Friday, March 15, 2019

You Can Barely See Them...

... but there were snowflakes falling all morning.  Gah!  They didn't amount to anything but it didn't seem fair that it was 50 degrees yesterday and then snowing this morning.  Not. Fair.


This squirrel set up a post on the step outside the patio door.  He kept out interlopers and chased off all comers, for a while anyway, until he lost interest and wandered off.  As happy as I am to see the snow melt I'm not thrilled with all of the spilled birdseed, rabbit raisins, and dirt that concentrates on the surface of the snow you can see behind him.



 

I went to CS's for what I assume is the last brioche knitting class and as I crossed the East River I saw that it had indeed decided to broaden its horizons.  The top picture is the Green Isle Park parking lot, one of the shelters, and playground; the bottom picture is the soccer fields across the highway.  All underwater.  One of the knitters who usually comes to brioche was trapped in her house by the water and told not to drink tap water.  I suspect that they might have been some of the people asked to evacuate later today.




 


At the brioche class I cast off my cowl.  It's done and I like it, mistakes and all.



I like the technique enough that I found a free brioche hat pattern that I cast on at Friday Night Knitting.  I plan to use up the rest of the cowl yarns, a partial skein of the same variegated yarn only in blue shades, and a partial skein of white solid.  Maybe it'll turn out to be something for the Seamen's Church Institute Christmas at Sea pile.  The rivers that bring the ships to town, the rivers that motivated me to choose to knit for that charity, are the same rivers that are flooding low areas.  Guess we have to take the bad with the good, but I'm very glad that I live on a hill and on sandy soil so my basement is dry too.  Whew.

15 March--Tropical Obsession. 

Manning showered and shaved while the water perked in the ancient Mr. Coffee. The water dripped through so slowly that the resulting brew was black as mud and tasted like tar. An ex-girlfriend suggested he use it to strip the rust off his beloved Jeep. He liked his coffee just like his women, he told her, hot, dark, and strong. Then he laughed. Very few women who heard him ever laughed with him or stuck around long enough to try and change him. After dressing in his usual khaki cargo shorts and washed out aloha shirt, he headed into town on the shore road. He slowed down when he got to the Town Pier and scanned the row of bleary-eyed men huddled under the roof around a brazier with a battered coffee pot on its grate. Manning beeped the horn and Bunny detached himself from the group, his jaw wagging as usual, his enthusiastic wave barely acknowledged by the Venezuelans. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Manning said when Bunny settled in the passenger seat. “I don’t, mon.” Bunny turned his ganga-red eyes to face Manning. “It’s the spiritual connection of the downtrodden we understand. The brotherhood of the spliff, mon.” He dug in the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a joint just as they drove past the Customs office. “Put that away, for God’s sake,” Manning said. “You want to give those tight asses an excuse to arrest us before we’ve made our score?” He pushed Bunny’s hand down and held it until the younger man stopped trying to put the joint in his mouth. “I hear you, mon. I put it away now. Don’ get all in a ruckus.” Manning glared out the scratched and spotted windshield. “How unlucky could I be to get myself a helper like you?”

I realized that I said that I'd teach how to duplicate stitch on knitting at next Thursday's Bay Lakes Knitting Guild meeting which means I get to spend the weekend refreshing my skills and putting together a handout.  Good thing I requested a couple books about it from the library when I agreed to do it.  Sometimes I'm on the ball.  Nothing got tossed today except for the trimmings of a trio of bell peppers I diced up to freeze for later use.

Seven months ago yesterday Durwood died.  Sometimes it seems like 600 years ago and other times it seems like yesterday.  I'm keeping moving.
--Barbara

1 comment:

Aunt B said...

The melting snow does uncover a lot of ugly stuff but, as you said, you've got to take the good with the bad. Eventually Spring will reveal a lot of pretty stuff -- like flowers and leaves and thoughts of gardening. That Manning!! Bad guy all the way around -- even his coffee is bad.