kmkat and her kneedles

Things that are making me happy today.*

I discovered that a pair of socks that had never really gone with anything actually coordinates with a recently-acquired shirt.

Fashion-forward is I!

 

The sun is shining!

Funny white shadow is reflection of cell phone in glass. 

 
Not only shiny sun in sky, but actual ground visible along north-facing driveway.
And while taking these photos, I saw a hornet flying around... outside!

The poles that I had Smokey put in last fall actually kept us from driving on the snow-covered garden. Yay!

 

Another pair of double-thick socks.

Raveled here.

That was how much I got done the first day of knitting! Of course, that was the day we drove to Rice Lake (one hour), Smokey had blood drawn (20 minutes), we had lunch and I finished first (5 minutes), Smokey went shopping in a couple stores while I waited in the car (~1 hour), we drove home (1 hour), and we watched TV in the evening (2.5 hours; we watched an extra episode of Criminal Minds on Netflix because I thought I could finish the sock -- almost; went to bed with ~1/2" of ribbing left to do.

I am enjoying double-thick socks immensely -- picking out the stash yarns to combine, knitting them zipzipzip, wearing them. So fast, so warm. I am pretty sure that if I knit enough pairs, and I get enough other people knitting them, these socks can solve world hunger, bring about world peace, and probably explain the theory of everything. (The latter has baffled Stephen Hawking for 45 years. These socks are awesome.)

There is one thing making me kinda sad, though.

Last time I grabbed my camera to take some knitting photos, it wouldn't turn on. Needs new batteries, I thought. Today I put in fresh batteries, and it still won't turn on. Right now it is sitting on the tray table in front of Smokey's chair, which is the place where he works on small projects while watching TV. He says the chances are slim that he can fix it, so I may be in the market for a new camera... which makes me kinda happy.

* Smoke actually commented that I was extra cheerful today. I explained about this post. Now you know it is all true.

Ice fog.

We have had fog for nearly a week, unusual around here. Some days it burns off, but on others it lasts all day. It makes driving a bit hazardous. But it is oh, so hauntingly beautiful.

 

 

 

If the temperature is low enough, the trees are frosted or even iced in the morning.

 

 

Sadly, I had only my cell phone camera with me.
It does great close shots; at longer range, not so much.

 

The trees in town were frosted only on one side.

 

Can you see it?

Imma share some pictures with you.

PSA: Here is the pattern for those thrummed slippers in yesterday's knitting links post.

Now. The pictures.

Polk County Dems represent at the side of Hwy 8 near St Croix Falls. GOTV!

 

LIttle Free Library on the front of our favorite diner in the next town down the road.
There are three, count 'em, THREE! LFLs my tiny village of 900 souls.

 

Observed at the county treasurer's office when I paid the second half of the property taxes. That Remington is almost identical to the Smith-Corona I took to college.

 

A window in the stairwell of the county museum. Polk County
is roughly the same shape as the state of Minnesota but in reverse.
 

 

.

Q: How long has it been since I did a post on Sunday Wenesday?

A: Roughly... forever. Yes, I wrote this on Sunday, but Typepad locked up and I walked away and didn't get back to it until Monday. When the knit links post went up. So you get this on Tuesday  Wednesday. Please hold your applause/tears/whatever.

* * * * *

1. Equality :: yes.
2. Strappy :: sandals.
3. Kitten :: YES!
4. Program :: library.
5. Inventory :: take.
6. Choice :: pro-
7. Scuba :: dive.
8. Purchase :: YARN!
9. Promotion :: advertising.
10. Organization :: lacking.

* * * * *

Today I must clear some of the debris from my desk. Also from the table by my chair. And my bedroom. Maybe start the laundry.

Life has been so frickin' busy the past few weeks that my mind is basically fried. Just trying to hang in there and not miss anything that I committed to -- library, farmers market, humane society, political (mostly political), not to mention family.

Retirement? Sheesh. I am over-committed and actually said NO to something last week. Yay for me.

* * * * *

And now, because what is a blog post without photos, a view of my revolving desktop wallpapers.

Friday funnies.

From a recent email.

Such a great idea! I wish had had one when the boys were little.

 

This might be our dinner table if Smokey had his way.

I am putting this up for all you crocheters out there.

 

Substitute Elder Son's face, and this could be he and Moose.
 

Perfect timing on this photo.

 

Today is brought to you by the color green*.

The wild geraniums are blooming along the roadsides here.

 

A closer look.

 

The hardy geraniums in my garden. Notice how well they are blooming. Not.

 

My hardy geraniums and their neighbors, labeled. You know how you never notice
the wonky stitch until you photograph your objet d'knit? Same with the weeds.

 

* * * * *

 
To keep you from being too impressed with my camera skills. 
The view from the iPod/Phone holder on my dashboard.
Do not ask why I have a photo of it. I know not.

* * * * *

As long as we are looking at things that are green, let me show you another. I have been knitting a gift from some Black Bunny Fibers suri alpaca/merino fingering weight yarn I won from Webs back in...

:::much searching of blog and Ravelry:::

...December 2010.

The long delay in using it was due solely to my thinking it not suitable for socks but not having another idea for it. Luscious stuff, but I don't have enough green in my wardrobe (yet!) to justify a scarf or cowl for myself. So it was with great joy that I chose it for this particular project, the recipient of which specified blues or greens.

I am not going to give you a full viewing of the FO today, though; you will only get to see my yarn-carrying hand.

Need to give that FO a good vinegar bath before gifting it.

 

* I am so damned clever with searching out the html.

If this is Sunday, it is time for the Sunday Stuff.

1. Games :: Hunger. Duh.
2. Younger :: woman.
3. Propose :: marriage. To a younger woman? Sheesh, I must be feeling insecure.
4. Closer :: to heaven.
5. Cleaned :: and polished.
6. Fresh :: produce.
7. Crunch :: Cap'n.
8. Centers :: of interest.
9. Shiny! :: Firefly!
10. Horrific :: nasty.

* * * * *

A friend just posted this on Facebook:

So [husband] just told me that the useless dude we had to see 27 years ago for pre-marriage "training" (<-- parent-pleasing move) was one of those named on the recently released Mpls/St. Paul Archdiocese list of abusive priests. I thought that guy was terrible back then, just on general principle, and now I'm glad we walked out of there and did pretty much the opposite of everything he suggested.

My friend is a GREAT judge of character.

* * * * *

 
While writing Friday's post about South Africe I found this photo that Younger Son
took in the men's room at the Madrid airport. Love it!

* * * * *

Winter arrived this week... with a vengence.

Actually, the above reading on our (internet-connected!) thermostat represents a slight heat wave. Yesterday at about the same time it was -12˚F (-24˚C).

Yup, winter. I have been making good use of my warm woolly scarf-y shawlettes  and hand-knit socks and LLBean flannel-lined jeans. For some unknown reason, the power company has not seen the need to turn off the interruptible power yet this winter, plus -- unlike last year -- the heat pump seems able to maintain the desired indoor temp. All in all, the house is balmy :-)

Speaking of hand-knits, the cabled hat I blogged about a couple weeks ago is coming along swimmingly. I know, I know, I complained about it in the original post, but I managed* to get the actual pattern -- Celtic Bunny Hat. Now, the knitting is slow -- lots of cabling -- but not difficult. Good pattern! This cable chart is much more logical than the one for the Saxon Braid. I actually experience joy when knitting it rather than anxiety and dread. 

The horizontal panel has short rows to duplicate the effect of the first decreasing rounds as a hat approaches the crown. I have not seen short rows in a cable pattern before, but they work just fine here. As some long-ago cooking program host used to say, Very simple very easy! 

* We shall not discuss precisely how I got the pattern. Just know that knitters are delightful people.

* * * * *

Younger Son just did a customer service call on the land line behind me. (Computer service people are never off duty, apparently.) Lots of technical jargon. When he hung up, he said,"You understood all that, right?" Then he smirk-chuckled. And proceded to explain to me what he had just told his client, which involved terms like "kernel panic" and "LUNs" and "disc arrays". Before he started I tried to tell him that I didn't need to know -- because I knew I wouldn't understand -- and he insisted, "No, this is fun!" Um, sure. But it makes me happy to know he loves his work.

I learned how to make an animated .gif!

Ser Percival The Energetic watched the process with great interest.

Younger Son used my car (with all-wheel drive) to pull the pontoons -- all that was left of the old, sunken pontoon boat -- from the lake edge to the trailer up by the pole barn, from whence they will go to be recycled. I photographed him from the decks, first on the lake side, then on the driveway side. 

 I haven't figured out how to make it play any other way than on the site where I made it, so you will have to go here to watch it.

Friday stuff.

But first, let me show you what happens when a book-lover and avid reader gets a little carried away requesting books from her library system.

Those are the books stacked by my bedside. There are seven more that got cut off at the bottom of the screen.

These are the books I have on request:

This morning I realized this was madness and froze all my outstanding requests. Should have done that a week ago. Then I might have a prayer of actually reading that stack by the bed.

* * * * *

Remember this photo?

How about now?

Or now?

Now?

Or now?

Effect found here.

A rural Wednesday in late August.

Today I was out and about. There are signs of fall.

The corn crop is water stressed.

The hay has been gathered into giant round bales.

Gardens are at their peak.

And the temperature was about 90˚ with the same humidity. Even though I was driving a car with killer air conditioning, I had to give up about 4:30 and come home. I couldn't take it any more.

Main street in my little town.

Those three buildings were, once upon a time long before we came here, thriving Main Street businesses. Now they are for rent and have been for months, even years. The third one, originally a movie theater by the looks of it, was a pizza/pool hall/non-alcoholic music venue for a couple years earlier in the aughts, but it folded. During that time it was painted purple, which I thought kinda livened up Main Street, but I may have been the only one who thought that.

It was a beautiful day nevertheless, and I got a lot done.

Oh, the cleverness of me.

 

So. I was getting tired of the wallpaper on my computer. It was a lovely closeup of a autumn leaves on the ground that I stole borrowed from Baxterknits, (with her permission), but it was weeks old and it's winter now. folks!

Let me tell you the cleverness of me.

I put all my photos of winter scenes into one folder and had my computer use that folder for the wallpaper, changing every minute.

This was fine for an hour or two, then I noticed that I was seeing the same damned photos over and over and over. Booorrrr-iiinnnngggg.

Okay, here comes the cleverness.

I went to photopin.com, a site for free CreativeCommons photos and searched for various winter-themed photos. Downloaded some I liked and put them into the folder. Rinse and repeat until I had enough photos there that I won't get bored.

 

 

 

 

   

 

Note: when I downloaded the photos I was not thinking about doing a post, so I didn't copy the attributions that are required when using the photos online. My bad, but I'm not going back to search for the exact photos and get the attributions. Sorry, internets...

Amazing images from my email.

Some are clearly 'shopped, some clearly not, some I just don't know...

Things organized neatly.

Things Organized Neatly is a site I look at occasionally. These two photos had to be shared.

Proud photo.

Matthew was quite proud of the depth of field he got in this photo taken with his phone. Subject is a daggar moth caterpillar, which is not nearly as intriguing in moth form.

The magic of photography.

As I was standing in front of our renewable energy table chatting with the vendor next to us, I noticed a fourth-grade girl wearing shoes I would have killed for in fourth grade. I sneaked my camera out of my pocket and Kinneared her as best I could, but this shot... sucks. I could have killed that kid with the red soles for stepping in front of her.

I know that an overexposed photo is more susceptible to computer correction than an underexposed one, but I thought it was worth a try to see what I could do with this dark mess.

Behold!

The photo will never win any prizes, but at least you get to see the awesomeness of knee-high Cons with purple laces.

Wind! Rain! Crash!

As I sat at the computer reading my email this morning I noticed that the sky was getting dark. It kept getting darker. Then the wind started to blow and the black sky started spitting rain. I closed the windows on the windward side of the house and retrieved Lucy The Wonder Dog from her chain outside. 

Soon the rain was coming down in bucket and sheets and the wind was blowing at, I estimate, about 300 mph. The oak trees were leaning and tossing and I could not see the lake 75 feet away. Pretty darned impressive. The electricity flickered very slightly a couple of times and I thought I should shut down the computer, but I didn't.

Eventually I went to check that there was no rain coming in on the leeward side -- none, the wide overhanging eaves prevent that -- and noticed that there was a breeze coming in from the 3-season porch. Where there should NOT be a breeze.

You perhaps cannot tell, but there is a window missing there.

This the second time a window has blown out in that porch. I guess combination windows that big are meant to be used with inner sash windows; they are not strong enough by themselves to withstand sustained 50 mph winds. And we thought we were being so clever and economical back in 2001, using just the storms to create a 3-season porch.

Smokey has a lot of Lionel and other model trains neatly stacked on the ping-pong table just visible in the upper left of the second photo. I moved as much as I could out of the reach of the rain, but some of the boxes definitely got damp. Hard to believe, but sometimes the boxes are worth as much to a collector as the train car that came in it. Damn.

This weekend is the county fair. I am glad I am working there tomorrow and not today. I can only imagine how the tents and booths fared in this storm. Same exact thing happened last year, also on the day before I worked. I guess in some strange way I am lucky...

On a more cheerful note, I found this Shopped photo last week, the image manipulation done by #2 Son when he was in high school. (haslp was the screen name he used then, a combination of Half Life, a video game, and Slipknot, a heavy metal group.)

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...

Photography fails.

I thought I would share with you what I went through to get this photo:

I used my eBay light box because I wanted to get a good shot of it. As you all know, natural light is tough to come by in the winter, especially if you are like me and don't really get started on the day until about 4 pm when the light is already fading.

The first couple shots.

Notice how I forgot to use the background swoop inside the lightbox? But later, much later, I fixed that with the retouch tool in iPhoto. 

#2 Son rags on me because, even if I remember to use the swoop, it is always creased and wrinkled. This time, though, my iron and ironing board were already out and mere inches away, so I decided to fix that.

However, the swoops are nylon and the nylon setting on my iron is too cool for steam. And I needed really steam to get these wrinkles out.

The solution:

The iron is set on 2, even though the nylon setting is 1. From experience I have found that the labeling on the iron is conservative, and that I can iron things with it one setting hotter than the labeling would have me believe. With steam coming out of the soulplate holes I held the iron 1/4-inch above the fabric for a few seconds, then ironed it really fast. No problems.

Your results may vary.

Next, I thought that the yarn would show up best if I used the black swoop. After all, I had held it against every color under the sun to decide what yarn to contrast with it in the scarf I had originally planned, and charcoal was the best choice. So black should really make it pop, right?

Looks good, right?

The results:

This is just a sampling of the shots I took. In retrospect, I see that the contrast between the black background and the subtleties of color in the yarn made it hard for the camera to capture the latter. If you click on any of those you will see how washed out the yarn looks compared to the first photo. Perhaps I could have corrected it in iPhoto, but I didn't even try. While shooting I kept backing the halogen work light (the white triangle at the upper edge of the establishing photo of the light box) farther and farther away from the box, putting another layer of white fabric over the top of the box to filter the light, aiming the light at the ceiling, trying both the regular and the macro setting on the camera -- everything I could think of. 

Eventually I decided to use one of the original shots and to blur the background. At least my swoops got ironed. And stored in such a way to keep them that way.

 

Check this out.

I would title this one, "Icelandic Sweater Hits the Big Time." Found at The Big Picture, its post about Fashion Week.

Street scenes in Buffalo, WY.

 
That mailbox is a model of a Basque sheepherder's wagon.
There was/is a substantial Basque population in Johnson County.

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