Poem of the Day

Mud
by Polly Chase Boyden

Mud is very nice to feel
All squishy-squash between the toes!
I'd rather wade in wiggly mud
Than smell a yellow rose.

Nobody else but the rosebush knows
How nice mud feels
Between the toes.

I don't remember the first time I read this poem, but I have the last line thoroughly stuck in my head, and it leaps into my head spontaneously when I see spring mud.

April is indeed the cruelest month for weather. According to the local airport weather station, last night the high temperature hit 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 C) - at 3am! Now that it's daytime, it's only 41 F (5 C). We haven't had our April snow yet, but that would be very typical.

The first Diana Wynne Jones book I ever read was Archer's Goon. I can't put my finger on one thing that I enjoyed so much, but it made me search out more of her books, like Dog's Body and Howl's Moving Castle.

I tend to like books with a certain level of complexity and background detail, so that when I re-read them, I pick out things on the second (or third) reading that I missed first time around. Most of her books have that.

I've been paging through old April posts, looking for inspiration. It's hard to believe it's been five years since I first knitted a Pi doily.

Let's see, what else has been happening?

I've been knitting little Niebling patterns from Bande 760.

Fig. 28:
Fig. 17:
Fig. 6:

Crocuses came up:

And snowdrops:

And the snow finally melted away.

Basking

The snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) from two weeks ago are in full bloom.Several years ago, my mom gave me a clump of snowdrop bulbs. I planted them in a spot where they are obviously happy, and they have been spreading ever since.Here is the same clump in sunshine. I even saw a honeybee on them yesterday!
We're having a week of lovely warm and sunny weather. Of course, when I say "warm", that's Michigan lakeshore warm. The temperature has crept up to 60 F (about 16 C) a couple of times.

We've been outside in our short sleeves in the sunshine cleaning up the dead raspberry canes and goldenrod stems almost every day.

Tomorrow's forecast is for rain and snow with a high in the 30s (0 C), so now is the time to soak up the warm and sunny.

I love wandering around the yard searching out the early flowers. First sweet violet:
A clump of daffodils that was barely an inch high a week ago:
The very first rosette of columbine leaves:Green everywhere!

One of the wonderful things about being outdoors with the camera is serendipitous pictures. While I was walking around looking for green leaves, I heard the unmistakable rolling kerroooo of the sandhill crane, Grus canadensis, overhead.They were relatively low, and they were circling to wait for a trailing group of five to catch up.I zoomed in as much as I could, and I couldn't resist cropping just one crane all by itself.I've been folding origami since I was about nine or ten, and I always called the back of the origami crane the tail. Most crane-folding instructions call that part the tail also. It wasn't until I started seeing sandhill cranes that I realized those are really their trailing legs!

When it gets dark enough and cool enough to send us back indoors, I've been taking some time to try some of the braiding patterns from Mark Campbell's 1867 Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair-Work, which I downloaded from Google Books.Isn't he great? I love him to pieces. My braiding stand is not half so fancy, though.
I made mine using a sheet of thick white craft foam, a pencil, a compass, and a protractor. But it seems to work as well as Mr. Campbell's.

Now it's time to get outside in more of that sunshine!

Snow Go

A quick photo essay before I take myself off to my first lace group meeting in months.

We still had a lot of snow last Monday, when I took pictures of the winter aconite in bloom.



You can just see through the trees off to the east that the fields still had patchy snow on them.

The yard and our property off to the south still had a lot of snow.

Then on Tuesday, I saw bluebirds!


By Thursday, the snow was in retreat. Thursday night we had our first hard rain.

And now that the yard is dry, Truffles and Ajax want to know, "Can we go out?"

The Sap is Rising

We've had about a week of temperatures above freezing during the day. The snow is retreating and today the first snowdrop is allllmost open!

The tough little snowdrops are about the only flowers that bloom for me this early, but spring is coming.

I can tell smell because at night, the skunks are coming out of their winter dens, phewww!

The bark on the willow trees and red osiers is getting brighter, and it's still light in the evening when I leave for work.

That means it's time to tap the sugar maples.

It's a good sign when you start to drill the hole, and sap leaks out with the sawdust on the drill bit. Now I'm sorry I didn't put my tap in five days ago!

Maple sap runs in the spring when the daytime temperature is above freezing and the nighttime temperature is below freezing.

Once the nighttime temperature also rises above freezing, the sap flow will start to dry up, and then it will be time to pull the taps.

As long as we get enough sap to boil down to a pint or two of syrup, we'll be happy!

On the knitting front, I've been turning a Goodwill sweater (too short and too wide to wear) into cakes of yarn.The sweater tag says "100% lambswool". It's very very soft. I'm thinking mittens for next winter.

I've been reading the current issue of Piecework (my mom extended my subscription for Christmas: thanks, Mom!) and the special Knitting Traditions issue that I bought with a gift card.
And I've been knitting a third pair of Wool-Ease-footed socks.

I need to get back to knitting on the Stargate before the weather gets so nice I want to spend all my time outdoors ruining my hands in the garden.

So what have I been doing? Looking through my stash of Valdani crochet thread, thinking about this year's Valdani bag.

I've decided not to cast on for that until I'm casting off on the Stargate. I'm hopeful that having that treat waiting for me will keep me moving toward the final rows.

Birds and Flowers

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you've seen my rose tangle, a climbing rose bush that I let grow into an untidy mound because the birds that came to my feeder always loved it.

Chickadees, cardinals, and blue jays would eat their sunflower seeds in it. Chipping sparrows and brown thrashers nested in it. Towhees and juncoes loved to scratch under it.

It's been mysteriously ailing the last couple of years. My secret fear is that we caught a little Round-Up (glyphosate) or other herbicide overspray from one or another of the nearby farm fields. Most of these things say to spray in still conditions, but farmers generally spray when they can, and if they waited for still conditions this close to the lakeshore, they'd get about ten minutes a day. So. They spray anyhow.

Whatever got it, this spring the rose tangle wasn't leafing out at all, anywhere. Last weekend I finally admitted to myself that it wasn't going to, dragged a tarp out there, and went to work with my ratchet loppers. I cut all the dead canes down, raked up the short thorny pieces, and dragged them off into the underbrush where stray thorns won't slash me.
It looks so bare out there.

I transplanted a little forsythia bush my mom gave me into the spot. Forsythias are sprawly. Eventually it should get big enough to fill in this space.

The towhees and the song sparrows have been scratching in the bare spot. But the brown thrashers came and gave me the stink eye for taking out their nesting spot.

Every time I tried to mow around there I cussed that thing out. I didn't think about how much I would miss it if it ever died.

Tiny green sprouts are coming up from the base. So we'll see.

In other news, the columbines are in bloom.
We've been spending a lot of time outside and at the library. The weather has gone all over the map, from frost/freeze warnings to 79 degrees F (26 C) to yet another inch of rain.

I ran strings for the hops vines to climb and trenched my garden (Maingay trench-paths), but haven't planted a thing yet. For the first time in many years, I didn't start tomato plants.

I'm still knitting on Christel, with about three pattern rows to go. I finally knitted Christel onto my Inox circular needle when the stitches got scarily close to the ends of the dpns.

Anyway. I'm alive. Hi!

Dancing Bear Falls Off the Ball

A while ago I got a call from a friend asking if I'd gotten an email she'd sent. Asking, because I hadn't answered it.

Well. I would describe myself as "not very organized" at the best of times. Sometimes, I have just enough energy to do the things that must be done, and none left over.

"Things that must be done" comprise a much shorter list than commercials would have you believe. On my personal list are things like breathe (so important! hold your breath and watch the second hand to find out how important), eat, drink, and sleep, and personal hygiene.

Blogging and email kinda falls off that list when things get tight.

So let's see, what have I been doing since the 6th of May?

I spent the last two weeks as Parent-in-Chief, while my husband went down to Arkansas for a hazardous material certifier school.

I took some pictures of apple blossom.I've read that my particular camera tends to blow out white highlights, and I have that problem in full sun. These shots were taken under a typical Michigan bright overcast sky. No blown out highlights here - I guess that's something to be grateful for!I took a picture of the deer tracks following the loop path that I mow at the south end of our lot.I caught the baby beech leaves just unfolding.

Over the course of the two weeks my husband was gone, I mowed the dratted grass twice, and then it rained the next day both times, causing the grass to instantly grow some more.

My lace group, whose meetings I have been missing very often and very much (they overlap with work), had a trunk show again. Since Kathy (Kirchner, link here) said she would open the sales room at 4pm, I drove up for the sale. I had a great time talking to my lace-making friends. Boy, have I missed these meetings.

Although I don't often get to attend meetings, not having the time means I do have the money to spend. So I bought two books: first, Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling, which is the brand-new Lacis translation of Eva Maria Leszner's Gestrickte Spitzendecken, and Sonja Esbensen's Kunststrick II.

I bought a pair of the Sew-Mate tatting shuttles, one green and one purple.

And (did you guess?) more thread, including more of the Valdani pearl cotton I love so much.

Saturday the child and I went to the Binder Park zoo down near Battle Creek, Michigan. This was supposed to be with his Cub Scout troop, but we didn't manage to link up with them.

Besides the great fun of spending his allowance in the gift shop, here was his absolute favorite part of the zoo: feeding the giraffes in the Wild Africa exhibit.Giraffes, ostriches, zebras, and several other species are free to roam in this large open area. Three of the giraffes came to the giraffe-head-height overlook where we could buy giraffe biscuits to feed them. This guy was the tallest of the three, and if you've ever succumbed to pleading puppy eyes, you know the exact feeling when we ran out of biscuits!

For me, my favorite part was after I drove home from the zoo, my husband was finally home. Right now he and our son are at the movies, and I am finally all alone in the house. Writing my first blog post in a week and a half.

Spring Has Its Charms

First off, oops. Yes, I did say 624 stitches, and I even had 624 written down on a piece of paper . . . but I'm not out to that row yet. Hah. Oops. It's only 432.

Last week I was ramping up for an SCA demo (Society for Creative Anachronism) at Holland, Michigan's tulip festival. This past weekend was Kinderplaats, an area set aside for children's activities.

We had a table with a chain mail shirt I borrowed from my brother to put on kids, someone painting faces, and some other armor they could try on. The chain shirt weighs 23 pounds (about 10.4 kilos), and I put it on and took it off kids many times over the two days.

Monday I was so tired that I hardly remember what I did. I know I worked -- what else? Laundry. I think.

Yesterday I know I washed laundry, because when I mowed the grass for the first time, I couldn't mow under the clothesline for fear of getting fresh juicy green grass clippings on my clean sheets.

Then we went to the library, where I soaked my head in more books, and afterwards ran some errands in town. Then we got home just in time to whisk the dry laundry off the line as it started to sprinkle with rain.

Christel has been sitting around for a few days. I knitted off a needle and counted only 33 stitches where I knew there should be 36. I couldn't find my mistake, so I let Christel sit until I had time to figure out where the error might be.

A couple of nights ago, my brain went *Ding ding ding* and offered up a possible mistake:

Today I sat down and checked, and sure enough, I had done the "YO, SKP" twice and missed out a "YO, K3" in there. So now that it's fixed I can work on Christel and knit out to that 624 stitch row.

My name is Ajax and I approve this post.

The Week in Review

It's spring. Time has gone and sped up on me again. Last week got away completely!

So let's see, what did I do?

Oh, yes, I finally sat down and did the taxes. I e-filed for the first time last year, which meant I didn't get the big instruction book in the mail to nag remind me about them. Which didn't make any difference, because when I saved the .PDF copies, I found that I did them on the same day last year as this year.

Friday we had a canton meeting for our local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) group. It was very small, since a lot of people were either getting ready to go see relatives or cleaning in anticipation of hosting visiting relatives over Easter weekend. But we had tacos. I ate three.

On the way we saw the Adopt-A-Highway sign on I-94 for the Zombie Prom Date Knitters. I drove, so I didn't get a picture, but it's real! Unfortunately, the Michigan Department of Transportation is going to be spraying their section of highway in April, and sent them a notice not to do the scheduled April trash pick-up.

That section of highway really, really needed a trash pick-up, so if you are driving on I-94 in Michigan, it's not the Zombie Prom Date Knitters' fault it looks so bad! They were all psyched and pscheduled to clean it up, and now they have to wait until the next scheduled sweep in July.

Saturday we turned these:


into these:


And we took the child off to an Easter egg hunt. The morning was sunny, so they held the hunt outdoors, but whew! was that wind cold after a while! By the time the kids were done, I was freezing. I was glad to get into my sun-heated car and sit on the warm dark charcoal upholstery.

Easter Sunday the child hunted eggs in our yard, and again at his uncle's house. We spent a lot of time driving and then eating at various relatives' houses. We had a sunny, pleasant Easter and I got to see my almost-8-month-old niece and talk to two of my brothers.

Yesterday I took one of the cars in for maintenance and then we went to the library.

Christel has been languishing for the past week, waiting for me to get back to her. Hopefully I'll have a new picture tomorrow!

February Days

This week I started making a new hooded cloak for our son. I made his first one when he was about four years old.

When he wore it outside, it dragged on the snow behind his heels. That little cloak now falls below his elbows and above his knees: time for a new one!

I've had the fabric for another for years. I used to work for an office furniture manufacturer where employees could buy upholstery and cubicle-wall fabrics for $1 a yard in the company store. 60" wool for $1 a yard!

It's done except for sewing on buttons and making a button tab to hold it shut. And it's long enough that if he outgrows this one, I can claim it for myself!

Here is another bit of excitement we've had this week. Monday I went into the living room and saw a bird in the rose tangle. At first I thought "Blue jay", but then it jumped inside the bush and I said, "You're not a blue jay - what are you?" and saw this!

I ran for my camera, and the bird flew out onto a dead sumac bush and preened itself, at first with its back to me.

Then it spotted me and turned around. After doing a couple of owl-like head dips, it went back to preening itself, while I alternated between trying to get good pictures and taking a good look at it with the binoculars.

Then I started flipping through my field guides, trying to decide whether I was seeing a Cooper's hawk, Accipiter cooperii, or a sharp-shinned hawk, Accipiter striatus.

Because of the very square tail, I'm leaning towards sharp-shinned. But even looking at Cornell's "Tricky Bird IDs: Sharp-shinned Hawk and Cooper's Hawk" page and Accipiter Photo Gallery, I'm still not 100% sure.

Needless to say, there were no other birds on the feeder!

Yesterday's excitement was a sunny, warm (60 F/16 C) day. We spent a lot of time outside, because today's forecast is for rain and fog (which you can see we are getting), with rain, light snow, and high winds tonight.

Weather records for today from the Grand Rapids National Weather Service include a record high of 69 F (about 20 C) in 1999 and a record low of -21 F (-29 C) in 1899.

Although we still have snow, even with all the rain and above-freezing weather, check this out: the daffodils still believe in spring.