Knitting in the Park

Tonight a few members of Bay Lakes Knitting Guild met in a downtown park, arranged our chairs in a big circle, and spent a couple hours knitting and chatting.  It was a glorious evening, just the right temperature with a little breeze to keep the skeeters at bay.  We'll do it again next month.



Despite all my determination to stick with the WW plan this week I went right off the rails for supper tonight.  The Gourmet Corn truck was at Zambaldi Beer so I went over and got Garlic Parmesan Corn




and Shrimp Ceviche.  Both were delicious and I'm proud to say that I only ate enough of the chips to scoop up the ceviche.  I ate all of the corn.


I got a haircut this morning.  I was kind of nervous to be with a stranger but she wore a mask, she's a one-woman salon, and I wore a mask too--until she was cutting the front of my hair and it fell down behind my mask until it felt like I was breathing through a teddy bear.  A prickly teddy bear.  I took the mask off to stop inhaling hair.  Yuk.  I didn't think my hair was bothering me until I walked out with my usual pixie cut and felt like my head was floating.  Ahhh.



This little washcloth is the only project I have on the needles right now.  The colors are much brighter in person.



18 June--Barbara Malcolm, Tropical Obsession. 

             Mona walked slowly between the craft market booths set up on the town square across the street from the Town Pier. Whenever a cruise ship was docked, the little band of artists and entrepreneurs set up their tables and laid out their wares. Mona wasn't a cruise ship passenger, never had been able to face the prospect of being trapped in what amounted to a floating hotel with a couple thousand strangers for a week, steaming from island to island striking each a glancing blow, spending just enough time on each one for a hot cab ride to see the highlights and take a quick tour through the upscale shops that line the ports. The whole cruise culture seemed so artificial to her.

             She had endured dinner conversations with avid cruisers who insisted they were familiar with nearly every Caribbean island. Judging by the majority of the people around her and the things she overheard, the packaged view of an island they experienced was just that--packaged. The real life of the island went on around the Disney-esque sanitized experience that was trotted out before the ship docked and carefully folded away until the next ship was due. Even worse, Mona bet that ninety percent of what was for sale around her was made in Taiwan. Pathetic.

           And where was Jack? He was supposed to meet her at City Cafe for lunch.

           Manning cursed as he looked at his hurting foot. A thorn from one of the cacti nestled in the rock had pierced the side of his shoe and worked its way into the soft flesh of his arch. He carefully scrutinized the next boulder he came to before sitting down. It took a moment for him to work up the nerve to begin gingerly working the devilishly sharp clump of thorn out. His breath hissed between his teeth and his blood flowed fresh and red to splash on the rocks where it immediately was absorbed. Manning tore a strip from his khaki shirt to stanch the blood and act as a temporary bandage. Blistering the hot, still air with curses, he retied his shoe and, limping only a little, resumed his climb.

I don't have a hawk photo today but this morning one of them was on top of the fence eating something.  The other one was about ten feet away watching intently.  The one without the food moved closer and closer, the one with the food moved away until they both had moved about fifty feet down the fence.  The one with the food finally took its food and flew away.  They have to be nest mates; no way strangers would hang around together like this.  They're too young to be courting.  Fascinating.
--Barbara