Small Project + Bigger Yarn = Done Faster

 




I'm still not having any ideas of what to knit so I took my bag of Advent Garland mittens and stockings to work with me and, LOOK!, here's a finished mitten and an almost finished stocking--and it wasn't a dead zone at work either.  These things are fast and satisfying to make.  I think I'll keep at them and maybe get up to 12 of each so that LC and OJ will have an Advent Garland from Meemaw this year.

Yesterday was chilly and rainy and dreary--did I mention chilly?  I was dressed for late fall and my feet froze.  Of course, I'd taken the extra packet of toe warmers out of my knitting basket when it seemed like it might be getting warm so I just grumbled and bore it.  However, last night's sunset offered a hint of things to come seeing as how the sun was visible through the neighbors' not-on fire-today tree (it's the tree that the fallen wires on Easter tried to ignite).  This morning the trailing edge of the clouds was nearing the eastern horizon and right now it's bright sunshine outside pretending that the last few days weren't crap.



I was thrilled to see a male hummingbird this morning.  He's really zippy so the first couple times I tried to take his picture all I got was grass and feeder but while I was making my breakfast I saw him having a snack at the bleeding hearts and managed to snap a picture.  Trust me, even though his back is to the camera there's that little patch of ruby red under his chin.

With all the cool weather the lilies of the valley have taken their own sweet time opening but this morning a few were open enough for me to pick them to send off to DD.  See, every spring since she moved to Kentucky I pick a few sprigs of these flowers and mail them to her in a card.  I know they'll be smooshed and droopy by the time they arrive but I'm confident that they'll smell like home and that's what counts.

May 25--Lewis Wickes Hine, Riveting Gang on the Empire State Building.  He worked up there where the air was thin and the street sounds echoed.  Richard clung to the girders by force of will and the grace of God.  He figured that it was God's hand that kept him from stepping backwards off into nothingness or getting pushed by the wind that whipped through the skeleton of the building.  On this side of the vertical beam the wooden platform he crouched on was cantilevered out over the edge with no railing or harness to keep him there.  The rivets that Lew slung his way were red hot and came at him like machine gun fire.  In his nightmares he dreamt that one day he'd miss and a rivet would carve an inch-diameter hole right through him, but not today.

They're resurfacing our street for the next few weeks.  Right now they're at the side street and main thoroughfare intersection into our little neighborhood but a huge dump truck just backed, beeping all the way, around the court so it could drop its load of gravel where they're working and come back past here probably on its way to get more.  This is going to be a pain in the keester, I can tell.  I can't wait until they get around to right in front of us and we can't use our driveways.  I wonder where they think we'll park.  Time to go pick up some tanks--again, and get off to work.  Toodle-oo.
--Barbara