The Stitch Witch

I love orange

especially in the sun

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."- Douglas Adams

The sun broke through for an hour or so today around sunset and I couldn't take my eyes off it...

 The fresh, crisp scent of the air right after a thunderstorm on an otherwise sunny afternoon always amazes me. I'm sick to death of the smell of endless soggy rainy days, but a brief shower...that's different. Of course, it could just be that I'm overdosing on vitamin D.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 2 weeks of rain and I'm utterly transfixed by a flaming ball of gas. The sun was visible, right before I snapped this pic and I almost drove off the road because I was too busy staring at it to pay attention to the road. Luckily, it went behind a cloud, breaking the trance and allowing me to take this picture (while paying attention to the road, of course. ahem.)

 

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

Another 3 inches of rain today. Love a duck. We haven't had a full day of sun since June 17th, though we're expecting another on July 5th. Coincidentally, the 17th was my 40th birthday and a friend of mine turns 40 on the 5th. Anyone else out there want to turn 40 and see if that improves the weather? In the meantime, it's Bill Cosby doing "Noah"...the spliced video's a little dorky, but he's still funny to listen to.

Noah's Ark

Lynn was right

Busted 20 minutes ago in the now nearly decimated red calibrachoa:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pox on you and your little slug family, you slimey bastard. You've eaten the only joy that brightened the deck during this endlessly rainy summer.

 

Ten On Tuesday

A little frivolity from Sara:

Ten Guilty Pleasures on TV

(and I ask you: Is there any other kind?)

1. What Not to Wear (TLC version): I love, love Clinton and I suffer from a strange desire to peek into the closets of Schlumpadinkas across America.

2. What Not to Wear (original UK version, with Trinny and Susannah): They're like 2 slightly embarrassing, bossy Aunts who like showing off and mocking their own saddlebags in public.

3. Good Eats: Alton Brown's manner of speaking reminds me of Captain Kirk and I still I think he's hot. Probably I need to get out more.

4. Mythbusters: Crazy redheads paid to test "what ifs" and they blow stuff up.

5. Tim Gunn's Guide to Style: He's so damn proper when he delivers his lecture on the importance of a good foundation (aka, a bra that fits)

6. Will and Grace. Actually, it's Karen and Jack that appeal to me.

7. Sex and the City: So very not me. I own all of them.

8. Eureka. It's the only TV I really want to watch regularly and the only reason the SciFi channel should exist.

9. Charlie Moore: Until I recently started work at 4am on Mondays, there was the Mad Fisherman and beer on Sunday nights.

10. Ab Fab: Patsy and Edina were deliciously awful.

 

Ok, who ate the Petunias?

Every year, I grow petunias. I think they're cute, plus there's the gratifying part where you start out with a teensy little plant in a pot and then it grows and grows and grows until petunia sprawl inhabits most of the deck. The only effect I've ever liked more was the trailing nasturtiums at the Gardener Museum but we're lacking the 30' high window boxes. Plus there's the part where my nasturtiums get sap sucked to death every July so we just didn't bother this year.

But back to purple petunias. During a break in rain showers this morning, I bounded outside to get a few pictures of the daylilies:

The color is wretched. I'm half convinced the world is holding it's breath and turning blue in response to the lack of sunlight and endless rain but I'm also willing to concede this may be further proof that a new camera's in the offing.

While bounding back to the deck, there was this nasty interruption:

Behold, between Saturday afternoon and this morning, some critter toook a scorched earth approach to the petunias. I initally thought "Petunia Sudden Death" (who knows, there could be such a thing) but there isn't a scrap of Petunia like vegetation left on the leaves or the surrounding deck. What eats Petunias this thoroughly? Google insists that what I really want is the deets about Petunia Dursley-gotta say, even though I've been out of books for over a year, googling Harry Potter trivia isn't going to be one of my hobbies any time in the near (or distant) future. Whatever it was, it wasn't interested in the Hibiscus (though few things ever are) and the tomatoes surrounding the petunias are unscathed. You can't see them in this pic, but besides the tomato in the pot adjacent to the former petunias, there are 4 more planted hay bales right next to the deck and they're easily accessible to slugs and other oogies. So, I'm stumped. And petunia-less. I'm a little put out, to say the least.

Yep, sometimes there is actually knitting related content.

 Last fall, when Mom and Lauren "organized" my stash for me, the one good thing that came out of it was Lauren's brilliant idea to put all the UFOs in one bin.  At the time, I was too freaked out by the fact that my stash was now organized strictly by color...roving with laceweight and so on...to do more than peek in the UFO bin and slam the lid shut. An honest accounting of the victims of my ADD and overall fickleness really wasn't appealing, and the sight of everything rounded up into one place was actually pretty appalling. Knitted UFOs are squishy and lend themselves nicely to tucking into corners of bookcases and hiding in the outside pockets of overnight bags, or random desk drawers at work and the deep storage pockets on the backs of the minivan seats. Dogs pee on trees, I spread stash. (wool smells better.) Anyhoo, she unearthed this glorious and lonely not-quite-a-sock that, having dug through the archives, I've determined was started in March of 2006.

When used properly, blog archives are excellent tools for self flagellation.

Mountain Colors Bearfoot, Sierra. The pattern's something from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks..possibly Crossed Rib but I really don't remember. I dug up this guy a few years ago for the UFO resurrection project and made the mistake of restarting it on a day with a funeral in Nashua in the morning and Harlot in Northhampton that night. In a fog of exhaustion, I completely boggled the toe decreases -the seams were spreading further and further apart (it looked pretty nifty and I wish I'd taken a picture before ripping back) and it found itself reabandoned. 

It's a very warm sock, not a trait typically appreciated in June unless one is stuck in an interminable spring weather pattern. It'd be lovely in the fall. And it's the first soon-to-be-former UFO from my little ennui busting, UFO finishing project. I figure if I start with things that are half done, then I'm already halfway to the end right from the get go.

It almost makes sense.

The face on the plate

So, we had a "moment" the other day where Daniel made the connection between the cute little oinker on the left and the pork chops he loves so much. And bacon. Tasty bacon now has a face.

 

 

Actually, it now has two faces.

It's not as if I've kept the origins of food a big secret...we've been going to the farm regularly for the past 10 years or so, partly to support local growers and local food and partly because I have this silly idea that the kids ought to know where their food comes from.  Besides, every spring, when the wee piglets are playing in the pen previously occupied by the big pigs, Nick always announces to no one in particular but everyone in the barn "OH! THE BIG PIGS ARE TASTY BACON NOW!!! WHEN THESE PIGGIES WILL GROW UP THEY'LL BE TASTY BACON TOO! YUM!!"  (for the record, Nick had a little problem with volume regulation and tends to speak LOUDLY.) Inevitably, some nearby mother rushes to cover her little Junior's tender ears before he learns the reality of dinner. But we've never been shy about it...countless dinners have a erupted into near melees because Nick, who's quite literal, gets hung up yet again on WHY IS HAMBURGER CALLED HAMBURGER WHEN HAM IS FROM PIGS? THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE BECAUSE CHICKEN IS FROM CHICKEN SO IT SHOULD BE COW BURGERS AND PIG CHOPS. At this point, one of his sisters will inevitably (and snidely) suggest renaming bacon "pig strips" and want to know what steak should be called? Slab of cow? Somewhere in the midst of Nick's sputtering response, Grandpa, who surely had no intention of spending his 60's mediating the same damn dinner conversation at least once a week for 5 years straight and is perhaps wondering what he's done to deserve such a fate, loses it and LOUDLY demands silence. After a 30 second or so pause, Nick will opine that IT SHOULD JUST BE CALLED COW. HOT TASTY COW.

(If your mealtimes are boring, feel free to look us up. Dinner time's always an adventure and guests willing to try and hold their own against the barrage of questions are always welcome.) 

Anyhoo, moving past the mealtime mayhem digression, Daniel's consideration of the meat on his plate has been fairly abstract, at least until he'd spent 10 minutes fooling around with future food.  So he's sworn off pork chops. And bacon. Bacon's a big deal because he loves bacon. Cow is off the food list, though he's never been a big fan, so I think he's pleased to have a reason to not eat it. Chicken is still food, though I'm curious to see where we'll go with that. He's never liked eggs and I'm wondering what'll happen when he makes the connection between eggs, fluffy yellow chicks and drumsticks.  Conveniently, I was vegetarian (and vegan) for a number of years, so we're fairly well equipped for this evolving moral and culinary exploration. And we'll see where it leads us.

Saturday Sky

Here comes the rain again...

Sometimes, you just need to get out of the house and wander back into ordinary bits of life.   

Which is what we did this week. A trip to the recently expanded farmstand was long overdue. The pigs are always cute and we usually end up spend a ridiculous amount of time visiting them. Besides, as Nick will loudly point out, one day they're going to be tasty bacon. Mmmmmmm...we LOVE tasty bacon. 

Lull's motto is "Eat Your View". In the interest of supporting our local farms we, of course, take this quite seriously. Sorry, Wilbur.

The sheep are always entertaining, too.

Every couple of years, I manage to get a picture of Grace in a pose vaguely similar to whichever creature she's visiting at the moment.  

My all time favorite picture of her is was taken at the farm when she was two or so: 

It's the sort of picture Moms like to show prospective boyfriends for the sole purpose of embarrassing their daughters so I'm keeping it safe for future use. I think it actually might be a little more effective than the usual nekkid bathtub pics.

The boys played with sheep, too, though they had the sense to not get caught doing anything silly. At least not this time out. 

We planned to go strawberry picking but the weather's been wretchedly uncooperative. No homemade strawberry preserves this year, I think.  Our spindly pea plants at home are in the process of giving up the ghost, and Grace and I are greedy for fresh peas, so we bought three pounds. She ate almost all of them while I was working, little grub.

And this year, I indulged myself. I wanted to grow castor beans for years but they were too freaking poisonous to grow around a horde of small kids. At this point, Daniel is 8, old enough that the chats about poisonous plants have stuck so

on the unused (and frequently unvisited) side of the garage that faces the neighbor's yard, I planted Castors.  I discovered, in a strange twist of irony, that the soil over there is great, possibly the best on the entire property. Best guess is that Mom never bothers maintaining that side so the leaves and other bits of organic material actually have a chance to break down and the result is a 4 foot wide stretch of loose, cakey soil that's loaded with earthworms. Provided the sun ever comes out, the Castors ought to do pretty well over there.

"On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death." Anne Lamott, Plan B

I'm sitting at the computer, a mere 7 days past 40, Nutella in one hand, spoon in the other, fully prepared to hasten my demise. Conveniently, I've got to put both down in order to type. It's difficult to overdose on hazelnut flavored palm oil when one likes to think on the computer.

Life isn't hopeless. I'm not even depressed. I am in a rut, though. Have been for a quite bit and it's reasonable to assume that if I succumb to eating Nutella by the jarful, it'll be nigh unto impossible to haul myself out of the rut. My Nutella enhanced butt'll drag me back down and there I'll be, stuck in the bottom of the rut, arms and legs flailing uselessly in manner reminscent of the hapless beetles I used to upend for amusement as a child. Won't even be able to reach the Nutella and wouldn't that be a crying shame?

Ever have your sense of the absurd leave you? Nutella induced flights of fancy aside, that's more or less where I'm at.  My head's usually teeming with nonsense inspired by my surroundings...if a leaking water main breaks in the store, is it possible to surf the result wave on a hollow core door? How much worsted wool would it take to knit a cozy for the Sienna? How many generations of chipmunks does it take to burrow through the sill of the house? (that's actually an experiment still underway. Three years and the little bastards are still trying. Haven't succeeded, yet.)

When Milo ended up in the Doldrums, I think it was a bit like this.

This isn't a sudden thing, though my awareness is. Had this little epiphany while reading Helprin in the minivan Sunday evening. No, silly, I wasn't driving; I was parked in front of the house. Lacked the desire to read in the house and the motivation to go somewhere else. A parked minivan in front of the house seemed like a perfectly reasonable compromise.

(Helprin has a joyous sense of the absurd and it's as subtle as getting slapped in the face with a fish. Read Winter's Tale. You'll love it. Or not. There's rarely an in between. )

So I spent this morning reading 4 1/2 years of my blog posts. For the record, 4 1/2 years of posts in a single sitting is entirely too much of oneself.  Anyhoo, it was interesting...the dwindling number of book reviews, the increasing number of incomplete fiber relating projects, the occasional half assed attempt to rouse myself from the encroaching apathy.

Some of this was definitely a result of my workaholic tendencies. All work and no play made Erica a dull, dull girl.  But I ditched the workaholic act last spring during that wake up call known as corporate restructuring.  And despite my best intentions (like the 101/1001 list), I never really got around to rejoining life during the extra 30-40 hours a week I regained. 

I don't know what I do want to do, but I do know I don't want to be a bloody apathetic middle aged couch potato.

In lieu of knowing what to do and where or how to begin, I'm dusting off the sadly neglected 101/1001 list, picking an item and having at it. Sometimes, forcing yourself to do anything creates enough momentum for something to happen. It's that whole "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" thing.

I'd like to believe that choosing "Summer Blue" for a font color'd somehow cast a little spell of appropriately summery weather over New England, but I know better. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happily, I went a little overboard taking pics of our next door neighbor's Northern Catalpa on Sunny Wednesday ("Sunny Wednesday"...I figure we're getting one good, completely sunny day, what, once every two weeks now? So, the sunny day gets to be a holiday until we have another sunny day, then that suny day gets to be the holiday. See? Sort of a rolling holiday for those people who don't normally worry about having to break out the light boxes this time of year.) My parents used to have two on their property but Mom prefers wee, manageable ornamentals to tall, leafy, shade casting ornamentals so she had them chopped down. There is something a little unnatural about moving from a tree covered lot in the treeless city to a tree covered lot in tree covered New Hampshire and then choosing to chop down all the trees on your new lot so you now live on a treeless lot in a tree covered state.  Coincidentally, just after the Great Tree Smiting, the family on the lot behind my parent's chopped down all of their trees.  Caught up in the throes of oneupsmanship (well, probably not, but it sounds good) they took it to the extreme and also amputated the limbs of any neighboring trees audacious enough to overhang their property (Mom would do this but I won't let her). Now why the hell would anyone move to New Hampshire if they didn't want trees?  As far as I know, eradicating the trees on your property is NOT an effective method for preventing fall leaves from populating your front lawn. Just saying.

Ok, so maybe blogging an hour after taking a muscle relaxant for one's bitchy back is akin to drunk dialing.  Have a little more blue sky, I'm going to bed.

Might need an ark one of these days

 

Enough said.

Goodbye, blue sky

At least the clouds returned with a little style:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now they're back to that monotonous grey crap we've grown accustomed to (actually, I can't prove that-it's dark out)

I did discover a lone pea pod while poking around this evening. The peas aren't doing as poorly as I'd assumed (and occasionally, being wrong is a great thing) There was much silly dancing and rejoicing over this little guy.

 

 

 

And we'll see what this looks like in a few days.  It might be time for a larger rain gauge (don't tell me to dump it out-where's the fun in that?)

"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." -- Lucille Ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, I am 40 and I'm fairly pleased about it, though that might be slightly influenced by  the muscle relaxants for my back.  I think I'll give most of the credit to the sunshine, though. 

Blue skies and sunshine can cure just about anything, especially when doled out in the miniscule portions we've experienced lately. In fifth grade, I read a Bradbury short story called All Summer In a Day. It's a quick story, but for those who aren't going to read it, it takes place on Venus where the sun only shines for 2 hours every 7 years.  It's beginning to feel a bit like that.  Bah.

There's no knitting happening right now. I'd actually started a post last night about being careful about getting what one wishes for with respect to being laid up and having lots of knitting time, but I was under the influence of back drugs and completely incoherent. As is my knitting right now. Cabled knitting + 10mg of Flexeril = much frogging.  I knit and reknit the same four rows enough times to convert the wool into a rat's nest and ended up pitching it. (just the rat nesty part, not the whole skein)

Because I was incapable of being even remotely productive (or sitting upright for that matter) I lounged on the couch and watched The Devil Wears Prada. Twice.  I indulged in a What Not To Wear intermission between Prada viewings.

You're right, my personal fashion statement consists of jeans, V neck shirts with 3/4 length sleeves, and Doc Martens in varying hues. And geek glasses. Got nothing to offer for an explanation here, just that occasionally I enjoy this stuff. OK, and I have a HUGE crush on Clinton Kelly and his argyle. No wonder I'm single. 

Anyway, enough about my closet fashion addiction (terrible pun intended), admire the peppers. Despite the lack of sun, they're actually thriving. I don't know that's about, especially since the pickling cukes have officially shuffled off to the Great Garden In The Sky, the tomatoes are looking a little pale (though it's been coool enough to futz with their ability to fix nitrogen so I'm not worried, yet) and the peas...

...the peas are small and pale and look like hell, but they are starting to flower. I don't know, the plants that usually thrive are failing and the plants that usually fail are thriving. It's a topsy turvy spring in the garden.

Indoors, the book culling has been temporarily suspended til the magical day where I can bend over and pick up more than a book at a time. No, no, I would never lift while bending, especially right now when I can't really bend at all. Though, the stacks are tall enough that adding to them requires no bending.  More than another foot taller, and they'll likely be a bookalanche hazard, though. These guys are going to the library sale, unless I can motivate myself enough to sell them online. I briefly debated bringing a bunch of them to the local used bookstore for credit, but that'd result in many, many "new to me" books coming home and that's not the purpose of this exercise.  It is tempting, though.