kmkat and her kneedles

Throwback Thursday: turtle love.

I captured this video in June 2007 and posted it on the blog then, but the original YouTube video disappeared when Google[?] bought YouTube and redid all the accounts. Here it is again, in all its snapping turtle, sex-in-the-water glory.

  
Turn up your sound to hear the shells clunk together.

Book sale!

The Friends of my local library had our annual book sale a couple weekends ago. It is amazing how many books get weeded from the library or from other people's bookshelves.

Kay and Diane squeezing as many books onto the table as possible.

 

The library is popular with teens. They were happy to help --
and they got early admittance to the sale.

 

 Last day of the sale -- fill a bag! The books were flying out of the library.

 

Sadly, we didn't make as much money as in prior years, but we did get books into people's hands. Large print and romance novels, which sold well last year, were not as popular this year; the remains were divvied up and distributed to the five nursing homes in the county. Unwanted paperbacks had their covers torn off and were recycled.

It was fun... and we'll do it again next year!

Okay, this is going too far.

  New business appeared this week on Main Street in a nearby town,
a lovely little city of parks and trails right on the beautiful St Croix river.

 You better believe the citizens are buzzing and the e-mails are flying. I might even attend their city council meeting next week. It promises to be more entertaining than Law & Order: SVU and NCIS: Los Angeles, my usual Monday night entertainments.

Even worse than the name of the business is what they sell: high-powered armaments and related gear. If you go to the website, you will find this in their "About us" page:

"...We support law enforcement, military, and sporting causes - we personally and as a business contribute to organizations like americansnipers.org, wounded warrior foundation, as well as local causes, and plan to expand that as we grow our business..."  

How many ways can you say, "WTF"?

Somewhat related: Charleston, and the next time.

A cautionary Thursday.

This is what happens when the cleaning lady puts a bag of trash in the can 
2 days before the garbage truck comes. I left home @9:45 am the next day;
this is what I found when I came home @ 2pm.
The bears are getting bolder -- they usually only mess with the trash overnight. 

 

 

Caution: this is what happens when you get dressed without turning on the light
so as not to wake your spouse.

 

In the words of the immortal Red Green, "Safety first!"

 

 

 

And this is Smokey dismantling my vintage-1994 Gateway computer
in order to recycle the recyclable bits.
Farewell, old friend; you were my first Windows box.
 

 

 

 

 

Images of spring.

 

The wood ducks were passing through last weekend.

 

It was difficult to count them because they kept doing this and disappearing under the water.

 

I spotted this today. For a second I thought it was a maze in the woods.

 

Then I figured it out. Those are piped maple trees, and that little wooden
building might be the cook shack. Maple syrup season is probably over this week,
according to the chatter I heard on Tuesday.

Speaking of (the first) Tuesday (in April), spring brings certain local elections --
village and town boards, school referenda, a supreme court justice.
These were three of my fellow election judges.

 

The fifth election judge monitored the single voting machine.
I'm pretty sure that voter is one of the volunteer fireman that pulled Smokey and I 
out of the lake a couple weeks ago. Small towns: you see the same people over and over.

 

She and I occupied ourselves in the same manner during the down times.

 

(no photo)
When I got home that night I heard the loons crying. It made me very happy.

 

 
Today brought the traditional April snowfall.
::sob::

It's winter carnival time in Luck, WI!

Every year the village north of us has an ice palace during their winter carnival. It -- both carnival and palace -- are somewhat smaller than the ones in St Paul and elsewhere.

St Paul Ice Palace 1992

St Paul ice palace, 1992.

Ice palace, Harbin, China

St Paul ice palace, 2015

Of course, the 2015 Luck ice palace didn't have the luxury of being situated directly in front of the Landmark Center, as the one in St Paul did, but it also was not as commercialized (above, lower right; click to embiggen).

Ice palaces have a long and storied history in the Land Of 10,000 Lakes.

St Paul ice palace, 1888. Looks more like a snow palace to me.  

St Paul ice palace, 1917. That's the Landmark Center in the background again, although then it was either a courthouse or a post office, according to Wikipedia.

 

Here is the Luck ice palace:

Somewhat smaller, but just as much a source of local pride.

 

One advantage of a small-town ice palace is that the viewer can see its inner workings.

 

Although the 2015 Luck ice palace is small, it is larger than the one I last chronicled here.

Luck ice palace, 2008

 

Bringing down an ice palace is as much fun as building it. Maybe more...

* * * * *

A Twin Cities television station has a feature called Going to the Lake, wherein two of their anchors travel to a vacation destination in MN or WI. The female anchor and the sports anchor came to Luck for the winter carnival. We watched them on TV: in front of the ice palace, in a local bar, having lunch at coffee house/cafe.

Edited to add: you can watch the Going to the Lake segments here.

The coffee house/cafe staged its second annual trivia contest during the winter carnival. Smokey, Younger Son, and I had participated the the first one and came in second. When I called the coffee shop to register they told me the contest was full! This is the first time in all our years here that anything -- a theatre, a restaurant, anything -- turned us away because it was full; such is one of the joys of small-town life. 

But they called again the morning of the contest to say one of the teams had canceled and we were in. Younger Son got here 24 hours earlier than he usually does on a weekend, just so he could participate in the contest.

This was before all the contestants had arrived. The room was packed during the contest.

We remembered from the first contest that in order to win, a team has to bet big when they can So we did, and we didn't know the answer, and we lost all our points halfway through. Had we gotten that single question right, we might have won. [/whine]

 

Mutterings on a Sunday. And yarn and yo-yos.

1. Fantasy :: land.
2. Square one :: beginning.
3. Impostors :: fakers.
4. Hydrate :: drink!
5. Card :: games.
6. Respects :: pay your.
7. Big city :: bright lights.
8. Alert :: DefCon 5.
9. Scrabble :: game.
10. Neighborhood :: These are the people in your.

* * * * *

I forgot to show you the other ball of yarn I bought on Friday.

This will be another pair of fingerless gloves. The final library craft sale until next summer will be next Saturday. I will have eight more pairs to sell (FO pictures later this week), then I can go back to knitting other things.

::whew::

* * * * *

One of the original Duncan Yo-Yo factories was in the next little town north of us. One night last week their historical society showed a movie about the factory, and Smokey and I went to see it. He has always been charmed by the fact that we live sort-of near the site of the Duncan Yo-Yo factory.

What we saw was not the movie you see above.

What we saw had been filmed by an amateur back in 1948 -- 1950. Silent, black & white, hand-held, unedited. Grainy, jumpy, occasionally unfocused. It was a fascinating 20-minute film that lasted an hour. Maybe it is our shorter attention spans now in the 21st century, but the film really could have used some editing when it was converted from 8mm to DVD.

photo credit: Vox Efx via photopin cc

 

Fun facts about the factory:

• Much of the film was devoted to building the original factory, and, two years later, adding on to it.
• Construction techniques have really changed since the late 1940s.
• The film followed the construction process right from the beginning: cutting down a tree for lumber.
• Logs were cut into boards and planed onsite.
• The factory was a one-story building of cinder blocks laid by hand. (Everything that passes for a factory nowadays around here is a metal building, aka a pole barn.)
• When it was time to seal the flat roof, the tar went up one five-gallon bucket at a time, raised on a rope via a pulley.
• When it was time to pour the concrete floor, the concrete got there by wheelbarrows.
• Wheelbarrows of concrete were raised to the roof (no, I don't know exactly why there was concrete on the roof) on a platform jerry-rigged onto a front-end loader on a farm tractor. A workman had to ride along with it to hold the barrow in place because it was such a bumpy, jerky ride up to the roof.
• Later on, a forklift was used to raise the platform. This ride was much, much smoother.
• The workmen all looked like local farmers in their bib overalls and caps.
• No one ever wore a hard hat.
• None of the machines in the factory had any sort of guards over the spinning belts or whirling blades, nor did anyone ever wear any sort of breathing mask even when spray-painting.
• No information in the film about the number of fingers/hands/arms/other limbs lost per workday. Nothing about respiratory ailments or lung cancer later in life, either.
• Cigarette smoking was common, even when there were piles of sawdust everywhere.
• All the cutting, planing, lathing, and spray-painting was done by men.
• Assembly, attaching the string, and packing was done by women.
• The women all all wore dresses. 
  
  

photo credit Tom Simpson via photopincc

• There were two yo-yo tricksters in the film showing their stuff.
• People in the audience, many of whose parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and/or older siblings had worked in the factory, kept mentioning that one of the tricksters must be Tom Andersen.
• Apparently Mr. Andersen was well-known locally for his yo-yo expertise.

In spite of my snarkiness above and the fact that the grainy, jumpy film gave me a headache that verged on nausea by the 45-minute mark, I did enjoy seeing this bit of local history. Many thanks to the historical society for preserving and sharing it. 

Thoughts whilst ringing the bell.

I spent a couple of hours on Friday bell-ringing for the local Salvation Army. While I have done a shift or two every year for several years, this was in a new location for me.

It was fabulous. I shall sign up to ring there every Friday.

Now, my navel-gazing. Note: I was there from 11:30 to 1:30, so I saw almost no school-age people and a lot of retirees. My off-the-cuff observations are clearly not drawn from a representative sample of the population.

• People in this little town, population 1,119, seemed friendlier and more generous than those who shop at Wal*Mart and the big supermarket twenty miles south on highway 8.
  
                                                                     Yes, I was at Wayne's Foods.
  
  
• It is amusing to stereotype the people who give, and those who don't.
• Those over sixty were almost guaranteed to slip a dollar or two into the pot.
• Women over thirty, about two-thirds donated.
• Lone men, about fifty-fifty.
• Lone men carrying beer, same as all other lone men. Somewhat surprisingly.
• Number of cartons of beer under the men's arms seemed not to have any impact on whether they donated or not.
• Lone men under thirty, never. Never.
• Unless they had one or more children with them.
• Then they gave.
  
  
                                 This was the guy whose job is was to retrieve carts from the parking lot.
                                 You can just see the tips of the moose/reindeer antlers he was wearing.
  
  
• Some people need to realize that a handful of change was a generous gift in, say, 1955.
• Not so much today. Gas is $3/gallon, poeple, not $.25.
• Judgey me is particularly annoyed when the handful of change came from someone who then got into a shiny new monster pickup.
  
  
                                     These are just random vehicles, not aforementioned shiny monster truck.
  
  
• But, as Carole reminds us, we don't know everyone's story.
• So I tell judgey me to STFU and just ring the bell.
  
  
                                                     It was a bit breezy and chill when the doors opened. 
  
  
                                    Then the doors would close and all would be well again.
  
  
• One elderly lady told me the most touching story. She had stopped to dig through her purse for some money to put into the red bucket. As she fumbled, I asked if she was going to be cooking for company on Thanksgiving. She said that she had gotten the very best surprise present that morning. 
• Her daughter had told her that Grandson would be home from the Marines in December. Later, elderly lady and husband had stopped at daughter's house to look at something. 
• When they walked in the door, there was Grandson, home early! Her eyes filled with tears when she told me this. He had been in Afghanistan, and we all know how dangerous that can be.
• Another couple had their 20-ish Down's syndrome son with them. As they walked from the store into the vestibule he was waving a tightly-rolled dollar bill, clearly excited to be the one to put it into the bucket.
• After he donated, he held up his hand for a high five.

The Salvation Army does good work and does it for some of the most needy people in our country. Please give generously to them.  

Look who came to visit last week!

It's Woody Woodpecker!

We have lots of downy woodpeckers and hairy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers and the occasional red-headed woodpecker or northern flicker here, but seeing a pileated woodpecker is cause for a stealthy photo. We have seen one on our property only three or four times in 25 years, but I think they are more common elsewhere in the county.

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.
 

 

.

Ser Percy, The Root, and The Hole.

Our septic tank required attention this past week*, which involved Younger Son digging up part of my flower bed to find the pump-out access hatch. Which should have been no more than 6" underground but which turned out to be much, much deeper. Ser Percival The Energetic was a big help, as you can see.

::hours passed, YS dug and dug::

Triumph!

That big round thing under the shovel is the access cover.

This gives you a better perspective. Everything between us and the tree is/was garden.
Manhole by tree gives access to the pump and electrical workings.

YS felt badly about having to destroy some plants. I told him plants are like children; you can always have another one.

He was not impressed.

The pump-out access cover was 31" underground. The installation diagram filed with the county when it was installed said that it should be no more than 6" underground. Oops.

 

* The gory details, which you may skip if you want. There is not enough room at the same elevation as the house to put in a drain field**, so it was put at the top of the hill behind the house. Septic tank has two chambers. The drains from the house go into the first, the *settling* chamber; when the liquid reaches a certain level it drains into the second, the *liquid* chamber, where a pump pushes that liquid up the hill.

** Original drain field was actually on neighbor's property. We decided that was not a good thing and so had the new one put in.

 

Dogs!

Last Saturday the county humane society held its annual dog walk. 

This is Rusty The Wonder Dog, mentioned in the article linked above.
Those who paid the extra $10 registration fee got these snazzy orange t-shirts. 

 

Participating dogs got bandanas, which their owners often chose to match their own outfits.

 

These collies and shelties were gorgeous.

 

Pugs? I think so. Boston terriers*? I got a lesson in distinguishing a pug from a French bulldog.
(The latter has stand-up ears.)

I was working the registration desk and did not walk either of our dogs. Besides, Lucy is too old and Misha way too insecure around other people and dogs.

It was a great day and a great fund-raiser for the shelter. 

 

* Thanks, Vicki!

This could have been shot from my front door.

a Forest Year from motionkicker on Vimeo.

The sound track is so familiar: song sparrow, geese, spring peepers, blue jays, rooster, red-wing blackbird, woodpecker, mourning dove, bullfrog, a number of others I cannot identify. We don't generally hear wolves (coyotes?) howling, though. And how could the maker forget the loon? Every American movie ever made with a lake or woodland scene has a loon calling on the soundtrack. (I even heard one in a movie supposedly set in the Caribbean once.)

Sad, sad day.

Last night a friend/neighbor died unexpectedly from complications of a low blood sugar event -- she had type 1 diabetes, which I did not know -- and cardiac arrest. Marcia was a kind, gentle, good-hearted, generous person, and a big library supporter who worked tirelessly on the building campaign. She has done so much for our community. When Smokey was in the hospital last March she and her husband took care of our dogs. I fell apart when I read her husband's email today. I am still reeling. 

It's county fair time. (There's yarn at the end.)

I was at the fair Wednesday night and Thursday morning helping set up our local Democrats tent. 

Covering the outside rain-vulnerable signs before shutting down for the night.
If you look closely you can see my signs hanging around the upper edge inside the tent.

 

 

We will have a drawing to give away this game.

I call this one How many Democrats does it take...

* * * * *

As I was leaving the fairgrounds I felt a strong magnetic pull toward one of the booths.

The seller agreed to model my yarn for me. Alpaca and angora, oh my.

Cinnamon-scented, felted soap. It smells sooo good.

Ornament for the Christmas tree.

Alpaca and angora, sooo soft. Bulky weight, probably destined to be a scarf.
Or a cowl. A very warm scarf or cowl.

If this is Sunday, it must time for another parade.

This was our group in the last parade. Lady in light blue shirt is
Kelly Westlund, running for Congress from our district.

Gonna drive in the Lucky Days parade this afternoon. Got a big bowl of candy to throw to the kids along the route. I tell myself all through every parade, "Don't drive over a kid. Don't drive over a kid. Don't drive over a kid." It's a good rule. 

* * * * *

Mutterings.

1. Joke :: practical.
2. Away :: game.
3. Reaction :: time.
4. High :: times.
5. Movie :: times.
6. Decide :: later.
7. Afternoon :: delight.
8. Contrarian :: Smokey.
9. Understand :: grok.
10. Zone :: no parking.

* * * * *

I continue to knit on the fingerless glove project. Four pairs mostly done, and cast on for a fifth pair last night. Only one pair is completely done; the others all need thumbs, one pair needs its hems sewn down, and most need their ends woven in.  I am saving all that finishing for some night when I am watching TV. 

In other TV-related news, we just joined the rest of the US and* got a flat TV. I think it is 46", maybe 42", plenty big for our cozy living room. Younger Son set it up for us on Saturday morning. It took me roughly 30 seconds to get used to having a bigger screen. The viewing experience changes a little -- I find I am more aware of the rest of the picture, not just the main action/actor. Our old TV, a 32" digital CRT model, will go to live in Elder Son's house. 

 

* I have found it a little disconcerting to see huge flat-screen TVs in the living rooms of pretty much every house that leaves its curtains open. Why does everyone else -- even people whom I know are on a severely limited income -- have a fancy-schmancy TV and we don't? Well, because we were waiting for the prices to come down to cheap. And they did. 

 

 

Random because I am lame.

I haven't done the mutterings for awhile.

1. Onion :: cry.
2. Greek :: salad.
3. Construct :: -ion.
4. Crunch :: time.
5. Bottom :: feeder.
6. Cream :: cheese.
7. Slamming :: crowd-surfing.
8. Jerk :: chicken. I seem to have food on the mind this morning.
9. Closed :: mind.
10. Texture :: -d stitches.

* * * * *

Younger Son sent me a photo that a friend had taken of Ser Percival The Energetic.

Look at the size of that mouth. Now imagine your leg in there. Beware the pit bull.

* * * * *

Smokey figured out that it was the 20+ year-old sunscreen I used on Saturday that had caused the allergic reaction and made my eyes swell to monster size. So much for trying to use up old stuff -- that sunscreen is going in the trash. I don't look quite as bad as I did on Sunday, but I would still scare small children. Sheesh.

* * * * *

Earlier this week I had to drive through Lindstöm. Remember Lindström? Anyway, I got myself a small Blizzard at the DQ (mint chocolate chip, thanks for asking) and looked for a shady place to park while I ate it. (I hate having to get out of the car. Drive-through, every time.) A block or so later I found a cemetary, lots of shade. Perfect.

As I drove around looking for my ideal spot -- level, shady, not too obvious -- I came across this tombstone.

The inscription says, "T-REX / Made by Frank".

 

T. Rex says, "Whachoo lookin' at, mofo?"

* * * * *

In other Lindstrom Dairy Queen-related news: last weekend Smokey gave a co-worker a ride home to Lindstrom after work. During the ride, co-worker disclosed that Robin Williams had been spotted at the DQ earlier this summer. What was Robin Williams doing in a tiny rural village in Minnesota? Presumably, the same thing as Ozzie Ozbourne, Eric Clapton, and any number of other celebs. 

* * * * *

Have I been knitting? Yes. Have I been taking pictures of my knitting? No.

I have been busily making fingerless gloves to sell at the farmer's market later this summer and fall in support of the new library. The library building committee is sponsoring the market and gets the booth fees. They also have a table to sell dog blankets and other crafts, all proceeds going to the building fund.

I finished my third pair yesterday, then discovered that Ser Percy had snatched a glove from the second pair -- 100% alpaca*, no less -- and had mangled it a bit. I grumbled and fumed as I wove in the ends on pair #3, then inspected the pair #2 damage more closely. Glove turned out not to be salvageable, but the yarn was. Frogged and 1" reknit so far. Will finish this weekend.

Damned alpaca-chewing dogs...

 

* Apparently dogs prefer alpaca to wool. Go figger. 

 

 

Weekend recap.

Friday: lake association boat parade and picnic.

Some folks went all out for the festive decorations.

Others took a more minimalist approach.

I forgot to take photos of the picnic food until people had started to leave. I provided the meat course (brats, Italian sausage, and appropriate condiments), eating paraphernalia, and beverages. Tables and canopy (and venue) were provided by another neighbor. The rest was pot luck. Many brownies were consumed with enthusiasm.

  
Remember the boat decorations? Some of us -- that's me on the left --
carried that spirit into our attire.

Meanwhile, Wife of Flag Shorts Guy puts an ice cube down the neck of a retired umpire.

 

Saturday: selling raffle tickets at craft fair.

All prizes were donated, so all proceeds will support the shelter.

My set-up. I sold over $500 worth of raffle tickets. Although Packer-Viking tickets have been an attractive draw in past raffles, the quilt got at least as much attention as the tickets this year. Success!

There was a fabulous face painter. This guy was happy to pose for me.
Fond Mom, too. They were so cute.

Blurry iPhone closeup.

I asked her if it was okay to take a picture of her ring while she was putting her name and address on her raffle tickets. As I prepared to take the photo she leaned down so that she would be in the photo, too. Not camera shy, that one. (But she bought a book of five tickets, so I love her.)

The woman on the right looked familiar. It took me a minute to place her.

 
She was the living, breathing incarnation of Maxine.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.

 

Sunday: another parade.

My car: a rolling billboard for progressive values.

Kelly Westlund and me. 

Something in the air on Saturday disagreed with me, or at least with my eyes. By the time I went to bed that night they were horribly swollen. I spent Sunday hiding behind sunglasses to cover them -- didn't want to scare the dogs and children. Cold compresses, eye drops, and Benedryl for me again tonight.

Can you stand another post about winter? Think hard; it is only December.

The township* road that leads to our house (eventually).

 

 

I attended (or heard about) two town meetings this week; both were heavily attended by people complaining about the ice pack on the roads**. Crews cannot do anything about the ice until it warms up; salt is ineffective until temps are above 0˚F (or so), and plows cannot scrape it up because everything is frozen solid. The state highways are clear because the county highway department maintains them (remember the cheese brine?***), but all the other rural roads are solid ice.

 

We remain toasty :-)

 

This and the previous photo show the state
of all local conifers: heavily covered with frozen-on snow.

 

Before the snow, this sign advertised free litter-trained kittens.
Kittens apparently all gone now; only litter remains.

 

* Technically, this is a town road. We do not have townships in Wisconsin; we have towns, which are the non-municipal rural areas and are typically six miles square.

** One constituent complained about a particular corner in his area. "You guys NEVER do a good job of clearing that corner. I have slid off the road there four times!" Er, maybe problem is not the road, sir?

*** A crew from CNN Chicago was here at the highway department this week to get a story about the cheese brine. If you are awake at 2am some night soon, you may get to see it.

Gizmodo comes to Polk County!

(Well, they probably didn't actually come here. More likely they emailed/called.)

Our highway department has given presentations on this method at the state highway department conference and other venues, including a meeting of the Polk County Board of Supervisors, of which I am an elected member.

More articles: Business Week, Modern Farmer, RecycleWisconsin.org, 

How we used to do it: making our own salt brine.