Twenty-five Minutes

 

That's how long I spent on the elliptical this afternoon, which is 10 minutes longer than my previous time.  Yay, me!  Since I started back at the Y this week I feel stronger and less winded, like I needed the last week of laying on the couch coughing, sneezing, and snorting to level up or something.  Whatever the reason I'm glad.  Now watch, I've got my first session with the new trainer on Thursday and I'll make a liar out of myself.  Ah well.




This robin had the most enthusiastic bath today.  Robins are vigorous bathers and this one did its best to splash out most of the water in the birdbath.  Then it spent a good ten minutes preening its feathers and looking around to make sure that everyone noticed how spiffed up it looked.


I took Aunt B's advice and spent an hour or so crocheting the edging on the 5-triangle Triangle Wrap.  Once it was done I weighed the wrap and the remaining yarn and there's enough of the dreadful stuff to make another wrap exactly alike.  I won't cast on yet, I'll save that pleasure for another month.




Tonight's sunset was a nice one.  Look at the peachy yellow clouds against the blue sky.  Ahhh.

I was happy to see info about what to prepare for this month's Bay Lakes Knitting Guild program on Fair Isle knitting.  That's carrying a couple colors across your work to make snowflakes or geometric designs, not something I'm any good at.  I made a sweater that had a band of Fair Isle around the bottom and was very glad when I was through that part but I figured I could be a good sport and take another stab at it.  Happily the woman teaching it recommended a pattern called the Fake Isle Hat that uses variegated yarn as the main color and solid color for the contrast part so it looks like you've used more colors when you haven't.  I unearthed a bag of small ends of different colors of the same yarn that I used to make hats one year and tied them together to make my variegated.  I pulled out solid black for the contrast but I think it'll be not enough of a contrast so I'm going to see if I don't have some creamy white to use instead.  We need to knit the ribbing and a few rounds of hat so that we're ready to plunge into the Fair Isle part at the meeting.  Gotta get my homework done.




When I went out a few minutes ago to see if any of the neighbors had their trash out so that I could put my small bag in theirs (no one did, dang it) I saw the crescent moon.  If you look closely you can see the outline of the rest of the moon's disc.  Pretty cool, huh?


7 May--Anonymous, Maria Callas in Turandot.  Her headdress looked like a peacock's tail of metal flowers on stems with butterflies quivering around them.  Chains hung like fringe from the sides, draping pearls and more chains over her shoulders.  When she sang, the butterflies flexed and flutters and the chains swung.  I watched that headdress like it was a living thing, like it was another actor in the opera, one with its own life and personality.  I don't remember her singing.

We lucked out today and it was sunny all day and got into the low 50s.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow and barely make it into the 40s.  *sigh*  What do we have to do to lure spring our way?  I was thinking I'd see about getting my bales but not if it's going to rain all day.  Maybe Friday.
--Barbara