Twenty-Four Years Later

People are saying "we should be the people we were on 9/12".  It's only been 24 years, but it seems that despite all the memorials and discussion, people have forgotten.

At least they are not (yet?) claiming it's all a hoax, as too many do with the Shoah.

Grandparents Day

The Sunday after Labour Day (in the USA, so the first or second Sunday of September) is Grandparents Day.  The only one I've posted about at any length is my maternal grandmother, who is the only one alive as I've written this blog.  My paternal grandparents disappeared when bio-dad left the family, and my step-paternal grandparents died decades before I met my stepfather (who most of the world knows as my father, he's been a part of my life for so many decades), and I also had a step-maternal grandfather.  But photos of these aren't on my digital media, and so harder to add to the blog.

I do have a photo of my maternal grandfather, although he died decades ago also, and I forget why I captured it electronically.

Arnold "Zep" Zimmerman

I've probably be thinking about him because football season just started, and it's still baseball season, and he was deeply devoted to both sports.  He played in college, but never professionally, instead building a truck parts and automotive business with his father and brothers.  We all learned the games at his knee, and I remember attending them with him, or watching many on television.

Every Sunday for decades he hosted a family breakfast at a local restaurant.  I remember sitting at the far end of the table, because I was one of the youngest.  You could hear my grandfather everywhere as he told stories and laughed.

I remember the bowls of sultanas and pecans set around their house for snacking.  All of the family gatherings he presided over (his parents having died long before I was born) with dozens of the very extended family, and friends, crowding tables or scattering through whichever home hosted that event.  The tradition of him singing "Down By The Old Mill Stream" with his brothers - cheerfully in four different keys, and with silly gestures that had us all laughing.  Some of his jokes, at least one of which wouldn't be considered politically correct, but it makes me laugh to remember.

There were not-so-good times too, as there always are with families, but I am glad to have so much happiness to remember.

Two and Two.

I finished the garter stitch scarf that I showed last week, and made another scarf plus two hats:

Hats are leftover bits of yarn.  Garter stitch scarf is Caron
Chunky Cakes, discontinued colour "Trifle".  C2C scarf is Caron 
Cakes "Lovely Layers" in "Sugared Cherry", also discontinued.

I'm making progress on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club assignment for this month (when I picked up the copy I'd ordered at the bookshop, the clerk was very enthusiastic about it), and should be done in time for Wednesday's meeting.  That will make my 21st book for the year, not counting the one I re-read on New Year's Day.

The library is starting another walking/exercise challenge, which of course I plan to enter.  Why not get double use out of my daily (except for Saturdays, when I do an early yoga class) walks?

Otherwise, it was a fairly standard week.  I should work on the last few items for my DFW Fiber Fest class and start gathering the items needed for the classes I am taking.  Now that I am presenting at a conference during the first part of that week, I have to be organized a little earlier than otherwise.

Today I started a shawl of Knitting Buddha's handspun, stashed from a prior DFW Fiber Fest:

Typically American Measurement

There are jokes and memes going around about how Americans will use anything as a unit of measurement to avoid the metric system.  My friend Trish and I joked about it and decided to display her Great Big Squishy Scarfie Thing against their Grand Caravan:

Current length, on Colour #21 of 25, is about 2/3 of a Grand Caravan.  I've knitted on it twice (somehow, not this trip!), once when I was there for "AIDA" and once at Maryland Sheep & Wool.

I did some knitting of my own, a scarf of Bernat Blanket that I left in Dallas to donate to Warm Up, America! at DFW Fiber Fest next month, and three hats; four if you count the one I knit on a friend's machine so I could try it:

The green one with brick stitch at top left will go to the local
guild's Hundred Hats Challenge collection; the other three are
destined for a different charitable project.

This time I was there to see her son in "HAMLET", portraying several characters, primarily Rosencrantz:

This wasn't the only play I saw this weekend, though.  On Friday I went to the Allen Contemporary Theater to see two friends in what turned out to be a spectacular production:

I've recommended it to people, and they report the shows are
selling out before they can get tickets.  Kudos to ACT!

And then this went into a black hole, instead of getting published.  I thought I'd hit the "Publish" button!

Since then, I finished another two hats for the collection, and half a scarf for WUA:

Ooops, the top one is a repeat from the previous photo.
Both hats are AlwaysBeKind yarn.  Scarf is a Caron Chunky Cake.

I've planned some projects (probably too many to get done before DFW Fiber Fest), and finished my Berie Shawl of the "Sunset Skies" yarn:

When I saw how much is left, I decided not to frog back and add another garter row in the center, and there isn't enough remaining for a border, so the shawl is as it is (and fits me well) and the last bit of yarn will go into a hat or something.  Yes, I have the ends to run in, but that's just a few minutes of work.  I love how it feels, very soft and cuddly.

Ninety and Nice!

 

My father's birthday is today.  Originally Mom planned to have a family event and a neighborhood party, then rescheduled the neighborhood party for two weeks from now.  (Next weekend is Labour Day weekend, and she figured people may have other plans.)  This took pressure off the family event, and won't be as wearing on my parents.

I think Dad would rather spend the day with some music and a book, than entertaining a parade of guests.

   

Testing the tea (dye).

Since I am going to Dallas (briefly) I thought I'd try some dyeing and take the samples to leave for next month's class.  I hoped to have a pile of knitted blanks to leave, but have had issues with tensioning the loom.  I've also decided to give people half-skein blanks, about 98-100 yards of yarn, instead of a full one, because it might take too long for people to paint a full-sized one.

Speaking of blanks, one of my sample dyes is a blank and a hank, dyed the same (half in one shade of green and half in another), to show how differently the resulting yarn will work:

However, the main plan was to refresh my ability with tea-dyeing.  In theory it is simple: make a BIG pot of tea, add yarn, and simmer.

I managed to goof it up in the beginning by (1) putting in too many skeins, crowding the slow-cooker I am using, and (2) adding the tea bags and yarn at the same time.

The result was VERY spotty, so I pulled out the yarn, drained much of the water back into the pot, added some fresh tea bags with the spent ones, and allowed it to become tea before returning the yarn.  The end result was still a bit streaky, but not as badly:

The above photo has a hank of the original colour under and to the left of each dyed hank.  The blue and tan came out much closer in colour than I expected.  Even though they are not perfect, it's a learning experiment, and I took notes, and that's also part of what I am teaching the students.

I was able to get a couple more slow cookers, so opened to the waiting list but with an absolute cap of eighteen.  When I last heard, there are seventeen registered for the class.  Wow!!

Back. With yarn and knitting.

Just a quick report - I did knitting, and am into the second skein, second half, of the Berie Shawl:

Not much done on the Albuquerque Shawl, but attention must be paid so it's not good for knitting while sightseeing or reading or during intermissions:

Yarn and fabrics acquired, and some fiber for a swap at the annual meeting for one of my local fiber guilds:

LOTS of photos taken, and I may get around to summarizing the trip.  I had fun, not enough sitting-around time as one sometimes gets on vacations, did some hiking, saw a number of museums plus some places I wanted to see and will visit again, and ate a lot of good food.

One of the boring ones.

Mostly because this is a placeholder - I am traveling, which means I cannot upload photos.  My watercolour seems to have stalled the middle of last week, because I was busy and felt overwhelmed and underinspired.  I do have ideas, but wasn't confident of creating them.  I'll get back to it - I brought the pad and some paints on the trip, but have had zero time to focus on them.

Whiling away the hours between when I arrived for my
originally-schedule departure flight, and the time of my
rescheduled departure, caused by some impressive weather
in other parts of the country, which I was now avoiding.

After some travel-fu (a very early connecting flight rescheduled to a very late one due to weather and other delays, and a very kind person at the check-in counter who moved me to an earlier pair that would avoid the kerfluffle although get me to ABQ a few hours later than planned), and a visit with an elderly relative that involved some very yummy Mexican food and a bit of sightseeing, I joined the tour group I'm with for the Santa Fe opera.  And some other adventures.

And a few of my own.  I'll report more about all of this next week, when I can add photos (such as the one above, added after my return).  I might slip one in here later, as an update; maybe the shawl I started on Saturday while waiting for the flights.

A bit stalled.

I've wanted to work on watercolours this week, but haven't quite had the energy to accomplish my intentions, so I did a lot of exercises instead of representational things.  I took process photos only of the last one, which didn't come out as planned.  I was trying to use the washi tape to mark out lines to do a plaid, but ended up with a checkerboard instead:

I taped a square for the library's mini art event on the paper.

So I filled in the center square very simply, although somebody skilled might put in a landscape or something representational:

This is the total since last week's post:

Trying to make the flag look as if it is waving
in the wind, and failing spectacularly.

TOP:  Transparent paint in overlapping circles.
BOTTOM:  Dripping water (left) or other colours
(right) onto a wet ground.

These are the two pieces I made for the library mini-art collection:

I've finished a couple of hats and most of a C2C scarf, plus plenty of work.  And a good soufflé this week:

And today is National Ice Cream Day, so:

My great-grandmother loved butter pecan ice cream, and we kids thought it was some strange old person's flavour.  (My great-grandmother was from Texas and they had pecan trees on some of the family land, so that might be part of it.)  As an adult, I've decided she wasn't wrong.

It Got Long.

I didn't read the pattern correctly; I should have stopped the diamonds with 9 stitches and I took them down to 5 stitches.  So they are much more defined and the scarf is quite long:

One skein of Lion Brand Homespun.

I kept painting this week, trying gradients one day and using washi and masking tape:

The outer ones are monochrome; the inner
use two or three colours.  I tried to blend them.

Finished, with tape removed.  The masking tape didn't come
up as cleaning as I would like on the right side and damaged
the pink triangle a bit.  Or the paper was still damp.

These are most of the ones for this week.  Some are just techniques or exercises.

I did a book for the day when the Prompt is
"TIRED" since reading in bed is my cause!

The prompt for the lower picture is "turtle" and
I thought of the shell pattern.  They are irregular
because I freehanded the outlines.

The trees are surprisingly good (to my eyes) other
than the trunks being out of proportion.  They
should be quite slim.  I may try doing them again.

On my way home from a fiber group meeting on Saturday, I turned in my second Reading Challenge form; I forgot to take a photo of it.  No prize this time, but I am entered into a drawing.  And I have started completing my third:

Without prompting.

An artist who started popping into my fees mentioned that it is World Watercolor Month, and since I have been playing with art, I decided to try to do something in watercolor each day.  I am not counting the form I was completing for the library's Summer Reading Challenge, although I did do the first one in watercolor and completed it on July 2nd:

I forgot to take a photo of the completed form
before I turned it on on July 2nd, when I went to
the library's science fiction book club meeting.

Since I didn't hear about this until a couple days into the month, I needed to do some catching-up, so my first couple of images are just trying the paints I have, on dry and wet paper:

Then I did one that was just making lines, to get into the feel of paintings.  And one limited to red and blue for the holiday:

I probably could have studied and done something
that resembles fireworks more accurately, but no.

Starting with Day 5, I wanted to try something that actually looks like a picture.  I'd seen a tutorial of hers, and it looked easy enough - and it was!

I decided to look up the official prompts for the month, and quickly decided that I am not able to follow all of them.  I may do a few, if I think it's something I can manage, or if the prompt inspires me.  Speaking of which, today's was "Hat" and I decided to try:

I need to make lighter pencil outlines.  And the proportions
are not quite right - but it does resemble a sunhat!

As for the reading challenge, we're supposed to mark every ten minutes we read.  That's too fiddly for me, so mostly a mark each time I read at least ten minutes, although if I read for an hour or so I'll count multiple ten-minute increments.  Nobody should be surprised that I've read well over the number of spots times ten minutes and am well into my second form.

As for my personal reading challenge, I've read fourteen books (fifteen if you count re-reading one) for the year, of the eighteen I proposed.  Being in a book club does help!

For an unofficial challenge I wanted to finish an item each day of the long weekend, and I did:

The "Americana" scarf was my 'car scarf', mostly worked on while waiting, so it took a while.  (I immediately cast on another.)  The two hats and other scarf were pretty much done in the last week.  Hats don't take much time and I wanted to do the crocheted scarf to have something quickly done.  Back to the scarf of linked diamonds shown at the top left.

Cool Licks for Hot Days.

Not of the frozen treat variety, but the musical variety, while the temperatures are triple-digiting:

Too Darn Hot  (Cole Porter)

Summer in the City  (Lovin' Spoonful)

Summertime from "Porgy and Bess", and Joplin's version.

I planned to post more songs, but it's hot and I didn't.  😁   Also, I went to Dallas for some plays, and back again.  It's also really hot there - but surprisingly, not as hot as the east coast is suffering.

"Slave Letters" at MBS Productions

"Cry Havoc" at Lakeside Community Theater

"Curtains", a musical, at Allen Contemporary Theater

And of course, masks with quotes and facts: