Wrapping it up.

Last day of June, so a look back at the month isn't a bad topic.  I've also been wrapping DNiece#1's birthday gift because I will be out of town, and want to give it to her father (my brother) today so it's waiting for her.  He's coming over to my parents' house so we can help them put back all the things moved out of two rooms where they had carpeting replaced with flooring in the last week.

I was at a conference in Denver for three days.  I'd been asked to co-present a session on negotiations, and then was asked to fill-in on another session, plus I wanted to attend a few of the other topics.  However, it was not just end-of-month but end-of-quarter and work was crazily busy.  I was pulled out of a couple sessions and look forward to viewing the recordings so I can learn what I missed.

Even though it was hot, the mornings were nice enough for walks:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

The little park across from our hotel turned out to be a historical site:

  

Progress on Things:  Not much accomplished in terms of reading, because I am working on an anthology and it is long and slow.  I like Ellery Queen's short stories, but these novels read as if he is still writing to get paid by the word.  It's his style, not my favourite, but not so bad that I am ditching the book.  As of today I am mostly through the fourth novel and the final one looks shorter.

Just before going to Denver I finished these bags:

A lady posted to our neighborhood e-list that she wanted help to make something.  She has very basic crocheting skills, and didn't want to learn how to do these, it turned out she wanted somebody else to make them for her.  A granddaughter made some and gave her the pattern, but was going overseas for the summer and wouldn't be able to make them.  I thought it was an interesting pattern and said I would help.  The bottom is a double thickness with an opening so the bag can tuck inside.

The lady purchased the yarn/string and a hook (wrong size) and dropped them off.  I took these to St. Louis and it was perfect not-pay-attention crocheting.  I told her that I have some green so she didn't need to get a big ball for the few yards the leaves would take, and I found some cute blue strawberry buttons in one of my button jars that were perfect for these.  As you can see, the pattern is supposed to make a citrus fruit result but she liked blue better, so received giant blueberries.  I didn't tell her that there was enough string to make two bags, deciding to surprise her, and when she called to see how I was coming along I just said that it was almost ready.  I dropped them off at her house during one of my morning walks before going to Denver and she was quite thrilled.  I returned the pattern but have it memorized in case I want to make more.

I took a super-simple hat of wild yarn to work on at the conference and traveling, plus a surprise project for a friend, and am finally back to this:

I took the photo after my yoga teacher said that we should find something to look at during balancing poses that makes us happy and isn't moving.  I love rainbows, I love knitting, and this made me happy despite the struggles.  A friend who makes socks gave me a bunch of leftovers to share with another friend who makes a lot of hats and things for charity.  While waiting to deliver the box (to which I am adding some of my own leftovers) I decided to use some of the yarns to make things.  I thought about how to use striping yarn in a way that highlights the stripes, instead of muddles them.  Often a yarn made for socks will have stripes calculated based upon foot-width, not head-width, so you lose the effect or it's just very skinny stripes.  Plus since these are leftovers there isn't enough of one to make a hat, so I have to combine things.

The first part, shown above, was to knit what I call a "vertical ribbing" which is done on a narrow width in repeats of knit a row, purl a row, knit a row.  I started and ended with orange.  Next is to pick up around the edge, which I started and stalled and then did the blueberry bags.  So now it is back to this hat - I thought knitting a rainbow hat during Pride Month makes a lot of sense.

Tomato Season Begins

And of course, must be properly commemorated.  First was a fresh tomato pizza that I made after helping my parents clear two rooms in their house that are having carpeting replaced:

Simple crust with chopped herbs in the dough, topped with
slabs of fresh tomatoes and lots of fresh mozzarella cheese.

That's not the only moving-of-stuff I did; somebody posted on the neighborhood e-group that a friend needed a small chest of drawers, did anybody have one?  I bought and put together a couple of simple ones when I moved here and needed places for things.  Later I bought a nice cherry bureau from a neighbor who was downsizing, because it fits my aesthetic better than the plain one, although I'd gotten one that had a midcentury modern feel.

So I offered the plain chest, it was accepted, how soon could she get it?  I asked her to wait until end of my work day, and during a break did a quick emptying of the plain chest, then moved it to the garage and brought the cherry one into the house.  Where it remained in the middle of the livingroom until the next day, because I was too busy Friday to finish.

On Saturday I wiped down the chest, and used a few nails from my toolkit to attach the backing securely on one side where it had come loose.  Then I moved it into place and put the things from the plain chest into it.  The bureau is enough deeper, although about the same height, that everything from the plain chest fit into it with room to spare. 

Today I had my first fresh tomato sandwich of the season:

Plain bread, toasted.  Mayonnaise.
Slabs of tomato.  Freshly ground pepper.

And blackberries are definitely ripening in the thickets:

I did not plan to pick berries that morning as I still have a lot of very ripe peaches, but there were so many people and dogs on the route I planned to take that I made a sudden decision to find a less busy route.  Luckily it was a bit shady so I didn't mind using my hat to carry as I easily picked well more than my hands would hold.

Work is at quarter-end and I have some fiber projects on deadline and my part of an article due tomorrow, so it's been busy.  And HOT.

Time for ice-cream, with berries, of course!

Flag Day and Father's Day

Two big events this weekend.

On Friday, it was Flag Day, commemorating the date in 1777 when the Continental Congress adopted the first version of the USA national flag.  I posted these photos, two of my favourites:

The famous photo taken by Thomas E. Franklin: "Raising the Flag at Ground Zero"

Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer prize winning photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.

Today is Father's Day in the USA.  My family got together at my parents' house to celebrate with burgers and cupcakes.  Gifts were donations to favourite charities because neither my father or brother need things.  I gave this hat to my father a few years ago:

Mom didn't think he needed any more ballcaps, but forgave me for this one.

Speaking of Mom, she was happy that the farmer came to their community center with a farmstand again.  It wasn't clear that he would be back after last summer.  So we went over, had a reunion, and bought lots of peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes, squashes, and a couple watermelons, several of which turned up in our celebratory lunch.  And I picked some wild blackberries this morning, so it was a wonderful, fruit-filled feast.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

As a friend said this past weekend, my travels came out a bit like the old movie - but without the weather and travel-partner issues.

I flew to St. Louis for the Illinois State Bar Association Annual Meeting.  These are rarely held in Illinois, primarily (I was told long ago) because there is no resort-type location that will handle a meeting of our size and type.  We need lots of small meeting rooms, not much catering, and things for families to do.  In the past the meetings were mostly at one of two resorts in southern Wisconsin, with an occasional trip to St. Louis, the last of which was during some massive flooding so many of the planned events didn't occur, and some people had trouble getting to the meetings entirely.

This time, the weather was perfect most of the weekend.  I flew into Lambert Field (STL) and went to the hotel, which happily had a room available even though it was still morning.  

View from the room after I said I didn't want to 
pay extra for a view of The Arch.

So I was able to settle in and get some work done before heading to the first meeting.  Then back to the room to work until the welcome reception, where I met a friend/colleague and we headed over to Busch Stadium, just a short walk away, and watched the Cardinals lose (by a single run) to the Rockies.

It was Star Wars Night so I wore a Baseball Wars shirt (my companion wore Stan Musial) and we got commemorative bobbleheads.

  

The next day I had two meetings, and mostly ate snacks due to scheduling.  Originally I was going to catch the airport-to-Columbia shuttle that afternoon, but by the time I figured out enough of my schedule to buy the ticket all the afternoon seats were sold out.  What to do?  Alternative transportation!  I knew there was likely to be an Amtrak station in the downtown area, and happily there was a train at just the right time.  So I decamped from hotel to station in time for a couple calls (hurrah for headsets), made it onto the train, and was met in time for supper instead of arriving around midnight.

Saturday was a quiet, visiting with friends, check out the Farmers' Market (I bought garlic scapes and fennel and cheese, and would have purchased much more if I were not flying home the next day - or if I'd brought bigger luggage), and otherwise a much more relaxed day than I usually experience.  On Sunday it was time for the 'automobiles' part of the travel - it turned out enough people were going from Columbia to the airport at that time that they used a long bus.

We made a stop to pick up more passengers.

At the airport friends met me, we had lunch, I enjoyed an unofficial tour of a Masonic Lodge, then back to the airport where I checked out the current art exhibits and had enough time to attend my weekly online fiber arts group before boarding the flight home.

Expanding the challenge

Last year, I told the Goodreads Reading Challenge that I would read a dozen books, and read eighteen.  This year, I decided to claim a dozen again, because overachieving is fun.  These are books on paper, not electronic or audio formats, because I like books on paper.

Sometime I go slowly because I read anthologies, which will have five full-length novels, but I count it as one book instead of five.  Then there are weeks like this one, when I read four books - but in fairness, they are fairly short, non-strenuous children's books:

A neighbor was offering the books to anybody who wanted them, as they were hers as a girl but her grandchildren did not want them.  I watched "The Mickey Mouse Club" in reruns when I was a child and thought these might be fun historical reads, so I took the books.  Then I saved them for the right time, and that turned out to be last week.

In quick order I read the four on the left.  I still have the other two to read, but am back into my Ellery Queen anthology, so it might be a while before I'm ready to pass these six to somebody else.

Recording those four means I am already at my goal of a dozen books for 2024, after only five months!  So I decided that instead of just overachieving, I would expand my 2024 goal to eighteen books.