kmkat and her kneedles

Babies!

One of my knitting groups (I attend 4 on an irregular basis) met at one of the member's farm today because she wanted to show us her baby lambs -- all 38 of them! 

The newest was only a few hours old and was still with its mama in the barn.

Later I went to the county recycling center for its annual Earth Day event. There were exhibits by vendors of any number of products -- geothermal HVAC systems, flax meal granola, window blankets -- and by the county health department (How to Catch Lyme Disease in Three Easy Steps) and the UW extension agents and the county land & water department (Jeremy the bug guy was there, as was Amy the water gal, both of them very popular with crowds), plus the county renewable energy committee on which I sit. The recycling center invites all the area schools to send their fourth grade classes, and the place is bustling with 9- and10-year-olds from 9 to 3. 

What else did I see? More babies!

These were kids rather than lambs. It is hard to tell their size in the photo, but they were roughly the size of Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom, my cat. And sooo adorable.

Bear! Cat!

Photo taken by a friend from his living room... without benefit of zoom. Said friend lives about 5 miles away from me; that's where Matthew and I were on New Year's day. That cat waiting for his turn at the feeder? His name is Pete and he weighs 23 pounds. Hard to say which is more amazing, the bear on the deck or the size of the cat.

Thanks to Kris and Dave for sharing their photo.

Winter on the ice.

Just in case you live where people are sane winters are mild, let me show you something I saw earlier this week. (Crappy photos taken with my iPod because I had left my camera at home.)

In summer, this is the swimming beach on a nearby lake. 

In winter it is the place where those crazy Norwegians Danes locals drive onto the lake to get to their fish houses. While I was sitting there, two pickup trucks went past me.

Now, ice houses on the lake are no big thing. Anyone who saw Grumpy Old Men knows about the ice house villages that spring up on northern lakes in winter. I spent my high school years in northern Minnesota, where the village plowed a road across the frozen-over lake on the edge of town so that residents on the other side didn't have to drive so far to get into town. I have even grown to accept driving on the lake, although I will not do it myself.

What drew my attention this time are the two fuzzy gray things in the photo below.

Those are fuel tanks -- BIG fuel tanks -- to run the heaters inside the fish houses next to them.

Somehow that struck me as... weird.

As I look at the photo now, it occurs to me to wonder if the two side-by-side blue things at right are Port-o-Potties for the convenience of the fisherfolk...

When the going gets tough cold, the tough cold... is everywhere.

I woke up this morning to... this.

Not only did it snow last night, but it is cold and very windy out there. 

Crap.

Summer/autumn = gone. Winter = now. (Of course, it is mid-November in n.w. Wisconsin, so what did I expect -- sunshine and palms?)

On the bright side, that means that this little thing OTN:

will be very welcome. It is a dog sweater for Ser Percival The Energetic, who has a very, very short coat and a naked pink underside. Poor baby needs a sweater.

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P.S.

Anything still green in the woods in November (except conifers) is an exotic. This is a Tartarian honeysuckle that was here when we bought the place and that I have intended to remove for... a long time.

Energy fair, or How To Have Fun While Keeping An Eye On The Toilets.

I volunteered at the Polk County Energy Fair today. Because I cannot walk very far or do heavy lifting or really anything remotely physical, my job was to check the women's bathroom every hour or so to be sure there were sufficient paper towels and t.p. and that no one had done anything disgusting. Except for the 30 seconds it took me to walk from my comfy camp chair out by the information booth to the restrooms every time, the job required roughly 3.5 minutes spread out over an 8-hour day. 

A few of the information booth crew:

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There were workshops and speakers. Five minutes before each round of workshops started, Dennis would skip (skip!) around the area ringing a cowbell and Jean (in the green dress) would put on her loudspeaker voice and announce the workshops.

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This is the second annual energy fair. From the very beginning it has aimed to be a low-waste event. This recycling/composting/trash station sums up their success.

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In between my arduous stints of checking the bathrooms, I spent most of the day knitting; it was my own little Knit In Public day. Three afghan squares done for Blankets for Birmingham:

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En Esch approves.

Random musings.

I am a charter member of the apostrophe police, and I currently trying to find out who I need to arrest for this egregious overuse of the little curvy devils.

 
* * * * *

This year's birthday was quite restrained, but Smokey and I did go out for dinner at a very picturesque location nearby. Tthe menu turned out to be unimaginative, but the food was excellent and the setting was lovely.

* * * * *

The shawl is slowly coming off the needles, which leads me to the all important question: what to cast on next? Should it be the sweater on the left but done with vertical stripes like the swatch on the right (please turn the swatch 90˚ clockwise in your mind), using the Noro yarns below?

 

 

Alex has requested a rugby-style doggie sweater for Percy, her and Matthew's rescued pit bull terrier, and has chosen yarn from my stash:

    

I am all excited about lace knitting and am considering using some Rowan Calmer I bought on closeout at Webs for a Cece (but I would make it longer and with 3/4 sleeves):

 

(I am not fond of the color of the Calmer -- color at right side of skein is truest -- and am thinking of overdyeing it. Tea, for a browner tone? Rit, if I wanted dusky blue? Anyone have experience?)

There are a number of other project swimming in my head but I'll stop here.

* * * * *

I picked these wild blackberries three feet outside my front door.

Small but tasty.

Winner!

The secretary of the county fair society is also on the county board of supervisors with me, and at the July county board meetin she sold the supervisors raffle tickets. Being a good citizen I bought a book of five tickets.

I was rather hoping for the 32" flat screen TV but had decided that if we won half a hog we would keep some of the pork chops and bacon and give the rest to the food shelf.

I did not win either of those things. What I did win:

 What is Remington 870 Express, you may ask?

Yep. It's a pump-action 12-gauge... shotgun.

Just what I always wanted. Not.

However, I did have the option taking cash instead: $150. According to several retail websites I checked, the gun retails for upwards of $300; I guess I got the wholesale value. Whatever.

I'm a winner!

The road not taken...

...can lead to extremely interesting discoveries when one finally travels on it.

--  The Kat™, 2011

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A perfectly ordinary farmhouse, now on the edge of a nearby village and probably no longer part of an operating farm.

But strange things lurk near the mailbox.

Even stranger critters lurk in a fenced-in area in the yard.

I know you want a closer look.

I have lived here 12 years and never knew this zoo existed. Let this be a lesson to you: when you want to avoid road construction, try an unfamiliar route home. You never know what you will find...

Reach for the sky!

Saturday was an exciting day. First the awesome yarn bombing, then the future mural, then I got back to our tiny town in Wisconsin and found this.

A new roof on the steeple of the Lutheran church. Excitement!

Yikes. I'm glad it is not me up there...

Catching up.

It is tough to find time to blog these days. I signed up to work 30 hours a week during this tax season. That was fine and dandy until we got busy a couple weeks ago. I have worked more than 60 hours in each of the past two weeks. This week will be not quite so bad, mainly because I took Monday off -- mental health day. It was marked as OFF in my original schedule, so I don't feel too guilty. (Until I look at my to-do list of 10+ returns that are waiting for me to review them, and fix them, and send them on to the next level of review, and fix them again, and do all the steps required to efile them, and, and, and...)

But I have a stash of photos from the past few weeks so we are gonna do Random Photos And The Stories That Go With Them, 'kay?

Random Thing #1.

Back in January a county board  committee of which I am a member toured the county jail. Interesting; I had only seen jails on TV.

The kitchen:

  

The county contracts with a food service to prepare the meals. They also prepare the meals here for the Meals-on-Wheels program.

Guess what this is:

The machine with the LED readout on the desk is the Breathalyzer. Happily, I had never seen one before.

A cell, this one for eight inmates. This one is in the less-restrictive area, to which prisoners are moved if they behave themselves. It was empty when we were in there because maintenence was working on the lights.

The uniformed man in the back, newly elected last November; he had been an investigator before his election (I voted for him because he was experienced and low-key; the other guy was experienced but seemed to want to build a paramilitary police force). The man at right is the jail sargeant who led the tour.

If your husband/wife/father/mother/sweetheart/brother/sister/son/daughter is in the Polk County jail and you come to visit, this is where the two of you will meet, you on the green chair on the far side and the inmate on the stainless steel stool:

Random Thing #2.

Remember the Spring Wine Sale? That beautiful and creative sign didn't last long. This was about a week later:

Random Thing #3.

A couple weekends ago I worked on a Saturday; my team took over a conference room that faced west.

The big building with the white rim around it just beyond the high-rise is Target Center, an indoor arena where the Timberwolves play. Beyond that and to the right is Target Field, where the Minnesota Twins play. The plume of smoke/steam just beyond that is... the city garbage burner.

Our office is on the 29th floor so we have a fabulous view. I'm not a baseball fan nor will I be here during baseball season, but with a pair of binoculars one could watch the action around home plate quite easily. If one were not too busy.

If you look carefully you can see the people lined up to buy tickets. That Saturday was the first day single game tickets went on sale.

Random Thing #4.

I really, really wish I had better photographs for this item. But I don't, so we'll just have to deal.

The aerator keeps some water open on our lake all winter, plus our groundwater heat pump outflow keeps a small area open next to our dock. A few weeks ago half-a-dozen raptors, mostly bald eagles, discovered the open water. They hung around for days. I don't know if they were finding fish or getting drinks or pretending they were ducks; I just know that we would see them swooping over the lake or over our house, and we had a great view of them.

You can just make out a bald eagle in flight through the tree branches:

Here's one sitting on the ice:

The open water by the dock:

The tracks around it were made by the eagles. (And probably other animals, but it's cool to think of the eagles leaving footprints in the snow.)

Random Thing #5.

There are always lots of fun little distractions at work during busy season. One Friday afternoon my neighborhood (the office is divided into "neighbborhoods" of twelve to twenty people, which are easily determined by the physical layout of the office.) There was beer and wine and snacks and... Jenga!

Pardon the photos; taken with my iPod.

 

We also have a daily trivia question that comes by email; s/he who has submitted the most correct answers by the end of busy season will get a prize. Last Friday's Happy Hour (beer, wine, snacks) featured a Name That Tune contest; winning team took away a mini-keg of Heinekin. There are email bingo games and guess-the-number-of-pieces-of-candy-in-the-jar contests, prizes being gift cards to Starbucks ro some such.

There are also impromtu antics. Look for the suction bup dart on the mirror. (Sorry, more iPod photos.)

Once they had the technique down, they attacked from afar, over cube walls.

And that is what I have been up to. Darned little knitting, and what there has been was never photographed. But there are only thirteen days to go!

Gulp. I have a lot to do before then.

Winter has arrived.

Last week we broke, or nearly broke, all-time high temperature records. It was almost 70˚ more than once. This is mid-November, folks -- it just ain't right. Sometime in the middle of Friday night, all that changed.

Our driveway, Saturday morning, 11 a.m., when I came home from a 9 a.m. meeting:

That was pretty much where I left the car because this (below) is what was ahead of the car (and behind the photographer):

That tree fell sometime last summer but was hung up -- high up -- on other trees. The snow today was so wet and heavy that it brought that tree nearly all the way down.

Coincidentally, it fell in the only place along that stretch of driveway where it DIDN'T land on a vehicle.

Nest.

Matthew is here today to get new brakes on his car and to help Smokey do some other car stuff. A few minutes ago he came running into the house to show me what he had just snapped with his camera phone.

Behold: the biggest wasp nest we have seen in recent memory.

Hmm, guess we don't use that door much. Maybe when I was designing the house I could have left it out...

Watch out, little ladybu-- oh, wait, that's one of those annoying Asian ladybugs.

Kill!

For now, while the wasps are active, we will just let them be. In a few weeks it will be cold enough that they will be sluggish. Then we will knock down the nest and burn it. ::wicked laugh::

So there I was...

...at the laundromat.

 

I turned around and guess what I saw?

 

Somebody decided to have their wedding photos taken on Main Street in Luck. Those photographers you see? Were just a small part of the crew. There were at least six people with cameras and reflectors and makeup kits and director's chairs.

Okay, I'm kidding about the chairs.

I don't know what you think, but that looks to me like a weird wedding photo pose. Groom with his back to the bride, who is leaning casually against a plate glass window. In her elaborate gown. It was a pose, too -- I saw the photogs snapping away while bride and groom held it.

Weird. Both the pose and the fact that it was happening at all.

The storm.

An Xtreme thunder- and windstorm blew through here one evening last week. I was home alone and went to stand in the three-season porch to watch it. (I love storms.) But the wind became so strong I stepped back into the house and closed the door. A window pane blew out in that porch once, and if it happened again I didn't want to be in the same room with the flying glass. The wind seemed to be about 50 mph -- it looked like the water was being blown off the surface of the lake.

After a few minutes he storm passed, and we had no significant damage, just a lot of leaves and small branches down (except for that one tree that fell and blocked the neighbor's driveway).

But the next little town south of us did not fare so well.

I drove through a couple days later. Scenes like this were typical.

The county government center lost a storage building. (Look closely at the trees in the background, too).

Utility and tree-trimmer trucks were everywhere.
 

 

Some guys were working.
 

Others were taking their lunch break near the village beach.
 

No one was exempt from damage.
 

The trees were sad.
 

County fair!

I worked at the county library booth at the fair again this year. That makes, I think, eight years in a row.

I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. and parked in the lot on the far side of the fair park from where I needed to be, just so I could get a look at everything before it got too hot. The dairy judging was in progress.

There were the requisite Holsteins.

 

There were the requisite brown Swiss. As a brown-haired person of Swiss heritage, I am partial to the brown Swiss.

 

What's that hanging in the dairy barn?

Surely not a piñata?

 

Strange sights are present even in the parking lot.

 

Did you see that?

 

Somebody rode his/her llama to the fair!

And, finally, the latest in my Tigers of Polk County series, which began in 2007. This is #4. Tigers are scarce 'round these parts.

 

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A final note: there is a small deck/stage attached to one of the buildings, and there have traditionally been small entertainments all during the fair -- barbershop groups, civic bands, whatever. This year the entertainments were moved to a large open tent where there was more space and lots more shaded seating, but apparently some missed the performances on the small stage. When I went past, several dozen people were seated on the benches... watching a woman spin. Excitement reigns supreme at the Polk County fair!

The eagle has landed.

Tuesday morning I got up early (for me, 8 a.m. is waayyy early) to attend a county committee meeting. On my way there I saw a l-o-n-g V of geese heading north. Spring comes to the Great Frozen Tundra!

It turned out that I could not sit in -- something about certain rules or statutes that I was not aware of -- so I returned home. On my way I saw something else, something that warranted turning the car around and taking some pictures.

I am pretty sure that is a bald eagle and not a turkey vulture, but Jeff? If you are reading this? Please feel free to set me straight (again).

The eagle stayed put for a minute or two, then decided it had had enough of that big red thing sitting at the side of the road.

Let's play "find the eagle", shall we? As always, click to embiggify.

* * * * *

Lest you think living in the woods is all joy, Smokey reminded me to put up this photo.

 

The first wood tick of the season, this one plucked from Hannibal the Fluffball of Doom.

The lake report.

The unseasonably warm weather we had last week is gone, but it is still well above freezing every day. The opening that the aerator kept clear all winter has grown so big I can see it from my deck.

Hey, what's that on the ice? (Smokey and I have said that to each other several times in the past couple days.)

 

It's an otter, and I do believe it is snacking on a fish!

 

Buh-bye, Mr(s). Otter!

 

How did I get such ::coughcough:: spectacularly professional photos of the otter, you ask?

 

(Don't believe the thermometer on the wall -- it lies. The temperature was in the 40s today.)

This was my first chance to put my new GorillaPod to use.

 

The camera I was using, shown above, has a 10x optical zoom, great for snapping the otter, but just a bit too old to have image stabilization -- GorillaPod to the rescue! My small Canon that goes everywhere with me has IS but only a 6x zoom. But since there is a handy pocket in my purse/tote bag the flexible mini-tripod will go everywhere, too.

More photographic phun on the lake. Fish kill:

 

There is a small bay that is connected to the lake by a narrow channel. We are in the eighth year (I heard today) of a drought cycle, and all the area lakes are very low. Our water level is so low that the channel was impassable last summer, and these fish were trapped in the bay where the aerator was no help to them over the winter. Our lake association has been petitioning the state Department of Natural Resources for permission to dredge the channel, but the Powers That Be have so far said no. Maybe this will change their minds.

Fog.

It's time for my annual what-fools-these-mortals-be post.

 

It's been rather foggy this week, due to above average temperatures and lots and lots and lots of melting. Last weekend we had pretty much 100% snow cover; today there is almost none left. That is really fast. Pity the poor folks in the Red River valley. That river flows north to Hudson's Bay, so the southern reaches of the river overflow their banks regularly in the spring because the northern reaches are still frozen.

No big flooding issues around here, thank goodness.

Just fog.

We do, however, have more than a few folks who seem to consider themselves immortal. Or at least lighter than water.

 

See that shoreline? Completely bare of snow, with plenty of melt water and rain on top of the ice.

 

Could it be that some of that ignorance/bravado/stupidity comes from this?

ETA: While I was out and about today (and took these photos) I saw two people in shorts and t-shirts. Look, either it is winter and you can drive on the ice, or it is spring and you can wear shorts and t-shirts. Make up your minds, people!

Still winter around here.

What I saw when driving yesterday:

 

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

 

I think they must have used a front-end loader to pile the snow that high.

Saturday sky and stuff.

That, my friends, is today's Saturday sky as viewed through my OPEN sunroof today. Seeing a blue sky through an open sunroof -- in February -- may not be a big deal in California or Arizona or Texas or Alabama (I'm looking at you, Yarnhog and Cookie and Squish and Carrie and Elizabeth) but it is cause for great rejoicing here in northern Wisconsin. We still have 100% snow cover (except for roads and sidewalks that have been cleared) but the sun was warm enough today to go parka-less. Yee-haw, yew betcha!

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Have you read Driftless by David Rhodes? He is a Wisconsin author, and I heard him speak today in a nearby city as the kick-off event for that community's Big Read.

I had just finished the book last weekend, having followed the recommendation of someone in my book club, then got an email on Tuesday announcing today's author event. Serendipity scores! 

I loved this book. Great story, captivating characters, excellent writing. The further I got in the book the more it became evident to me that this author had thought about things. A lot. It seemed that every other sentence had something in it that demanded me to put the book down and spend the next day mentally chewing on it.

The author published a couple books years ago, then spent the last 20 years on a wheelchair as the result of an accident. He said today that it took him ten years to write Driftless. Yep, he thought a lot.

Anywho, I recommend the book. If you read it, let me know what you think.

The event today was held at the St. Croix National Scenic River Visitor Center. The visitors center is a beautiful newish building near downtown and right next to the river and surrounded by native plantings.

 

 

 

There was a good turnout for the event.

 

The author was low-key and friendly.

And, as always, the hand-knits made a good showing.