One Mitten

 


I finished the first LC mitten just now and made copious notes so that mitten #2 has a chance of being of similar size.  Fingers crossed.

I spent most of the day sorting through a lot of yarn, pulling out stuff that I know I'll never knit with and putting it into a couple totes because in November instead of a program at the Bay Lakes Knitting Guild meeting we're going to have a yarn swap/sale/giveaway.  Since I didn't buy most of the yarn I sorted out I intend to give it away.  I very intelligently made notes on my Ravelry stash pages which yarns I'm sorting out so that it won't say that I have something that I don't.  I didn't delete any of it in case I bring some home and have to reenter the skeins.


At the October meeting we're supposed to have an unmarked paper bag with a skein of yarn and a pattern in it, then we'll each take a different bag home and knit whatever's in there for the December meeting instead of a dishcloth exchange.  I knew that I had a bag with a skein of yarn and a simple scarf pattern in it already and luckily it was in the first bin I sorted through.  Whew.  Saved me from having to think too hard about it.


I didn't make a rat trap/swimming pool today.  I'll get to that tomorrow.  It was so rainy today that I just left the traps out there overturned and tripped.  I'll set them tomorrow too.  Maybe.





The Downy Woodpecker came to the suet today.



 
And I had a stroll down memory lane for breakfast.  When I was little my Grandma Babe made Pillsbury Orange Rolls when I'd sleep over and they've been nagging at the back of my mind.  Well, I was grocery shopping the other day and there they were, in an end-cap cooler, staring right at me, so I bought them.  And today I baked them.  They weren't as delicious as I remembered, there were no little pieces of orange zest in the frosting, but they were okay.  I don't think I'll be tempted again.

22 September--Barbara Malcolm, Horizon. 

Art shows, art shows, art shows.  Abel and I must have gone to ten of them that month.  School gyms, church basements, town halls--all of them smelling of wet wool and bodies, with shuffling crowds of winter-weary people, art lovers, cabin fever sufferers, and the just plain bored looking at real art, good amateur art, and a lot of god-awful art.

By the end of our art tour that month, I thought I would scream if I saw one more crocheted dishcloth or painted wood "Welcome" plaque.  At the beginning I found myself comparing my paintings, usually unfavorably, to the ones on display, but by the time the tour was winding down I had acquired a bit of objectivity and could see that my work was better than 90% of what was on offer.

"See, Gail?" Abel whispered in my ear as we passed yet another booth filled with bad watercolors.  "I told you you're a real artist.  Most of these people are just hobbyists or hacks."

I poked him in the ribs.  "Shhh.  You'll hurt their feelings,” I nodded at a scowling man staring at us from the booth, "or start a fight.  I think you might have insulted his wife."

He put his arm around my waist and walked a bit faster.  "Not that I couldn't take him, you understand, I just don't want to make a scene."

"Of course you don't, Tarzan," I said, laughing at my own personal macho man.  Why men don’t grow out of the need to flex their muscles I'll never know.

I'm meeting a friend for breakfast tomorrow and I will go to the Y in the afternoon.  I haven't gone much since I got home from Yellowstone and I need to get started again.  I feel stiff and creaky.
--Barbara