Cities have Yarn Shops

Strolled over to a beautiful shop today. This is the first real yarn shop I've been in since the 1960s and I recognize all the same feelings that I had what? forty years ago?
The wools are so beautiful. And they're really all wools, or silks mixed with wools. The colors break your heart, the skeins all want to be touched. And boy, they're all expensive. And my deeply inbred stinginess comes forward saying, "yeah, and then you have to invest all the time and labour, and hope you have something worthwhile, and yet only briefly worthwhile, in the nature of anything cloth -- it's generally not in use, is it?"

I recognize the urges that had me resolve back forty years ago to have a pastel orange mohair and make it into a sweater; to have Norwegian wools to make those indestrucible green sweaters you all remember...

This trip, I bought a blunt-ended sewing needle and actually finally left. They do have a lot of half-price sales on the ends of runs... And it's quite near by.

Daffodils in February

Up north, in Skagit county, a bunch of daffodils cut in the field and bundled with a rubber band like a bunch of asparagus, costs 99 cents. In a vase of water at home, they wait quietly until morning, and then as the sunshine hits them, they open, to be beauiful slightly fragrant yellow trumpets, more and more opening as the day grows. In the month of April, people drive up to Skagit county to see all the blooming bulbs, but in middle February, the only watchers at the flower stand were two bald eagles sitting peacably in a large bare tree next door. One of the eagles was sleek and poised; one of them was probably a nice large affable juvenile.

Well, those juveniles aren't always so affable, I guess. We drove up to a parking lot, and saw two large four-year-olds lounging in a nearby field. They moved about, got a little restless, and then one gawkily took off. As it lumbered over the fields, squawking ducks reminded each other that an eagle can eat a duck easily. These young eagles have bigger feathers and stand larger than the fully grown-up model.

We certainly saw the grown-up model. Driving the car slowly down the highway, we came near a whole gang of grownups, twelve sleek bustling bald eagles, and they even dived at the car. Imagine seeing their tail feathers so clearly I could draw them today. Certainly, if I were a duck, I'd have squawked.

When first we arrived at the huge field that snow geese had been filling last week, there was a sentinel hawk, a black red-tailed hawk, in a tall tree, a robin prancing near the the field, and an eagle way far away on a post. Later, an eagle moved onto the same tree the hawk was using. And that hawk flew over and buzzed the eagle, I think he meant to warn the eagle away. That eagle was no juvenile, easy to scare; it just waved one wing, one huge wing, like a brush-off. The hawk retired to its old perch, and after while just quietly left. Stayed awhile, to show it wasn't being scared away either. But left.

I guess, in February, the red-tailed hawk that has picked out a good spot likes to keep it. We saw one at the side of the road. It launched out, perched momentarily on a roof, whipped down and apparently picked up lunch; took its lunch back in the trees where we couldn't see it eat. But later, we returned down that same road, and there the hawk was, in his original spot, happily fed, posing on various branches. He doesn't like to have his picture taken, much, but he doesn't want to leave.

Skagit County is beautiful in February.

Snow Geese

This empty field was ahead of us, and we drove towards it, noticing clouds of geese in the sky over distant hills. And in their thousands, they all descended on the field of grass, stretching out farther than a football field, and really making noise though not as much as Canadian geese do.

After about half an hour of being all settled, they started to leave from the eastern end of the field, and quite suddenly, after a drift-away over ten minutes or so, the last five hundred or so just suddenly took off. One robin was left on the large empty field. It became so quiet, we could hear that robin when he chirped. He really stood up straight and triumphant. He'd moved off how many thousand snow geese?

And who's in Skagit County?

This is one of the gorgeous birds, just hanging out on the other side of the fence. We saw one heron who was farther away, who spread his wings and left, hurtling over a pile of brush towards water. But otherwise, the herons we saw today were almost right next to us, like this one, and even ran along keeping pace with the car! It was cold, and they curl their necks down to keep warm, I think.

A Trip to Skagit County

We had the most marvelous day today. There's a lot of water and cornfield and marshy land up north, in Skagit County, and the wild birds travel to get here in February. Even swans were lying down out in fields, and thousands and thousands of white snow geese with black on their wings -- Bill says they fly down from Alaska to winter here where it was only 14 degrees last night. The sun was brilliant and the temperature was thirty, by two in the afternoon.

We saw a kestrel, who posed politely on a telegraph wire so that I could practice with my binoculars. Really, I can probably manage better without them. But with binoculars, Bill can stand around looking at a cornfield with a short-eared owl flying round it, very low, looking for mice to eat I guess, and he murmurs "What a lovely face" when he sees that owl's face. And we saw an eagle, likewise, sitting happily on a green lawn, with a juvenile keeping it company. Looking at all these gorgeous fellas -- and having them sit down and stay in view! -- utterly beautiful.

Reconsidering the Shawls

When we were introduced to Prayer Shawls, I had the idea that they would be put on, when a person wanted to pray. The two patterns given are both quite simple, based on triplets to help concepts in the prayer sheets we were supplied with ourselves. The dimensions are those of the tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl. Long, straight edged, fringed, narrow -- tallits come with a choice of widths, from 20 inches to 28 inches, depending on how much of the back is to be covered. A choice of lengths, too. From 60 to 74 inches.

So okay, I did a number of the crocheted and knit ones in the given patterns. Using Homespun gave the one the other members thought was the prettiest. When a person is being cared for, they're usually kept warm already; one of the things I felt was important was lightness and laciness, so that the shawl could be added to what's already on a person without weighing them down.

The ones I like best from that viewpoint were crocheted from a thin fuzzy strand, called boucle, in the standard pattern of three double crochet rows, one single crochet row, done with a big hook very loosely.

The standard knit pattern seemed heavy, it reminds me of a long ribbed look. K3, p3, forever. Knitting generally seemed to produce a dense result, and I looked through other people's pattern books.

For a couple of days, I was thoroughly infatuated with a difficult pattern that I couldn't internalize: 18 rows that make a delicious curving pattern, with yarnovers and various ways of decreasing. I've worked two samples that I'm going to use as little tablemats for sandwich plates. Now I'm working a similar sample to add to the set of a pattern that makes a popcorn effect.

But in the meantime, I've looked at pictures online of recipients draped in these Prayer Shawls, who look as though they have to wear the things all day. Not an addition that helps sanctify a short period, but something you're stuck in.

I should resume doing these in April. But I'm curious now, maybe the kind of shawl with shoulders knit into it, and with an all-day look, is more important to produce? By April, we should be able to hear from those who give them out, to find out how they're actually used?

Blocking, you said? That's probably just another way to refer to what you probably always do. Dunk a finished product awhile in clear coldish water. Take a towel from the drier, lay it on a table, lay the product on the towel, roll it up; cart it off to the bed with the shower curtain on it, unroll the product to dry there. Water shapes the stitches (of course, you do too, as you lay it out). The only steam blocking I'm aware of is what they used to do to fedoras --to men's hats.

Time to get it done - or not

I felt so sure last week that by yesterday I'd be en route to the Northwest. Luckily, I checked the calendar before I canceled the mail. So here I am, with time to go ahead and clean everything up properly before I abandon ship. A couple of the flowers in the dining room have drooped anyhow, they probably thought I had already gone, and left them dry. I'm facing up to the chores, a little bit, although I managed to spend a large part of this week more cheerily and idly. On the phone, yesterday, a lot.

Not sure just why I couldn't get onto the web much this last month. I blame the phone lines, squirrels probably eating away at them. Maybe I just need to go back to hitting restart on this computer more often.

Of course, as soon as I realized there was this much more time -- a week seemed so big then -- I hit the crochet hooks and knitting needles again. Now I'm trying to decide: is the person in charge of this ministry going to be happy or disturbed, if I try to foist off three more Prayer Shawls on her? One is finished, and ribboned and carded; one is drying and needs yet to be fringed; one is not finished, the knit one, but it will be. I did go ahead and print up some copies of the card we're attaching to the ribbons, and a handwritten card is probably more personal, but the printed italicized one is easy to read. And to produce. My writing's not that great.

I remember my mother making afghans for all her grandchildren, and I recognize that most of the women in my family have turned to needling for fun. I have that tablecloth that Sister Anna Clare made, and beautiful afghans that she knit. I have the really long afghan that Mom made, it wasn't actual crochet, it's a stitch she produced with a spool. It's so long, so that it'll cover Steve's legs when he's asleep on a couch. She measured. Finding him asleep on a couch wasn't really so tough.

She had that little wooden box of leftover needlework from her mother, which included some of the last things she'd worked on. More quilting, in that Molly's case. The quilt my Grandma Hanna was last working on, when her husband got sick and they left Ivesdale, was on a frame for finishing, an elaborate white-on-white one, but it didn't survive the later move to Illinois. Maybe I should think about trying to keep some of these prayer shawls in the family? Anybody want one?