Scrap Pi Bag

I am running low on wool thrums, so I started knitting a border and eyelets in this scrap Pi bag.

The eyelets are two double decreases on either side of four yarnovers (SSK, return to left needle, pass the next stitch over, return to right needle, YO 4 times, slip 1 as if to knit, K2tog, psso), because I learned in the first Pi bag that the eyelets get pretty small as the bag shrinks and felts.


This camera has the ability to take eye-watering close-ups: you can see the double yarn on the needle where I overlapped two thrums as one ran out, the sticky-out-y end of the mustard-colored yarn, and the detail of every stitch. Whew.

I'm sure I'll get over being boggled by the Fuji pretty soon. Before I had a digital camera, I had (still have) a fairly good Canon SLR, with a set of close-up lenses. Then I had a good Nikon digital camera from a company I did some assignments for, followed by Mr. Snapshot.

Going from a decent SLR camera to a decent digital wasn't hard, but going from a decent digital to a *****y one was.

Next on my list, learn how to do zoom shots, so I can try for decent bird pictures.

In Other News

I finally mowed the grass yesterday, both the yard, the sides of the driveway, and our walking path. My palms are sore!

I have no idea exactly how much grass that is, and I don't even want to think about how much CO2 the mower spewed into the air. The walking path goes from the house to the drainage ditch at the south line of our property and back to the house again in a big meandering loop.

Our twelve acre lot is a quarter-mile deep: that is, if you walked from the road back to the south lot line, that's a quarter-mile. And I mowed that path twice around. With a push mower. I must be nuts.

I've been hearing a wood thrush singing, and a cardinal has built her nest in the yew bush by the house. The brown thrashers are not nesting in the rose bush this year. What with our goofy warm-and-freezing weather this spring, the bush leafed out later, so it wouldn't have been very good nest cover.

I haven't seen one yet, but I hear the orioles singing in the tree tops. It always surprises me that a bright orange and black bird can stay so hidden. The wood thrush generally sings from cover, but it's a camouflage bird anyway. But the oriole's orange is the bright light orange in a packet of Astrobright paper -- how do they stay so invisible?

Tonight our local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) has its monthly meeting at our house. So it's off to clear table tops for the potluck.

I'll also take the new Fuji out for a walk.

(My strategy for learning to use a new camera: take it out, try to get it to do stuff, push all the wrong buttons, swear, return to the house, * RT*M until I figure it out. Repeat as necessary. After I've tried every possible wrong way, eventually the right way wears into my brain.)

* RT*M: Read The *ing Manual