Chair yoga, tuesday knitting group, Textiles and Tea

Tuesday started with April and Aiko, fifteen minutes of chair yoga great for my stiff neck from sleeping wrong.

Very helpful, too. 

My day starts at the moment by checking in to my online advent calendar, finding the day's elf, arranging flowers on Tuesday, and getting very engrossed in a game about placing gems on a board. I may go into withdrawal when I lose access to this game, just sayin'. 

• Tuesday Knitting Group was large and fun, new members, returning former members. New people included a beginner, and a great knitter, working on yarn she'd spun, with a lot of great projects either worn by participants or in progress or both.

Toad in progress to join frog already finished and played with by a grandchild 

Here are double-knitted mittens in progress and a great cabled sweater in action 

Here's a finished sweater we've seen as it was made, and a better view of the cabled sweater 

Your humble blogger is currently assembling pin woven squares into a shawl, with many helpful suggestions..

New member here knitting alpaca and her handspun, see that ball? She's an accomplished spinner and knitter

Here's a keen beginner on her first project 

And a total beginner getting to grips with crochet 

Here's the start of tacking the woven pieces into a draft shape, ready to attach together 

And here's what I was wearing today, the spun, plied, knitted woven vest you lived with me through several years ago. The picture is me cracking up at my attempt to show you the back. 

I spun and plied the yarn with my trusty Schacht spindle, knitted the sections following Sarah Swett's slanted concept, then wove the yokes using a cardboard loom I cut to size. The reason I wove was to keep the shape of the heavy wool vest, and in fact it has done that, no sagging nor stretching out.

Conversation ranged over many subjects, often several at once, Quebec hotels, Lyft, selling cars, English vs Continental style knitting, wheel vs spindle spinning, our exhibit, art, bequests, cats assisting in fiber arts, and more. 

Speaking of our exhibit at the library, here we are 

Embroidery, Tunisian crochet, knitting, beading, so many great things. We decided we're wonderful.

Home to Textiles and Tea with 

A raku potter and wet felter who combines both forms in her art. These pieces are bigger than you might think at first sight.

She created these hug scarves as gifts,  at a time when people had given her a lot of help.

This is an unusual combination of the potter's art with the felter's art. The flowers are felted and sit like lids on top of the raku pots, and can be lifted off just like lids. She's getting more into acrylic clay in addition to earth clay, to use for fine detail. As you see, she loves color. 

Typically she makes wet felt projects indoors in winter and raku firing outdoors in summer. Well, if you've done raku, with the smoke and burning paper and all, yes it's an outdoor pursuit.

Happy day, everyone, another great Tuesday happened. Just go with it. Or lie down for a few minutes.

Fitness paraphernalia, pinloom weaving and neighbors

 The day started in the gym, as usual.

To wit: tablet set up at April and her Mom, doing chair yoga, Kleenex because concentration makes me sniff, stool in the absence of an armless chair.  What you might call an 'armless set-up. Fine for purpose.

And out walking later, I met a neighbor on her patio, haven't seen her for ages. She has a great setup of miniature raised bed things for an array of vegetables and herbs, gave me a sprig of lavender. 

She's going to try potatoes again after we talked about them, planting only potato peelings. Last year my success with the peelings was as good as with half potatoes. And you still have the potatoes.

Throughout our chat her tiny new Yorkie puppy kept up a high range of shrieks and barks, a canine queen of the night, effortless high fs. 

I learned a lot from reading Highly Processed People, including the fact that, like a lot of famous science writers, he has a few excellent ideas.  They could be a very good long feature article, and he inflated them to book size because marketing. 

Not by padding but by bludgeoning the reader with endless proofs and reasoning around the same few points. He seemed unable to switch off. Still worth reading, though I nodded off around page 6,429.

Then I studied the next chapter of The 1619 Project for this week's book group with a group of Highly Knowledgeable People, need to be ready.

And while I'm considering the next page of the fabric book, speaking of books, I did some pin weaving, managing to make the same mistakes and failing to spot them in time or figure out why. 

This yarn came out like a tartan, appealing.

.

But they're okay anyway. I did better last time, probably because I didn't plunge in thinking I knew exactly what I was doing.. I do like this little loom though, so friendly.

I'm not making anything in particular, just letting my mind wander over stitching ideas while I play.

 The red owie  you may have noticed on my finger is the result of an encounter with the fire irons I freecycled recently, one tool of which closed shut on it, ow.  It looks a lot less lurid now. 

And I seem to have set up another self inflicted potential mixup. You may recall the test I accidentally did recently which showed that mosquito rub doesn't remove stains, when you pick it up in mistake for the similar looking stain remover.

 I dropped the glue stick in the same handy drawer, because it's handy.  I will probably be able to attest soon that glue is ineffective against the itch of mosquito bites.

Happy day, everyone, Tuesday knitting group, to which I'll go in hopes of other people doing likewise. I'll take knitting and the pinloom, change of pace.

And remember anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Done is better than perfect.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

And other such annoying aphorisms.  I wonder if there's a book with that title.

Sharing is good. Said Peter Rabbit.

 I did a bit of cleanup outside. That huge white mass of chrysanthemums covering half the path was battered by rain and ready to be done. You see the darker color of the ground cover where it's been shaded since July by the spreading chrysanthemum.

So now it's out back feeding the earth in the woods, leaving the Montauk daisies to shine. They look better without the competition from across the path.

Then it was lunchtime so I thought hm, some chives and dandelions would be nice additions to my salad, and on top of the vichyssoise soup. So I went to cut them

and found that word had got out that I was a Potter fan, and Peter's cousin had swiped the lot.

So italian parsley subbed. I used all the leeks and potatoes from my box, and yogurt whey. Milk added, not cream. I forgot to add in celery. Next time.

On the subject of fitness which we were, indirectly, this kind of eating being pretty good for health, I needed a change from hasfit exercises, so I've added chair yoga as of  today.  When instructors pronounce it eeyoga, it sounds like Cherry Oga, new singing sensation, but I digress.

But however you say it, this is good.

Many of the hasfit exercises are based on yoga practice, so they all go together.

Knitting group online today, where I'll be stitching, not having any knitting going right now.  And hoping not to crash or freeze, this event being generated from a dodgy connection in a branch library. The other, alternating, knitting meetings are from the main library with the Big Cables, much better signal. But I'll sign in anyway, to be supportive. Also to see who's there.

And I delivered samples of sweet potato bread next door as promised, to some excitement. Doesn't take much these days!