.
I’m trucking on my sweater and finished the ribbing, so very soon will be starting on sleeves and maybe have an unblocked, work-in-process photo to share…just a reminder that I’m knitting the Pink Memories pattern by Isabell Kraemer. I also got these adorable progress keepers from the Etsy shop Bump on a Hill and I can’t wait to use them on the sleeves.
I’m doing a lot of knitting to a new-to-me vlog these days – Talasbuan, about a couple in Sweden going off-grid. The photography is just lovely and their journey fascinating.
And we are still on the fence about the new Dracula on Netflix, but likely going to tune in for the second episode tonight!
I hope you are warm and dry and I will see you here on Tuesday for Show Us Your Books – I have a couple great ones to share!
We’ve been up north for a few days celebrating the solstice with my folks. We’ll be home for Christmas but in the meantime we’ve been enjoying the unseasonably mild temperatures and doing some last minute shopping and adventuring.
We hit Glen Arbor to visit Cherry Republic and loaded ourselves down with free samples. The big joke in my family re. Cherry Republic is that when Miss L was a tiny thing, we were driving home from an expedition there and I heard her in the backseat munching on free samples she’d stowed in her pockets.
We also visited the exceptionally wonderful Cottage Books, where they gave us a bag full of graphic novels that they’d gotten as complimentary copies. Of course we HAD to buy books as well so we were laden.
And we had our traditional winter solstice hike. The sun did its valiant best but by 3PM was hanging low in the sky, its strength spent. No matter- we’ve turned the corner now. Brighter every day ahead.
My mom and I took a short road trip to a yarn shop in Cedar that I’d seen on several blogs and ‘grams and vlogs. Wool and Honey is so beautiful and the owner is just a lovely, warm soul. We were instantly charmed and comfortable and spent a long time looking at their yarns and notions and extensive selection of patterns. Their Sleeping Bear Yarn club has some exquisite colorways that truly embody the natural beauty of this part of the state combined with artisan fiber craftsmanship. I was so happy to be able to visit and buy a couple of skeins of different types of wool for gifts for my own self.
We love this part of the world and always feel like our buckets are filled after a few days here.
That being said, we will also be happy to be back downstate tomorrow for our Christmas Eve and Christmas celebrations, and reunited with Brandon, Emmett, Sarge, and Pot Roast.
I hope you all have a very happy holiday week no matter what you celebrate.
I had a tummy bug on Monday and let me tell you, the unsung moments of parental heroism really come when you are valiantly striving not to humiliate your child by vomiting in the middle school dropoff line. Miss L may never fully appreciate this enormous act of valor but I certainly felt proud of myself! I slept most of the day and was better within 24 hours but man, it was touch and go for awhile.
So THAT was a poor start to the week, but the weekend preceding the ailment was great. Miss L and I drove up north for a quick visit with my parents and we took my mom to see The Nutcracker as performed by the Interlochen Arts Academy Dance Company and Orchestra. It was the first time for Miss L and I to see Nutcracker live and it was a beautiful performance.
And now it’s the week before Christmas and I’m trying my best to clear my desk off at work and be ready for a long holiday break. I finished a trial run at a pattern I purchased just recently – The Petite Jumper by The Petite Knitter. I saw this on the Fiber Tales vlog and immediately wanted to make it. This first one turned out a bit wonky as I twisted the needles on one of the sleeves when knitting in the round. But the second one I just finished (in the same colors) is much better. I’m doing a couple to accompany Christmas presents for near-and-dears and then I’m going to do a couple more using the same colors but in different mixes – so a cream body with red and brown accents, a red body with cream and brown accents, etc. – for a little garland. It’s a very quick, cute pattern but, as Fiber Tales noted in her vlog, it is a little fiddly and requires some concentration (I’m just happy I remembered how to do a color chart in the round).
In the Happy Mail department, I got some boxes full of materials for soap-making (more on that in the New Year) and I’ve received my 2020 planners – I went with Hobonichi this year. I want to do a better job this year with bullet journals / planners. We keep a Google calendar for Miss L, so both of her households can stay up to date on her activities, but for my own personal life, I’ve never really adjusted to an electronic calendar and much prefer paper. Additionally, working for a Japanese company, I love the Japanese minimalist aesthetic and the cultural emphasis on making organization and efficiency an art form.For work, where I need more writing space for meeting notes, I got the Hobonichi Techo, which has monthly pages and pages for individual days with inspiring quotes / factoids at the bottom of each 2-day stretch. In addition, it’s the Steiff limited edition so it has the Steiff bear on the cover underneath the Hobonichi kanji. I really love this planner and wish that I’d gotten the Techo for my personal planner, too (I strictly separate my work life and personal life – separate phones, separate notebooks, separate planners – working in a Legal department will do that to you). Instead, I got the Hobonichi Weekly for my personal planning and I feel a little sad that it is small and doesn’t have individual day pages. Still, though, it’s a great size for my purse or knitting bag or work satchel, and I ordered several cute pens and markers and washi tapes when I placed a recent order from a Japanese pen/stationery shop for Miss L’s stocking.
So these are just a few notes from Suburban Elysia. I hope you are all enjoying the best things about the holiday season and letting go of anything that doesn’t serve you. Be well and take some time for yourself before things get any more hectic. xoxo
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because you get all the gratitude, joy, and time with family without a lot of the extra nonsense and pressure to conspicuously consume. You just eat and watch football, and when everyone goes home you have some extra time to put up the holiday decorations and take naps! What can be better than that?
Brandon & I started the day with the Detroit Turkey Trot, which is sponsored by the Parade Company and runs along the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade route. It was clear and cold and despite my initial reluctance to roll out of bed, I was so glad that I let Brandon convince me. The vibe is fun and excited, with folks camped out on the streets before the parade, slapping high fives to the runners and calling, “Happy Thanksgiving!” We’d initially planned on doing the Drumstick Double (which would be the 10k and the 5k) but it cut it short to the 10k so we could get home a little earlier to prep for dinner. It’s a fast course, mostly downhill for the last half, and we had a tailwind, so I was pretty happy with our time.
I heard there are around 18,000 participants for the Detroit Turkey Trot.
My parents drove down from northern Michigan to spend the day with us and meet their grandkitten Pot Roast. My mom makes the best pumpkin pie, and Miss L baked her famous cheese rolls for us. Brandon carved and my dad introduced him to the delicacy of the turkey neck, heart, and gizzard. (Barf.) Although Miss L did classically Thanksgiving-themed placecard drawings, I went with a more Scandinavian-themed table setting this year, which I always really like.
We spent the rest of the weekend getting the house decorated for the holidays, and I watched some new-to-me YouTube knitting vlogs (Fiber Tales from Denmark!) while I finished up my Garment House hot water bottle cover. (Raveled. And it was purely a to-be-used knit, so I didn’t bother with gauge, switched to a slightly larger circular from dpn’s halfway through, and ran out of the stashed Cleckheaton Mohair that I was holding with a plain Lion’s Brand worsted. So it’s wonky but since it will spend most of its life tucked at the bottom of a bed, I’m not stressed.) Brandon’s cousin came over to help install the replacement dishwasher for my old Bosch, and Miss L started her Advent Calendar!
Harry Potter Funko Pop! Advent Calendar 2019!
Sadly, my car “Finn” did not want to start when the long weekend was over, so it’s been a Monday with a tow truck and working from the car dealership. I was dreading the outcome – new starter? new alternator? new CAR?!? But needing a new battery was the best (and likely most inexpensive) outcome so I am now ready to face the rest of the week with a working car AND a new dishwasher!
He felt like all the rest of us on a Monday morning after a long weekend…
I got creative with leftovers over the weekend and apparently I was not alone – Brandon texted me that all of the guys he works with brought turkey pot pies today for their lunch. 🙂
I hope my American friends had a lovely holiday and all of my overseas friends had an equally lovely weekend. To close, I wanted to share a couple of links for anyone who is as Moomin-mad as I am. Finland is definitely on my bucket list!
Six Ten 