ABC-Along 2008 ~ R through Z ~ Happy New Year

Prospero Ano y Felicidad!

Warning!! Image heavy post!!

The end of ABC~Along 2008

R is for Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez by guitarist Julian Bream (w/Chamber Orchestra of Europe):

S is for winter Snowstorms in the Midwest (four hours worth of snow on a previously snowfree lawn):

T is for Trees, my favorite thing in nature to photograph, especially with my Mamiya film camera although these are shot using my digital Canon PowerShot:

U is for porcelain Unicorn music box, a gift to me from my beloved oldest niece when she was only seven years old:

V is for Virginia, my mother’s name and the initials on this wooden box made for her more than 55 years ago by my father ~ similar to the tabletop in R and U above and W and Y below; the box is walnut; the letters are birch; the letter inlays are marquetry ~ a painstakingly long process of drawing images, cutting them out of wood and stacking them into a veneer, one of my father's many hobbies (sorry for the bad flash blur spot; I tried to bounce the flash using a white T-shirt to soften the flash, but it didn't work):

W is for Wagner Ware cast-iron frying pans:


X is for Xbox 360:

IMAGE x

Y is for YoYo Ma’s version of the Bach Concertos, my second most favorite album, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by Perlman being the first:

Z is for Zero calorie diet Pepsi, hubby’s lifeline:

FIN! This ABC~Along was a LOT of fun even if I had to catch up on more than half the alphabet on the last two days of the year!!

ABC-Along 2008 ~ L, M, N, O, P, Q

How’s this for staying on track over the duration of a long-term project?!

L is for Love in any time, especially in the Time of Cholera

M is for my husband Mike, who does not let me photograph him, so Maneki Neko the beckoning cat will have to do

N is for Needles, knitting of course, here is a small sampling:

O is for Ornaments, of the Christmas variety (the faded, missing half-a-leg, little "tin" nutcracker was made by my favorite niece about 20 years ago and spent the first 15 years of its life hanging from the rearview mirror of my car):

P is for purple, but in this case, Pottery, a mainstay in every available space in this house:

Q is for the handmade/hand-stitched patchwork Quilt my mother made me (yes, every single stitch on this overly large, king-sized quilt was completed by hand, without a stitch on the sewing machine):

Merry Christmas ~ Mele Kalikimaka

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau'oli Makahiki Hou - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Above you have your Bing and the Andrews Sisters version, below Jimmy Buffett, but one has to wonder why it's Merry Christmas from Florida when it should be Mele Kalikimaka from Hawai'i) Shaka, bro!

Korknisse and Cookie A. Has a Book Coming Out

I love these guys!! I need a wine-bottle cork source because these tapered-type corks don't make good bodies. I'll also need to make a trip to Jo-Ann's to get some ribbon and perhaps tiny bells. This isn't in great focus because I was freezing and because my camera was, too. I took four snaps and my camera started to complain to me. The temps are below zero.

See the tiny red berries on my burning bush? Neither can I, at least not with my naked eye. With the help of this photo and an extra click to embiggen, though, you will be able to see them. I hope the wildlife can find them. We had more snow today and more to come by tomorrow afternoon. We have about 15" of accumulation so far since Friday ~ not counting the drifts or plowed piles.

Our beloved Cookie has a book of sock patterns entitled Sock Innovation: Knitting Techniques and Patterns for One-of-a-Kind Socks set to be released in April 2009 ~ can't wait!!! (For those of you who don't remember, Cookie gave us such superb creations as Pomatomus, Monkey, Hedera, Red Herring, and more.)

Oh, Baby, It's Cold Outside on the Winter Solstice

Taken from my bedroom window. I didn't have the courage to try to go outside today.

Winds are very strong today, making the windchill effect -18°F. Brrrrrrrr!!!! Happy Winter Solstice!!

I hope my new trees make it through this winter. In the fall I had two maples planted, a Red Sunset and a Chinese Paperbark. We have a terrible wind tunnel-effect in our yard due to the proximity of the houses, so I really hope my little one that hubby never staked will make it! It's a somewhat rare for this region maple, an orange Chinese Paperbark that has the most splendid cinnamon-colored, peeling bark.

This isn't my tree. Mine has a one-inch circumference trunk. A baby.

I really wanted an American Sycamore because it, too, has a splendid bark, a green-brown camouflage-look:

But Sycamores grow too fast and too wide for the space we have. Their canopies can grow to be in excess of 50 feet wide. I spent almost a year researching trees that met our space, environment, shade/sun needs and my aesthetic desire to have beautiful fall foliage. I was lucky to find a local nursery that carried the paperbark, a slow growing and smaller variety of maple. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Ten and One-Half Inches

Well, 10.5 inches in a few hours and more on the way:

We have almost 36 inches piled up next to the driveway:

More snow is on the way today, Monday, and Wednesday. Yeeesh! Here it comes:

It is so absolutely beautiful out right now, large, fluffy snow, lots of snow already, which always makes for such a wonderful sound buffer; although it is 4:54 a.m., lots of Christmas lights are still on, and the street lights make the snow look beautiful. I wish my flash had some power or that I could hold my camera still enough to get a decent landscape shot without having to dig my tripod out. Still. It is lovely. Take my word for it.

The good news is I finished my cowl ~ just in time:

Project Specs:
Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss ~ 70% merino wool, 30% silk (220 yards/50 gr), in Concord Grape (left over from DH's binary hat that used about six rounds of Grape, very close to one full skein)
Needles: size 4 Inox circs (16”) (cast-on with size 10 for elastic fit)
Pattern: Poinsettia by Anne Hanson of Knitspot (free on Winter 2008 Knitty)
I was so SURE I would run out of yarn that I didn't knit the last round, but it still worked out fine. Yum!!

Snow Day and the Letter J

We had a snow day today, the first one of this year, both academic and otherwise. Last year we didn't have any snow days despite some incredibly bad weather and poor decision making on the part of the administration not to cancel classes at a commuter college. Canceling classes today didn't mean much for most of my campus since the last day of the semester is tomorrow, so little teaching can be done, perhaps a few final exams, but there are less than a handful of Saturday morning classes, and very few classes are held on Fridays anyway, so not much other than support staff got the day off. Here's our trusty and trusted weatherman, Chuck G.:

Hopefully everyone was prepared because there had been a significant amount of news coverage about the changing weather conditions. Last Sunday evening it rained all night and continued all day Monday, with temps rising to about 37F degrees. All the previous layers of snow melted. We were back to green grass. Now we have in excess of 10 inches in most places in the Southeastern part of the state, and I imagine a lot more in the U.P. ~ and all of this in one day over a six hour period. We often had more than 2" of accumulation per hour. It was blinding, I tell ya! But wonderful. There is absolutely NO chance of NOT having a white Christmas. (Ugh, double negatives!!!)

Tonight I finished grading all the essays for all my remaining classes (two early start-short-semester accelerated classes already finished in October.) WHEW!! I am GLAD to be finished with that. Now just a few more assignments that are due tomorrow, figure out grand totals, post after midnight, and I am done. YIPPPEEEEE!!!!

I realized I am woefully behind in ABC-Along. Oh well, Burns was right about the best laid plans . . .

Here is my letter J:

Jergens hand lotion, the lifeline of my existence. I single-handedly have kept Jergens handcreme on the market and the company in business for more than 45 years. I don't know what I would do without it. I have other specialty handcremes that I also indulge in, including some heavy-duty ones for this time of year or when I am knitting a lot, but this is my 400 time per day staple. My letter K will be knitting, of course!

Chance and Good Fortune

Holiday Business: After you read this post, please head over to the Harlot's and donate to Doctors/Knitters Without Borders. Just the amount one would use for sock yarn would be good if all of us out there donated.

Poinsettia at Knitty by Anne Hanson:

You really need to click to embiggen this image because at the bottom of the cast-on you can see snowflakes that are clinging to this (shot in the wee small hours of the morning on snow in front of my house).

For the most part I try to arrange my schedule so that I teach late afternoon or evening classes, and it can get fairly cold in the evenings and at night in the Midwest. I am generally on campus late at night, usually after 11:00 p.m., and the cold, bitter wind can really bother my neck, chest, and throat after long days of lecturing in acoustically challenged classrooms and very long walks through campus and parking lots.

For a several years now, I’ve wanted to make myself a lightweight, warm, soft scarf or shortish cowl because my neck is often very cold when I go to and from work. I don’t want the bulk of an all out scarf or a decent sized cowl. I have been thinking a lot about dickies ala EZ, now commonly referred to as *neckwarmers* or *smokerings,* and just the other day I saw this while reading someone’s blog ~ a beautiful compact neckwarmer named Spiralucious by Anne Hanson of Knitspot fame.

Although I love this pattern, I was still thinking about something that was more like the dickies of my youth, the standard blue ribbed things that had longish sort of flaps or tails that tucked under one's shirt while at school. They were always navy blue to match our Catholic-school uniforms: deep navy blue cotton jumpers with white blouses. No ornamentation was ever allowed (this was in the 60s), and the Spartan blue dickies were the only additions allowed to our uniforms to help stave off the drafts in the 100+ year old poorly insulated/windowed schoolhouse.

I wasn't necessarily thinking of a ribbed neckwarmer, but one that had those flaps or tails so that I could tuck the thing down inside my coat or ideally, use it keep my neck and chest warm so that I didn't have to zip my coat and have all the bulk of it strangling up on me when I drive.

I’ve been coveting several of Anne’s patterns for just about as long as I’ve been considering what to do to warm my neck without the bulk, and I decided to purchase the above pattern. Before doing so, I somewhat fortuitously decided to take another look at Ice Queen on Knitty (Winter 2007) because I remember falling in love with the gossamer-like beauty of this cowl but knew deep down that it would not be warm enough or the fabric dense enough for my needs (yes, I’m at that age when function beats out form every time). When I went to Knitty, I suddenly realized the new Winter 2008 edition/issue was out, so I quickly scanned the patterns, when what to my wondering eyes did appear near the end of the list but a neckwarmer named Poinsettia by Anne herself!

I immediately went about printing out the pattern, grabbing the leftover purple Gloss from hubby’s binary hat, cast-on, and have the beginnings to what is EXACTLY what I wanted and need: a pretty, yet warmly functional neckwarmer/dickie that is a little bit longer than Spiralucious in my favorite color to match my winter jacket by one of the great knitting designers!! And the pattern is FREE! Great good fortune all around ~ and all by chance!

Imaginary Eye Candy Friday

Sorry, this might take a bit of time to load. Either the images are a bit too big and need some file shrinking or blogger is pretty slow to upload today.

Several days ago, I finished hubby’s no-longer-a-surprise-binary-Christmas-hat.

He’s a computer programmer by trade, so this grouping of 1s and 0s makes sense to those who can think in binary terms, and the numbers represent the words “I love Mike” wrapped on their own rows. You should click on this image to embiggen to see the lovely 1s and 0s.

Before I even finished braiding the ends, he was off and wearing it on his nightly perambulations. He seems to prefer this fabric to the other 100% wool ones for walks in this weather since it’s not unbearably cold yet ~ nighttime temps remain in the low 20s F.

Project Specs:

Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss ~ 70% merino wool, 30% silk (220 yards/50 gr), in Burgundy, Pumpkin, Concord Grape, and Dusk (lots left over ~ maybe one full skein total or just over)
Needles: size 4 Addi~turbo circs (24”), Plymouth Yarns Bamboo 8” DPN when too small for circs (cast-on with size 8 for elastic fit)
Pattern: my own, a standard purl-banded hat with iCord topping

Hubby pretended to be interested in the hat while I was knitting. He often remarked that he liked the colors. When he figured it out it was for him, he obligingly tried it on. Then when it came to the iCord, he said “oh, no, not one of those Dr. Suess Cindy-Lou-Who things on top,” to which I felt no small amount of dismay, but left it on nonetheless. Who can have a hat without iCord if an iCord possibility presents itself to the nature of the hat?

I would have had some incredible eye-candy for today had I remembered my promise to take my camera with me yesterday when we went out to eat. We left the restaurant right around twilight and were heading home west into the setting sun. On our way to and from the restaurant, we can take a route that winds its way through the last remaining farmland in this once very rural area.

In my mind, not much can beat the view of vast expanses of furrowed and plowed farmland waiting to hibernate over the winter, near a stand of leaf-shorn maples a deep-red barn sits amidst a snow-laden field with Canada geese flying in formation overhead against a blue-grey Midwestern winter sky. To see this at twilight, with the golden-pink hues that brush the rivulets of clouds that mirror the furrowed fields is quite breathtaking. We oohed and ahhed all the way home, but once we got home, I couldn’t get my camera out quick enough to catch the dying light.

I know better, I really do. Any trip out that way, to my favorite place to eat French toast (yes, for dinner!) or to the movies will always hold some wonderful sights, and I am usually without my camera even though I always promise myself never to venture to that area without it.

So today you will have to settle for a binary hat and my meager word picture.