kmkat and her kneedles

Family photo fun.

Thanks to Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting for the link.

A public service announcement.

Ruth, above right, of 5elementknitr is doing a huge destash, above left. Go check out her Flickr page and buy some yarn. Instructions on how to buy are on the Flickr page.

Go! Buy! Help Ruth clear out old stash! (Maybe to make room for new stash? who knows?)

Saturday: frolicking and fitting, tra la.

ETA: There is a non-workplace-suitable photo at the end of this post. Be warned!

One of my duties as a county supervisor is to be the county representative on the two lake associations located in my district. One is my own lake association. Today was the annual meeting and picnic of the other, above. This lake is quite a bit larger than ours, and the crowd visibly wealthier. That woman in the center front in the denim cutoffs and dark gray shirt is a former Twin City anchorwoman who went on to CNN. Elsewhere in the crowd is a well-known Twin City radio announcer, now retired, who was one-half of a popular morning drive-time show for many years. There were well-to-do businessmen and attorneys, trophy wives and doctors (probably; I did not meet any personally). All nice enough people, but definitely a different crowd than that on my own little lake.

Speaking of my lake, let me show you our Fourth of July boat parade. It is a casual affair.

There were a couple other pontoons, but it is always a small parade. Small lake, small parade.

The last photo made me chuckle in a wicked manner. The guy in the canoe is a freshman at Purdue; the pontoon belongs to his lake-dwelling grandparents and is full of his friends. Unfortunately for them, the DNR had a warden on our little lake that day and every one of those kids got a $200 ticket for not having a flotation device. Oops.

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One the knitting front, I bought myself a new toy: an adjustable dress form. I have wanted one for a number of years, and the sweater I am making was the trigger that sent me to eBay last week to buy one.

Here it is, hard at work modeling the Summer Raglan (notice how cleverly I matched the stitch markers to the yarn):

You might wonder why it is wearing a bra. Good question; let me explain the ways of adjustable dress forms.

An adjustable dress form is adjustable in length and girth, but only in an overall way. My own particular body bits are distributed rather differently than is represented by the dummy. (No remarks, please.) For example, when I expanded the bust line to be the same circumference as mine, it was obvious that, um, er, something wasn't right. The majority of my bust line girth is in front, not distributed as evenly around my body as it is on the form. This necessitated some improvisation on my part to make the dummy resemble me more closely. Once again, no remarks, please.

Thus, the bra and its *amplifications*:

Yup. Stuffed with plastic bags. I first thought of using a couple breast prostheses, but a quick check on eBay revealed they cost more than I wanted to pay, like, $50. Not worth it, no matter how realistic they are. Hence, the plastic bag boobs. Yay, me!

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As Chris suggested I applied my google fu to yesterday's snapping turtle question and discovered that they mate from April to November and lay eggs from May to October. Those periods of mating and egg-laying are shorter here in the Great Frozen North, but I guess my question is answered. They mate whenever the the spirit moves them and the temperature is warmer than, say, 50 degrees, and then they lay their eggs. There. Now we know.

Turtle love, v. 2008: at it again.

Remember last year? They are doin' it again.

As you can see, our dock and boat still languish on the shore, so this year's turtle pørn photos were taken from the porch. Not as good.

A seemingly odd thing just occurred to me. Three or four weeks ago a female snapper laid her eggs at the head of our driveway. The eggs did not survive more than a day or two before some predator (raccoon? skunk? badger?) dug them up and feasted upon them. So, my  question is, do turtles mate in late June/early July and wait a year to lay their eggs? Or is this mating the second try? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Eye candy Friday: Wisconsin roadsides.

Something I have loved for many years is about Wisconsin, and particularly about northern Wisconsin, that they (whoever they are) do not feel compelled to mow the roadsides. This is in direct contrast to their counterparts in Minnesota, who seem offended by unshorn rights-of-way. Consequently, many of Wisconsin's roadsides and ditches grow a diversity of plant life -- wildflowers, grasses, small shrubs -- which in turn foster a variety of insect and bird life. I took all these photos along the 2-mile stretch of paved township road that leads from the gravel road around our lake to the state highway.

Let's start with some of the more common wildflowers. Actually, all of these are common. Some are just more common than others.

Clockwise from upper left: common yarrow (white) with some kind of black-eyed Susan/sunflower behind it, mullein (yellow) with ox-eye daisies behind it; and a bunch of ox-eye daisies with a happy fritillary butterfly in the middle.

Other common roadside wildflowers:

Clockwise, again: daylilies; creeping bellflower; Canada thistle; yarrow and red clover.

With the exception of the yellow daisy-like flower in the first photo, all of those flowers are exotics, either introduced or escaped from gardens. The ones that follow are natives.

Woodland sunflower, looking rather bedraggled because we had had a tumultuous thunderstorm with 60 mph straight-line winds the night before.

Summersweet, of the spirea family. The flowers are the conical spires near the bottom of the photo; the skinny spikes are some kind of grass seed heads:

Wild bergamot (Monarda fisulosa), first cousin to the bee balm in your garden. The flowers are normally bright lavender, but these were pale and washed out for some reason. The Indians used to make tea from the leaves. I tried it one year but was not impressed:

Tick trefoil, so called because the foliage is three-leaved and the crescent-shaped seeds are covered with minute velcro-like hooks that enable them to cling to pant legs and animal fur:

Spreading dogbane (I have no idea how it spreads nor why it is bane to dogs):

The first few years we were here I was disappointed that there were no wild roses in the roadsides. Then one year I spotted a clump a few miles north. In the last couple years they have started to appear along our road:

Fireweed, so called because it is often one of the first plants to reseed and bloom after a fire:

Milkweeds -- common, beloved of the Monarch butterfly larva; marsh; and butterfly weed:

I take credit for this butterfly weed growing wild at the end of our gravel road. I had planted some several years ago in a xeriscapic garden in our front yard, but that garden is now largely under the new deck. Since this is the only butterfly weed I have seen anywhere in Polk County and it is growing a half mile from where I used to have it, it seems a safe guess that it grew from a seed that originated in my garden. Yay, me.

I used to have marsh milkweed growing in another flower garden in a spot where rain water from the roof tended to accumulate. It attracted dozens of little black butterflies every year. But it grows wild in lots of damp areas, so I cannot take credit for it.

As lovely as wildflowers are, the grasses that grow in the roadsides have their own kind of subtle beauty. I have discovered that adding a few stems of grasses with seedheads makes a flower arrangement look better, more sophisticated.

 

There used to be a few patches of both little and big bluestem grasses along the road, but I haven't seen them this year. One of the things about wild plants is that any given year will be different than the year before and the next year will be different again.

This next thing is kinda scary. I took this photo over a week ago, so it was early July. Very early July.

That is goldenrod, people. Goldenrod is an end-of-summer, early fall flower. Why is it blooming in early July? Did our late spring freak it out so much it decided to go directly to autumn, do not pass go, do not collect $200? Weird. But like I said, nature is not necessarily consistent year to year.

Finally, here is a blue flag growing by our dock. I planted this one myself, but they are native to the area.

Delicate woolen organs.

Sent to me by #2 son. I trained him right.

Monday morning stumbling.

Stumbling Upon, that is. StumbleUpon is my new favorite time-waster. I limit myself to stumbling onto only a few websites per day, lest I waste more time than usual too much time.

Here is today's best find: Oooms.

Need a flash drive?

Before you rush over there to buy one, be warned that a 512MB one costs €70. Even if the dollar weren't in the toilet that would be a lot of money for a flash drive.

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Fans of Office Space might find this one amusing:

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These are just weird.

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Looking for a present for that aggravating relative or coworker? Look no further...

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Thus endeth our shopping session for today. Go forth and consume stumble!

Express yourself.

This is more fun than I have had in at least twenty minutes. Go, try it. I'll wait.

See? Wasn't that fun? Here is what I made yesterday.



If that isn't obvious enough for you, how about this? Talk about beating the subject to death...

Meanwhile, back at the knitting.

Time for a distinctly sub-par photograph of the WIP.

I took this in my vintage 1970s harvest gold bathroom with inadequate light at 11 pm last night and without flash; thus, the delightful greenish cast to my skin. The color of the knitting is fairly accurate, however, and that's what we care about, right? Right.

I am at the underarm, where the pattern has the knitter put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, cast on an inch or two of additional stitches where the sleeve stitches used to be, stop knitting in the round, and commence knitting back and forth on one side, double decreasing up the side "seam" and wrap-and-turning at the end of each row so the knitting will gradually fill in the roughly triangular open area at each side. So far, it seems to fit, more or less. The real test will come in another 6" or so, when it will have encompassed the boobage. Mine is rather ample, but I am vertically challenged in the shoulder to waist area, so proper fit is often elusive.

In spite of my short-waistedness, I think I want this to be longer than the pattern would have me make it. If it reaches only to my waist, there is a strong possibility that the proportions would be... so wrong as to frighten small children and dogs ugly as sin unattractive unflattering.

Note: yes, that is a small sliver of bra peeking out at the lower left of the photo. Maybe this will make my blog less elementary school.

"I'm voting Republican."

Not.

Thanks to soxanne, on whose blog I saw this.