Snow Day -- takin' photos & bein' chill

February 9, 2017 was a Snow Day in Philadelphia, PA.

Sources* tell me, "Everyone was predicting a 'Snowpocalypse' and what we got was just a little bit of snow, in February, which is when snow is supposed to fall. But still, it has been the only real snow we’ve gotten this year, and everyone kinda wanted this to be a bigger deal than it was, so I get it..."

My son, his girlfriend, and my daughter all live within a couple blocks of each other in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia.

A snow day meant working from home for the day. The sun was shining by the lunch hour, and they all went outdoors -- not to play -- but, to get me some Just Chillin' hat photos.

My favorites:

Manayunk, PA, on a sunny, windy, and cold Snow Day... when they got "just a little bit of snow".

Much thanks to my most beloved young people... striding around the streets of Manyunk in their Just Chillin's... takin' photos & bein' chill...   
 
Love you so much!!!

*Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2017/02/09/snow-day-deals-philly-restaurants-bars/#TMqUlbrP81QG9UHv.99

Chill Happenin'

I love my friend Ann's photo of the Just Chillin' Hat that she made for her granddaughter. After Ann posted this photo, I commented that it was "the most beautiful Chillin' ever".

I made my son a Just Chill-in-Black, during the Gosh Yarn It "Summer Camp" KAL. I showed it to him, in July (when it was very hot), and I told him that I wanted a photo before I gave it to him to keep. He got his hat for Christmas, but still, no photo...

My latest (belated) gift knitting was a black cherry Just Chillin' for his girlfriend. Here is a photo that she messaged me (after I sent her belated gift).

(Aren't they a cute couple?) I finally got the photo I wanted of him wearing his hat, but hers is not totally in the frame. Would you believe that I (boldly) asked her for another? She did not seem too bothered by my request... There was mention that my daughter, who I have recruited often enough to give the title of "experienced knitwear photographer", will take one. I will share any new photos that come my way.

Speaking of my lovely daughter, she is also an "experienced knitwear model". She posed for the photos of my design sample hat that she now owns.

JUST CHILLIN’ is a worsted weight cable hat pattern with an optional pompom. You can make a pompom with your knitting yarn, or you might try a purchased (faux or real) fur pompom.The hat pattern has three sizes to fit heads of 19 (22, 24)” circumference, or to fit an average sized child (woman, man).

Look for an upcoming post all about "Removable Pompoms" -- like the fur ones on three of the Just Chillin's above.

On My Needles (October)

This morning I was knitting in gray.

My morning knitting began with a few rows of my Boardwalk pullover by Heidi Kirrmaier in the "Sweatshirt" colorway of Brooklyn Tweed Loft.

I set that down, and I worked a couple rows of my latest Baa-ble Hat, designed by Donna Smith, in Berocco Ultra Alpaca. The hat ribbing is in the (now discontinued) "Gneiss" colorway.

I set that down, and considered how hard it is to knit only in gray in the middle of winter.

I will be knitting in full color by February. 
  

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)!    

Winter, Go Home!

Winter 2014 was the "worst winter ever" and then became the "winter that would not end".

I took this photo from my back window the week that I came home from my February trip to southern California.

Fortunately, those icicles are long gone.  This past Wednesday night, locally, our record low temperature for the date was broken by 2 degrees.  (Many records were broken this winter, but I took note of this one because now it is truly spring.  Right?)  The record low had been 15° F and now is 13° F.  I have decided to declare a win for Winter 2014:  You won.  You beat us in a record breaking way, and now it really is time for you to go back where you came from... OK?  Winter, go home.  Now!  Do not turn back!  The southern hemisphere might be your kind of place right now.

I know that spring is here because I saw two robins (together) in our yard last Saturday.  That felt lucky, because even though I usually see a single robin by the first week of march, I really do not remember ever seeing two (together) as my first robin sighting of the year.

Thursday morning, as I drank my coffee, the sun was shinning very brightly and I got caught up in watching a pair of smaller, I think, finches seriously engaged in nest-building in a tall pine tree through my front window.  I tried very hard to get a photo and I failed.

The robins and the finches reminded me of the hawk's nest at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA.  I remembered that eggs were laid in past March's, and I went to check it out...  I learned some very sad news at the "Hawkwatch at the Franklin Institute" blog.  But there was also news of reason for hope.  Let us all have hope for the Philadelphia Hawks.  I do.     

Later in the day, after lunch, my outdoor thermometer read 42° F, and that meant it was one of the warmest days of the week.  I went out to get my mail and newspaper with my camera in my pocket.

It was very windy.  I tried one last time to photograph the pine tree where I had observed a couple of steady hours of nesting activity.  No birds there.  I was cold.  It was windy.  (No birds.  No photos.)

Nearby, I checked out a flowerbed, which had a fantastic crocus bloom a couple of years ago, and then, I walked up to a daffodil bed on the other end of the property.  (No buds, no sprouts, no anything.  No photos.)

No luck at all.  Winter did his thing and he won and his photo is my only photo today.  But he is done.  I sent him home.

My Great Escape

Now, I could be wrong, or I could be right, but...

One thing that I got from the comments to my last post "The Lantern Festival" was that (though the pictures were enjoyable to look at) it was not necessarily perceived that I actually took them, in person, on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills, California.

I really and truly was there!  On Sunday, February 9, 2014.

My footwear on February 12 (my last full day in CA) working by the pool...

My footwear at home on February 15...

The trip (obviously!) should have been much longer.  It was a working trip for Mr K.  I tagged along, but I also brought my work.  Our sightseeing, and my photos, were somewhat limited... most of it happened on that lovely Sunday.  I will share the best of the rest another time.
 

Cool Yarn

This yarn is from Juniper Moon Farms.  On the left are two (of six) skeins of DK weight yarn from my full CSA share of 2013 Spring Cormo yarn which I elected to have dyed "Providence Red".  On the right are two (of my seven) skeins of the 2013 Colored Flock worsted weight yarn which I ordered separately.

I will be winding these skeins into balls very soon, but I wanted a "skein" photograph.  I felt like I needed an outdoor photo, and I wanted it against the stone wall with some snow.

Cold yarn.

(looking forward to swatching)
 

"On the Bright Side"

The winter solstice occurred on December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere.  With the Earth’s North Pole at its maximum tilt away from the sun, locations north of the equator saw the sun follow its lowest and shortest arc across the southern sky.  The good news is that for the next six months, our days will grow longer as the sun spends more and more time above the horizon.  Even though it has been ridiculously cold here, I am very glad to be on the brighter side of winter.

I have some belated "Bright Side" stories from that solstice day.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and I went to my LYS, Gosh Yarn It!, for a holiday "Stitch-N-Spin".  There was a woman, who I will call C, sitting to my left, who I had just met for the first time.  I learned that C was a friend of the shop owner, Jill, and that she was an on-again / off-again kind of knitter.  When I sat down to join the group, C was happily knitting away on a garter stitch afghan for her son.

Next comes a sad part of the story... C found a hole in her approximately 3-4 feet of afghan.  Then she found another.  And everyone was concerned and trying to decide if it could be repaired.  In short time, it was concluded that a mouse might have done it.  There was a small hole on a bottom edge of her laminated burlap bag.  I was consulted (I do teach there) and I suggested that the one hole seemed like a slit and might be repaired by placing each side (4-5 stitches) on a dpn and working a Kitchener stitch to graft it closed.  I said that I thought it best to rip back to the other, more irregular hole, because it would only be a few inches of lost knitting.

Jill began to work on this for her friend.  I returned to sitting and knitting and talking to the others...  C was somewhat disturbed that there was a mouse in her house and then everyone seemed to have a mouse story to share...  (I was wondering why a mouse would bother C's knitting under her bed, if the house had a kitchen with food in it.)

A little more bad news... as Jill began working on the afghan, the yarn that she ripped back kept breaking...  again, and again... so, it was then (I think correctly) concluded that the damage was probably caused by moths...

The get-together ended all too quickly (4:00 PM).  Many of us (including me) were happy to have had a lovely break from our own holiday preparations.  I never knew I loved mulled cider until I tasted Ann's.  A student of mine, who I had not seen in ages, told me that she enjoys reading this blog.  I left the shop with a happy heart.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE:  The very last thing that C and I talked about was that she was glad (very glad) that it was moths and not mice.  I said that I agreed that this was a good thing.  No one wants mice in their house.  (Later, I wondered how much other wool yarn she might need to put in her freezer; and I have not heard what became of the afghan.  I will have to remember to ask Jill.)

ALSO ON THE BRIGHT SIDE:  A day or two before the solstice, I found something that I had lost.  I mentioned in a post in October that "I found my mother's (handwritten) directions (for an old little neck scarf) on a small piece of paper when I went through some of her knitting things."  What I did not mention was that I had the idea to include that small piece of paper in the photo of the scarf, but I could not find it.  I happily re-found my Mom's pattern during the search for a hat pattern that I mentioned in this more recent December post.

A "multiple exposure" collage created in Picasa3.

I'm pretty sure I remember the sun being very bright on that solstice day.  One day this week was the first day of the year 2014 that the sun set after 5:00 PM local time.  That makes me very happy.  Enjoy the sunshine whenever you can!      

Positivistic Me

  

On a day last week when we had blue skies I went for a haircut.  My friend who cuts my hair was talking about how cold the weather had been.  I told her it was so much nicer of a day, on that day, because of the sun.  I also told her, "We have way too many white sky days this time of year."

Her reply took me by surprise.  "I like your attitude.  At least you say white skies, not gray skies."

Who would have thought?  Within my negativity there is positivism.