Weekend Things ~ Need to Do/Want to Do

I again went into the weekend with a list--inside my head--of things I needed to get done, and things I wanted to do. I started the weekend with an evening out Friday night with a friend, to a new Indian restaurant (yum!) and to see this movie, which was so good and so sad. The tragic irony of it destroyed the last shred of faith I had in humanity.

E and Z had a friend over Saturday morning, so I put off the housework until a time at which they could help and focused on a couple of need-to-do's that I've been putting off for too long.

Starting sprouts, finally! Winter's half over (ha!) and I just now got these going, which is ridiculous since it takes all of a minute to find a jar and the sprouting lid, put the seeds in, and add water.

I also finally got the Christmas thank-you-notes (mostly) ready to go in the mail (but didn't get them to the box in time for Saturday's mail delivery). Addressing the envelopes led to a whole 'nother project: I updated my Christmas card mailing list with all of the changed and corrected addresses, printed out a set of labels and stuck them to new, clean pages in my address book.

This is what the book looked like before. People are forever moving and getting married and getting divorced and otherwise messing up my address book. I still need to go back and hand-write in the phone numbers (but since the few people we actually call are programmed into all of our phones, I don't feel terribly compelled to do so).

After the boys and I cleaned house, we got one with some want-to-dos:

Lounging around with comics and comic books (I want to long around reading, too, but it just doesn't seem to happen).

And playing outside. The January thaw hadn't hit yet, and it was still pretty frigid out, so we didn't go too far.

In the evening, I took M to see this amazing guitarist. He's one of M's favorites and the tickets were my Christmas present to him. I love going to see local musicians at local venues--it is so congenial and cozy and intimate and the musicians seem like real people, not demigods. I think I could never attend another big-name concert in an arena full of screaming people and be perfectly happy.

Sunday the rain came, and we spent a cozy day inside. On my need-to-do list: sketch and identify winter weeds (I had collected them a few weeks earlier, so I didn't have to go out in the rain).

And on the want-to-do list: knit and read (books piled on that foot rest include: Big Nate, The Series of Unfortunate Events, The Man Who Walked Through Time, Magical Journey, Akimbo and the Lions, and How to Train Your Dragon. Guess which books are mine?).

I had planned to go to a party in the afternoon, but warm rain falling on frigid roads made for treacherous driving and, after fishtailing as far as our neighbors' driveway, I turned around and skidded back home. Instead I cooked a healthy dinner and did another need to do--fixed two pairs of mittens--while watching various Sunday night PBS programming (Father Brown, Downton Abbey, Grantchester).

And then we had a bonus weekend day! In between E's dentist appointment (about which he was outraged--outraged!--that it did not entail missing any school) and M's voice lesson, I managed another want-to-do that I've been meaning to do for a very long time: make Welsh tea cakes, something I remember my mom making when I was a kid (only I didn't know what they were called, but googled "frying pan cookies") and have been meaning to make myself for ages. The boys and I just finished reading The Dark is Rising series, which again reminded me of these (a good portion of the series takes place in Wales...and tea cakes make an appearance). I used this recipe, subbing whole wheat pastry flour for half the all-purpose flour, using yogurt instead of buttermilk, cutting the sugar by 1/4 cup, and using dried blueberries instead of currants (a little Maine twist). They came out delicious--a bit like a scone or a biscuit, with just enough but not too much sweetness. The orange zest and nutmeg were perfect. I'll definitely be making them again.

Finally, we ended the weekend with this sighting on the way to M's lesson, a barred owl who kindly flew down to a fence post and posed for a photo after the third drive-by.

Owl Pellet Dissection

As part of my Maine Master Naturalist class homework, I had to dissect an owl pellet last weekend. I thought that this would be the one thing the boys would get into, but other than a little help from E right at the beginning, they had no interest. (Due, in no small part, I'm sure, because E and Z had a friend over and were watching a movie. And because M is a teenager: "I'm not really into owl pellets. They're kind of grody").

Yes, indeed they are kind of grody. When I've dissected pellets in the past (ones we've found in our woods and, once, one that an owl ejected onto the roof of C's car where it stayed, frozen to the metal, while he drove around for one whole day before we realized it was there), I've dissected them dry, but the directions I had said to pour boiling water over the pellet and let it sit for twenty minutes.

I was hoping this would make it easier--that the fur would float to the top and the bones sink to the bottom, but it did not quite work out that way. Instead it made it quite a bit more grody than it otherwise might have been, and I spent a good three hours picking apart teensy bones from globs of wet fir (mildly scented like moldy carpet).

I came out in the end two sets of bones (plus one extra jawbone...where had that come from?) from two voles (meadow or creeping, based on the key that came with the pellet--a barn owl's from the Pacific Northwest).

The final step in the process was to assemble the skeleton of one of the unfortunate owl snacks. I don't think I'll be hired by a museum to put together their stegosaurus skeletons anytime soon--I had run out of energy on the project and placed the toe bones and vertebrae rather willy-nilly.

But it was fascinating to see the details of the shapes and how they work--the ball and socket of the hip, the thin, wing-like shoulder-blade, the needle-thin rib bones. And pretty amazing to think how these minuscule bones correspond to the bones in our own bodies and in an elephant's and a whale's. At class this week we learned to identify the skulls of many different Maine mammals, and the similarities and differences among them left me in awe of evolution and nature. As my college biology professor used to say, "Life is so cool!"

Cables and Cables and Cables

The Three Kings dropped off a cable-knit hat for each member of the family last week (because someone hadn't quite gotten them done in time for Christmas).

When I was in Ireland two summers ago (how can so much time have gone by already?), I picked up several skeins of Donegal Studio Aran Tweed yarn, each a different color, with the intention of making a hat for each member of the family, each in a different cable-knit pattern, because Ireland. And also because I love the way cables look and wanted some practice knitting them (in case I ever get really wild and crazy and knit a cabled sweater).

I started knitting the first one while I was still in Ireland, but as it turned out, it took me several months to almost finish it (didn't I say I'm not a summer knitter?), and then I ran out of yarn after the first few decrease rows. I tore the whole thing out and started again, knitting it with one less cable section than the pattern called for, and still ran out a few rows before the end. So I gave up and turned it into a headband.

I then found an online source of the very same yarn and was able to get another skein in each the teal, light green, and dark red colors. 

I wasn't able to match the dark green or light red, so I found a pattern that included both cables and color work. It doesn't look terribly Irish, but it was a lot of fun to knit.

I discovered along the way that the disadvantage of using free patterns that I find online is widely varying inconsistency in sizing: the teal hat came out tiny, the light green enormous, the red-and-green a bit big, and the red just right but not quite long enough. If it were just my loose knitting to blame, they would have all been huge, right?

 I learned my lesson and actually paid for a pattern for one last hat:

When I made my order for extra yarn, I bought two skeins of purple that remind me a little of the heather that grows on the hillsides of County Kerry. I also moved down a needle size, because I really do knit loosely and I don't want an enormous hat. Although this one is intended to be a bit slouchy, I don't need a shower cap.

It's keeping my hands busy these winter evenings as we work through a season of MI-5 that I got for Christmas, our weekly NetFlick (last week: Little Women), and, of course, Downton Abbey. Maybe that's why winter is my knitting season: it's also my TV-watching season!

Pattern names and (minimal) notes at my Ravelry page.

Weekend Things: Tulips ~ Tree ~ Tracks ~ Tamales

It was good starting the weekend out with a list. It kept my momentum up, and even though I never actually looked at it, as I did things, I would feel a small sense of satisfaction that something from the list was getting done. And most of it did get done--true, the thank-you notes didn't quite make it into the mail (but they're off to a good start), and some bits of housework remain undone (but isn't that always the case), and I didn't write one single word (no excuses).

We did take down all the Christmas decorations (and I couldn't resist replacing them with some tulips from the market, even though spring is too far away to even start daydreaming about it). Once the tree was out of the house and two extra leaves removed from he dining table, our living space felt about quintupled in size.

M carried the tree back into the woods, from whence it came, and all I could think about was how I carried him in the rainbow sling when we went out to get his first tree, and in the backpack the next year, and pulled him in the sled the next, and how after that he ran over the snow on his own sturdy boots, picking out the biggest trees, sawing the trunk by himself. And now he can carry the tree like it's nothing.

We continued down to the river, which has finally frozen over. Last time we were down, on Christmas Eve, it was completely open water. The last week or so of sub-zero temperatures finally did it.

C went out on the ice, but, after having had an incident last year, I am much more cautious and will wait for a few more weeks of cold before I venture onto ice over flowing water.

M and E sawed and broke chunks of ice from the edge and pitched them out, trying to break the cornice of ice that overhung a big willow log that lies across the water. This kept them entertained long after I had grown cold and moved on--what is it about breaking ice that's so fun? I don't know, but I would have joined in if E weren't wearing my mittens, since he neglected to wear his own.

I headed up to the gravel pit to look for tracks and was rewarded with a beautiful set of padded paw prints. A fox, I think, based on the size and shape (slightly longer than wide, with occasional claw marks). I followed them across the pond to where they disappeared up a steep bank into the woods.

Later in the afternoon, my friend Lee came over and we made tamales and red tomato rice. Hers were pork and mine were half sweet potato, half mushroom, and they were all divine. 

Sunday the boys all had friends over and they watched The Hobbit and played out in the snow while I dissected my owl pellet and played with fabric and organized the spice cabinet.

Overall, I'm settling in to these January days--quick bursts of cold outside energy interspersed with lots of time inside with a warm fire and a drive to accomplish, to stave off the winter blues (perpetual motion is my antidepressant of choice...if you stop moving too long, you remember it's winter in Maine).

What keeps you moving these January days?

2015

I finally had some time earlier this week to sit down and think about what I want to accomplish in the year ahead (apparently resolutions are out and intentions, plans, words, and feelings are in. It all amounts to the same thing, though, doesn't it? Reflecting on the year past and investing your hopes and dreams and desires into the one ahead.)

Why, yes, our Christmas stockings are still hanging up. You never know when Santa might swing by for a follow-up visit.

I finally ran out of time--but not resolutions--once I had filled three pages (three 8 1/2 x 11 tablet pages). My goals ranged from the prosaic--clean out the basement, catch up on photo albums, get a handle on my computer storage issues--to the pie in the sky--big travel and book-writing plans. There are crafty plans on the list--quilts for E and Z (with no illusion that they will get done this year...just progress) and knitting up all my stash. There are healthy plans (exercise more; eat less...but not until I finish off the eggnog). There are cooking plans. There are goals for improving my photography skills and ideas about drawing. There are lots and lots writing intentions. I ran out of time before I got to personal growth goals, but I'll get to them soon.

It's a long list. A bit overwhelming. I haven't had time to break the items down into manageable chunks, with timeframes and deadlines, and mini goals along the way, not to mention strategies for overcoming obstacles. For now I'll face it--and life--one day at a time. Or, as it were, one weekend at a time. Here are my plans for this weekend:

NEED to do

Take down the Christmas tree and decorations (I know, I know, I know)
Write and send thank-you notes 

The usual housework

Dissect an owl pellet (for reals...it's homework)

Catch up on winter weed homework

WANT to do

Get started on a couple of essays that are floating around in my mind.

Finish making a cover for a couch pillow that I started ages ago.

Knit while watching MI5

Read

Hike down to the river

Make tamales with a friend

Get started on my capstone project 

Sounds like a three-day weekend is in order (E and Z have been hoping for a school- and work-cancelling blizzard with such fervor, it just might happen). 

Do you make resolutions--or goals, plans, intentions, words, feelings--for the new year?

Knitting Yarns

When I graduation from my MFA program last January, my dear, sweet, fabulous-in-every-way mentor gifted me a copy of Knitting Yarns, a book edited by Ann Hood and in which my mentor Suzanne's essay "Crafty Critters" is included. When I got home from residency, being generally burnt out on reading and words in general, I added the book to the teetering pile of to-be-reads at the top of the stairs. I would get to it as soon as I was in the mood to read again.

I'm a winter knitter--from around Halloween to St. Patrick's Day is my knitting season--not by any conscious decision, but that's just how it seems to shake out. So by the time I was in the mood to read again, my knitting season was winding down and, so it seems, my desire to read about knitting. Again, not by any conscious thought, but whenever I've gone to grab a new book to read over the last year, that one just didn't rise to the top of the stack.

And then, when I got home from work on New Year's Eve, with a strong desire to sink into a hot bubble bath, and then, when my family chose a movie I wasn't interested in for our traditional New Year's Eve viewing, I went upstairs and turned on the water in the tub and perused the leaning tower of books at the top of the stairs.

The cover of Knitting Yarns grabbed my eye. The gorgeous balls of yarn, wound perfectly spherical and arranged in a rough wooden hod (I'm not sure if it is actually a hod--or what a hod even is--but it seems like the right word for those cubbies. Also, where can I get my hands on such a hod to house my partial balls of yarn?). I flipped open to the intro, the part where Ann Hood writes about coming to knitting out of grief after her five-year-old daughter died and I knew this was the book to read in the tub on the last day of 2014.

By the time the bathwater temperature dropped to frigid, I had finished half the book. On New Year's Day, I found time to loll on the couch reading another quarter (with breaks to knit several rows on a cabled, color-work hat, the perfect companion knit to this book), and I polished off the remaining essays over the weekend.

Knitting Yarns is the best kind of anthology--a simple, single starting point (knitting) that a wide range of writers riff on, all stitching together widely different, unique, and universal stories. There are stories of learning to knit and teaching to knit and failing to learn to knit. Of knitting well and knitting very, very badly. Of knitting daughters and mothers and aunts and grandmothers and nannies. Of the ways knitting weaves a thread through generations. Of buying yarn and books and unfinished projects. Of knitting and sex and sexuality. Of knitting into love and out of a bad marriage, knitting  down blood pressure and knitting (or observing knitting) to quell nerves. Of knitting through grief. Heartfelt, heartening, heartbreaking stories, all threaded together with yarn and needles.

I don't know for sure that this book would appeal to those who do not knit, but as they often said in my MFA program, "Good writing is good writing." And the essays in this book are the very best, from writers you're familiar with (Ann Hood, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Andre Dubus III, Barbara Kingsolver, Hope Edelman) and writers you've never heard of but whose work you will want to search out. If you've ever knit or tried to knit or loved someone who knits--and I think that pretty much covers all of us--I think you will love this book.

Linking up with Yarn Along and Keep Calm Craft On.

Weekend Things ~ Ice & Snow

There were fractious, querulous beings in our household this weekend.

*

Small people completely outraged that winter break was coming to an end after only two weeks.

They expressed their grievances by endlessly bickering with and picking on each other.

For the first time ever, I understood that line from "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." 

Yes, indeed, mom at least could hardly wait for school to start again (even if it means a return to making lunches and enforcing bedtimes and policing homework).

Santa Claus made the probably ill-advised decision of gifting the two youngest members of the household with electronic devices.

**

All arbitrary and toothless limits went out the window as soon as they were declared.

Until, looking up Sunday morning, I noticed two glazed faces completely hypnotized by a week straight of Stampy Someone-or-other's Minecraft Youtube videos.

***

The devices found their way to a hiding place--where they will spend Monday through Friday and all but one hour on the weekends--and, amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the two screen zombies bundled up and out into the snow.

To have fun. Real, actual, physical fun.

Later, we made snow ice cream with eggnog and played cards and Pictionary and worked on a puzzle and read a chapter from the book we've been neglecting all holiday season. And it was good.

Notes:

*I realized this weekend that I will never be any better at ice skating than I am now, which is no better than I ever have been, which is not very good. I think this is the definition of growing old.

**Standing on perfectly clear ice in your stocking feet feels like walking on water.

***I tried out an old high school photography class technique of panning a moving object on a slow shutter speed but didn't quite pull it off (the moving object is supposed to be in focus with a blurred background). Anyone know the secret to that technique?