Knitting Iris

Impossible. Part three.

It seems nearly impossible that we have an eight year old.  Can it really be? 

One who takes the initiative to pick up the phone and call up his great uncle all the way in Norway, whom he has never met but with whom he shares a birthdate, to wish him a happy birthday, too. 

One who, when he sees you making lists and preparing for his upcoming birthday, produces a Fimo clay figurine of Harry Potter from his room that he made months ago with the idea of having it as a decoration on his cake. 

One who spends the day counting down the hours and making decorations for his own party and (this just cracked me up) sitting with his brother like so for an inordinate part of the day, speculating as to what was inside these packages:

One who, when you ask him what he'd like for Christmas or his birthday, answers something like, "Oh.  I don't know.  It's too hard to decide.  I'll be happy with anything.  I'd rather be surprised."

Don't get me, or him rather, wrong.   He's always been one to know what he wants.  Believe me!  He must have been born with his solid conscience and a sense of what is right and wrong, what is just and what is not.  Yet he's always willing to listen to more than one side or take on things. 

He may not have been the easiest baby (colic!) and, honestly, this past year, he was rather...hmmmm.....I'd rather not say "sullen" so let's say "quiet" instead.   However, in the past weeks leading up to his birthday, we've been seeing him coming back into that easygoing, grinning child we've always known that he is.

It's all good, and all has it's little challenges, but I have this feeling eight is going to be a awfully fun year.

Cake, ice cream, hot cider and singing took place, by the way, outside in the cold darkness around the picnic table, in "The Great Hall", so that we could pretend that the stars weren't the real stars above but instead the enchanted ones, like at Hogwarts.  A little convoluted, I know, and we forgot to explain that to the party goers, I think, so they were probably wondering why we made everyone bundle up and were dragged them out into the cold darkness.  It sure made for some pretty tough picture-taking as well.

Impossible. Part two.

Impossible to narrow these down to any fewer pictures, starting off with more than a couple hundred, nearly a vacation's worth, taken during not even a couple of hours.  Again, impossible to truly capture the feel of actually being here.  Almost impossible to believe even when you are.  An impossibly beautiful and magical wonderland.  Easy to get lost in.  Hard to walk away from. 

Caught up in it all, somewhere along the way I set my mittens down and, probably close to an hour later, with freezing fingers and my real life responsibilities back inside the house calling me, I had to track and retrace my wandering footsteps through the snow to find them.

Warmish days followed by cold, clear nights, and fog in the more open and low-lying spots on our place seem to be just the right formula to create this each of the last few mornings. The longest of these crystalline formations were about one inch long.  It only lasts as long as it stays cold enough, until the sun comes up and warms the air enough to make it all either fall or drip down to the ground below.  By noon, at the latest, it's all gone.

Even so, it was only on the grasses and trees down in the open field.  See? Not at all on the only slightly higher hillside.

Hoarfrost A deposit of interlocking ice crystals (hoar crystals) formed by direct sublimation on objects, usually those of small diameter freely exposed to the air, such as tree branches, plant stems and leaf edges, wires, poles, etc., which surface is sufficiently cooled, mostly by nocturnal radiation, to cause the direct sublimation of the water vapor contained in the ambient air.

I wasn't really even sure if this was the name for it until poking around online.  Of course, no surprise, there's an entire Flickr pool's worth of photos. 

"Hoarfrost" or "rime" seem too harsh of words for such a fleeting and fragile phenomenon.  "Frost ferns" or "fairy frost" (although not this one nor this one) seem more like it, or even the common explanation, "the work of Jack Frost."

Last summer's skinny grass stems cast thick, fuzzy shadows in the low, winter, morning sunshine.

If you listen quietly, and gently brush the sparkling crystalline ferns off and onto the snow below, it sounds like the tiniest of glass fairy's bells tinkling into the crisp cold air.

Impossible. Part one.

None of these look quite like it did to the naked eye.  Impossible to capture, for an amateur like me, anyways, who's lost the manual for her camera and knows nothing of F-stops and aperatures.  Fun to mess around and try, though, and something to do during the several hours it took for the earth's shadow to cross over the moon's surface.  Others did too, I see, with far more success than I.  Kelly expressed my thoughts exactly about how I felt about my fumbling around, in the dark, both literally and figuratively, with the camera and its settings last night: "Because it's there." and  "Sure, everyone else has tripods. Everyone else has expensive cameras. There's really no point in my taking these, much less posting them.....But I did have fun..."

More cool ones, and here.

I'm glad others got out and saw "the show" last night, too! If it hadn't been for a brief mention of the eclipse the previous evening on CBC radio, it would have likely occured completely unnoticed by us.  Instead, we were able to plan and make the most of it, eating our dinner, leftover chicken and rice soup, around the fire, toasting sourdough bread and marshmallows over the flames, to go with it.

Fire watching, yet another thing I find impossible to capture the way it really is:

Total Eclipse of the Moon TONIGHT

The view from our fire pit a couple of days ago. 

6:43 p.m. through 10:09 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, peaking at 8:01 throuh 8:51 p.m.  Not a cloud in the sky here today and crossing our fingers it'll stay that way.

More info here and here.

And, from here:

"So why does the eclipsed Moon glow deep orange or red, rather than being blacked out?

The answer is amazing.

The red light you'll see on the Moon comes from all the sunrises and sunsets that are occurring around Earth at the time."

Off.

Off running errands, gathering necessaries for R's birthday later this week, and I just might pop into a quilt shop for a peek around.

This picture isn't current, it's few weeks old, but it's the highway I'll be driving down today.  There shouldn't be as much snow as then, and the skies are clear and blue.  It wouldn't be unlikely to see a bald eagle or two along the way this time of year.  Always a long, lovely drive except after dark when the deer are thick along the sides of the road.  Fortunately the days are lengthening, but still, I must be going so as to be back before dark.  Hope you're having a great day.   

Keeping the love alive.

At a loss for energy and blogging fodder these past few days, so, to start, here are a couple of pictures that I came across while poking around in last February's pictures:  the door of the local Lutheran church, which has since been replaced, hardware and all, by a gaudy carved door.  A barn north of town.

And, from this year:

Valentine's morning, E asked for a pair of wings so he could be "Cupid, the love angel".  how could I not indulge a request like that??  Pinched for time before leaving for a Valentine's party, he agreed to a quick pair cut from a cardboard box.  Add a halo (the first made with beads and yarn himself, and this one made by his brother of pipe cleaners), a broken toy bow fixed with duct tape and Red Heart acrylic yarn, and a bamboo garden stake and he was ready to go.  Of course, shooting "love arrows" has a tendency to quickly disintigrate into mass warfare play.  I'm sure the bow shooting part of playing Cupid holds a lot of the appeal for him, although he is a sweetheart through and through.  Here he is, still at it, this afternoon, four days past Valentine's Day.

Paper, scissors (or, in this case cardboard and a box knife), glue, and a little bit of time and imagination.  These are the things that hold a lot of the appeal of Valentine's Day itself for me.

Perler bead style hearts, only they're the IKEA ones we've been using for several years now and still we're only about half way through the jug of beads.  I'm pretty sure (Yarnstorm) Jane posted a similar picture a few years back.

The party was with a couple of friends and their children who homeschool, too.  I can't imagine pulling this off for a classroom of 20 or more!  No wonder people buy boxes of valentines.

There was a fair amount of coersion persuasion involved, towards the end at least, in trying to pull off enough Valentines for 10+ friends, grandparents, and eachother, and all the out of town ones were sent out late, as seems to be the norm these days.

FAB! ric.

Gosh.  What a response to the last post!  So fun reading all your comments and memories, too.  We had a fun Valentine's Day party, exchanging valentines with a couple of other homeschooling moms and kids, followed by a nice, family dinner together. 

Then, I came home to find a package in the mailbox from SewMamaSew.com.  Yay!   Last summer they randomly picked a picture I'd posted to the Sew, Mama, Sew Flickr pool which won me a gift certificate to their online shop.  Finally, I've gotten around to using it.  (Thank you, Kristin and Beth for the freebies and help with the certificate code!)  Usually I'm pretty good with staying within the bounds of a gift certificate, but not this time.  It was too hard to limit my choices and, fortunately for the wallet, at least for now, a few of them were out of stock at them moment.  Phew.  Be sure to go check out their blog where they're hosting a month's worth of quilting posts.  The haul:

This quilt is blatantly inspired by Amanda's quilt she made for her son here and here, and is intended for my own E. 

All but these ones are destined for the quilt above, which might go towards a more red/orange/brown version for R:

Here are some recent contributions from JoAnn's fabrics.  The turtle fabric is the one that really spurred on the starting of this quilt.  Argh!  I can't seem to walk out of there without bringing home a new project.

There will be some stashbusting going into this project, too.  Potential additions:

So, I'm thinking there's a little overload on the polka dots, if that's even possible, and that there needs to be some more solids, stripes, and lighter colors thrown in to the mix.  Don't expect to see a finished project anytime soon, though.  All the quilts I've made so far have been made not over weeks or months, but years, and there are already two others at the cut out and partly assembled stage.

While we're at it, why not a look at the latest thrifted fabrics.  It's been awhile since I've come across any goodies like these:

Truth be told, nearly every one of these fabrics, particularly the polka dotted ones, end up being draped in front of me and leave me wishing there was enough to make a skirt out of it.  Must be sensing spring coming on. 

I'm home, skipping out on the skiing today in hopes of fending the sore throat that crept up on me a couple of days ago.  So far, it's working.  The house needs a full on overhaul but all I seem to have accomplished so far is sleeping in, cutting out of lots of squares (with a template and scissors this time and I'm enjoying handling and feeling the weight of each of the different fabrics.), browsing online fabric sites, and posting this.  Off to fold laundry and begin to tackle the disaster area.

So much for my plan for having the Road to Golden sweater done by today.  One more sleeve to go, then the weaving in of a zillion of ends.

Nana

I'd planned on posting about this last February, but somehow never got around to it.  At the time, I'd just been back to my parents' house and had spent some time looking through some boxes of my grandmother's things.  I didn't have a scanner, and the pictures here aren't all that great but, because I've realized that she was was the truest of romantics, and since it is Valentine's Day today, I thought I'd share all this now anyways.

Nana was born in 1904 and lived in Seattle, Washington.

Throughout my childhood, most Sundays, she came to our house for dinner, although I'd have to say that I'm not sure that I really knew her very well, nor much about her life.  I guess maybe you just don't ask those kind of inquiring questions when you're young, and she died when I was in my early twenties.

What I do know is that she was the only daughter of German immigrants and, like me, was the youngest of three children with two older brothers.  She, like me, also had two sons.  I never pieced this together until recently.  Of her six grandchildren, I am the youngest and the only girl.

She married my grandfather in 1930.

Photos from that day.  Check out the flowers, and all those bridesmaids, and their bonnets!

Newspaper announcements:

Meticulously typed records of their wedding and honeymoon expenses, their wedding announcement, a little card with the design of her wedding ring, florists' receipts, a small box with grains of rice thrown at the wedding (click for a closer look.  Really.  You just have to see all this stuff close up.):

Pamphlets and menus gathered on their honeymoon, and cards received for her wedding shower and for their wedding:

My grandfather died sometime in the 1960's, before I was born.  She kept EVERY single birthday, anniversary, Valentine's, Easter, Christmas card that they exchanged with eachother every year throughout their married life. 

It's interesting to see the way the styles of the cards changed as they spanned those years:

She worked as a secretary for Zellerbach Paper Co. during the 1920's  and then, all the years that I knew her, for a heavy construction equipment supplier, even into her early 80's.  Those were still the days of typewriters and dial tone phones and employers who kept people on until they were ready to quit working, regardless of the bottom line.  She always said she'd keep working until her boss was ready to retire, and that was what she did.

When I think of her, I think of her taking photos of us, always asking for just one more, "just in case."  How she would have loved digital cameras!

A handful of pictures of her and her homes, over the course of her life:

 

She was one of those people that saved practically everything.  You know, the ones who are called crazy old ladies because they can hardly get around in their own house by the time they're in their 80's?  To give her the benefit of the doubt, she lived in a pretty small house by that time, but it was chock full.  One might be tempted to attribute it to her having lived through the Depression but, really, they weren't wanting for money during that time, possibly because my grandfather was employed as a butcher, so there couldn't have been a lack of food or income.  They couldn't have been even remotely bad off seeing as there are piles of photographs and even home movies from when my dad and uncle were very young, in the early thirties, not to mention piles of presents under the Christmas tree in those pictures each year.

Letters sent by her and received by her from friends and family around the country, both near and far:

I know that all her collected stuff has been a bit of a burden for my parents to have to deal with and go through, and likely were a burdern to she herself over the years.  But, I have to say that I'm quite grateful for at least some of what she, and my parents, in turn, have kept.  I know my dad enjoys going through it all, and has whittled it down some over the years.

An album filled with postcards sent to her between the 1910's and 1930's:

Each year she would take each of her six grandchildren, alone, for a special day, "Our Day".  We would take the bus into downtown Seattle together, get on the monorail to Seattle Center, spending the day there on the rides and playing the games and having lunch in the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle, which we would always make last at least a full hour so that we could stay through the whole rotation of the restaurant.  We'd stack a pile of sugar packets on the windowsill, in some certain special way that we'd be able to recognize when it came around again.  One year that stands out from the rest is when she broke the heel off of her shoe while stepping off the bus so that we had to hobble around downtown until we could find someone to fix her shoe before continuing on our way.  Adventure!

Palm readings, dated  9-13-'24 :

Another year, instead of individually having their day alone with her, she took all five of her grandsons together for the weekend on the Princess Marguerite to Victoria, B.C. to see things like The Wax Museum and Minature World.

Some of my dad's things, including his Boy Scout bandana, his diplomas, and a little note they used to put by his plate at the dinner table that reads, "Remember. Eat More Slowly":

As far as I know, she didn't play any instrument but there was an organ that maybe her mother played?  

Sheet music, some from movies, exclusively love songs:

I do know, from a diary of hers from then, that she regularly saw silent films in the 1920's.  There is also a diary of hers somewhere, written entirely in shorthand, that's never been translated.

These, for some reason, I actually do have, so these are scanned.  Newspaper ads for some of those films, that she clipped out:

 

When I think of Nana, I also think of flowers and wigs and china dolls and travelling and the Rose Milk lotion that we bought for her every year for her birthday at the local drugstore.  I think of sitting and drawing a picture for her while waiting for her to arrive on Sunday evenings for dinner.  I think of actually going to the grocery store with her sometimes while she picked out a birthday card for someone.  She'd typically read almost every card on the rack looking for just the right one. I think of the cards she would send to us on our birthdays that always, ALWAYS arrived on our actual birthday, signed in her meticulous, curly handwriting.  Only, there were always two cards, one signed by her, the other signed, "Guess who?".

A tiny notebook she'd filled, in even tinier handwriting, with the lyrics from love songs, interspersed with little pictures she'd cut out, pasted in, and embellished. Dated 7-26-'28:

One more thing I think of when I think of her: her ringing our doorbell on Halloween night, dressed in a costume that always incorporated a mask to cover her face.  Then, when we answered the door, she'd step slowly and silently into the front hallway while we watched, holding our breath and wide-eyed, and not really sure if it was her or not, for those first few minutes before she revealed herself.

Card, dated 1928.  Exhibit Sup. Co., Chicago:

OK.  If you've made it this far, well, Happy Valentine's Day.  : )

Some of Nana's vintage Valentines, scanned last year, over here on Flickr.

 

 

Valentining.

Some things just require more space than the table can afford.

Totally cheesing out to The Heart on XM, too, just for the sake of being uber-cheesy.  Like, totally.

Tools of the trade.

Sock yarn solids and semi-solids, to be used for reinforcing heels and toes, either double stranded or as a single strand held alongside the main color strand.  The ziplock is filled with washable 4 ply wool yarns leftover from baby sweaters and can be used in a pinch although they're not as sturdy as the sock yarns with some nylon or poly content.   I used to buy bobbins of "official" sock reinforcement yarn (which is typically exactly like regular 4 ply sock yarn only it's one or two ply fewer) until I realized that you could get an entire 50 gram ball for not much more than the price it costs to buy the reinforcing yarn.

I know it doesn't really look like it, above, but my stock was getting low and also  wasn't compatible with much of the sock yarn I have on hand.  So, when Elann finally re-released it's Essential Sock-It-To-Me 4 ply solids a week or two ago, I finally used gift certificates from C's mom (Thank you, GB.) that have just been sitting waiting for something like this to come along.  I can't say it's the nicest sock yarn out there but it's perfectly good and sturdy enough for my purposes.

And, their customer service always amazes me.  I had lost track of one of the gift certificates sent to my email account from last spring and they promptly tracked it down and added it to my account with them.  Super quick shipping, also, and everything is packaged so....neatly, I guess, is how it can be described.

It's been about two months since I've had a pair of socks on the needles.   Not really feeling withdrawals, either, nor even sure where the Addi's are.   How strange is all that?