Annie Knits

Wheels at Work

I hope that, if you spin, you have a group with which to gather and share spinning.  I belong to a lovely Sunday afternoon group and we gather once a month to spin and talk about spinning with people who don't go catatonic when you bemoan the staple length of Wensleydale or ponder the suitability of Finn wool for socks.  

We meet in the back room of the knit shop and we chat and spin for a few hours.  Customers wander through and wonder what we're up to.  Someone (usually a customer's husband dragged in on Sunday errands) invariably pokes a head through the door and says something like, "Oh, that kind of spinning.  They said you were spinning back here, and I wondered ... "  

Like we haven't heard that one before.

They especially wonder what we're up to when we whoop it up after this kind of entanglement...  You knew this was going to happen at some point.  All those spinning wheels and all that drafted fiber dangling about.

Some of us spin with drop spindles and most spin with wheels.   We spin blends and different breeds of wool and discuss the merits of drafting versus rolags.

We bring in our recently spun yarn and hand spun hand knits to share and ooo and ahh over.

We show off recent acquisitions.  Can I just say that the sheepy smell coming out of this sampler box should be bottled and sold.  Or boxed and sold...  ; )  That's a box of several ounces each of 20 sheep breeds.  We decided it should be spun and knit into a sheep breed striped sweater.  How cool would that be?!  Except when you explained it to non-spinners, which you'd have to do because it's so cool, they'd glaze over.

One of us just spends an inordinate amount of time playing with the Sports Action setting her camera.

 

Bullets -- Life Gets Disjointed, You Know?

• First off, this  (it's a Yahoo News link).  Here's what I think (and this is totally not a viable solution, I know, I'm just hoppin' mad).  Everyone should get to opt out paying for of so-called safety-net programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, Food Stamps, etc if he or she wants to.  If someone doesn't want to participate in society, it's obviously his or her choice.  Two conditions, though.  It should be a public choice -- you don't want to pay for this stuff, don't just cheer anonymously in a rabid crowd, put your name down so I can see it.  Second, you opt out of the benefits as do your dependents.  Period.  If that's what you believe it means to support each other in society, fine, you're un-subscribed.  Hope nothing bad or out of your control ever happens to you.  I mean that with all my heart too, because I'm just that kind of gal.
• Speaking of bad or out of control, a family we know has had a difficult time lately with a severe injury happening to an adult child who lives across the country.  Luckily, he has insurance and he'll be ok.  Meantime, his mom has flown there to be with him and his dad and younger siblings are here.  Through church, we're making meals for the family this week.  Monday, I cooked for much of the day and caught up on Boardwalk Empire.  Add Steve Buscemi to the list of people I'll watch do anything (it's a short list... Colin Firth, Anna Paquin, Rufus Sewell).  Weird, I know.  I made lasagna, Mulligan Stew, and these cookies.               Peanut butter, chocolate chip, butterscotch chip.  They are awesome, but they'd be better if I'd sprinkled them with sea salt and turbinado sugar before baking them... a little sweet/salty crunch on the top would have put them into the "sublime" category.
• Knitting the Fibonaci striped sweater has stalled.  I'm going to run out of yarn and it's 8 years old and discontinued and the place I bought it originally doesn't have it any more and no one who has it in their stash on Ravelry will talk to me.  Pooh.  I've found a sub and may order it.  Pooh again.
• Since Fibonaci is stalled, I started something else.  Vitamin D in my hand-spun.  I'm Ambivalent so far.                       I love the way it's knitting up, but it's a little uneven.  Gauge issues I think.  Soon, I'll wet it and see if I like the results.  The yarn is this:   I plied Spunky Eclectic's club colorways Night Owl and Changes together.  The resulting yarn is a squooshy dk weight 2 ply.  We'll see if it's the right yarn for this sweater.  Time and knitting will tell.
• Now, The Game of Thrones is the black hole of my time.  Bridgett thinks it's dark.  There must be something wrong with me that I don't really...  I'm hard wired to enjoy the medieval I think.  I can look past the filth and throat slitting and just enjoy the rawness.  The social network in this kingdom?  Someone else's dagger...  And I love Peter Dinklage -- he's a kind of out-of-the-ordinary but very appealing choice for this role.  Lots of knitting and watching.
• And finally, I made this little craft project for our bedroom out of some toile I found and fell in love with.   
• Yeah, loved it until Rachel made me watch this:     

Yeah.  That's all.

An Absolutely Perfect Day

That's what we're having here in St. Louis.  It's up to 74 degrees and breezy.  The sun is shining and the sky is blue.

This morning was cooler and less breezy -- perfect for a bike ride.

Across the river, just outside of Granite City, Illinois, is a network of bike paths that stick mostly to the floodplain of the Mississippi River and wind in around the small towns on that side of the river. It's a beautifully maintained set of trails which husband rides often.  I've been too incapacitated to ride them, but on the 2 month anniversary of my surgery, the weather cooperated and I was ready.

Hubster is an inveterate cyclist and knows the trails and bike paths in the area well.  He chose this set of Illinois paths for my first long ride because they're so well maintained and because they're flat.  We started here, at Horseshoe Lake State Park on Horseshoe lake.  The lake is actually an oxbow lake, or part of what was once the Mississippi river's channel. The river runs closer to the Missouri bluffs now and this lake is just a remnant.

See?  That's St. Louis across the lake.

This set of bike trails sticks mostly to the floodplain which is wide here, and floodplains are flat.

Did I mention the trails are flat?  Flat is good when you aren't so confident of your stamina.  Which I am not.

See Horeshoe lake at the bottom of the map?  We actually got a bit past this marker for a round trip total of 13.6 miles, with a few photo-op stops along the way.

See what a perfect day it was?

The sights included:

• a covey of quail;
• a gaggle of geese;
• a solitary snake;
• lots of butterflies;
• turtles;
• fish jumping;
• a snowy egret; 
• lots of sun flowers and thistle and black walnuts;
• a recumbent tandem (hubster says they're for old people, but I thought it looked really cool).

The trails take you through everything from trailer parks to farm land to city parks to state parks.  They used to be railway rights of way and I think that cities and states are making this kind of trail all over the place using former railway beds.  Do you have any in your neighborhood?

Hubster rides almost every weekend and has cool biking togs which include very visible shirts and shorts with a gel insert for ... um ... comfort.  

All I have to say is that I'm acquiring gel insert shorts for myself before the next long ride.  That's the only part of me that got tired.  ; )

No Irene Here

But it sure looks like it in my yard!

There are lots of posts around about downed trees and flooding.  Just awful stuff and my heart goes out to those who are still without power or a place to stay due to the storm's damage.

I can, in solidarity with Irene sufferers, post a picture of a downed branch.

It's hard to see, but a branch no less than 10 inches in diameter fell darned close to daughter's parked car sometime this morning.  

Windspeed?  Zero.  Rain?  None.  

The branch is actually rotten through it's core.  I hope the tree isn't.  Time to call the tree guy.  Lucky for me, I'm not on the east coast.  He is available to come right over...