Spring Fever
Knitting on Christel is moving along. I am on about the 70th row of the chart, about 400 stitches per round.
Unfortunately, I think I am going to rip back about two rounds. I switched to double yarnovers, knitted off once, all the way across the knitted ground, and that throws the hole size off. It doesn't look horrible, but I can see it, and I don't like it.
It started raining on Sunday afternoon, and rained gently but relentlessly most of Monday and Tuesday. It was overcast and dark and hard to get good pictures.
Birds, from top to bottom:
White-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys
Male goldfinches, Carduelis tristis, changing from their dull winter plumage to brilliant summer black and yellow.
A pair of birds I don't often see, not the introduced house finches, Carpodacus mexicanus, which I see by the flock, but a female and a male purple finch, Carpodacus purpureus.
Besides this pair, I saw three more female purple finches, but only the one male.
Tuesday we made a quick drive up to the local library to pick up a book I had on order (Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade), and on the way back I finally took a picture of this old farmhouse (bottom photo).
It's on the edge of a vineyard. At one time it was a very nice house. Now it is fading and weatherbeaten and draped in vines.
Every time I drive past it, I am full of questions. Why don't they tear it down entirely? Who lived there? Where did they go? How did it fall into such disrepair?
It's a visual poem, spooky and intriguing.
Labels: birdwatching, herbert niebling, knitting, lace knitting
posted by Alwen | 8:33 AM
10 Comments:
Oh too bad about ripping, but if you see it, it is better to rip than to feel it annoying later. So beautiful birds! It is so fun to see photos of birds that we don't have here in my country. Yes, I wonder too why they don't tear down such old houses. I don't like spooky houses in my surrounding lol.
Visual poem - the perfect description.
Love the bird pics!
That house is fantastically spooky, at least in that rainy shot. I think I would be a little sad to see it torn down.
Absentee landlords and a home fit for squatters. Bad combination.
Lovely, lovely birds. I didn't realize goldfinches had a winter coat and a summer coat. How stylish!
(My word is aftaze - the opposite of foraze.)
When I was a kid, we went by an old decrepit house like that, and my mom and sister and I would dream of renovating it, and bringing it back to glory.
When I was in highschool, after it had sat vacant for several decades, someone finally bought it and fixed it. It's beautiful now, and the belle of the country road on which it sits.
I've spent most of my life living in houses in need of saving, and we did it while we lived there. We left a path of restored, beautiful homes in our wake. The trail ends when I got married to an engineer...they over-think everything, and nothing ever got finished.
Oh that's looking so good. Ripping back is going to suck though.
Love the purple finches - and that old farmhouse - it's gorgeous!
Don't empty old houses just beg for questions? A visual poem indeed... Good luck with the ripping (eek)!
MY FIXER UPPER! You found it! ;-)
The purple birds are beautiful. We have several cardinals and some jays this year and I've been enjoying watching (and listening, jays are noisy) them. My cats, not so much so. They're afraid of the birds. Wusses.
How quickly spring seems to have come to you! I love the house - it always seems so sad to see abandoned houses (especially when m=so many have no home) Here they are usually used as haysheds!
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