Three on Thursday: Looking Ahead to October

I can't believe it's the last day of September! Time seems to have gotten into some sort of weird warp this month, as it's simultaneously felt very long and also like it's flown by. I've already talked about it being a stressful month, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is hoping that October will be calmer. So I'm linking up with Carole and friends today for Three on Thursday, this week with three things I'm looking forward to in the new month.

One of my two full drawers of hand-knit socks

1. Wearing my hand knits
I run cold most of the time, so I always look forward to the time of year when there's a chill in the air and it's reasonable to be wearing wool. My feet especially enjoy being covered in hand-knit socks. Our high temperatures are still running a little above normal these days, but it's starting to cool off enough that my feet are comfortable in wool again. This morning, it was 46F/8C when we got up! So socks will be in the regular rotation now, although sock washing is going to need to look a little different now that Rainbow has moved up into what was the stash room and I'll have to find another place to put my drying racks.

2. Designing more
It's been a pretty crummy year for me in terms of designing and creativity. Whereas in past years I've published roughly one pattern a month, I've only gotten four out so far this year, one of them a third-party pattern that I actually designed last year. I just haven't felt all that inspired. But lately I've gotten some new ideas that I want to swatch, and I feel like I might have a bunch of patterns ready to release in the last months of the year. Fingers crossed!

3. Rhinebeck!
Barring any last-minute changes, I will be on my way to Rhinebeck two weeks from today. I've already reserved the days off from work and purchased a festival shirt that I'll pick up at the fairgrounds. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about being around that many people, but I'm vaccinated, I have a stack of N95 masks to take, and I'm hoping that the safety measures the festival has put in place will be effective. My desire to go this year has less to do with buying stuff and more to do with seeing people, especially my dear friend Amy, whose booth I'll be working in. I have not seen her since December 2019 at the visitation for Scooterpie. This will be the first Rhinebeck without him there, and I can imagine it will be emotional, so while I'll be there to do the physical labor of setting up the booth and selling the yarn and fiber, I can imagine that much of the labor involved will be emotional. I know that many people who normally go to Rhinebeck will be skipping it this year, but if you do plan on being there and want to say hi, I'll post more specific details of where we'll be once I know them.

Is there anything special you're looking forward to in October? I'd love to hear!

Three Reasons for Excitement

It's Friday-eve, so I'm linking up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday, this week with three things that I'm excited about right now!

1. Fall weather has arrived! We had a front move through yesterday that brought rain (and even, at one point, a tornado watch), and it left some decidedly cooler weather in its wake. Right now it's 57 F (that's about 14 C), and that looks to be the highest we'll get today. It will warm up a little in the next couple of days, but not a whole lot, and I am excited to get out my lighter sweaters and hand-knit socks!

2. Tonight is Curriculum Night at Rainbow's school. You might know this as parent/teacher night or back to school night; basically it's the evening at the beginning of the school year when the parents go to meet their child's teachers and hear about what they'll be covering in class that year. I'm really excited to go because I only know one of her teachers this year (and it's because she used to babysit me when I was about Rainbow's age and the teacher was in grad school). We also haven't been able to go in for this kind of thing since fall 2019, when she was still in the elementary school building, so things are bound to be different!

3. This weekend is the Great Race. It's a local event that the Mister and I have been doing together for years (we do the 5K), although in past years I've run it and I'm planning to walk this year. Last year it wasn't held at all, though you could still sign up and do it virtually (i.e., run on your own and submit your time online), which we did, though it certainly didn't have the same feel to it. One of the things I love best about this race is that you get views of the city you'd never otherwise get on foot. It would have been nice to run it, but I'm not going to push myself because I haven't been training and am not sure how my hip would take it, but since I've been regularly walking 5+ miles a day, I figure I can put on the gas a bit for a measly 3.1 miles.

I hope you have some things to be excited about this weekend, and I'll catch you back here on Sunday!

Thursday Funnies

Just a quick post from me today -- I'm joining up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday with three images that made me laugh. I hope they give you a chuckle as well!

1. I passed these mops leaning against a building to dry on my walk over the weekend and thought they looked like angry faces. When I passed them again, I noticed the sign behind them and had to snap a photo -- they're mop bouncers!

2. Rainbow has been asking for honeydew all summer, but for some reason they've been really hard to find. Finally, on Sunday, the Mister found one, and you might say it's big enough to make up for not having found one earlier in the summer. I was joking with Rainbow as I was about to cut it up that it was as big as a baby, and she snapped this photo of me hamming it up with the melon:

(In case you were wondering, it was bigger than my largest knife and, even after giving Rainbow a big bowl of melon chunks to eat right away, what I cut up filled up three takeout food containers. We only just used up the first one this morning!)

3. I was taking an online survey earlier this week, and it asked me which Pennsylvania metro area I lived in. See if you can find what made me laugh out loud (and here's your reminder that spell check isn't always useful):

I hope you find many reasons to laugh today!

Three Reasons to Celebrate

Just a quick post from me today because I'm slammed with work, but it's conveniently Thursday, so I'm joining up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday. Today, I've got three reasons to celebrate in the next several days.

1. It's our anniversary today!

Us under the chuppah

The Mister and I are celebrating 14 years of marriage today, which feels like a lot. It's not an especially important number of years and it's a workday, so we're not doing much. We exchanged cards this morning, and I'll make us a good dinner tonight. We didn't get each other gifts but instead decided that we're going to get some new linens for our bed (are we exciting or what?).

2. We have a long weekend ahead of us!
My office is "closing" at 2 p.m. tomorrow ahead of the holiday weekend, and we'll all be off on Monday for Labor Day. Which leads me to ...

3. It's an extra-long holiday weekend.
In addition to being Labor Day, Monday is also my sister-in-law's birthday and, at sundown, is the start of Rosh Hashanah, so we will be having a big family dinner to celebrate all of the above. As if that wasn't enough, my brother and sister-in-law are also moving into their new house tomorrow, so we'll be bringing dinner to them tomorrow evening and probably helping them to get settled in over the next few days.

I hope that whatever you have planned for the weekend ahead, you can find at least one reason to celebrate, if not three!

 

Three on Thursday: Sweater Planning

I'm joining with Carole and friends this week for Three on Thursday with three sweaters I'd like to knit soon-ish. I know many of you are still dealing with record heat and probably don't want to think about covering yourself in wool just yet, but I've already noticed that the days are getting shorter, and that means that fall isn't that far away. If I want to have new sweaters to wear when the weather is suitable for them, I need to get started soon.

The first of the three sweaters, shouldn't be a surprise because I've been spinning for it for a while now. It's the Shifty pullover (Ravelry link) by Andrea Mowry.

I'm planning to start this one just as soon as the spinning is done, which I'm hoping will be within a week or two. I'm thinking of this as my Rhinebeck sweater, whether or not Rhinebeck ends up happening. It's on as of right now, but with the Delta COVID variant wreaking havoc, you never know what will happen.

The second sweater is one I've had my eye on while it was in testing and even bought in the presale before it went live. It's Recalibrate (Ravelry link) by Shana Cohen. 

This top is knit mostly sideways, with some vertical garter panels, and it looks like it would be great for smaller amounts of handspun that might not be enough for a sweater on their own but would be enough if combined with other skeins.

Finally, there's Garland (Ravelry link) by Stephanie Lotven:

This actually a two-fer because there's a matching girl's version that I also got so that Rainbow and I could have coordinating sweaters (not matching, of course -- she's way too mature for the Mommy and Me look now!). We haven't planned too far ahead, but we've discussed potentially doing them in a neutral shade that would be the same and then using some multicolor handspun for the colorwork. 

Am I the only one already thinking about sweaters? I hope not! Have a great end to your week and see you back here on Sunday for a handspun update!

Three on Thursday: 3 R's Edition

First, an update: Two days have passed and 60 rows have been worked on my wrap. I'm right on track and expect I will have a significant update for you early next week.

It's Thursday, so I am linking up with Carole for Three on Thursday this week with something a little different.

I have long thought of myself as a bit of an environmentalist. I was one of those annoying kids who was telling you to recycle, and I've turned into one of those annoying adults who has no qualms about pulling things out of the trash that should be in the recycling bin and vice versa. While I haven't explicitly taught Rainbow to be like me, I'm delighted that she's taken the message of environmentalism so much to heart and has pushed me to do better. So I wanted my three items today to be the so-called three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle.

1. Reduce
I have really been making a concerted effort the past few years to reduce how much we throw out in the trash. Nearly all of our food waste gets tossed into the composter -- fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, bread that's gone stale, etc. I also occasionally add paper like newspaper and the paper trays that produce often gets packaged in. Come fall, I add in leaves and yard waste. I have yet to actually use any of my compost, but I also have yet to fill the container up and have it stay that way, so I know stuff is breaking down well.

I've also been trying to have a "make do and mend" mindset. I am more likely to sew up/darn holes in clothing, which is really helped by the fact that visible mending is very in right now. When there's an item that really isn't salvageable, I try to see if it can be useful in another way (as cleaning rags or stuffing for well-loved stuffed animals, for instance).

2. Reuse
This has long been a practice in our house. We have the reusable water bottles and mugs (and use them pretty much every day). We take cloth bags to do our grocery shopping. But here's an area where Rainbow has made us better. She asked if we could get some more cloth napkins to use on a daily basis. I had bought a handful of cheap ones from the Target Dollar Spot a while back, but we only used them when we wanted to feel a little fancy and used paper napkins most of the time. After she expressed this desire, I ordered a set of 24 cloth napkins -- not particularly fancy ones, just ones with printed designs on them so that any stains wouldn't be too obvious -- and we've been using them ever since. I try to use just one a day (so for three meals) if I can, and the dirty ones get placed on top of the washing machine so they can get thrown in with our regular laundry. Plus I also find ironing them to be strangely satisfying, despite the fact that I normally hate ironing. Rainbow has also asked that our next step be to replace the Dixie cups we use in the bathroom with washable cups as soon as our supply runs out.

3. Recycle
I've been known to be a little militant about recycling, and anything that possibly can be recycled is in this house. We are even recycling all the paper Trader Joe's bags we got when we were allowed to use the cloth bags by using them as liners for our inside receptacle and then placing the filled bags into our city recycling bins that we put out at the curb. I've been a little disappointed that our city's rules have changed in the past year and there are some things that we used to be able to put in the bin and now can't (like the clam shell plastic packaging that berries and grapes often come in and the plastic cups that yogurt comes in). I recently heard that there is an organization that does a collection of some of these plastics a few times a year and will be looking into that. I am glad that our city is determined to go plastic bag free in its recycling collection and has been distributing the big blue bins to all residents free of charge (did you know that those blue plastic bags that they told us to put our recyclables into for so many years are not only not recyclable themselves but actually jam up the machinery used to sort items in the recycling?).

The photo at the top of this post has nothing to do with the three R's, but it's relevant to the general efforts to be kind to the Earth. This patch of Russian sage originated on our neighbor's side of the fence. For years it kept creeping under to our side and I kept pulling it out. One year I just let it go because it was pretty, and since then I've discovered that the bees love it (and we all know how important bees are to our ecosystem). Last year I transplanted a couple of sprigs of it to our backyard, and I was delighted to see that they were still alive this year. I'm hoping that in a few years we have a bit patch of it and have a garden that's friendly to pollinators.

If you have other suggestions for how we can all reduce our footprint and be good stewards of the Earth, I'd love to hear them! I hope you all have a good end to your week and a relaxing weekend.

Three Unrelated Things

It's Thursday, and it's been one of those weeks, so I'm joining up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday with three things that have nothing to do with each other -- just three things I'm enjoying right now!

1. Good listening for my walks
Margene mentioned the Wind of Change podcast in our Zoom chat this past week, and I've been listening to it all week during my walks. It's kind of like an audio miniseries in that it's an eight-episode exploration of whether the CIA had any hand in creating the Scorpions' song "Wind of Change," which just happened to become a big hit right around the time that the Soviet Union was starting to crumble. Even though I'd never heard of the song and most of the events that are discussed happened before I was really paying attention to world events, it's been a fascinating listen. It's hosted/created by Patrick Radden Keefe, the journalist and author who wrote Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. I am just about finished with all eight episodes (I'll listen to the last 10 minutes or so right after I hit publish on this post!) and have thoroughly enjoyed them.

2. Low-maintenance hair styling
With the humid weather we've been having and with my hair being shorter than it's been in a long time, I have been letting it do its own thing most days and experimenting with different curl products I have. My hair is naturally curly -- as in I get spiral curls if I have a little bit of product in it to keep it from frizzing -- though most of the time, especially when I was still going to the office, I'd blow it straight. I'm enjoying the much easier routine of letting it air dry and curl up, and I'm also hugely entertained by the rather prominent gray "highlight" I always seem to get, even if it forms more of a wave than a curl:

3. Knitting up a new skein of yarn
I've pulled out a skein of sock yarn to wind later today to take with me to the orthodontist tomorrow. They will be socks for my sister-in-law (the one married to my brother, as opposed to the one married to my brother-in-law) for this Christmas, mainly because these really look like her colors:

I'm even more excited to knit this particular skein up because although I can see the colors and know that there are six different stripes from the label, I don't have any idea of what order they'll knit up in. This is one of Lisa's one-of-a-kind skeins, the result of her playing with her dyes but not really noting what colors she used or in what order. So the first repeat will be a lot of fun!

I hope you can find at least three random things to enjoy today and that the end of your week goes well. I'll be back on Sunday with a conclusion to the 2021 Tour de Fleece!

Three Things to Pack

We're leaving tomorrow morning for our quick trip up to Michigan, so that means that today is packing day. I'm linking up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday with three things that are definitely coming with me.

1. At least one knitting project

This is that hat that I'd started and had to rip and redo because the brim was too big. I've done a round or two here and there, but I really need to get moving on it, and I think it'll be a perfect car project. I may bring along my ADVENTuresome Wrap as well, though it would be worked on while we're at my aunt and uncle's or the hotel -- there will be three of us in the back seat of the car, and that might be just a tad too tight to wind mini skeins.

2. Plenty of reading

My iPad will be coming with me, so of course I'll have access to ebooks, but I've picked out two hard-copy books to come along that are both for my bingo card.

3. My long-suffering spindle project

You've seen this project before -- it seems to come out once or twice a year but never actually get finished. I'm embarrassed by how long this has been in progress (I started it in May 2015!), and I'd really like to get it done. It's still Tour de Fleece and it's unrealistic to bring a wheel with me, so it seems like the perfect motivation to do some spindle spinning. Even if I only work on it for 15 minutes a day, that's better than nothing!

Whatever you have planned for the holiday weekend, I hope it's enjoyable, relaxing, and safe. See you back here on the 4th for some handspun!

What to Make Next

I double-checked the calendar and confirmed that today is actually Thursday (the craziness of the power outage had me thinking it was Thursday two days ago!), so it's time to link up with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday.

After I finished my sweater and my brother's socks, I found myself without any active WIPs. I did end up pulling out my long-languishing ADVENTuresome Wrap (Ravelry link) that I started back in January with my Fibernymph Dye Works holiday minis set from the 2020 holiday season, and I've now finished two repeats -- 22 more to go!

The blue that's been wound into a ball is next.

While I want to finish this project this summer, it's knitting that I have to pay close attention to, so it's not good for knitting while reading. I really need some fairly mindless projects, and I like to have a variety of projects in progress at once so I can pick something to match my mood or the situation. So here are three projects I'm thinking of starting soon.

1. A pair of socks for my sister-in-law
I don't know that everyone in the family will be getting hand-knit socks for the holidays again, but my sister-in-law has been so enthusiastic about the two pairs that I've knit her that she is permanently on the list. She also has pretty small feet, so knitting socks for her feels very easy. I bought two skeins of OOAK self-striping from FDW recently, and this one really looks like my SIL's colors:

2. More charity hats/cowls
My giant bag of scraps has been sitting in front of me and hasn't gotten any smaller (though I have added some fingering scraps to it), so I think it's time to start knitting some charity items again. It would be great to have a big stack to donate this fall when they're needed!

3. A new blanket for my nephew
I don't expect he'll give up his well-loved knit blanket, but I thought it would be nice to make him another to have an alternative when the original needs to be washed. Years ago, I bought up a bunch of skeins of Mission Falls 1824 Cotton when it was discontinued. I intended to use it for a sweater for Rainbow when she was a baby but never got around to it. I'm not a huge fan of knitting with cotton because it's hard on my hands, but crocheting might be a different story. So I'm thinking of using it for a corner-to-corner blanket.

What does everyone have planned for the weekend? We're having a family birthday party tomorrow evening -- my mother-in-law's birthday is today and my mother's is tomorrow -- and I'm sure we'll do something for the Mister for Father's Day. I'm also signed up to donate blood tomorrow, and I'm excited that the drive is happening on the campus of the college where I work so I don't have to drive. The Red Cross has been testing donated blood for COVID-19 antibodies since the start of the pandemic, so we'll see if the vaccine has done its job!

Always Room for Good News

As I've done on previous Thursdays, I'm joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday with three things making me happy today.

Happy Thing 1: The roofing work is done!
The finishing touches were put on this past Tuesday, and later that day the port-o-potty company came to retrieve the Turdis (well, they actually relocated it up to the street, because our neighbors are now getting their roof replaced by the same crew). That meant that for the first time in many weeks, we were able to put our cars in the garage. That may not seem like such a big thing, but we live on a narrow dead-end street, so there's not a lot of spare space on the street to park. We had to do a lot of car Tetris to ensure that we weren't blocking anyone.

A view of the finished garage roof

Happy Thing 2: I have the day off tomorrow!
I get two personal days a year, and they expire at the end of our fiscal year, which is at the end of June. I never end up using them during the year and so usually take two random days off in June. Tomorrow Rainbow and I are going to hang out. We have plans to go to the craft store and maybe look at some ideas for her new bedroom (she's planning to move up to the third floor at the end of the summer), and if we have time left, we might even make our first trip to the library since before the pandemic.

Happy Thing 3: I finished a sleeve!

As you can see, I'm also well on my way on sleeve #2, so I expect this project to be wrapped up in a matter of days.

I hope you're finding some happy things to make you smile and that you have a wonderful weekend!

On My To-Do List

The nice thing about going back to work after a long holiday weekend is that they seem to go by quickly. It feels like the workweek just started, but tomorrow is already Friday! There are still plenty of things to do before the week is over, though, so for today's Three on Thursday, hosted as always by Carole, I've got three things that are atop my to-do list.

1. First, my tech editor got back to me yesterday with some minor edits to my most recent shawl pattern, so now I have to do all the administrative work to publish it. Some of you might be surprised by just how much work that actually is: I have to do all the steps to create the Ravelry and Payhip pattern pages, upload photos, create discount promotions (often more than one, because newsletter subscribers always get one but sometimes the general public does as well), write up my newsletter, and write up a blog post (if I'm doing one). That's all before I hit publish. After the pattern is published, I have to upload the pattern to LoveCrafts (they pull from the Ravelry listing), hit publish on my newsletter and blog post, and post on Instagram. Sounds very glamorous, doesn't it?

2. I finished the third bobbin of New Hope singles on Tuesday, so now I have three bobbins that are ready for plying.

3. I did a lot of knitting on my Threipmuir yesterday while I was reading and then while watching the end of a documentary on the 1921 Tulsa riot last night, and I am surprisingly close to the end of the body. I'd like to finish the body by the end of the week, if I can.

Obviously the curl of the stockinette is making it look shorter than it is; when I measured it last night, I think I had almost 11 inches of stockinette under the arms, and I believe the pattern calls for working to 13.5 inches before doing the ribbing at the bottom. I think a few more hours of knitting while reading a good book or watching something interesting should do it!

I hope that you don't have too many items remaining on your to-do list this week and that you're able to cross them all off without too much effort. See you back here on Sunday, when those three bobbins of singles should be empty and I should have a new skein of handspun to share!

Three Random and Unrelated Things

It feels like the week should be over already, so it's a good thing that Carole hosts a Three on Thursday link-up because I can't seem to come up with anything coherent today. Instead, you're going to get three random things that have only me/my life as their common element.

1. I am sorry to say that my hip was not cooperative when I went for a run the other day.
I managed about 2 miles altogether (I did short spurts of running with walking in between), and two days later my hip is still giving me trouble, so I'm going to stick with walking for the time being. That means I need to replace that 5K run item on my 21 in 2021 list. I am thinking that some sort of virtual walking challenge would be a good replacement. I know that Juliann has been doing the Land's End to John O'Groats walking challenge -- a total of 1,083 miles -- and while I'm not planning to sign up to officially do it, I do like that number, not to mention that it's nice to imagine walking the length of the UK at a time when I haven't traveled farther than a few zip codes. I've been using an app that tracks my walking distance, so I totaled up how much I've walked so far this year, and I'm already to almost 620 miles, not counting this week's walks. I thought about trying to walk the equivalent of the length of the Appalachian Trail, but that seemed a bit high at almost 2,200 miles (I'm trying to challenge myself, but I do have only so many hours in the day). Suggestions are welcome!

2. I'm in need of some plant advice.
Our landscapers were here this morning to cut the grass, right around the time the Mister was arriving home after dropping Rainbow off at school. I have long hated these holly "bushes" on either side of our front steps, so he asked the landscapers their opinion. The bottom line is that they're finally going. But now we need to decide what to plant in their place. Ideally I would like something that stays green and looks (relatively) alive year-round. Our house faces east and gets a lot of morning sun. I can't tell you anything about soil conditions or zones -- I'm really clueless! So those of you who are good with plants, do you have any ideas?

3. It's a long holiday weekend!
This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend in the United States, the official start to the summer season, and that means that everything is closed on Monday. As as added bonus, we got an email from our office personnel director yesterday that our office will be "closing" at noon tomorrow. Of course, that just means that I'll be able to log out of my email at noon but otherwise carry on as per usual, but I'll take it! We're unfortunately expecting a cool and rainy weekend here, so no pool parties for us, but I will be more than happy with extra time to knit and read. Whatever your plans are for the weekend, whether or not it's a holiday weekend for you, I hope you enjoy them!

Three Small Joys

I am posting a little later than usual because I only *just* got caught up with work, so I'm stealing the few moments of calm I have left to share a few things making me happy today, seeing as it is Thursday. Thanks to Carole for hosting us every week for Three on Thursday!

1. I received some new (to me) books.
I have thank Katie for introducing me to Thriftbooks. I've been trying to reduce rather than increase my book collection and buy used books when possible, but I don't have a good used book store near me. But thanks to this site, I was able to get three books (two gently used, one new) for very reasonable prices to add to my big stack for Summer Book Bingo!

You can go ahead and laugh at my totally unrealistic plans to read all of these plus some additional digital and audio books this summer, but I am totally excited to dig in!

2. The roofers are almost done with the house.
They've spent the past couple of days putting the roof on the addition on the back of the house, which has a very shallow slope compared to the main roof. They told the Mister that they expect to finish it up by Monday. There's still the garage roof to do, so I'm not quite done hearing the banging all day, but at least it won't also make the house vibrate at the same time.

3. I've had a bit of luck.
Speaking of Carole, if you read her blog, you may remember that last month she asked us to consider supporting her local Kiwanis Club by buying a cash calendar. I was happy to do so because I remember my grandfather and great-uncle were involved in Kiwanis (we got that box of individual packets of salted peanuts to hand out at Halloween every year), but I was even more delighted to receive an email earlier this week to let me know that my calendar number was drawn the other day and I'd won a cash prize! So thanks, Carole!

I hope the end of your week is full of some little joys and maybe even a little luck. See you back here on Sunday!

Three Small Joys

It's Thursday, a day when I often link up with Carole for Three on Thursday. In her post today, Carole chose to focus on three seemingly normal things that have become simple joys for her. Her post really resonated with me because part of my daily journaling practice during the pandemic has included a list each day of three things I've accomplished and five small things that have brought me joy that day. I started doing it early on, when every day felt the same and all the news seemed to be horrible. Reframing my perspective and forcing myself to find things to be happy about each day has really shown me how much I have to be grateful for. Often those simple joys are little things that made me smile -- like when I saw a fluffy young sparrow on my walk or when the sun came out after several days of rain -- but that's kind of the point, I think. So today I'm sharing three small joys from the past few days.

1. The weather has been dry this week after tons of rain last week, so the roofers have been able to work again.
As of yesterday, they'd gotten maybe a third to half of the back of the roof shingled. The back of the house is a bit more complicated than the front because we have a dormer back there, but it looks like they just might finish it this week. That leaves just the roof over the addition on the back of the house to do before the entire house part of the project is complete (they're going to be doing the roof of our garage as well, but it's smaller and shorter than the house and I hope will take less time as a result).

2. Our rose bushes have started to bloom.
This one was the first one to open up, and I have a feeling there might be a few more open this morning when I go to check on them. These bushes along our driveway were planted a long time ago by a previous owner of the house, and considering that I know nothing about growing roses and the landscapers who come to cut our grass and week likely don't, either, it's nothing short of a miracle that they keep growing. But every year they treat us to these beautiful hot pink blooms starting in the spring.

3. I finished my shawl -- and won at yarn chicken.
That little tangle of yarn you see in the top left of the photo (which is mysteriously coming out very grainy -- sorry about that) is all that is left of the skein after I bound off last night. It's just enough to weave in. I'll block the shawl tonight, if the timing works out, and I hope get the pattern ready this weekend.

I hope your day brings you some small joys and that they make you smile! Have a lovely end to your week. See you back here on Sunday!

Three Reasons to Smile

It's Thursday, though it's my Friday because I am off tomorrow, and if that isn't reason enough to be happy, I thought I'd link up with Carole and share three more things that are bringing me joy today.

1. Our lilac bushes are blooming (and they smell amazing!)

These bushes are along our driveway, and I normally pass them a lot, but the current stage of the roof project means that there is scaffolding along the back of the house and a dumpster in the driveway, both of which prevent us from getting in and out through the back door. On top of that, there's usually a roofer's truck parked in front of the dumpster during the day, so when I leave the house, I've been missing them altogether. Today, though, I had to take Rainbow to school while the Mister took my car to the dealer for its annual inspection, and I got to get up close and personal with the bushes. Good thing, too, or I would have missed these fragrant blooms! I have never seen as many flowers on them as I have this year (they only started flowering at all a few years ago), so I can only imagine how amazing they will be in years to come.

2. Thanks to vaccines, we were able to safely have dinner with all our siblings last night.
My brother- and sister-in-law hosted us for a Cinco de Mayo-themed dinner, and that meant that I got to see and squish this cutie:

He's 19 months old now and is running around and talking up a storm. I hadn't seen him in person since sometime last year, I think (we did a few outside meals when the weather was good last year), though we've video chatted with him plenty of times and they've been showing him our pictures so he doesn't forget us. He can say all our names, more or less (I'm "Sadah" -- R's are hard!), and he's got the stubborn toddler persona down. He's going to be a handful, especially because of item number 3 ...

3. I'm going to be an aunt again!
Baby #2 for my brother- and sister-in-law is due around Thanksgiving! They'll be finding out the sex (my sister-in-law is convinced it'll be another boy), so I will have some guidance as far as my knitting is concerned. I'll also be putting some stuff on the list for my nephew, because I know that when his sibling comes along he's not going to be happy about not getting all his mama's attention!

I hope your Thursday is full of reasons to smile! See you back here on Sunday (spoiler alert: I'll have a finished skein of handspun to share!).

Cooking for Passover

Passover* starts this Saturday night. For the first time in my life, my mother is not going to be cooking for the holiday. She and my father will be driving home from Florida this weekend, which is great because we'll soon be able to see them again in person, but that leaves the cooking to me. Last year we did a virtual seder, and she and my father cooked and delivered care packages with everything we needed so that we could all gather over Zoom. But this year, we'll have a very small seder -- just the three of us and my brother and sister-in-law. The weather is supposed to be lovely on Saturday, so we'll be able to sit outside. And because there will be so few of us, I'm not planning a huge, elaborate menu. It's Thursday, so I'm linking up with Carole to share three Passover recipes.

1. Charoset
Charoset is a symbolic food that is put on the seder plate for the Passover dinner. It is meant to represent the mortar used by the enslaved Jews in Egypt, and though it represents suffering, it's quite delicious. You can find numerous recipes online, there really is no "official" way to make it, and a lot of it is done by taste. The ingredients are simple: apples (something crisp and flavorful, like Honeycrisp), walnuts, cinnamon, and wine. You chop the apples and walnuts (which I like to toast in a pan first) and then mix them together with the cinnamon and wine to taste. The wine that I usually use is Manischewitz Concord Grape, which is a bit like alcoholic cough syrup and, in my opinion, is only good for this use. You can easily substitute any red wine or even concord grape juice. I once made a batch of charoset with apple juice when I was pregnant, and that worked, too. It's pretty hard to go wrong on this!

2. Brisket
You might be familiar with brisket in the context of BBQ, but in my family, we've always cooked it the "traditional" way for Passover: slowly, for many hours, in liquid with onions, carrots, and celery. We get the brisket from the market trimmed of some of the fat, but not all (you want a bit left on to keep the meat moist). I season it a bit with salt and pepper and put it in a large pan, then cover it with broth and the sliced veggies. I cover the pan with foil and put it in the oven at about 325F for several hours, until it's just starting to get fork tender. At that point, I remove it from the oven and slice it, against the grain, into pieces about 1/2 an inch thick. I return the slices to the pan with the broth (adding more liquid if needed) and veggies and cook it for another hour or two. Cooking times can vary and depend on the amount of meat, so you want to make sure you have plenty of time for it to cook. I often make a brisket a day or two ahead of time and reheat it for a holiday meal to ensure it's had enough time in the oven -- it's cooked enough when you can break it apart with just a fork.

3. A Flourless Chocolate Dessert
There are many restrictions on what can be eaten during Passover, but the simple rule is that nothing is permitted that can rise or leaven. This means no flour or other wheat products unless they're kosher for Passover, which means matzah or made from matzah (like matzah meal, which is ground-up matzah). So any sort of cake or baked good that uses flour is out. My mother typically serves a flourless chocolate cake that she gets from Whole Foods, and Rainbow and I contemplated baking one, but in looking through other recipes online, I came across this one for flourless fudge cookies. We'll be trying these for the first time this year, so I can't vouch for how good they are, but they look good and pretty easy to me. A bonus is that these aren't really Passover cookies -- they're more of a gluten-free recipe that just happens to be kosher for Passover! I'll let you know how ours turn out.

* By the way, if you are not Jewish, you might not think you know anything about Passover other than it's the time for eating matzah. But if you've ever watched The Ten Commandments, which always seems to air on network TV around Easter, then you know the Passover story, even if you don't know the details of how it's observed.

A Year Later: What I've Gained

It's amazing and yet not entirely surprising that it's been a year since this crazy pandemic started. A year ago (more or less), I was at work at my office for the last time. Traditionally the Friday of spring break week is a day off for staff at the university I work for, so I was looking forward to a Friday off the next day even as I was getting more and more anxious about what was happening in the world. My blog post that morning featured this photo, taken of my then-current lunchtime knitting on top of my work desk:

Later that day, I'd be sent home and told that we were using the rest of that day and the following Monday as a trial period to see how working from home might go. I don't think I need to tell you how that all worked out! Since then, I've been in my office exactly once, when we were allowed to return for a short window one day last summer to retrieve items, though I pass my office building every day on my exercise route.

So many reflections on the past year focus on what we've lost due to the pandemic, and for good reason. But in thinking back, I've realized that I've also gained some really amazing things, too. so that's what I've chose to focus on for Three on Thursday (hosted by Carole) this week.

1. A healthier lifestyle
I'd be lying if I told you that I haven't been indulging in more sweets or drinking more during the pandemic, because I absolutely have. But working from home has also made it easier for me to instill some healthy habits. Because my commute is now a matter of walking up a flight of stairs and I don't feel I have to be fully made up (meaning makeup and hair done and in business casual dress), I'm able to sleep a little later in the morning and get more rest each night. I've also been able to get out and exercise pretty much every day because I can take my lunch break whenever I want. I did a heck of a lot of running last year, and since I did something to my hip last fall, I've been walking a bit more than 4 miles every day. I've gained some muscle definition and probably lowered my resting heart rate, and I feel stronger. I have no doubt that the exercise has helped my stress level (getting out every day in the early days of the pandemic was certainly a huge help), and the habits I've made are ones I'm likely to stick with even when things are closer to normal, whatever that is.

2. Wonderful friends
I had a handful of internet friends before, but when the internet suddenly became the primary way to connect with people, that circle of friends grew and deepened. There is not a day that goes by now that I don't check in with many of you. We're still reading and commenting on each other's blogs and posting on Instagram, but we've also started meeting on Zoom and Google hangouts on a regular basis, formed an online book club, sent each other physical mail, and connected via email and text message. I've long struggled to make new friends as a very introverted and shy adult, so in this respect the pandemic has been a blessing.

3. A deeper sense of self
I regularly kept a journal in my earlier years, but I'd fallen out of practice with it until the pandemic prompted me to start again as a way of documenting this moment in time. Between reflecting each day in my journal, reading more deeply and broadly, having serious conversations with friends, and listening to new podcasts and other media, I've developed a much better sense of who I am, what I value, and how I want to change and grow. I've really grown my self-confidence and become happier with who I am and what I have. I'm sure some of this comes from just getting older (yes, I'm now officially middle-aged!), but the pandemic has also given me some very real perspective on my position in life and society. I know how lucky I am, and I also recognize that my privilege is a gift that enables me to help those who are not so lucky.

We have lost so much this past year, but I hope that every one of you can also look back on this year of sadness and loss and find at least a few good things you've gained as well. As always, I'm happy to have you here as part of my little corner of the internet. I hope you have a lovely weekend, and I will be back on Sunday with some handspun!

Three Reasons to Smile

It's Three on Thursday time again! Thanks as always to Carole for hosting. Here are three things giving me a reason to smile today:

1. The VP visited Fibre Space yesterday.

If you're on any social media and follow people in the fiber community, then you no doubt saw this everywhere yesterday. I found it particularly exciting because I actually know Danielle, the owner of Fibre Space! She is originally from this area and is good friends with Amy of Ross Farm, and we had dinner with her and her family several years ago on my first Rhinebeck trip.

2. Vaccinations are ramping up.

We were all happy that a third vaccine was approved last week (no one more so than Rainbow -- she's hoping that the first one available for her age group is one that only requires one shot!). Yesterday our governor announced that the state will be getting more than 94,000 doses of the J&J vaccine in the coming weeks and will be designating those doses specifically for teachers, child care workers, and school staff. One of the things that's really irked me about all the people whining about their kids not being in school is that they seemed to completely disregard the safety of the people teaching and looking after their kids. Rainbow's school has done an excellent job of keeping everyone safe, but I'm really happy that my state is looking out for her teachers.

Also, my parents have their appointments for their second shots next week (they both got the Moderna vaccine)! They are planning to stay in Florida for two weeks beyond their second doses for the full effect and then plan to come home.

3. If all goes according to plan, Rainbow will have a finished sweater by the end of the day.

I just did the last decrease on the second sleeve, so now it's just a matter of adding enough length. I'm down to 42 stitches in the round now, peanuts compared to the almost 300 in the body!

I hope you have some reasons to smile today and find some more this weekend!

Signs of Spring

As someone who runs cold and has a tendency toward seasonal affective disorder, it's fair to say that winter is not my favorite season. I also live in a place where winter can stay past its ending date; we've been known to get snow into the early days of April. But around this time of year, when we're not far from the start of meteorological spring, we start getting some hints that winter is slowly giving up its grip. Yesterday we certainly got a big tease of things to come -- we hit a high temperature north of 60 degrees! It made me think of other ways nature reminds us that winter can't last forever, and because it's Thursday and Carole is hosting us for our weekly link-up, here are three that I've been noticing lately.

1. A change in the light
Have you noticed lately that the days are not only getting longer but the light is better? That's because during the winter, the sun's highest position in the sky is actually lower than it is during the summer. So not only is there less total sunlight during the winter, but the intensity of it is actually reduced. As we get closer to the spring equinox, I am noticing both that I am turning on lights later in the day and that I need them less often during even cloudy days. This does a lot for me, because it's the darkness that I find most depressing during the winter.

2. Morning birdsong
Bonny mentioned earlier this week that she viewed sightings of robins as a harbinger of spring. I haven't stopped seeing robins around me, but I have noticed a definite uptick in the noise from birds in the mornings. Winter days are usually quiet in this respect, aside from the occasional squawk of a Bluejay or Grackle, but in the past week or so, I've been treated to a small chorus of birds greeting the rising sun.

3. Spring flowers are on their way
Yesterday's mini heat wave served to melt a lot of snow and ice, uncovering much of the ground that had been covered for several weeks. While I was out on my daily walk, I was treated to this very welcome sight:

Nature is pretty amazing, isn't it? Despite months of cold and snow and ice, life still finds a way.

Three on Thursday: From the TBR Pile

While I have certainly increased the number of books I've read over the past few years, the vast majority of them have been digital books. Why? Because they enabling multitasking -- I can read while I knit or spin, and thus I feel like I'm getting more done in my limited downtime. Because of this notable shift in my reading habits, my physical To Be Read pile (the one that sits on the shelf of my nightstand for easy access when I get into bed) has gotten a bit unwieldy of late, and I'm determined to tackle it. So for Three on Thursday, which Carole is so nice to host each week, I've picked out three physical books I would like to read in the near future.

1. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
This was recommended to me by Margene, and like her, I ordered my copy from Blackwell's so that I had it before it was actually published in the U.S. It's a take on the Trojan War from the point of view of the women, and it was short-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction. I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

2. Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate. This memoir tells the story of her mother's murder at the hands of her stepfather. My friend Louisa (a member of the Sunday morning Zoom crew) passed along her copy to me. Tracking the package was an exercise in frustration, so I was delighted when it finally got to me.

3. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey
NERD ALERT! This is a book about diagramming sentences. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm probably one of few people in the entire world who actually enjoyed diagramming sentences (and I'm pretty sure no one even teaches it anymore), and I've wanted to read this book for years. I even remember where I first found out about it: Back when podcasts were a relatively new thing, I discovered one put out by NPR about books, and I jotted down the name of this one when I heard about it (it was published back in 2006, so that gives you a time frame). A couple of years ago, I finally bought a copy. Now I just need to get around to reading it!

Now that I've posted that I want to read these, please hold me to it, friends! I'd also love to hear what books are on your TBR pile that you're determined to read.