Adventure and Tradition

I’m still thinking about my most recent getaway with my granddaughter.

I loved it because it represented tradition for me.  I grew up going ‘up north’.  So when I go now, I like to visit the same places and swim at the same beaches.  I’ve added a few of my own new traditions, too.  First of all, I take my coffee into the woods and I drink a toast to my folks, in gratitude for all the wonderful memories I have.  Secondly, I gather a few downed birch branches to use for holiday decorations and candle-making.

More than that, however, I like to visit antique stores in the vicinity looking for things that help me preserve my memories.

Goodnight loved our getaway, too.  It represented adventure for her.  I think it did for me at her age too, because everything was new and different.  Maybe over time, her sense of adventure will morph into a sense of tradition.  But for now, I wouldn’t want to change her approach.  At thirteen, life is still new to her, relatively speaking and it’s not fair borrow her time to pay for mine.

She tolerated my  browsing through antique stores and I tolerated her browsing though clothing stores which stock garments that can’t be classified as vintage anything yet.  We both win when we share that way.

I found a copy of the same cookbook my mother used when I was growing up.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  I bought it immediately.  I started reading it and deemed myself a complete failure before I finished chapter one.  (More about that another time.)  Goodnight found some cute blue jeans.  I found a set of dishes with the same pattern my grandmother had.  I oohed and ahhed for a long time and found pieces that my gram didn’t have (or had and were broken before I remember them).  I didn’t buy the dishes.  Goodnight found charms for her charm necklace.  She likes the inspirational words.  I get to tell her family stories when I run into antique items that I recognize, and she gets to tell me stories about herself, whether verbally or implied by her shopping choices.

Adventure and Tradition:  I don’t think it means the same as Young and Old, but with Goodnight and Gram, maybe it’s a fair analogy (sometimes.) 

 

Winter Scarf Tying Methods

I received a fun email today.  Someone from scarves.net contacted me and included a link to videos they have showing different ways to tie winter scarves.  There are other scarf-tying videos on the site, but since I’m a knitter and the Super Scarf Project for the Indianapolis 2012 Super Bowl has taken up most of my knitting time for over a year now, I decided to pass around the link to the Winter Scarf Tying Methods.

I have also added the link to my sidebar on my home page.   From there, you can find your way to the other scarf tying methods for various kinds of scarves.

It won’t be long before we need to know some of those methods here in the U.S.A.

Enjoy!

The reality of knitting rears its ugly head.

All ‘play’ and no ‘work’ makes Gram a very fast knitter.  Then comes the reality.

A little bitty mistake twenty-two rows back absolutely had to be fixed.  No hiding, no excuses, no tears, just yank it off the needle and unravel it!  The photo tells no secrets.  I was following a chart – one that I had designed myself.  The charted design is still there . . .  somewhere in the tangled part.  If you look closely, you might see it.

Cruising along at over 2000 stitches per hour is the ‘play’ part (not extraordinarily fast, but consistent hyper-knitting).  As you can tell by the photo below, the ‘work’ part is having to back up a bit and take a second crack at the stitches.

All you clever readers will notice that the yarn is blue and white and will probably be guessing that the shredded project must be going to Indianapolis: something footballish/something Super Bowlish.  You would be right.  It will still get there, but I need a cup of coffee and a walk around the block before I have the fun of doing those twenty-two rows over.

Keeps me humble . . . . and I have plenty of those opportunities!

I took her out for breakfast.

Goodnight loves going out to eat, but I don’t think our morning breakfasts ‘up north’ were what she anticipated when I rolled her out of bed – at least not the first day.

We went for a walk in the forest and we were there at the perfect time for raspberry picking.

It was chilly in the morning, so I gave her my old raincoat to wear.  Good for warmth and long enough to keep the brambles and thistles away from her legs.  There was no path to follow, so she needed the protection.

We didn’t bring a bucket.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t know there were raspberries there. 

Since I’ve been an adult and driving there on my own, I’ve only driven up in the very late Autumn.  I love to see the vestiges of the leaves on the trees with their morning nip from overnight low temperatures.  I also like to see the tamarack trees, which when one first sees them in October, can look like they are dying.  They are very unusual conifers which shed their needles every year after turning a bright copper orange color.  It’s quite stunning, especially against a backdrop of other green forestry.  I enjoy that time of year in the northern part of the state.

So . . . .  no bucket to hold raspberries that we picked.  We just ate what we wanted, enjoyed our hike, then I took GN our for the rest of her breakfast at a local diner.

Aside from berry-picking, hiking in the woods, swimming in a chilly lake, we toured the area small towns: books stores, antique stores, flea markets, farmer’s markets, etc.  We got back to the town where we stayed just in time for a parade!  What you see in the photo below was the entire parade.  It barely lasted ten minutes and was made up of only the local emergency vehicles, except for the sheriff, who had to block the street entrance from the highway.  Short and sweet, but lots of candy thrown in such a short time.

I got a kick out of it.  The local kids we had seen at the lake came running to the parade in their swimsuits, knowing they were going right back to the lake with their stash of Tootsie Rolls.

Goodnight had a great time on our getaway and is already looking forward to the next time we escape.  It isn’t as often as many other Minnesota residents head north, but our next trip will include bike-riding on a cross-country trail, hunting for some fallen birch branches to bring home for Christmas candle-making, and probably a better chance to see the Aurora Borealis.

We didn’t roll in back home until nearly 9:00 last night – just in time for me to hear a well-earned, “Goodnight, Gram!”   :-)

A Gram, a Teen, and a Post Card from ‘Up North’

I can’t say I’m an expert on raising children.  Goodnight is only the second child for whom I’ve to be responsible.  I know that once in a while isn’t good to unplug ‘em from their phones, computers, electronic games, TV’s and movies.

GN doesn’t really balk at this – so I start out a little ahead in the first place.

We’re having a great time.  The only thing that would have topped off the weekend would have been a peek at the Northern Lights.  No luck because of the clouds that rolled in, but there was enough other stuff to see.

We saw a wild turkey hen and five poults.  I’ve never seen baby wild turkeys before.  Always something new to enjoy!  We saw a donkey, a mule, several bison , horses of all colors, same with cattle, white geese with their tail feathers pointed heavenward like avian compasses, as they went under for food, one lone loon, and a bald eagle feeding on carrion by the side of the road.  We watched fish swim to the surface of a perfectly clear lake and snatch unfortunate flies that had landed there.

Goodnight swam in the chilly waters of a northern Minnesota lake that I’ve been fortunate to go to for fifty years.  She skipped rocks for a while until she got fully wet.  She got one to take five hops before it sank.

Then she climbed on the shore rocks of another, larger lake in the vicinity.

We went out to eat last night at a little place down the road apiece.  When I parked the car, GN asked me if she needed to bring a book.  I said, “Nope!  We are going to sit around and talk.”  I’m not opposed to her reading, but the line comes from a commercial in which two women make fun of people who get away from technology for the weekend.  So, GN and I sat around and talked while we waited for our food.  I love giving her the time to just chatter away.  It’s her life and she lets me in – for which I am very grateful.

The little town we stayed in had a parade last night.  It lasted less than ten minutes.  It was only the a couple of fire trucks and law enforcement vehicles – with one lone sheriff who had to stay on duty and block access to the street from the highway.  GN doesn’t get too excited about parades anymore, but this one cracked her up.  Short and sweet, and a fist full of candy because she was the only kid on the block where we watched.  The town is so small, they couldn’t have had a bigger parade.  They would be able to afford it, and there would be no one in town left to watch. 

I love ‘up north.’  Having a wonderful time.  Wish you were here.

A Legendary Endorsement for Super Scarf Project

If you read my post for yesterday, you know I hit the work day Superfecta and took advantage of it.

Goodnight and I tossed some clothes and pj’s in the car and took off for a drive ‘up north’ as we say here.

I’m not much of a groupie, but there is a famous person that I run into once in a while when I get ‘up north’, so I asked him a HUGE favor: to pose with some Super Scarves and so I could shamelessly use his big name and face to endorse the Indianapolis Super Bowl and the Super Scarf Project.

Hearing no dissention, we commenced the photo shoot.  In fact, I seem to recall he said he would be happy to ‘lend a hand.’ 

 

This legend, of course, is Paul Bunyan, the mythological lumberjack.   I shot this photo this morning.  This statue of my long-time friend is located in Akeley, Minnesota.

As I type this post, there is a Super Scarf knit-in going on in Indianapolis, to which I was invited.  I wish I could be there to join other knitters in continuing the effort of supplying TONS of blue and white scarves to volunteers who will help host the 2012 Super Bowl.

Since I barely got off my crutches from my summer fall, and am still in knee-hab, I thought it best to stay a little closer to home.  Too bad.  There was a pre-season home game for the Colts last night, too.  Shucks!

So, to the folks who have gathered at the knit-in, to the Super Scarf Project Committee, and to the Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee, Paul Bunyan and I send the best from here. 

My Indy brother signed up for his volunteer assignment and I hope he gets it.  Sounds like a blast.

There are only 160 days left to game day.  I just checked the Super Scarf site and they are showing a total of 7,544 scarves collected.  I’ve include a link in case anyone wants to help up that total.

I have my blue and white knitting along with me on this weekend getaway.  Luckily, there is a little festival in the little town where we are staying and there is outdoor music tonight, so I shall be sitting in the park and knitting in the northern forest area of Minnesota.

Thanks for your time today, Paul Bunyan!

And happy knitting to the rest of you!

Work Week Superfecta!!!

It’s Friday!

It’s payday!

It’s a beautiful day outside!

I have a boss who leaves the building early!

Spout Your Knitting Stats!

I like to keep stats on my knitting.  It helps me decide what I can accomplish for the time I have available.  If I have a large project I’m working on, I can’t take it to work, so a smaller project makes my daily commute with me. 

Here’s where the stats help.  I have one intersection where I rarely get a green light.  It’s a long red light, too!  Last year I timed it and it’s a two-minute wait if I get there and have just missed the green.  If I have knitting in my lap I can knit while I wait.  I also know how many stitches I can average in an hour, so if I keep plugging away at a scarf of something.  I hit that light twice a day as a general rule.  With my knitting stats, I know I can average a ‘red light’ scarf every two months or so.

Something to consider, though, is that if I hear honking, I know I’ve been having more fun at the red light that someone behind me . . .

My stats help me feel some accomplishment.  In the last month, I have knit nearly 200,000 stitches.  Most of those were NOT at a red light, however.  All but 14,000 of them are in the photo below.

Here’s where the fun comes in.  When you hear someone talking sports stats, you can chime right in! 

Talking baseball?  Did you know that one skein of Cascade 220 is long enough to reach 1.8333 times around a baseball diamond?  Or talking football?  That same skein of yarn will span the distance from one goal line to the other, and back again, and then  to the twenty yard line.  Choose your favorite yarn brand, check the yardage and translate that into sport distances.  Or if you know how long it takes you to knit a scarf, you can impress a sports fan by telling them your scarf took you 1 1/2 football games to produce or roughly the same amount of baseball games (without extra innings or overtime, of course). 

Now, I’m not talking about bragging.  I’m talking about the genuine, inspirational tossing out of impressive numbers related to the sport of knitting.  Don’t think it’s a sport?  We run to the store to pick up yarn.  We drop stitches and then have to pick them up!  If fishing is a sport where a thin line is cast, then knitting is a sport where a thin line is cast on AND off!  We tackle new projects and we jump through hoops to finish our hand-knit gifts.  In football, the running back sometimes has to weave through the defensive line.  We weave in our yarn ends.

We don’t have to be left out of the Stat Chats and perhaps we can draw people into knitting in the process. 

A Cautionary Plea to Knitters

This is just a little blurb to all the knitters who have been stopping by here lately.

I can see by the blog stats that two of my knitting patterns are currently being viewed quite frequently lately: Pastor’s Winter Cap and Scarf and my Skunk Scarf. 

      

If you are knitting them both as gifts, I implore you not to get them mixed up.  They both require black and white yarn as I designed them.  I like them both, of course, but you’re bound to upset the pastor if you gift wrap the Skunk Scarf accidentally.  Of course, if the pastor is a different denomination than the skunk . . . carry on! 

I love my life as a knitter!

Today I got an email with a pdf attachment which was a scan of someone’s hand.  It made me laugh to think of how quickly I was supplied with the object of my request.  I remember when I had to take the measurements myself in person, or get the sketch in the mail in order to make a custom-fit pair of hand-knit gloves.  I still have to take the measurements from the sketch, but now it can be from anywhere around the world.

So much for the image of knitting as a pastime for old ladies in rocking chairs on their porches, eh?  Sounds good to me, but only if my porch has WiFi.