Travel, it's not just about moving around.

Lately I've been hearing a lot about travel, usually meaning coach tour tourism, from people who love it, good for them, and are quite rude about people who don't, not so good for them.

I've had to travel a lot for work and life, and find it tiring and disturbing, not fun and games. It's not related to vacation, really. Some of my best trips have been to familiar local places which don't yield exciting stamps on my passport.

The travel I love is the interior kind, from making, creating, thinking,  reading, paying attention to the lives of other people. It's not about throwing your body around then boring your friends rigid with accounts of holdups in airports, ripoffs conducted in foreign languages, total mileages, you know these well enough to set them to music!

One of my friends who'd traveled in the form of staying long enough to pay rent, receive mail and make friends -- it helps if your job is portable like this -- used to say she didn't count it as travel unless you had a street address, not the American Express office, for mail delivery, an interesting definition. 

So this is where I am this mild rainy Sunday.

In other news, I find that the second spiral sock, several inches of which is done

as you see, turns out to be a different gauge from sock one. I evidently picked up smaller needles when I cast it on, chatting in my group. Oh.  Given how I'll do anything rather than unravel, I now have various decisions. 

Door One. I can continue, making this the first one of a yet another new pair. Door Two.  I can use bigger needles to knit yet another sock,  matching the size to the first sock. Door Three. I can replace two of the current needles on the current sock with bigger ones, to maybe adjust the gauge gradually. At this rate I'll never get away from this @#$% yarn, unless I open Door Three.

Door Three it is. If this doesn't work I may give up everything and buy a ticket to a round the world cruise, just to escape.. Or something.

And the coleus, started in water, is now potted up ready to grow for the winter indoors before moving outside next spring

This is not my garden, it's a shot from a flower show 

Happy day everyone, prayers and vibes and good thoughts to the poor folk in North Carolina who'd give anything right now to just worry about a bit of knitting.

To improve lives in Florida, please, Florida friends, note this when you vote

Planning ahead, winter edition

Thinking about reading, especially enjoyable on my Kindle, I reacquired a complete Austen, and now I've added a complete Dickens.

He wrote enough to keep me occupied. I really liked Bleak House best, read on my own time. Now that they're not set books for school, the kiss of death, I hope to enjoy revisiting others. No exam looming at the end.

I'm not really worried about running out of things to do, what with the knitting and stitching and other fiber adventures. 

And the occasional musical interlude, like this one, through which I stumbled rustily.

For them as wants to know, today I'm wearing the little jacket I hand stitched from homewoven fabric Joanne gave me. 

It's soft and friendly, very nice to wear, and I think of the weaver every time I put it on. 

In other planning, my ballot arrived. The joy of being able to vote for a woman for President.

And our county literally sends every election on request including the little known Fire District. All counties don't do this. 

I'm showing you my lineup so you can see, in the blue column, the lovely racial and gender intersections in my region.  

I'm undyingly proud of being part of the group of activists who made mail-in universal in NJ, who got ballot cure -- the ability to correct a mistake without voiding the vote -- and drop boxes, to work around the USPS. Yay us. Or rather yay Winn Khung, grassroots leader. 

Friday, not as planned

Peaceful scene early this morning 

The day was supposed to go like: breakfast of seedy bread and strawberries, shower, postcards, knitting, lunch, Friday Knitting Group, and so on, on-line meeting in the evening.

This didn't quite happen. In fact I was still in robe and jimjams when there was a ring at the door, large man with clipboard, contractor truck behind him. Hugh, his name was, ready to clear out and put a new grill over the stove duct at the street side.

This is a long running problem all over the development, everyone's stove exhaust duct being a perfect size for nesting, birds and squirrel love them. Warm from the stove indoors,  dry and cosy for their families.

But they get hopelessly clogged with nesting debris, these tenants being terrible housekeepers. This renders the stove exhaust inoperable, aside from being a diabolical liberty.

Gary has been going to clear it for, um, quite a while, allowing for the baby birds to fledge and take off, then forgetting. So I put in a work order and to my amazement, Hugh showed up. 

I never got my shower, in fact ended up outside, still in robe,  explaining the situation to Hugh, then having to keep running indoors,  switching on and off the stove fan while he diagnosed the issue. 

Then Gary came over, many serious consultations about manly tools. Then after Hugh found he didn't have the tools necessary to complete the job, Gary said fine, hold everything.

I was in charge of getting the info about the tool, and listening to Hugh's life story, while Gary showered and dashed off to shop, returning with the tool, now stored in my outside storage area, for neighborhood use.

Eventually the whole thing was done, the entire L shaped duct exposed from inside, Gary dashing off for drop cloths to throw over the stove while I moved the stuff on the counter.

I now have a good understanding of the mechanism of the duct, the best maintenance practice, the nasty bully Hugh had to deal with at work, the board asking him why he's doing the job he's paid for, and how nice Hugh's wife is, lovely to go home to.  I know where he lives, also where the, now fired, bully lives, and Hugh's theory that he's a big kid preferring negative attention to no attention. 

All in all, after Hugh, the site manager, who showed up to look at doors, why not, everyone else was there, including interested neighbors, finally departed, it was late afternoon and no postcards nor knitting group had happened. Nor shower, now scheduled for this evening, unless something else crops up. I had to collect and return the things Gary had forgotten, his jacket, drop cloth, various tools, usual post operative task 

Never a dull moment. It wasn't as planned, but it was certainly interesting, the most testosterone filled day.  Everyone went away happy. 

I have, aside from becoming a hearing aid evangelist, become an expert diagnostician. Hugh needs hearing aids. Bellowing speech, though very friendly, close attention to speakers' faces, inability to grasp what's said out of sight.  I'd be glad to set him up in my amateur practice..

Now I hope my online meeting goes without unplanned events.

Good word from e, whose comments you see in here, safe after the hurricane, power restored. Other friends too managed to dodge it. Still waiting to hear, as of Friday evening,  about Mary Moon, though. Vibes galore there.

Happy day everyone, stay ready for irruptions of all kinds!

Misfits box, yawn, knitting, yawn,

Misfits Market day, and I was starting the reaction to the COVID-19 vax. Mainly crushing tiredness. The kind where you start to wash dishes and have to sit down several times in the process. 

It took half a dozen stages to prep the Misfits box. 

Missing the blueberries, but I'll live. I actually lashed out and bought a jar of marinara sauce. First time in living memory I didn't make the  sauce from scratch, but worth a try. Mainly with the penne pasta in this box.

Plenty of diced tomatoes for various dishes, from spaghetti sauce to baked egg-cheese-tomato on toast, to that eggs-tomato-greens dish from the Together cookbook. 

Lovely fresh eggs, they're really a pleasure to handle, from chickens who'd had a decent life, as you can see from their egg quality.

Strawberries to accompany Tony's Chocolonely. Scallions to include in Yeung Man Cooking recipes. 

I like the feeling, once the boring prep is done, that food is pretty much halfway there for next week. No apples this week, because the berries were the idea, but they ran out. S strawberries will work. And it's all good food.

After a morning spent online with lawyer friends analyzing exactly how much trouble Mayor Adams is in, news of the indictments broke while we were already talking, I started the second spiral sock.

After prep of the Misfits box, I set up to listen to The Twist of a Knife, Horowitz, and knit. At least that was the plan. Two hours later I woke up, made a pot of tea, and staggered back to the sofa. This is why I planned the vax for yesterday, so I could lie around today like a sloth and not miss anything.

I've been trying to be in touch with Florida friends, some of whom have evacuated to South Florida to other friends and are now chilling around the pool with all their kids and dogs. So far so good. I'm still on high alert for other friends, in place because the path of Helene is unpredictable.

Our weather is damp and mild, such a contrast. Happy day everyone, I hope you're safe or soon will be.

Floral tribute to Ukraine, also ice cream

Today's flowers are another daily shout-out to Ukraine, daily since the Russian invasion, in different forms. They all reference the blue and yellow national colors of grain and sky.

Here there's an additional note. The blue flowers are forgetmenot, to promise we won't forget Ukraine.

Today yet another medical appointment, this one easy and local, the newest COVID-19 vax.

And, since I've been so conscientious about doctors and injections and hearing adjustments, I decided, for the first time in months, to pick up ice cream, from the vax store in fact, as a reward.

Breyer's Neapolitan. Also see flowers over there on the hearth, and postcards to voters waiting there.

I usually need a day to recover from COVID-19 vax, so just in case I have symptoms requiring ice cream, I'm set. I notice the higher prices and smaller containers, too. Getting toward thimble sized cartons. But I'm worth it.

What I did not see were the security precautions noted by bloggers elsewhere, items tagged or in locked cases. So this CVS has perhaps not been so subject to theft as some.

I did balance this indulgence with lunch of a spicy plant-sausage croquette on a bed of steamed spinach. Funny how no matter how much spinach you start with, you end with a tablespoonful.  Where does it go?? Up in steam, I guess.

I found a great YouTube tutorial for an interesting project that you really can do if you're learning crochet. It's Marion again, such a good teacher. 

This bag is a rectangle three times as long as wide, eg 30"x10" which is folded and stitched, origami style.

I wouldn't add the foofy bits, but chacune a son gout. Translation: everyone's got gout.

Just an idea if you're in search of a project or one to interest a beginner if that's not you.

Happy day everyone, many thoughts about Florida right now, keeping in touch with friends there.

Great Tuesday! Friends, fun, fiber.

 I really love my Tuesdays. Today started with a routine doctor visit telling me I'm fine, and she thinks she's straightened out my online pharmacy's inability to grasp that I take two different strengths of one medication. 

It adds up to the correct dosage, but they've been repeatedly deleting one in favor of the other, forcing me to split pills to create the dosage while I fight with them. My doctor tells me she had to attest that yes, I needed both together, definitely, before they conceded.

Then Gary returned the gardening scissors vital to my needs, my hands not being strong enough to open regular handheld clippers with one hand. He apologised profusely, been searching for weeks finally unearthed them. I'm so happy to be functional again.

Very nice lunch of fettuccini Alfredo with plums for dessert, then off to the Tuesday Knitting Group, total kindred spirits.

One friend  brought a box of bobbins of silk thread and tiny treasures from her grandmother's stash, such fun to play with! Even the Schraffts chocolate box she'd kept them in is iconic.

Chat ranged from spindle spinning, darning, Opera supertitles, Portugal, an imaginary university, millinery, sheep and wool festivals and more. 

You know you're with friends when you all suddenly decide to create an imaginary university, with a double major in Dance and Darning, a Spurtzleur Department, a Classical Ballet with Embroidery degree, Opera training, and plans of what the buildings will be like. Grounded in reality, since two of our members were professional dancers, one an opera singer and voice coach. I'll be the Spurtzleur Professor of Spinning.

Then home to more fun, with Textiles and Tea, featuring Andrea Alexander, a wonderful, energetic weaver, textile designer and former Marine biologist. I have to find her channel on YouTube, for more. 

She did an internship, while an undergraduate at FIT, in NYC, at Fabscrap, a nonprofit dedicated to saving designer fabric scraps from the landfill, and was a presenter at this year's national handweavers HGA convention, Convergence.

Here's a garment she made from scraps foraged from her internship, a sample book of fibers. She used a heddle loom and clasped wefts, to create this wearable artwork.

Here are computer designs, also using Photoshop in planning the weaving

She adapted images from her Marine biology fish textbook for this design.

And here's a sample of fabric design woven ready to use. She's definitely worth seeing more of.

I've already signed up for the Fabscrap newsletter,  what a source for high end scraps! 

You can shop online with them for mendable clothing, bags of scraps, all kinds of cool fabric stuff. This may be a rabbit hole of biblical proportions.

Now for tea and a read of Pride and Prejudice. 

This was a vintage Tuesday.

Happy day everyone, be safe if you're in Florida, please. Dry out if you're in the UK under water. Or keep rowing, as the case may be.

Everyone's taller than me now

Marigolds have joined the ranks of taller than Boud! Here's this morning's first view 

On other important issues, the bursitis is so much improved from the icing. Why didn't I do that before! Ice is not in my vocabulary. I don't use it in drinks, doesn't occur to me to apply it. It takes a doctor with multiple credentials to tell me to do it. 

I was thinking about people's approach after yesterday's neighborly chat. The shouty neighbor is one I hear from when she wants something. Information, an egg, a cup of sugar, name of my powered milk, name of plumber etc.

My oldest, lifelong bully,  sister was the same, except she'd call, once in a while,  to tell me what she'd just acquired. Or to say she'd waxed the floor, had nothing better to do, so she called me.  Never asked about my family, not interested, seemingly. Same idea.

I didn't like this for many years, why not just visit or call to ask how I'm doing, anything, you don't need an excuse.

Finally it dawned on me that they want to be in touch and feel they need to provide a reason. Oh. More benign than I'd realized. Not able to be casual. Maybe it's a bit of shyness.  So now I'm not so ready to criticize.  I'm a bit slow at times.

Today is about knitting, I need to finish a second pair of socks, maybe gloves, to send off. 

Top, first spiral sock of the pair, bottom, the other style, with the patch toe, this pair complete. Same yarn, different looks. I always try on to make sure they're comfortable.

Small finishing job on the woven vest. More postcards to voters -- handwriting is tough on my neck, don't want to go back there -- and another Horowitz audiobook. 

I googled Horowitz to check on books and got a lot of references to the pianist. Forgot about Vladimir! Have you seen his keyboard style? It's weird, very flat hands, not what my teachers taught me, but clearly it worked dramatically well for him. Giant hands, too. 

Happy day everyone, play life your way, never mind the convention 

And here's yet more black eyed Susans 

And more fungus veil, decorated with fallen Russian sage flowers

And for the brave folks who tried it, here's the Haggard Hawks puzzle solution