Hard driving

Last week’s weather presented some challenging driving conditions. By the end of the week I was tempted to create a bingo card that included Construction, Earthquake, Terrible Flood, and Locusts.

Though we didn’t actually endure those particular events, we did have snow, sleet, freezing rain, regular rain, and dense fog. Many of us suffered from being on the road in the wrong order: timid drivers in front, driving no faster than 30 miles an hour and keeping their hazard lights on; sensible drivers in the middle, with headlights properly on, sure that they could stay on the road at a slightly swifter 40-45 miles an hour; aggressive Jeep owners in the rear, headlights off (unless they were tailgating, in which case they were using the high beams).

On the last day that I drove my loaner car, everything seemed to come unraveled. While Youngest and I were trying to get through town in the rain, one windshield wiper ripped the other one from its mounting. I stopped the car, retrieved the separated wiper, and drove to the nearest auto parts store (fortunately, it was just a quarter of a mile away) to have it replaced. We continued on until we were three miles from home, when a rather overstuffed raccoon was wandering across the road. One mile later we were almost struck by two large low-flying birds. I wasn’t sure that I would get home safely until I was in the driveway, putting the car in Park.

Bah! There’s not even any snow or ice!

On Friday morning I was at last able to pick up my new used car, the 2011 Subaru Forester that my mechanic has been rebuilding for me sine sometime in November. I seemed to spend all of Friday figuring out how to drive it — I accidentally put it into a “sport” mode that depended upon me to do the shifts, then eventually figured out how to put it in full automatic mode again — but at last I was home with my “new” car and new license plates.

Eldest and I spent much of Saturday vacuuming the upholstery and detailing the interior in mid-30s weather, since it wasn’t raining, or hailing, or snowing at the time. We found some items that the previous owners had left behind: five pennies, two stainless steel coffee mugs, and a fork. (I cleaned them up and will return them via my mechanic.) I flipped through the owner’s manual and put Post-It flags on the pages where information was particularly important to learn in a hurry. Illumination Brightness Controls? Now I get it!

Here’s Kinga. Kinga Forester. Get it?

She’s so much fun to drive, and she seems to enjoy k.d. lang albums as much as I do.

Typewriter Time

I’m getting ready to give a cleaning to another typewriter in my collection. It will be my mother’s 1966 Smith-Corona Galaxie II, which she gave me at Thanksgiving. I remember this machine as the one she used when she went back to college in the early 80s to earn a Master’s degree in Education from THE Ohio State University. (There’s a tiny splotch of Wite-Out on the ribbon cover; I’m thinking of leaving it there to honor all the pages she typed — and retyped — on it while sitting at the end of the dining room table.)

Eldest and I took a careful look at it this afternoon, flipping it over to see how we might get it out of its shell, but I don’t want to barge in without looking at the repairs manuals, and maybe a few YouTube videos, first. So the real work probably won’t start until next weekend.

Impossible Read checkpoint: The Once and Future King, Book One, Chapter 17. I have been doing a little reading because I so desperately want to do any reading at all. I am not caught up on my notes.

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Knitwise, I gifted the Thrift Stripe Cowl to its new owner. I also completely frogged the shawl I was making with that soft and beautiful lavender yarn (Järbo Garn Duo in purple/grey) and wound it up again to prepare for a fresh start. I have 200 g (312 m) of it; what could I make? I’m leaning towards something stole-ish in a simple stitch pattern.

The Stripe Scarf is still waiting for a perfect box, which I might have in my office at work.

So much yarn in the stash, but nothing is calling out to me right now. Eldest is requesting one of the dickeys from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s wonderful book Knitting Around, so I will try to get started on that. Casting on with some Shetland wool might be just the thing to ensure that the cold weather will fade away until next winter.

The Write Type

It’s been a long week of bearing the bitter cold and snow, checking various tasks off my list, and finding peace and relaxation where I can. The spring semester begins tomorrow and I may not be able to take a deep breath until Friday afternoon.

This weekend I finished reading Uncommon Type, a collection of short stories written by Tom Hanks. Yes, that Tom Hanks. Each story refers to or features a typewriter in some way, but other than that the stories are quite diverse. They’re all very well done. I’d be proud of myself had I written any one of them.

Hanks’s work gives me encouragement to allow myself to work on a variety of writing projects. My head is full of story ideas, but sometimes I limit myself by worrying about what kind of stories I “ought” to be writing. (Finished ones, self. Finished stories are what you should write.)

I have book after book after book about how other writers write: what their libraries and writing areas look like, which computer or typewriter or fountain pen they use, when they sit down to write and when they rise up. I suspect that my attraction to these books was the hope that whatever routine and process worked so well for, say, Ursula LeGuin, would be the process that worked for me — if only I could copy it.

Of course, I am not Ursula LeGuin. I have led a different life and have a different mind and very different circumstances and resources. The lesson that I wish I had absorbed decades ago was to keep writing, try everything, and keep doing the things that work for me. So I guess I’ll have to take it to heart now, start writing, try everything, and find out what works.

Impossible Read checkpoint: The Once and Future King, Book 1, Chapter 16 of 24.

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Knitwise, I have found a recipient for the finished Thrift Stripe Scarf. Eldest told me to take it to work and find out who it belonged to, so I did.

MUSIC: SAX SOLO

I was alone in my office that day. The ownerless scarf was draped over a chair. That’s when SHE walked in — the dame who needed a scarf.

MUSIC: FADES OUT

Anyway, they’re such a good match for each other. I’m now in the process of using the rest of the yarn to create a coordinating cowl for her.

In person, it doesn’t actually look like a terrified Muppet.

The Stripe Scarf is waiting, with a few other items, for the Perfect Shipping Box to come along so that it can be sent to its recipient.

I’m thinking of frogging the very narrow shawl — or whatever I had named it — made from the wonderfully soft lavender yarn I found at a thrift store. I now think that a traditional prayer shawl or wrap shape would suit the yarn (and me) better. If the events of the coming week make me want to tear something apart, I’ll do the frogging then to settle my mind.

And then I’ll be thinking about casting on for a new project: whatever works.

The take-apart typewriter

When I was little, one of my most favorite toys was something that I called the “take-apart car.” Made by Playskool in the 1970s, it was a car with plastic pieces that screwed into wooden slab sides using plastic nuts, bolts, and screwdrivers.

On eBay for $70 plus $25 for shipping. I’m not kidding.

This was not the epitome of technology, but I was thrilled with it. I spent hours taking it apart and putting it back together. My mother was surprised at how much I enjoyed disassembling and reassembling this thing, and talked about it for years. I went on to enjoy other toys that had elements of assembly to them: a Spirograph, a Lite-Brite, and a metric balance that I had to build before I could use.

My fascination with this toy should have been a clue to how my brain worked, but if anyone drew any conclusions at the time they didn’t mention them. (At least, they didn’t mention them to me.) I liked seeing how things worked and how things could be fixed. I didn’t get a lot of chances to do this sort of thing, but I do remember sitting in the high school band room fixing saxophones that were passed down the row to me. I also preferred to do my own work on my touring bike.

One of my mechanical treasures, a 1949 Underwood Leader manual typewriter that my parents had given me when I was eight or nine years old, stopped working in the spring of 1986 during my freshman year in college. By that time I had an electronic typewriter as well, and I switched to it mid-paper to finish an important assignment. I didn’t know how to fix my typewriter then, but I didn’t throw it away.

A couple of years later I transitioned to a Mac SE, but computers and peripherals were a lot more mechanical than they are now; when my hard drive platter stalled a friend showed me how to crack the case, remove and open up the hard drive assembly, reattach the cables, and flick the platter into life after rebooting the Mac. I was thrilled to be able to fix it myself.

Many more years passed, and I learned that some things — like relationships, to choose a random example — were much harder to repair. Sometimes they were, in fact, impossible to fix. But one might find solace in tightening the loose cabinet door handles or opening up the vacuum cleaner and finding a way to remove hair and carpet fiber from the beater bar so it would work again and not need to be replaced. And one might show the kids that it’s fun to open up a VCR and see all the parts that are inside it, including the tangled videotape and the plastic toy that somebody pushed through the little flap door.

Only recently have I discovered the soothing effect of taking something apart, cleaning it thoroughly, and putting it back together — usually the vacuum cleaner, but now sometimes the coffee maker I’m descaling or the slow cooker that isn’t working properly. If I have a stressful event on my schedule, I try to add an activity that involves putting something back together again.

This weekend I selected the first typewriter of my little collection to give a good cleaning, and it was a satisfying experience. I must say that the typewriter’s owner and namesake, Carole, made it easy by taking good care of this 1953 Smith-Corona Skyriter. But into every typewriter some dust and eraser shavings must fall, and it was time to clean them out.

Eldest lends a hand.

After watching a brief but helpful YouTube video on removing a Skyriter from its shell, Eldest and I did the same. Then he carefully pulled hairs, fuzz, and and bits of eraser from the typewriter’s innards while I scrubbed the metal areas with a toothbrush dipped in a solution of Simple Green and water. I also used rolls of wide masking tape to draw oils out of the felt that lined the spool cover and the bottom and sides of the typewriter shell.

There were no drastic changes. We just cleaned things up a bit, let everything dry overnight, and then put it all back together again.

Refreshed.

I’m just beginning this journey into typewriter maintenance, and I was fortunate to be able to start with a typewriter that didn’t need much attention and didn’t need any repairs at all. Somewhere down the road sits my 1949 Underwood Leader in its case, with a manila pouch containing the spring that I need to replace. I’ll be able to fix it, clean it up, and start writing on it again.

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Knitwise, I hope you are sitting down because you are not going to believe this. I finished the Thrift Stripe scarf and even washed and dried it. It’s ready to be worn or donated.

I also picked up the Stripe Scarf and knitted on the grey stripe, starting a game of Yarn Chicken that I rightly suspected I was going to lose. I texted the requestor and got permission to add a black stripe that will even things out. If I can ever find more of the Plymouth Encore light grey heather yarn (color 151, if you can help me look for it), I can take the scarf back, undo the bound-off edge, rip back to the start of the grey stripes, and knit on until the scarf is as long as the recipient wants it to be. But if it’s warm enough and long enough now, perhaps no further work will be necessary.

Soon it will be time to choose the next knitting project, but not tonight. Right now my back and shoulders are aching from shoveling snow, and my hands are sore from clenching the steering wheel on a trip to and from the grocery store after our driveway was finally plowed out. If you have been wondering how I was able to do all of this work on the typewriter and the scarves, it might have something to do with the fact that we’ve basically been snowed in since Thursday night. I did have to dig out my car, but — this time — I’m grateful that I didn’t have to take it apart.

The week of no easy answers

I’ve spent this long week struggling with logistical problems embedded in other logistical problems. To skip to the end, my beloved 2002 Forester is no longer drivable due to the condition that eventually slays all noble Subarus — a failed head gasket.

Apparently it’s been on the verge of failure for quite some time, as I struggled with coolant-related problems on a long trip I took last summer. We thought the problem was something else, but now we know the truth.

Fortunately, the day before I drove my 2002 to my mechanic’s garage he had purchased a 2011 or 2012 (I forget which) Forester from another customer after its engine failed. It’s exactly the model I was looking for, I love the color (pale teal), and the price is right.

Meet Kinga Forester! My former/current Forester, Clayton, is in the background.

What I don’t know is when my new old car will be ready. I’m hitching rides to and from work (thank you, Rick), wondering how I will get to my PT appointments, and doing errands like grocery shopping only when they dovetail with the schedules of others (again — thank you, Rick). The situation has added a level of complexity to my everyday tasks in a way I could not have imagined.

The next puzzle will be how, exactly, I will pick up my new car when it is ready for me. I don’t exactly live in a Lyft zone, as the Lyft app informed me when I searched for a way to get my dog to his vet appointment on Friday morning (thank you, Carol).

On top of that, although a new well was dug for my house last Tuesday and the electrical work for it was prepared on Thursday, the well itself won’t actually be connected to the house until sometime this week. I’ve gone to a friend’s house a couple of times to wash my hair (thank you, Sheila) and to another friend’s house several times to do my laundry (thanks again, Carol).

The same level of complexity has been present in my tasks at work, too. A particular question might seem easy, but the most appropriate answer depends on a lot of context. At one point I needed to get some money from one of my bank accounts to a friend (for whom I was raising the money), and I could think of at least four ways to make the transfer. When the time came, I just walked into the bank, told the teller what I wanted to do, and let her pick the procedure.

A few days ago, though, I discovered a free app that is literally making a game out of keeping me organized and on task. (There are paid versions, but how much fun would that be?)

You make your to-do lists, your habit lists, and your daily task lists, and you get little boosts when you do them. And sometimes you get an egg to hatch, a sword, a potion, or a food drop. So far it’s a fun way to be accountable to myself. I’m getting my chores done and I have a Skeleton Dragon, a Base Dragon, and a Cotton Candy Wolf.

Princess Peachtree hasn’t shown any growth but she doesn’t seem to be dying. Maybe I should add “water the Princess” to one of my to-do lists.

When I’m not doing my chores, I’m trying to read and to catch up on putting entries into my reading journal. Over the past few weeks, I read the entire “Ramona” series by Beverly Cleary. During this process I realized that I had only read one of the books as a child. So it’s more of a new read than a re-read. I had thought it would be something of a tomboy read, but I was surprised to find a lot of passages that had to do with more autistic/sensory processing issues. Ramona is texture-averse to certain foods, particularly slimy ones, and she often self-regulates with physical actions such as smashing bricks on the sidewalk, or squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube. There’s so much reality in these books, and the new illustrations help the books to keep up with the times. And now I have eight more book entries to create for my reading journal. There is also a lovely large book called The Art of Ramona Quimby that I’m working though. So that will be nine books about Ramona Q, one of my favorite fictional characters.

If you have any suggestions for my Tomboy Bookshelf, let me know!

No new typewriters were acquired this week. But I’ve been working on the logistics of picking up a 1934 Royal from a small town in West Virginia. Stay tuned…

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Knitwise, the Stripe Scarf is now at 42 inches long and I’m more than halfway through a grey stripe. I have just 12 grams left of the grey yarn, though. When I have finished this stripe I’ll weigh the remainder again and do a little math to help me see whether or not I will have enough yarn for another grey stripe. (I have 36 grams left of the black yarn, so no worries there.)

I don’t think that I’ve done any work on the other two current projects, though I’m sure you can understand why. We’re heading for a chilly week, so it will be good to concentrate on this one and get it to my son before he gets too cold.

My life at the mall

I spent part of this weekend at a mall, and it led me to reflect upon the many intersections of my life with various shopping malls. Depending on the generation to which you belong, this may be a trip down memory lane (Gen X) or the most boring and pointless piece you’ve ever read. Also, I have no idea how this will (or will not) resonate with audiences outside of the United States; feel free to leave a comment.

Then

My memories of Westland Mall go back to before the mall was covered with a roof. I remember going shopping there with my mother on a rainy day, and dashing from one doorway to the next to avoid the raindrops. The mall also gave me one of my first pony rides; every so often, during the summer, a contractor would set up outside one of the entrances with a contraption that put the tamest ponies in the world in their traces and let them plod around in a circle for a few minutes. I don’t know exactly when this happened — I think it was after the roof was added — but I was young enough to be absolutely thrilled.

After the roof was added, seasonal events took place in the open areas of the mall. There was a visit with Santa, a visit with the Easter Bunny, and sometimes musical events or magic shows. One particular set-piece was a display of penguins “skating” on simulated ice.

center: clingy Chocolate Lamb.

Going to the mall was a big deal in the early 1980s, especially for kids from out in the country (where I now lived, having moved from Columbus’s West Side [Hilltop] in the summer of 1977). Behind the mall was a strip mall that contained an arcade and a movie theater; it was at that theater that I watched, though slightly underage, the movies Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop, having smuggled in snacks that I had purchased from the Woolworth’s in the mall proper.

My first real job was at JCPenney’s in Westland Mall. I worked in the Mens’ Department in the summer of 1985, where I learned how many pins are in an button-down shirt (all of which you need to remove), my ethics with regard to swapping out change for a buffalo nickel in the till (I refused), and how many people shoplift jeans and try to get a cash return (too many). I returned to JCP in the summer of 1986 to find that I didn’t have a job there because I “hadn’t given them advance notice” that I would be returning. I retaliated by applying for a job at Domino’s on my way home from the mall. After I spent a week answering the phone and cleaning the windows at the pizza place, Penney’s called me with an offer to rehire me in Linens, where I spent the rest of my “career” with JCPenney. Note: minimum wage was $3.70 an hour in 1986.

I never saved a dime from my job at Penney’s because I used all the money, in addition to my employee discount, to shop at special sales where I could purchase clothes that complied with the strict dress code. No patch pockets, no blue jeans…. But one lasting benefit of the job was my first credit card. Penney’s knew I didn’t earn enough to qualify for the card, but since I was an employee they couldn’t turn me down.

Many years later, my beloved took me out to dinner (and drinks) at the Chi-Chi’s at the mall, after his homemade dinner proved too spicy for me to eat.

These days (literally) Westland Mall is being demolished. There’s a Facebook Group that shares still pictures and drone videos of the teardown, and the group also gives those of us who came of age at the mall a place to share our memories.

Now

This weekend I visited a mall in one of Milwaukee’s suburbs. Although JCPenney’s remained as one of the mall’s anchors, Boston Store was empty and the food court was nearly deserted. One of the few food vendors in the court was a place called Arepa’s, where I ordered a vegan arepa and a side of sweet fried plantains (sorry, Starliner Diner). I nibbled on the blazing-hot plantain slices, took the leftovers with me, and didn’t try to dipping sauces until I got home hours later. OMG try the dipping sauces, folks!

Westland Mall’s food options back in the day were an Orange Julius, a place where I could get bagels with cream cheese, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, the super-classy restaurant at Lazarus, a Mark Pi place, the Woolworth’s lunch counter until it was taken out, and a Wendy’s next to the Chi-Chi’s. I never could have conceived of being able to order Venezuelan food in a mall.

One-third to one-half of the spaces in the mall were empty. I sat in the center and worked on a knitting project (cf. below) between a “We Fix” kiosk and a tall video screen that, on a loop, displayed Halloween-oriented recipes and makeup tips. At one point I set down my knitting just so I could finally discover the food item on which “Edible Intestines” was based (cinnamon roll dough).

Eventually one of the “We Fix” owners approached me, complimented my knitting, and offered me his business card. A few minutes later, a young Asian girl worried about the End Times invited me to her open Bible study. People with various disabilities walked laps around the perimeter of the mall’s interior. The mall itself seemed eternal.

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A week after being potted, the peach seedling didn’t show much sign of growth — but it was still alive. I watered it and put it back in the window. The remaining seeds didn’t show any evidence of rooting, and I cracked the lid of the plastic container when I checked on them. Goodbye to the rest of the setup; I’ll take the peach seedling to work for more sun and regular watering if nothing changes in the next week.

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Knitwise, I have been knitting 2-4 rows every day after casting on for a shallow-but-wide shawl from the marled purple skein. It’s soothing. The pattern right now is kf&b, k1, YO, k to end; repeat. I won’t change anything until the last 2 rows, which should be (k1, YO) across, end K1; BO.

I’m on the third stripe of the Stripe Scarf after restarting on smaller needles. I had a GP to watch this weekend, so I was able to make progress building on what I knitted at the mall (cf. above). Winter is far away, but the chilly weather has already arrived. I need to keep up the pace.

The birds are back

Last Monday I heard, from across a snow-covered field, the distinctive call of a Sandhill Crane. The timing seemed ridiculously early in the season, but the next morning I was reminded (via Facebook Memories) that this had happened one year ago at the same time, and going back for several years at almost exactly the same time.

The birds returned to our area just in time for bitter cold followed by a daylong ice storm. I do not know how they are staying warm enough to survive. but survive they do without any obvious source of food or means of shelter.

Search “Marjorie Rhine” on Flickr for more photos!

Frankly, most bird activity in late February seems ridiculous to me. This weekend I took the dog for his morning walk and heard a woodpecker of some sort hammering the heck out of a high-up branch on one of the maple trees. I couldn’t imagine what could be living in that frozen branch that might be worth eating. (I’m glad that I’m not a bird.)

I was still walking the dog when I looked down our road and saw one group of turkeys slowly approaching it from the north, then another group slowly walking to the road from the south. They were just beginning to greet each other at the centerline when I heard a car behind me. I cautioned the driver, who wound up waiting patiently while the turkeys decided which way they were all going to go.

Not my circus, not my turkeys.

If you’d like to know more about the late-winter and early-spring behaviour of the turkey population in Wisconsin, check out this blog post from UW-Madison’s office of University Housing. I am not making this up. If you are planning to attend college in Madison, Wisconsin, this is must-know info.

Anyway, a day or so after the ice storm encased the back yard, I felt sorry for the birds and sprinkled some birdseed across the ice. What wasn’t taken away by the squirrels was eventually eaten by some house sparrows and juncos. We’ve seen our local rabbit, Bun, in the same area but I hope he (or she) is not reduced to feeding on birdseed.

This evening, for my cooking blog, I fixed (and documented the fixing of) a batch of turkey sandwiches. Maybe that’s why they were crossing the road.

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Knitwise, I have done more work on the Vintage Packer Scarf but not enough to get me to the end of the first ball of green yarn. Almost but not quite — just a few more stripes’ worth. Good news, though: Formula 1 season is coming soon and that scarf will be the perfect project for TV knitting. I am well aware that by the time I finish the scarf it won’t be scarf season anymore; I’m glad these trivialities are of little concern to me.

Right now the scarf measures 48 inches long, and I’m not quite halfway done. What are the odds that the finished length will be 100 inches?

Fortunately, it is always yoga season, and I won’t have to wait for my yoga socks to be finished before I can do yoga again. (To be honest, though, I might.)

Snow day

This weekend we had a forecast of morning flurries on Saturday. I took the dog outside for a walk before the snow began to fall — and thank goodness, because the expected hour of flurries turned into a snowfall that went on and on and on and on….

…and as the day went on, the wind picked up until the snowfall was simply ridiculous. One inch turned into three. Or five. Or drifts of what the heck is going on out there amounts.

Meanwhile, my phone began to curate photo collections of past snow days. Facebook sent me reminders of every snowy day in the last twelve years. But, as the song goes, I had nowhere to go and all day to get there. All of my tasks and deadlines were tied to one computer or another (except, of course, for the laundry that I did in the background).

Winter 2018.

Winter 2019.

Winter 2023.

It turned out to be a good day to read, to download files, to do page layout, and to write — and to occasionally pull back the curtain and laugh at the snow that kept falling and started piling into drifts. We already had the ingredients for the stew, and there wasn’t anything critical to retrieve from the mailbox. We had heat and power and light and didn’t need to leave the house for any reason.

I Zenned up the area around my writing desk by eliminating a lot of visual clutter. I got a newsletter proof sent out. I played my word games for the day. But other than that? No worries.

If the snow had fallen on another day of the week, I would have a different tale to tell. But on this lucky Saturday all we had to do was watch it come down and keep coming down.

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Knitwise, I have pushed ahead on the Blue Blanket. It has travelled between home and the workplace a couple of times, but I actually did knit a few more rows. There’s a psychological advantage to knowing that every row is now shorter than the one before. The yarn doesn’t seem to get used up very quickly, but that will come in time.

At this point there are 72 stitches on the needles, and the knitting is going quickly. This week I watched a couple of F1 session broadcasts from last season to make more space on my DVR for the upcoming season, and it was nice to be able to turn the work sooner than I expected. Pretty soon I will be able to go from 3-4 rows in a sitting to many more than that, and when terminal knitting velocity kicks in and I start to think, I will keep working on this all the way to the end, it will be very rewarding.

This is the inverse sensation of when I was working on the Citron shawlette in laceweight, with finals rows having something like 300 or 400 stitches of what looked like sewing thread. Binding off that project was intense, I-tell-you-what.

Citron from 2012…. with many miles to go.

I haven’t taken any pictures of the Blue Blanket in a while, so I will try to do that this week. I’ll measure it, too, and perhaps sew up some of the loose ends I have left along the way. Then when I reach the end I will be able to sew in just one loose end and call it done.

New angles

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you can probably tell that I love a good new year. (With Judaism, you get several extra!) I’m not into the whole Going Out And Drinking thing, especially when it’s dark and the roads are icy, but give me a fresh start any time you feel like it. When I get to decide on the parameters of my own fresh start, that’s even better.

First, though, let’s review the blog stats for 2022. In the course of the year I published 51 posts that got about 800 views, 360 Likes, and 4 comments. About 765 visitors came from 31 countries, and 278 people (since 2006) have signed up to get RSS notification whenever I publish a new post. And it turns out that I wrote about 45,000 words!

I don’t plan to change much on the blog in the new year, but if I can find where WordPress has hidden the word-count feature I will try to bump my annual word count to 50K. I’ll still sit down at my computer (or iPad) each Sunday evening and try to publish something worth reading by 9 pm Central time. I’ll still divide the content between musings on my life (or whatever strikes my fancy) and the knitting I’m working on or I am planning to do.

Last night, though, I started a new blog. It will be a one-year project to document my reading through, and cooking through, a fascinating cookbook published in 2018 by chef Alon Shaya. The book contains food from Israel and the Middle East, Italy, the American South, and New Orleans. As I found out when I Googled Chef Shaya earlier today, his life has been a long, strange trip that took a difficult turn just when the cookbook was published. I’m going to concentrate on his writing, his story, and his food as I make my way through the book. I plan to write those posts on Saturday evenings, but that may change as I go along. If you’re interested in viewing that blog, let me know in the comments and I’ll add a link. There’s nothing to see right now….

I did, of course, make some resolutions to change some of the things I will do in the new year. There are the usual health-related resolutions that turn me into my own drill sergeant. Do your situps every day. Take care of your feet. Eat more salads. Go for more walks. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The better resolutions are the ones that let me have more fun and encourage me to be more creative. I have finally started writing in the lovely turquoise Rhodia date planner, with my fine-nibbed fountain pen. (As it happened, I could have done this a few weeks ago as they had included some December pages. OH WELL.)

I also had some fun setting up a reading journal/log for myself this afternoon, starting with creating pages for books that I started last year and am still working on. (Six, why do you ask?) After that I will start a section for the books that I’ll start this year, and include some lists of other books I would like to read. I think it will be a nice artifact by the end of 2023. And if I don’t quite fill up the book I can just drop in a 2024 cover page and keep going. It’s not as if I will decide to stop reading or as if I will run out of books to read. It also allows me another space for being creative, since I can use whatever colors I want, make sketches, or even do some watercoloring. Speaking of which….

This would be the broad side.

Another journal I plan to set up is a sketch journal. I want to do a quick sketch every day and eventually be able to sketch out images that I will render in watercolor. For now I plan to study the watercoloring and the sketching separately. (Yes, I ordered a book….) I didn’t get to sketch outside today (it feels much warmer because the wind died out, but it’s still in the mid-30°F range), but I did look at the scenery with a different eye today as I walked the dog. This morning we were behind the barn (see above) when we heard a squirrel scramble through the end of the gutter. That got Monty’s attention; what I noticed was the confluence of roof angles at different sections of the barn. The wooden section just holds hay and straw, but the cinder-block section, now storage, used to be a milking parlor. I went out later to take some reference photos.

What will happen if I don’t keep up with all of my New Year’s resolutions? I’ll just keep trying. I don’t make changes to my life in order to beat myself up — I do so to give myself a chance to become more relaxed, more skilled, or just happier.

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Knitwise, I haven’t gotten anywhere with the slouch hat and I’m not sure if I did any work on the scarf. But this weekend I knitted on the Blue Blanket as I played back some F1 sessions from last year (free practice 2 and 3 from the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard) from the DVR before deleting them. (The new season starts in just 60 days, so I need to free up space.) I used up almost every inch of the partial skein before knotting it to the full skein and continuing on. The work is now 34 inches from the cast-on point to the live stitches.

Over my lunch hours at work last week, I did the knitting portion of a small potato. I still need to add eyes (thank you, Deborah) and do the seaming and stuffing before I will have anything worth photographing, but it looks as if it will be a cute little spud.

The knitting itself, though, on worsted yarn with US 2 needles, is awfully tight and hard on the hands. There’s not much I can do about that, as I don’t want the potato stuffing to fall out and it doesn’t make sense to knit enormous potatoes. I will just have to do this kind of knitting when I’m able to and let the other knitting be the relaxing kind.

Who left the window open?

To put it mildly, this has been a cold week indeed. On Thursday and Friday I opted to work from home because of the BLIZZARD WARNINGS AND ALL, and on Friday my dog was gracious enough to permit me to stay inside until just after noon. The howling winds piled up drifts around my car, twisted the old maple trees to some alarming creaking, and really made us regret that we had only insulated two small windows on the house this year. The wind chills plunged to -38°F for about two days.

Those windows that we insulated did not include the west-facing and north-facing windows of my bedroom. For four nights in a row I retreated to my bed at the end of the evening and tried to make a pocket of air under my covers that would help me stay alive until the morning. Yesterday our energy supplier requested that we lower our thermostat to somewhere between 60° and 62°F to ease the burden on the power grid while a supplier fixed some broken equipment. I was greatly relieved to move the thermostat back up to 68°F this morning with their blessing.

Fortunately, the Forester started right up on Saturday morning despite the fact that snow had drifted around it and packed the front wheel wells.

My mom: “He looks so cold!”

Not taking out the trash for a while…

This morning I woke and realized that I didn’t hear any wind. My weather app assured me that the 19 mph winds made it feel like -17°F outside, but compared to what we had already been through it felt like a sunny day.

Now. Those of us in my generation still remember the Blizzard of 1977 and the yards of snow it piled up and drifted for us to deal with for weeks when we were unable to make it to the roads, let alone go to school. This was not the same. But I could have done without one Nextdoor posting after another telling me that this was not a real blizzard and the folks these days were soft. Let me just say that I hope their words were not responsible for the death of anyone going out on the roads when they didn’t need to. I spent a couple of days watching the straight-line winds absolutely scour my east-to-west road and being grateful that I wasn’t required to go anywhere. And then I made another cup of coffee and counted my many blessings.

I coped by knitting on several projects (see below), baking two batches of cookies, cooking a huge batch of beef chili, and starting a book (reading, not writing, although if the temperature dips again….). I made a list of mini-tasks that I could check off whenever I found the time. I went outside the bare minimum of necessary times (Monty, sometimes I wish that you were a cat) and wore as many layers as I could. The house trick in cold weather has been to toss the blankets or the comforter into the dryer for a few minutes just before bedtime; this was the first time I’ve done that to my long robe at the start of the day. Even then, the zipper cooled off before I had the chance to worry about burning my skin on it.

As the meme said, if there was something you had sworn to do when Hell froze over, you were scheduled to do it this weekend. But all of the things I’m planning to do in the coming year are things that I’ll need to start planning now.

It will soon be 2023. That indicates that 2024 and 2025 are in the near future and not as far off as we think. SecondSon estimates that they’ll graduate from college in Spring 2024. I should get my Master’s degree in Fall 2025. MiddleSon and Youngest may be in college at those times. And who knows what Eldest may be up to by then?

The future is coming. Be prepared!

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Knitwise, this week I pushed myself a little and was able to make progress on all three current knitting projects. For two of the projects, progress is measurable only in inches: the Vintage Packer scarf is now 33 inches long, and the blue blanket is about 28 inches long. I will be joining to a full skein of yarn sometime in the next row of the blanket, and I should be able to chug along whenever I have time to knit.

For the ombre slouch hat, I cast on 112 stitches last week (Tuesday or Wednesday), then joined the round and knit almost all of the ribbing on Thursday. On Friday I was able to knit up to the chart of colorwork, and on Saturday I knitted the first two rounds of the chart and started on row 3. I’m carrying both colors along with every stitch, so I’m twisting the yarns however it looks like it will work. (Don’t look, Lori.)

The Shetland yarn is rather fine and scratchy, so it’s not quick knitting — especially the way I knit (I’m a thrower). So the color chart is just something I’ll have to plug along with for a few rows a day. If my hands get too tight on the US 2 needles I can switch to one of the other projects; the scarf is on US 9s and the blanket is on US 15s. I think this hat’s going to look pretty nice by the time I get to the other end of the chart. Nice enough that I’ll want to make another one right away? We’ll see.

With the new year almost upon us, it might be time for me to finally jump on some sort of temperature blanket bandwagon when I’m ready to start a new project. If you have a pattern or color scheme to suggest, please leave it in the comments. Keep in mind that Wisconsin temperatures can range from -40°F to 100+°F; I might need the whole rainbow and some heathers to bridge the gaps.

The way the weather is going, you might want to learn to knit, too. Let me know if you need some yarn.

and just like that, it was hot chocolate season

This week was beautiful. Everyone I saw talked about how beautiful it was. The perfect autumn day, so bright, so lovely. The sky was begging to be photographed for a calendar page. Then, in the last 48 hours, the temperatures took a nose dive and snow flurries started to invade the air every so often.

So here we are, less than two weeks before Thanksgiving and ready to enter what I call “the tunnel” — a Wisconsin winter, from which one only truly emerges the following May. Sometimes the end of May or the beginning of June. We haven’t put the plastic over the windows yet and we missed our best opportunity to move the unused bicycles from the garage to the basement, but I have already made chili once and hot chocolate twice. Extra blankets have been added to the beds.

All I want to do on the weekend is curl up in the Big Green Chair and read books, but it turns out that what I really need to do is read books and articles about trends in higher education, write papers for grad school, lay out newsletter pages for my congregation, and read my Hebrew books. (Not books that are written in Hebrew, but books that teach me how to read Hebrew. True Hebrew literacy is way beyond the blue horizon right now.)

And apparently I need to wash dishes, lots and lots of dishes. If the hot soapy water weren’t keeping my hands so warm, I would consider switching to paper plates. Two sinks-full of dishes washed after dinner, then a mug of hot chocolate, then it’s time to crawl under all the extra bedding and dream until the alarm goes off.

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Knitwise, I found some stash yarns that looked like they would go together well, and on Wednesday I cast on for a garter-stitch wide scarf. I had two skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Avocado and one skein of an unlabeled yarn of the same weight in a muted gold that one might call Harvest Gold, if one grew up in the 1970s. A vintage-vibe Packers scarf it is!

To ensure that I would use up as much of the yarn as possible, I decided on a simple pattern that would use it in proportion. So, after casting on 30 stitches, I knitted four rows of the green to two rows of the gold (two ridges to one ridge). I’m carrying the extra color yarn up the right side, so I’ll have just two ends to weave in at the start and two at the finish. I’m not sure that I have a full skein of the gold yarn, and of course I didn’t weigh the yarn before I cast on, so I might measure off some of the green yarn to set aside for fringe and see how things look at the other end of the project.

The ball band on the Wool-Ease calls for a US8 (5mm) needle and I’m using a US9 (5.5mm), so it’s producing a squishy, drapey fabric instead of a stiff one. So far it’s been a good project to work on while watching F1 sessions off the DVR. When I’m watching a live session as I did this morning, I have to be careful not to tighten up on the tension. (It was an exciting race, and our favorite driver won! I had to set down the project from time to time, and I’m not sure I touched it at all in the last ten laps.)

As it happens, after knitting on the project since Wednesday it is now 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches long. Those measurements seem familiar….

I also purchased two knitting patterns this weekend. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve purchased a pattern.

Knitcircus got me with their weekly email newsletter, and on Saturday morning I bought the pattern for the Thornberry Cowl, designed by Bug Richardson Selig. I liked the look of it in the sample photos, but the part that sold me was the opening phrase in the description: “A simple and quick knit….” Oh, Bug, you had me at simple. Quick is just the icing on the cake. (Or the cupcake, if I’m pretending to watch my portion sizes.)

Another factor may have been that I already had a cake (there’s that word again) of the very yarn specified for the pattern, though it isn’t in one of the colorways that they were suggesting. At this time of year they’re promoting their Christmasy colorways, but a few years ago they also promoted Hanukkah colorways. It was in 2019 that I purchased a skein of Festival of Lights. I didn’t have a plan for the yarn, but I wanted to support the effort.

Let’s face it; there are only so many Hanukkah-themed colorways that are possible to dye up, and I [may have] bought both of them from Knitcircus. (I can’t find the ball band for the other cake, but guess what! The yarn is blue and white.)

Then, this morning, I was concerned about the warmth of my hands as I was doing some electronic page layout work. I did a Google search for fingerless mitts and came across a picture of the Tree of Life Fingerless Gloves pattern at KnitPicks, designed in 2010 by Jenny Williams. The pattern is sold with KnitPicks Wool of the Andes but was designed with KnitPicks Telemark Peruvian Highland Wool. No worries, I probably have some of each. It only takes 100 yards to knit up a pair on US3 (3.25mm) double-pointed needles.

Pattern purchased, yarn in stash, needles in inventory including a cable needle, somewhere. I got this. Warm hands for the win.