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This nest has been in this tree since the summer, but I think it's safe now. Looking at it gives me the creeps and fascinates me at the same time. I think this is the nest of the Bald-faced Hornet.
Knitting has been woefully neglected. My goal is to knit through the next couple of days with little interruption. Heh.
Last summer I joined the Knitting Gnome Swap and had expected to receive a visit from my gnome friend while on the Cape. However, life happens and one of the gnomes went AWOL and Gnorm has been doing a lot of traveling and only just made it to MA!
I was fast asleep this morning and
felt something get dropped on my legs. I just rolled over because often
my husband brings a cooler w
ith
my Boost in it so that I don't try to skip the morning insulin and
breakfast. When I woke up a little later I saw that there were two
squareish objects on the bed and one was a box from Wisconsin! Gnorm
had arrived and he brought some amazing goodies with him:
in the shape of a tiny little gnome.Of course, this was the moment my camera battery died and the charger went into hiding. No worries though...I have a cell phone that can take pictures! You can see Gnorm (up top) just after he came out of his box, resting with my still sleeping son! Here to the right is Gnorm with all the goodies he (and Ann in Wisconsin! Thank you!) brought with him.
Gnorm has a busy day ahead of him. He'll be going to my local LYS for a quick hello before I go to work and he'll be spending the day at my synagogue, which is were I work in the religious school.
It's not blocked yet, but sweater #1 of the 3 sweaters I want done by the 5th night of Chanukah. This is for my nephew and it's the Drive=Thru Sweater from Knit and Tonic. What a great, fun and quick pattern. I am 8 inches into the back of a guernsey (Reynolds pattern#402 Colorful Kids) for my other nephew *(using Mauch Chunky in Kiwi) and then it's (hopefully) another Drive-thru sweater, this one a cardigan for my niece.
I haven't been posting pics but I have been slowly transforming the craft room (formerly the dining room) into a much more functional craft room. I am now moving the yarn and the stash from my bedroom into the room and the other day had much of it piled on my bed for sorting. Noah was horrified and I snapped a picture or 2.
I kept out the things I thought I'd need for the holiday knitting. In addition to the sweaters I still have dreams of making some hats.
OK, enough chit chat, back to knitting. My poor kids! All they hear from me is "Mommy is holiday knitting..go ask Daddy!"
Thanksgiving was lovely this year. We were guests at our friend's home and they live near by. My contribution was a Spinach Cheese Puff (from the November Everyday Food), an Autumn Greens w/Apple (and toasted pumpkin seeds!) salad and I also baked mini banana breads w/ cranberry,raisins and walnuts for everyone to bring home. There was also: turkey, mashed potatoes,cornbread stuffing,chesnut stuffing, pecan noodle kugel, green beans, pumpkin soup, challah with chocolate chips and cranberries, rolls and probably other stuff I've forgotten! The desserts were amazing too. My mom brought lemon merangue pie, apple pie and cupcakes for the kids and there was also a Chocolate Cranberry Marscapone Tart. There were 16 of us, 8 of them kids. Lots of good music, conversation and John got to play some pool.
However, it is now Friday morning and in 16 days it will be the 5th night of Chanukah and our family Chanukah Party. This means I need to make quite a few things by then. My goal today is to finish my nephews Drive-thru sweater and to get to the point of making sleeves on my other nephews gansey. I also want to spend some time at my sewing machine. I still have Chanukah shopping to do but under no circumstances will it be done today. I hear that the stores are a madhouse!
That's it. No pics. No links. Must return to knitting!
This literary meme is making the rounds of the intranets. If your reading the blog consider yourselves tagged and let me know in the comments so I'll be able to see what you're reading/
open the book you’re currently reading to page 161 and read the fifth sentence on the page, then think of 5 bloggers to tag.
I am currently reading Sarah Monette's The Mirador, the third book set in a very richly imagined fantasy world. Her characters are so fully realized and so compelling I almost hate putting the books down and leaving them. The first book is titled Melusine and the second The Virtu and I recommend them highly.
page 161, 5th sentence:
"Gideon says that although he's not keen on helping you kill yourself, it occurs to him that we might ask Rinaldo if you could borrow a walking stick."
My back went out last Saturday. The good news is that since I started the exercise and lost the (80ish lbs so far) weight my back has merely twinged once in a great while but nothing serious has happened. I'm not sure what triggered it and I did the bed rest,nsaids and heat for Saturday and resumed walking Sunday and then on Monday took a nice long walk in the woods in the morning (after a lovely massage) and later that night did 45 minutes on the treadmill at the Y and some circuit training. Who knows? Maybe it would have gone out again anyway. Maybe I overdid it. In any event, I'm barely moving this morning and even reaching for things hurts.
How is this connected to knitting? Well, backtracking a week or so-I've been in the knitting doldrums for several days. I hadn't been able to muster the energy to knit a single stitch. Then my Winter Interweave Knits came in and I fell in love with Kristin Nicholas's , Kilm Gloves. I had to make these! My knitting mojo was back! I'm using Mission Falls 1824 Wool in teal, periwinkle, orange,fuschia,navy and moss. I've done about 4.5 inches and it looks so cheery and nice. The pattern combines texture as well as color so there will be some duplicate stitching to do after the knitting is done. The problem is even throwing the yarn or twisting to carry the colors is making my back spasm and sitting for any length of time hurts. I am motivated to get to the fingers today but am also trying to be sens
ible because I have what will likely be a long meeting tonight (I'll be bringing the cable footie socks to that-they're a holiday gift I think and won't require much thought)
.
The lace shawls are halted. The holiday knitting is barely begun (I'm making a lot of hats this year and my excuse is that the book I want to use hasn't arrived but let's be honest I have many,many hat patterns in many, many books here). It's November! Ack.
Oh and the Bat Mitzva. I really, really need to get more done for that. March is only 5 months away and really it's more like 4.5. I have a plan for making the Tallit. I know what I want to do for the invites but need to get the paper and the wording and other pieces where they need to go for printing (which means I need to actually get the paper). Em is doing marvelous job with her Torah portion and other preparations. I'm just boggled that we're at this point. OK, now I REALLY need a lay down..and some tea.
"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." anne frank
I feel somewhat blahish. I haven't knit or spun for a few days. My back is really bothering me (although I exercised over 90 minutes today). I had a massage in the morning which was lovely but I guess the whole back getting better thing is going to take time.
I'm behind on Nanowrimo but am not going to obsess.
No. Because I have found a new purpose in life. and that purpose is to knit EXTERMIKNIT! I just know that once I pull the right yarn out of the stash and knit me a Dalek I will be fine again. Now, forgive me while I search he net for a knitted Tardis pattern. I sense a theme here.
This is my third shot at Nanowrimo, the annual November challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. The emphasis is on quantity not quality, process not product. The thinking is that by pushing oneself to write, without self editing or over thinking that sooner or later some genuine creative stuff starts o happen and maybe, if your lucky some small nugget of useful writing is contained in the document. For those who write often anyway it may even be possible to come out with a workable first draft, for the rest of us it's enough to write everyday and try to break through our own personal barriers to creating a work of fiction.
In my case the biggest barrier is simply my very loud self editor and an inability to get what's in my head into the laptop. In the past two Nanowrimo's I've done, I gave up before 20K words and deleted the files. This year my goal is to just write, even it's the most insipid drivel ever to grace a word file. If I find myself written into a hole I'll start a new chapter, a new character a new whatever, cohesiveness isn't the goal, trying to find out why I can no longer write fiction with any sort of confidence is.
It's funny. I don't expect to write something publishable and am not even trying to. In fact, I may end up deleting the whole thing again and strangely that's ok. My goal this year is simply to write.
Kari Grady Grossman: Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia
Maryanne Wolf: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Willa Cather: My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (Dover Thrift Editions)
Shmuley Boteach: 10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children
Catherynne M. Valente: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden
