kmkat and her kneedles

Eye candy Friday.

A geranium in my friend Kathy's garden. It had the most saturated red color I have ever seen in a flower. It glowed.

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For those of you who wondered, yes, I did have a good time at my reunion. I won a hat (better than a t-shirt any day; they actually fit) and saw people I hadn't seen in 20, 30, or 40 years. The surprising thing was that those same people also seemed glad to see me. Made me feel all warm inside, ya know?

I'm being sarcastic, but it did make me feel good. Guess I wasn't as aloof-but-really-shy as I remember. Or maybe we all have better social skills now.

In any case, I'm glad I went. Y'all should do it, too, if you have the opportunity. In my admittedly limited experience, the nadir of reunions is the 20th; everyone is so busy comparing jobs, cars, financial success, size of wife's diamond, etc., that they are mostly a big pain. By the time of the 40th we were all happy just to be above ground and [mostly] ambulatory.

The road home.

On the way home from the class reunion, we could see that autumn is approaching in the north woods. Rose hip jam, anyone?

Autumn also means deer season. Want to buy a deer stand?

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We saw a number of things on the way home that are listed in Roadside America. Meet St. Urho, who supposedly drove the grasshoppers from Finland. I say supposedly because the whole thing was the creation of Sulo Havumaki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College (now Bemidji State University). My mother, a first-grade teacher, took a continuing ed course from him in the 1960s. I remember her telling my dad and I how entertaining he was and how he had created a whole legend about a fictional Finnish saint. This statue stands in Menahga. (I had to steal the photo from Roadside America; I forgot to take a picture of him myself.)

In Nevis we saw the world's largest tiger muskie. What a thrill. Or maybe not.

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In Akeley there was Paul Bunyan:

Paul is holding his hand down low so you can sit in it (if you dare; imagine being goosed by Paul).

Everybody loves Paul and Babe:

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Truly the high point of the trip for Smokey, though, was in Proctor, just north of Duluth. Back in the heyday of the Mesabi iron range, Proctor was a big rail center through which the ore trains passed on their way to Duluth harbor, where the ore was transferred to ore boats (remember The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?) that took it to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana and to Cleveland.

Smokey is a big fan of trains.

I tended to look at it more like a massive, very complicated sculpture full of intriguing abstract shapes and unusual textures.

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Smokey explained a lot of the machinery to me. This particular engine holds a number of records for tonnage hauled.

But my favorite image was this one.

I call it "Sgt. Schulz's Hat, With Handle."

Restaurant capital of the world.

While attending my class reunion we stayed with my friend Kathy. She and I were best friends in high school and have stayed in touch through the years. I moved to Minneapolis and eventually Wisconsin, while she returned to Park Rapids after college. I have always been a wage earner; she has always been an entrepreneur. I admire her greatly.

Her current venture is a small store and restaurant in Dorset, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed Restaurant Capital of the World. Population 22, six (6!) restaurants.

If you are ever in the area, check out La Pasta -- the food is wonderful. (Seriously. I'm salivating as I type this.)

Notice how it says "No substitutions" on the menu? She means it. Really, it is more than your life is worth to ask to change something. She may be my best friend, but even I know better than to ask to substitute. You will eat what is put in front of you and like it.

If you arrive during a busy time, which is pretty much anytime they are open, you may have to wait for a table. No problem, walk across the street to one of my favorite bookstores. Small, but good. All trade paperbacks; no mass market.

Pssssst. There's an espresso bar in the back.

If you still have time to kill, wander around back of the restaurant and stroll through the garden.

 

Kathy likes gargoyles, but they haven't all made it into the garden yet.

Have you ever been in the back storeroom of a restaurant? Lots of food.

This is northern Minnesota, so the General Store sells bait. Don't worry, this fridge is as far away from the kitchen as you can get.

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The town has a number of little specialty shops -- stained glass, gifts, clothing, a scoop shop, a B&B -- plus it is on the 49-mile Heartland [bike] Trail. On the first Sunday of August every year the six restaurants cooperate for the Taste of Dorset.

   

If you go to Dorset before August 3, 2008, don't try to order the spaghetti balls. They won't be ready until then.

   

The only bad thing about Dorset? No LYS; in fact, I don't think there is one for 40 or 50 miles. A business opportunity awaits for one of you knitters out there...
 

40 and counting.

On Saturday we drove north to my high school reunion.

Welcome to Stearns County. We're about halfway there.

I was prepared with car knitting. This is actually the second knitting bag. One can never have too many projects in reserve.

Park Rapids has grown some -- it was only about 2,500 when I lived there.

The reunion was held at this golf course near Menahga, the next town south on Highway 71. Menahga means "blueberry" in the Chippewa language.

Who are all these old people? (You can see the top of my head at the right in the third row, to the right and in front of the guy in the orange t-shirt.)

Same as these... plus forty years. That's me in the lower right corner.

Eye candy Friday.

Cape of Good Hope, December, 2005. My boy who is now in Chiapas spent his semester abroad at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. At the end of the semester Matthew and I flew over (22 hours in the air, one-way!) and we all played tourist for 8 days.

Andrew in Chiapas.

Okay, here's the deal.

My boy Andrew is volunteering in a Zapatista community in Chiapas, Mexico until next April. He sends out mass e-mails periodically to all his friends and family to let us know what he is doing, plus he submits a column to the local paper every six weeks or so. He sends Smokey and I individual e-mails sometimes, too, but the vast majority of information  comes from these mass e-mails.

Anybody want to read them? He's an decent writer, and this is a way to get a glimpse into the lives of indigenous people in a developing country who have historically been treated pretty much like African-Americans in Mississippi. Not as badly as Native Americans here or Africans in South Africa, but badly nonetheless. They are improving their lives now, though, and apparently doing much better than they were able to before they essentially seceded from Mexico.

I have uploaded the first three e-mails and his first column. The links will take you directly to a pdf file; you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can get free here.

July 4 e-mail: Introduction

August 1 column "Land, Dignity, and Freedom"

August 2 e-mail: El Encueñtro

August 20 e-mail: The universe will have its way

That's a lot of reading all at once, for which I apologize. It wasn't until I was reading the latest e-mail that I had the idea to put his stuff up on my site. Also, as he says himself, "I can't say hello in less than 1,000 words."

* * * * *

I'm off and away this weekend to my 40th (!) high school reunion, to which I am muchly looking forward. Old friends, catching up, staying with my best friend from h.s., [another] Kathy, good food, great scenery, blog fodder all around. Maybe some knitting, too...

See ya on the flip side!

End of the hurricane saga.

From my e-mail to Andrew:

Did you get any effects from the hurricane? I'm really curious, since on the Weather Channel maps it looked like you would be on the outer edge of it.

mom

Andrew to me:

Yeah.  It rained a good four hours earlier than normal.

Andrew

And we shall not speak of it again... until the next hurricane. It is only August.

Andrew and Dean.

According to The Weather Channel, Hurricane Dean came ashore in the southern Yucatan and Belize very early Tuesday. Late Tuesday afternoon I got an e-mail from Andrew, in which (of course) he made no mention of the hurricane. In spite of his lack of caring as to whether his mother is having a heart attack or not, it does tell me that his little hamlet still has electricity and a telephone line, both of which would probably be sorely lacking if there had been severe storm damage.

Thus, the smileys. Yay for the internet!

ETA: [I'm such a self-centered slut.] Thank you all for your good wishes! This knitblogging community rocks, as so many others have said before this.

 

 

Dean and Andrew.

This is Hurricane Dean at about 2 pm Monday. See that yellow star at the left edge of the picture? That is where my son Andrew is right now. He is volunteering in the Chiapas state of southern Mexico until next April. Happily for his mother's state of mind, he is not near the coast. Unhappily, he is still uncomfortably close to harm's way.

Button, button.

I added some new buttons to my sidebar after listening to Brenda Dayne's latest Cast-On podcast.

             

If you have been listening to her latest series of podcasts, you know she has been talking about camping and Campfire Girls. We didn't have Campfire Girls or Girl Scouts or Brownies in the little town where I grew up. Every Tuesday, though, most of the boys in my class would come to school in their blue Cub Scout shirts in preparation for their weekly meeting after school. To make up for this astonishing, shameful, and disabling lack of badges in my youth, I have taken three of those provided by Brenda.

               

The first and last ones identify me as a Cast On camper. Just like an appropriate uniform would have back in the day.

The “Talking Knitting” Badge "Required for all Knitting Scouts. The recipient must conduct himself/herself in such a manner as to talk knitting whenever an opportunity presents itself. Not easily fazed by looks of disinterest from friends or the act of “zoning out” by well-intentioned loved ones."

My qualifications: I'm kinda lax on this one, actually. Must resolve to Talk Knitting more often.

The “MacGyver” Badge (Level Two) "The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a knitting tool in a non-knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used a strand of Regia Bamboo to slice cheese, or repaired a small appliance with an old metal knitting needle."

My qualifications: I have used a 14" US#8 aluminum straight needle to prop up a sagging houseplant. More than once. And I have used yarn, stretched between two stakes, to mark straight lines in the dirt -- for planting rows of seeds, for laying out landscaping ideas, for marking the edges of possible flower beds. Never fear, though, it was always acrylic.

I wonder if there are Eagle Scout troops for knitters...

 

Stooges, 2 + 1

When I started this blog almost a year ago, there was a brief time when I wondered whether or not to share its existence with my family. Maybe they would think it was dumb, maybe they would think it a waste of time. Thankfully my moment of doubt didn't last long. Nowadays they are ever alert to blog possibilities.

Like one day this week.

Matthew: "Hey, mom, c'mon outside."

Smokey: "And bring your camera."

Matthew: "Blog fodder!"

Dutifully I grabbed my camera and followed them outside. What was going on?

We got back from vacation in mid-June. Matthew and Andrew unpacked the trailer and cleaned it in preparation for storing it until the next camping trip. But in the process one, and then both, of the back end internal cables which raise and lower it... broke.

It has sat like this, sad and broken and silly-looking, most of the summer while Smokey pondered the best way to fix it. He had fixed it twice before, fixes that clearly were not as permanent as he had hoped. Since vacation he has been working many, many double shifts at the hospital in Minneapolis and spent what little time he had here at home catching up on his sleep. The trailer had to wait.

He has had some time off the past couple weeks, so he and Matthew have attacked stalled projects everywhere. Now it was time for the trailer.

How to raise the broken end?

With a chain hoist and that handy deck directly above the disabled end of the trailer.

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Worked like a charm! I'll spare you the 40 seconds of video boredom that I captured as Matthew cranked up the good end and Smokey hoisted the bad end. It was a lot more thrilling for us than it would be for you, believe me.

Of course, the dogs were interested in the whole thing.

Um, Bear? You're facing the wrong way.

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There, that's better.

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Lucy was totally fascinated by the whole endeavor.

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When the trailer had been properly raised, without mishap or injury, Smokey commented that it was an unusually calm Three Stooges-type event. I pointed out that it involved only he and Matthew, i.e., Two Stooges. He then informed me that I was one of the Stooge crew, too.

Oh.

Fixed. Yay!

[Another kind of] Eye candy Friday.

I call this one "Channeling Chuck Close"

...and this one "OMG, My Little Boy Has Grown Up."

In the woods, there is a lot of wildlife under an inch long.

Monday, 9am:

Tuesday, 9am:

I intended to post a lot more pictures like this, but, um, apparently I never took them. Imagine that I put up a sequence of, oh, let's say a couple dozen photos, just like those two. This is what has greeted me every frickin' morning when I approached the sink. Since June. I'd get rid of the web and the Persistent Little Spider would spin another one overnight. In. The. Exact. Same. Place.

Generally, I let spiders be. They have their own place in the ecosystem that is my house. Their webs catch mosquitoes, which can then no longer buzz in my ears at 2 am. Come fall, I get rid of the most egregious of the webs and enjoy a mostly web-free house until spring.

But this spider had gone too far. No webs in the sink, dammit!

This week I finally spotted the villain:

Said villain is no longer. Caught in a paper towel and squished out of its sink-web-spinning existence.

And there was much rejoicing.

Reading. Knitting. It's a good life.

Finished a book yesterday, The Exception. Excellent. Disturbing. Nasty. Still thinking about it. Go read about it here, the plot description is better than I could do. The depiction of evil and its effects in everyday life is chilling.

 

Before that, I read Invisible Prey by my favorite author. The Prey novels are soooo good -- intelligent and clever and absorbing. Besides which, Lucas Davenport so rocks! I like the Kidd novels, too, almost as much. Last year Sandford tried his hand at a political thriller. Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked. Big-time. Hard to believe that someone who writes the best police procedurals/thrillers ever can write such a dud in a slightly different genre. Go figger.

Query for any other Prey readers out there: when, not if, one or more of these is made into a movie, who do you see playing Lucas? My pick is Ed Harris, who doesn't fit the physical description of Lucas at all but somehow seems perfect to me. Another internet friend said she always pictures Nick Mancuso; physically right, although I had to google a bit before I knew who he was.

WTF? I just checked IMDb to see if there was perhaps a movie already out there or in the works, and I found this. I'm sorry. Lucas is NOT black, especially in MN.

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Ya know what this is?

This is what 270 worsted-weight stitches on a 32" circ look like. It's Red Scarf #2, a lengthwise-knit scarf. I like to think it looks a bit like chocolate-covered cherries. Maybe I'll include some in the package.

PostSecret and OMG! knitting.

Have you discovered this website? New secrets posted every Sunday.

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This is, of course, for the Red Scarf Project, Norma's favorite cause. If  you look carefully you can see that the non-red stripes are two colors, purple and navy. I'm hoping that this can qualify as a guy's scarf, since they are often short on those. The colors are a little deeper than they show on my monitor. Here is a more accurate picture of the reddish yarn, from the Smiley's site:

The reddish yarn is Puno (100% alpaca) from Filatura Lanarota, bought on sale last year from Smiley's Yarns. I thought it was lovely soft until I felt the purple and blue yarn that I bought this summer to go with it. They are KnitPick's Andean Silk, "55% Super Fine Alpaca, 23% Silk, 22% Merino Wool," in the colors called hyacinth and navy, and that yarn is unbelievably soft. I bought some in the sangria colorway, too, but it turned out to be too close to the color of the original alpaca to make an effective combination. The KP is very strong -- when I need to change colors I can break the Puno alpaca with my hands, but I need to get out the scissors for the KP blend. Must be the silk.

Anyway, between the lusciousness of the yarns and the knowledge that scarf will keep a college student warm next winter, I am enjoying this scarf project a lot. I think I will have enough yarn left for another red scarf.  They are due between September 1 and October 15, so I should have no trouble finishing (she said blithely).

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Thanks for all the birthday wishes on Friday. We ate humongous steaks Thursday night and today Smokey and I went out for a fabulous brunch here. I am now officially 29... times 2.

The outing, pt. 2.

I forgot one thing from Lindström.

This Swedish thing is everywhere.

There were a couple of interesting sights on the way home,

for example, this world-famous establishment where Ozzie Ozbourne, among others, has been treated.

We always get a little chuckle out of the road that it is on.

"Another Pleasant Valley Suuuunnnnn-daaaayyyyy..."

And then there was this. WTF?

Oh.

It's Eichten's Cheese Shop...

and Buffalo Farm...

and Bistro. Sorry, no pictures of the bistro. We were too enamored of the huge mouse and the buffalo, er, bison.

 

HB2.. me!

Image found at Bittersweet, the knit/crochet/food blog of Hannah Kaminsky. Go there, look at her fascinating images, read her words. Thanks, Hannah, for permission to use your photo.

After a brief troll through a few of my bloglines today, I find a share a birthday with Jen and almost share a b'day with doggedknits, NeitherHipNorFunky, and Fricknits. Leos rule!

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One of my favorite birthday memories is from the year I turned 50. My husband was working so the celebration was postponed. #1 son wrote me a haiku to tide me over. A gift with words, that boy.

Today I am fifty.
It's really, really nifty.
Give me a gifty.

We go on an outing.

Since you guys were so enthusiastic (no death threats, yay!) about my county fair photo essays, I'm giving you another one.

A couple days ago we went out for lunch and to run some errands.

Smokey drove and Matthew ate a doughnut-y thing. I got to sit in the middle row of the van and knit. Woot!

First stop was at Lennie's auto repair. Lennie has been our new best friend ever since he charged us $300 for some body work that every body shop in Minneapolis wanted $1000+ for. We pretty much have Lennie on retainer.

Remember the county board's "meth dealers go away" campaign with all the yellow signs?

Apparently some of the signs were red.

I call this Still Life with Oil Pan, Tire, and Funnel.

Lennie has a Bobcat and a dog. The dog was very friendly. I don't know about the Bobcat.

Then we headed down US Hwy 8 into Minnesota for lunch.

Ethnic diversity in rural Minnesota (or Wisconsin, for that matter) is when an African-American drives his Japanese-made truck to the Mexican restaurant for take-out made by Swedes.

How did we know the food was made by Swedes? Because it is in Lindström. Everyone who drives this way from the Twin Cities knows Lindström, the Little Sweden.

The famous Lindström water tower, a rosemaled coffee pot.

They had to build a new water tower but thank FSM they still kept the old one. There is a lot of growth in this area; it is within l-o-n-g commuting distance of the Twin Cities, but it is still rural and has a chain of lakes.

Giants in the Earth was required reading in my high school English class. Trivia fact for the day: Karl Rolvaag, governor of Minnesota in the early sixties, was a descendant of the book's author, Ole Rolvaag. The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg is similarly about Scandinavians who settled the farmland in the Midwest.

Problem: I think she is supposed to be looking back to The Old Country, but really she is looking west. Maybe she is looking back the way they came from Minneapolis.

Lindström is a pretty little town.

There is a little plaza on Main Street with a miniature Statue of Liberty. The pavers of the surrounding plaza memorialize veterans from the area.

Sadly, but realistically, they left blank pavers for future names.

While Matthew and I were busily snapping photos of the plaza, Smokey drove around. And found this.

Somebody is really, really into antique auto stuff...

and odd lawn art.

Elsewhere in town, a rooftop ventilator was taking careful aim at the nearby chimney.

I won!

I won Carole's Tour de Fleece contest last month by  guessing how much fleece she would spin during the TdF, and looky what arrived in the mail today from her!

That's three (3!) skeins of KP laceweight alpaca, a skein of fun Opal sock yarn, and the yummiest hand-made (by JoVE) soap ever! I already have plans for the sock yarn. The alpaca may look black in the photo, but it is actually deep, deep blackish-blue with one extremely fine ply of bright blue hidden in there. Mmmm, 1200+ yards of gorgeous laceweight alpaca, I think I may see a shawl somewhere in my [distant] future [when my knitting skills are up to lace]. The soap is "...scented with pure essential oils of orange, tangerine, cassia and clove, with added ground cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, allspice, and orange peel." It smells wonderful.

Thanks, Carole, you rock!

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I got this link today in an e-mail from a friend. It has amazing photos of the bridge collapse. Some, maybe all, of them appear to have been taken by newspaper photographers, but the link seems to be to the LiveJournal blog of a Russian-speaker in Norway. Ah, the internets...

Pictures.

Kat's Great Stash Reorganization Extravaganza of 2007

How about a stash tour? I have been organizing*.

This was taken during the Kat's Great Stash Reorganization Extravaganza of 2007 and represents about 1/3 of my stash.

Last week I bought some more of those 33-qt. Rubbermaid under-bed storage boxes, like the ones at top and right above, to reorganize my stash. The four I had just weren't doing the job anymore. (They worked fine for twenty years, right up until I became A Knitter, as opposed to someone who knits.) Large portions of the stash were being housed in cardboard boxes poised helter skelter around the laundry/craft room. I haven't been able to fold laundry on the laundry table for, oh, about two months. Ever since that last Knit Picks Wool of the Andes sale, I think.

Here is the upper stash. The netting cube on top hold a growing collection of sock yarns destined to be a sweater for me. Someday.

Below that are two taller, smaller tubs, for the dishcloth cotton. One holds solids, the other variegateds.  There are also two cones of SnC elsewhere. Dishcloths & facecloths: the perfect portable mindless knitting.

The vast majority of my stash is worsted weight wool and wool blends. I sorted it by color and labeled each box with an index card stuck inside and facing out. Under the SnC, above, is a box of blues and a few grays. Under that is a box of miscellaneous worsted and non-worsted weight wools and blends.

This is the down-low stash. There is no rhyme nor reason to the order I stacked the boxes. Total chance.

Beneath the miscellaneous box just visible at the top of the photo are boxes of browns and golds, reds, and greens, respectively. The deeper box underneath the greens holds Louet Gems Topaz merino in purple and maroon that will be a big ol' cozy wrap sweater for me to cuddle into during the winter. That sweater, pattern TBD, will be my next big project, after some smaller ones that will probably take me until mid-September. I can't wait to cast it on. I haven't made a sweater for myself since 1982. Seriously.

The box also has a bunch of recycled sari silk from eBay -- don't know what that will be yet -- and some lurvely, heathery DZined DK wool I got from Juno in her stash sale this spring. And deep in the box are three big skeins of fantabulously gorgeous hand-painted wool from Rovings, also destined to be a sweater for me. Once I am confident I can knit something that will fit my ample curves.

At the bottom is another deep box, this one of sock yarn. Happily, it is not full. If it were full it would be a lifetime supply of sock yarn. I don't need that.

The net cube at lower right holds miscellaneous non-wool yarn. There is some rayon ribbon yarn, some acrylic, the remains of the glow-in-the-dark yarn from Matthew's scarf, the SnC cones, a bit of this, a bit of that.

* * * * *

Currently on the needles is a very narrow Clapoutis-style scarf being knit from Madil's Eden yarn, 100% bamboo. The link will take to you the color card for it at Cascade's site. This is the perfect yarn for a soft, drapey scarf; it feels like butter through my fingers, and I am delighted every time I pick it up. But I'm not sure I picked the right pattern for it. Time will tell.

My eternal gratitude to whoever it was that created the Clapoutis Excel document that combines the instructions with a spreadsheet listing how many stitches should be on the needle at the end of each row. It saved my butt any number of times during the setup and increase sections. Now that I am on the straight section I don't need the counts as much. I wonder if I will be able to memorize the pattern totally before I finish?

* Why, yes, my invite to Ravelry might have something to do with this burst of activity -- why do you ask?