Our Rocky Mountain Trip - Part 1

Been blogging for a number of years now. Mostly about knitting. Mostly not about the personal.

One day, in mid-September 2017, Mr K and I hit the thing called our 30th wedding anniversary. To pre-celebrate, just a couple of weeks earlier, we took a trip to the great American northwest and the Rocky Mountains.

Been Insta-gramming all of this... (somewhat slowly)...

First there were the Cascade Mountains.

  
Mr K shot this one (with my iPhone) from the plane to Seattle.

After a tour of the city,

we took an overnight trainride to whitefish Montana... barely sleeping... passing through the almost 8 mile long Cascade Mountain Tunnel, arriving at sunrise in Whitefish Montana.

Lovely place that was...

This long distance view shows the hazy smoke from distant forest fires. We learned that forest fires are not always a bad thing (if controlled), in our national forests.

We were in a national forest and on top of the continental divide. And in the Rocky's.

If not on top of the world, it was definitely on the top of the continent.

That is Montana. 

Part 2 coming before too long.

It is very possible that new knitting will come sooner...

On the Other Side (of Christmas)

It was an amazing kind of Christmas in my house this year!

All three of my siblings, and pretty much all of their families, were here for the best of Christmas feasts. We put three tables together end to end and had a sit down dinner for 19. Very many hands went into the making of that meal.

In my three bedroom home, I had a total of 11 overnight guests (for three nights).  The photo above is of the small tree I think of as "the children's tree" in my living room. It usually goes in the family room, but this year it and the bigger tree swapped places to make more space where it was needed for dinner tables and air mattresses and gifts and celebration.

I hope that your holidays were merry and bright and full of love!

Dear Daughter (I know that you have been knitting lately),

And then you sent this photo of your little dog sleeping in a cowl that I made (for you). "For your blog", you messaged. Thanks, my blog could always use a good pet photo!

I know that you have been knitting lately.

You gave me that Honey Cowl project of yours (no project photos) when I saw you about a month ago, and you had me do a little repair work. (It really was not all that bad.)

Did you know that the yarn I gave you for the cowl was the Berroco Ultra Alpaca yarn leftover from the Feldspar pullover that I knit for your dad?

He wore it on Saturday when we went out to dinner while you were home for the weekend.

I cleaned up this pile of abandoned knitting from your bedroom floor where we left it after our abandoned knitting discussion. I ripped out the skinny scarf that you were teaching someone how to knit (and you don't remember who)... and the hat that you started that was coming out way too big.

I know how tough it is for newer knitters to rip out old knitting, but sometimes it puts you where you need to be to move forward.

I have a new hat pattern (I custom wrote) and yarn ready for you when you finish your Honey Cowl. I am looking forward to seeing the finished project. I love it when you knit, but I love you whether you knit or do not knit. Love, Mom.

(PS: Its been almost a year since I have had a new pattern in a magazine, but it looks like I am getting a sock pattern published next year! Yeah!)

White Skies Ahead

A friend of mine once told me that I am an optimist for calling a sunless winter sky "a white sky".  She said that most people would call it gray.  (I have that going for me.)

On New Year's Day 2015 my family and I unexpectedly lost a good friend and neighbor.  (Too soon after the death of my aunt and godmother.)  Sometimes planes full of people accidentally fall from the sky, and sometimes school buildings full of innocent people are shockingly and senselessly destroyed in violent attacks by others who have lost their own humanity.  These are difficult things to wrap our minds around.  We must try to remember that life, even in its darkest moments, must be appreciated each and every day because of the fact that all who live will die one day.

Today we have white skies, and even though I do not want to begin putting away Christmas things, that is largely what this day will be about.

An angel sat on our treetop this Christmas season.  I took this photo Christmas evening.  (I used a photo editor to add more light.  Not one of my better photos, but I did have a houseful of people that night.)

I am thankful that my own home was so full of love and laughter on Christmas day and then all through the evening with both close and extended family members.  I was surprised that most of them came back again the very next night!

Our angel was a gift from my mother.  I do not remember what year she gave it to me/us, but I believe it was before my children were born.  This year, after a week where our little angel shone as brightly as ever in her lofty perch, her lights went out.  Most of the bulbs (many are inside the skirt) were burnt out and blackened.  It was the day before Christmas eve (my late aunt's birthday).  I fetched my step stool and brought our angel down to begin replacing all of the (10) bulbs.  I plugged her into a nearby outlet.  She lit up for about a second and then she burnt out again.  Next, I enlisted Mr K who tested the bulbs (and other things?) with his (voltage?) meter (maybe someday I will tell you more about my total non-desire for knowing more about all that is electrical).  Mr K did his testing for a while until he actually found a partial break in the cord, near the plug end.

I forgot to mention that somewhere in between my replacing all of the bulbs and Mr K finding the damage to the cord, we went out to dinner with our dear daughter.  While out, we stopped for replacement watch batteries at a Rite Aid store.  I never in my life thought that they would have a small string of white lights on a white cord, but I asked my daughter to look.  She found just that, and it was half price, and I bought it.  And so it was that late on the night before Christmas eve, I found myself pulling the old light strand out of our angel and replacing it with a new and brighter (20 bulb) one.

I am getting a little long here, but I took some photos of other Christmas things that my mother gave to us before I packed them up ready to go back in the attic.   

      
My mom always enjoyed going to "ceramics" where she would purchase unfired clay pieces that had been formed in molds.  She cleaned and painted them for glazing in a kiln.  The taller tree was a gift to me when I was in my 20's.  The smaller two were made for my daughter and son when they were little.

I had fun with this centerpiece set by filling the bowl with two of my most recent yarn purchases.  I always love a good red (Malabrigo Rasta).  The variegated forest green sock yarn was the November 2014 colorway of the Rockin' Sock Club (the photo does not show its true beauty).

I wish you a happy and healthy 2015!  Remember to look for as much white lightfulness as you can find when skies turn gray (and cherish fond memories)!    

Randomly I Write (About Saturday)

1. Mr K and I went to a beautiful and extremely enjoyable wedding on Saturday evening.
2. The bride and groom, our friends, are just a bit younger than us but older than most wedding couples.
3. We had to get up very early on Saturday to make it to the wedding.
4. The wedding was not far from our home, but we were vacationing last week in North Wildwood, New Jersey.
5. Most east coast weekly rentals are from Saturday to Saturday.
6. If you leave an Atlantic shore point at any time from mid to late morning on a Saturday, you can expect a very -s-l-o-w- ride.
7. We left much earlier.  
8. Part way home (actually at a mid to late morning time) we stopped to "check in" on our children.
9. One of our children was moving into a new place on Saturday.  (We could not help, because "We had a wedding to go to".  But all was well... help was on the way.  BTW:  The new place is pretty cool.)  We had a late morning outdoor brunch with our other child (who lives not very far away in another pretty cool place.)
10. How did these (once very tiny and totally dependent baby) children get to be such accomplished and fun to visit young adults?  
11. We rested at home for a bit before I began to put my outfit together.
12. My latest FO is "The Color of Flowers".
13. I finished (seaming) it the day before we left NJ (Friday).
14. I wore it to the wedding.

Project Name: The Color of Flowers

Pattern: Vine Street Tee by Amy Herzog

Yarn: The Fibre Company Canopy Fingering
Color Name: "Guava" 

Happy Mother's Day

This was my mother's high school graduation photo.  I do miss my mother.

(I really and truly would like to say more, but I do not have much time. I need to start getting ready for a quick trip to Philadelphia.  I will see both of my children there later today.)

I do miss my mother.  I was trying to think of a quote to share, something I remember her saying to me.  She taught me so very much.  Which is why I am just a little disappointed in myself.  At the moment, the only quote I can come up with is, "Everyone who has curly hair wishes that they had straight hair, and everyone who has straight hair wishes that they had curls."

You have to think on it, but there is much wisdom in that.  

(Like me, my mother had straight hair, but over her lifetime she had many a permanent wave.)

I think that my mother must be a part of me, and therefore is always with me (but I still miss her).  I wish you, and all of your own mothers, living on earth, or only in your heart, a very memory-filled and happy Mother's Day!

Holiday Reflections

On Christmas day, in the evening, 2013

Hours after dinner, most of us are still inside... a moment reflected on a window and caught by a camera...

It was after desert... (the candles are already burning low)... but before the traditional family card game of Apples to Apples.  Thirteen for dinner and ten for Apples to Apples.

In the morning we awoke to a fresh coat of snow.

Random Weekends

Over the past month or two I have had some very fine weekends.  Pennsylvania is a very good place to be in the Spring.

We were in Philadelphia several weeks ago.  In the first photo, you can see the office building where someone very close to me works.

Both of the sculptures were nearby.  The last one is in front of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.  (I think that I should actually go there one day.  Another someone who is very close to me is a student at Drexel.)

But on that day in "Philly", we went to the Franklin Institute, and we saw their exhibition of actual artifacts from the Titanic.  Very interesting.

On another weekend, we revisited The Lands at Hillside Farms in Shavertown.

I really enjoyed the expansion in the number of restored green houses.  There was a weird kind of randomness to what was growing in there.  These are mostly succulants.

I took photos of some of the animals as we ate our ice cream.

Then came Father's Day weekend.  We had lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and dinner at our new favorite Italian one.  In between there was a boat ride at Harvey's Lake and a "Rattlesnake Roundup" in Noxen.  (Hard to believe that this was my second time to that particular event.  It is both weird and interesting... a little creepy... but a good time for people watching.)

This was a very hard post to write, to re-write, to edit (to finish, once it was started).  I do have a hard time deciding how much to reveal about my loved ones.  And I am not yet a total blogger because lots of things are happening all around me and I am not always taking photos! 


Photo Credit Franklin Institute:  https://plus.google.com/106251580418573776406/photos?hl=en
Photo Credit barn at Hillside Farms:  http://www.thelandsathillsidefarms.org/about-us/  

In Keeping...

...with flags, here is something that my Aunt F gave to me yesterday.

She did the machine embroidery with her Brother sewing machine.  The machine has at least a couple dozen designs in its memory.  Last month my Aunt F, who does not live far from me, called and asked me to stop by to help her download several holiday designs that she purchased online.  I was glad that I could help.  She is also my godmother.  She has lung cancer, and is doing well for now, but like she says, "I still have cancer." 

This is the towel she gave to me just a week after I had helped her.  It was shortly before Easter.

I will treasure these towels for the rest of my life.  I have been thinking about my Aunt F...

Though I have long felt that I was most inspired to live-to-create by my parents and my paternal grandmother (who sadly are no longer with me) my Aunt F (who is my father's sister) has also lived a life in keeping...

Like me, she "just likes to make things".  Her illness may have slowed her down, but she keeps on...  I so love that.
      

"Follow Your Heart"

He said it again, just before I went to bed, "Follow your heart."

It was my son, home for the weekend.  I had been a bit down.  I have a hard time sometimes with all that I have to do and all that I want to do... it just gets hard sometimes to decide what should I be doing right now.

There have been too many life changes for me of late.  Sorry, but, I do not really like it that most of my aunts and uncles have passed, and several cousins as well.  My parents have both been gone for more than a couple years.  I do not like this feeling that now I am responsible for leading the family as those who came before me would have wished.  Sometimes it makes me feel lonely and insecure.

I do have so very much to be happy about.  My children are both well and my daughter just graduated from college and landed a great first job.  The thing is that when she moves this time it is for real.  This will no longer be her "permanent" address as it was while she was in school.  This is also on my mind.

I have been astonished over the last week at how much my son's words have helped me.  Each time I bring them to mind, they do help me decide what I should be doing right now.  And I do get more done.

My son does not know it, but he has given me the best possible Mother's Day present.  I truly am blessed with both of my children.

Happy Mother's Day!
In times of doubt, remember to "Follow your heart."  It won't let you down.

Midweek Meditation

"We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, 'Why did this happen to me?' unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way."  

                                                                            ~Author Unknown

A spring flowerbed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

The patient is finally home and is feeling so much better now.

Just 50%

I am here, but I am not here.  I think that I am just 50%.

A person very close to me has spent the last eight nights here.

There has been a bit of a setback, and the discharge date has been pushed further out there.  I value the privacy of my loved ones more than my own, so that is all that I will say for now.  This is, of course, a knitting blog.

This hospital is about two hours away from my home.  I have been driving a lot.  But when I visit, there is time to knit.  If you are a knitter like me, then you know that it is absolutely essential that I do knit when I visit.

My "Traveling Socks" are at 50%.  I based the name on the name of the knitting pattern, "Route 66".  I did not know when I chose the project name just how many miles I would be traveling with these socks.

My "Swirling Spectra" is also at 50%. "Spectra" is an extremely popular pattern by Stephen West.  I created the project name to tie it in to all of my other Swirl knitting.  I have 43 wedges of 86 completed.

I have a definite love/hate relationship with Noro yarn.  Twice I wound up great lengths of beige-y neutral tones between the green and the blue.  What a long length of beige is still there!  But now I expect to finish with at least one more run of the pink and green.  It will work out OK.

And I and my loved one will be OK, too.  It will just take a little time.  If I do not post very much these days, at least you have an idea of why.  I truly am only 50% here.  Or 50% anywhere.

 

A Weekend Meditation

If I had to pick a song, and one song only, as a favorite song of all time, I would pick "Imagine", by John Lennon.

Imagine there's no Heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace You may say that I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say that I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will live as one

I do not think that my father was a John Lennon fan.  But my father and John Lennon did have one thing in common.  They both had the same birthday.  It is today, October 9.  My father is a big part of who I am...I will be remembering him today.

Midweek Meditation

Alex Haley said,

“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.”

and

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”

and

“Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.”

While I do like the first two, it was the last one that made me smile.

Alex Haley was born on August 11, 1921.  (When I created this post I thought that the 11th was a Wednesday!  Oh,well.)

Happy Thursday!

Some Things I know About Grandma S

I mentioned my grandmother's sewing in a recent post.  Here is a photo of her crocheting on a family vacation to Canada a very long time ago.  (Sorry about the quality of the photo, and that she is not smiling.)  (I am sure that she made her outfit.  She hardly ever wore pants, so I would call it vacation attire.)

I know that Grandma S, the daughter of Polish immigrants, did not have nice kitchen curtains in her home when she was a child.  She told me this in order to explain why she had so very many sets of kitchen curtains which she changed with the season.  She made all the curtains herself.  My favorites had pretty machine appliqued flowers on them.  I am sure that they were her own design.

I know that my grandmother married at 18, and that my grandfather was a coal miner.  They raised five children (my father was their oldest) during the Great Depression.  I know that there was one winter during the hardest of those years when Grandma S went without a winter coat (her only coat was given to a sister).  She told me this in order to explain why she had a whole closet full of winter coats that she made herself.

The night that my grandmother died (after a long hospitalized coma) I was 23 and living alone in a new apartment.  I could not sleep.  In the middle of the night I made curtains for my kitchen window from some white eyelet fabric that she had given me.  It was the kind of crazy thing that I do to stay sane.

Grandma S did not really have to explain why she had so many kitchen curtains and winter coats, but I am glad that she did.  I know where my 'crazy' comes from and that it is not all bad.

I also know that Grandma S was proud of me.

Midweek Meditation -- A Birthday

Pablo Picasso...

 "It takes a long time to become young."

I have a birthday this week.  My family got me an expensive designer handbag that I saw while out shopping with my daughter.  In my entire lifetime, I never thought that I would want an expensive designer handbag.  I told my daughter that I liked it a lot.  She went back for it, and now it is mine.  (It has a red lining.)

This Brings Me Around to My First Socks

It does seem hard to believe, but I did not knit my first pair of socks until 2007.  (I do remember knitting slippers and Christmas stockings, but not real socks.)  I have always mostly knit sweaters.  I like sweaters.

These are my first socks.  I made them using the first pattern, 'Start Here: Simple Sock in Three Sizes', in Cat Bordhi's SOCKS SOAR ON TWO CIRCULAR NEEDLES book.  If you read my last post, you know who recommended that pattern.  You also know who loaned me the book and two 24" US 1 (2.5mm) Addi Turbo circular needles.  And, perhaps it would be no surprise to you, that I made my first pair of socks for my mom.

They were fun to knit.  I made more.  For a while I numbered my socks as I entered them on my Ravelry project page.  My fifth pair, made in 2008, were also for my mom.

My Mother Was a Great Sock Knitter

This is a photograph of all of the socks my mother knit for me.  (A cool dozen.)  She began focusing on sock knitting some time around the turn of the century.  She became totally hooked on knitting socks with two circular needles after she read  Cat Bordhi's SOCKS SOAR ON TWO CIRCULAR NEEDLES.
For a little while, she knit socks for anyone who she thought would like them.  Then for a couple years, she started Christmas-knitting pairs of socks, alternating each year between the guys and the girls in our immediate family.  I know that 2003 (the year that my father died) was the first year that she knit Christmas socks for everyone in the family.  That would be 18 pairs of socks!  36 socks!!  Four children and their four spouses, along with 10 grandchildren, AND WE ALL HAVE TWO FEET!
Christmas 2008 was her last year to gift us with socks.  (Pancreatic cancer really sucks.)

My Mother Was a Great Knitter

  She learned to knit as a child from her sister who was 15 years older.

  I remember a beautiful sweater that my mother knit for me when I was in first grade.  It was burgundy and had colorful embroidered flowers on it.  I loved it and remember proudly wearing it to school.  That sweater is long gone, but I think that one day my memory of it could inspire a design.

  Another favorite, knit by my mom, was a beautiful short sleeved cotton sweater with bluebell flowers knit into it.  It was a deep rich blue, but it faded, as cotton will, when worn and washed so very many times.  I kept it for many years after its loss of color, thinking that I would dye it one day.  I cannot find it anywhere, so I must have let it go during one of my rare "you can't keep everything" moods.   

  This simple gray vest has four buttons and buttonholes on each side.  The stitch pattern is the trinity stitch and the yarn is fairly fine, probably a sport weight.
  It goes with everything, and I wore it so much that it has a little hole in the front.  I might be able to repair it, but I know it would be a little small.

  I have worn the pink sweater only a handful of times.  It is truely lovely, but has a very wide collar, or a very wide sort-of-a-collar-thing.
  Sometimes it happens that we love someone, and love something that we make for them to wear; and the someone loves us back, and loves the thing that was made, but the actual wearing-of-it just does not happen a whole lot.
  My mother first taught me to knit when I was seven.  I knit a small garter stitch square from a colorful 'ombre' yarn.  I folded it diagonally and made a kerchief for my Barbie doll.  (I do not remember how often Barbie wore that kerchief.)

I do miss sitting and knitting with my mother.