We Have Melting

The sun came out again today but unlike last week when the lack of clouds let all the warmth out, today's sun brought warmth with it and is shoving quite a wind at us from the west.  At this very moment it is 38 degrees which means that the ice floe at the end of the driveway is melting away and the melt water is coursing downhill at a brisk pace, glittering in the midday sun.  I briefly considered attacking the ice with a shovel but thought better of it over lunch and decided to let the sun do its job.

At Friday Night Knitting I made good progress on the hand and thumb gussets of the Bumblebee mittens.  As you can see in the photo there won't be enough of the black tweed yarn to knit the flip-top of the yellow-gold cuff and hand so I have to figure out what to do.  My current favorite solution is to use three colors of tweed to knit what's called helical stripes which entails knitting the first third (or fourth or tenth however many strands of yarn you intend to use) in one color, dropping it for the second color, knitting the next third of the stitches, then dropping that one for the third color of yarn.  You knit to where the first strand of yarn is hanging, drop one, pick up the next, and go round and round that way until your mitten/hat/sock/whatever is the correct length.  There will be enough of the yellow-gold to knit the flip-top of the black cuff & hand so only the yellow-gold mitten will have the spiral top--I think.  I know for a fact that neither of the thumbs will be black or yellow, that much I do know.  Sometimes I suspect that people would faint dead away if I made a pair of something all matchy-matchy.

February 12--Ottoman Turkey or Syria, Iznik Ceramic Ewer.  There was a chip in the base of the blue painted pitcher that Hugo examined.  I wasn't a fan but he was certain it was a rare 16th century find.  "In a thrift shop in Wisconsin?" I said.  He nodded and turned away to let the sunlight streaming in the dusty window light the pitcher's bottom.  "See these crossed swords?  Don't you think we've seen this mark before?"  I squinted at the faint mark.  "It might be swords or maybe it's an X or some other mark."  I shook my head at him.  "I think it's an Antiques Roadshow 'don't.'"  "What do you mean?"  He looked half-disappointed and half-angry.  "I'm afraid they'd put you on camera and then spend five minutes pointing out how to tell it's a fake and that it's worth one-tenth what you paid for it."  He turned it over again and said, "It's only fifty bucks.  Maybe I can talk old Ralph down a bit.  I'm buying it."  "You know I hate blue," I called after him as he threaded his way through the crowded shop.

That last paragraph was born of the news that Antiques Roadshow is coming to Green Bay in the middle of June.  When it was announced last week on the show I immediately got online and put in our request for tickets.  Durwood planned to do it too but they've got a limit of one entry per household (party poopers) but if they draw your name you get two tickets so we could both go.  Fingers crossed.  I'm already thinking about what to take WHEN they contact me that I have tickets.
--Barbara