Sky Crazy

We all know I love looking at the sky.  One of these days, when I have/make the time, I've got a Great Courses DVD class all about the night sky.  I probably should have been watching the lectures when I was piled up on the couch with my cold but I didn't even think of it.  I'll get there.  In the meantime, I watched the sun setting on my drive home from work (I love it that it's a bit light when I close the store) and made it home in time to catch the last rays of pinkish peach from the bedroom window.  This morning when I opened the patio curtain the sky was suffused with the same sort of exuberant display but more pink and purple.  Ahh, the sky is amazing, isn't it?  All sorts of colors and moods, although, in my opinion, it can keep the unrelenting gray clouds over my horizon a bit more.



I always mean to follow my own advice, really I do.  Months and months ago I suggested in a Guild blog post that knitters pick a stitch every month and knit it into a dishcloth to try out new stitches and build up a supply of dishcloths, so yesterday I made a quick copy of a lace pattern that intrigues me, grabbed some cotton yarn and a pair of needles, and cast on a dish/washcloth at work.  Like all lace, it doesn't look like much now but once it gets blocked (stretched out) it'll look like fishtails.  At least that's what it's supposed to look like.  I'll keep you posted.

I saw a Bluejay this morning for the first time in weeks and weeks.  Durwood and I have been wondering where they'd gone, thinking that the hoggish squirrels had chased them away from the peanuts but while I was doing yoga this morning one came to snatch a peanut and then zoomed off, hopefully to spread the word that there are peanuts to be had over here.  The only "interesting" bird that held still long enough to get its picture taken was a male Downy Woodpecker.  Durwood saw a Hairy Woodpecker yesterday (a little bigger than a Downy) but didn't get a picture.  Oh well.

February 18--Richard Weston, The Window.  It was the sky that drew her.  From north to south, spread out in front of her was more sky than she had ever imagined.  It sounds naive and self-evident, the sky arches like a great dome no matter where you are, but the horizon was so far away in every direction that it looked like there was more of it.  She imagined how the pioneers saw it, the great swath of grassland spread like an endless gold carpet in every direction.  She thought that she would have been afraid to step off into that vastness for fear she would get swallowed up by it.  Out here where the sky was everything there was to see it was easy to be convinced that she was standing still and the power poles and wind farms were rolling past her on their way east.

I called The Clearing yesterday and secured my spot in the Women's Writing Retreat in late September.  Tonight I get to tell the Knitting Guild members how to get started using the online fiber enthusiasts website, Ravelry.  I've got my props all set and my handouts printed ready to hand out so how come I've got a little case of butterflies?  I know this stuff and we all know how I love to talk.  I'm sure that once it's time to talk I'll be fine.  I'm wearing hand-knit socks and have on a hand-knit AND beaded scarf.  I'm ready.  Off to work.
--Barbara