Post 411: This Blog is at an End (But I'm not done blogging)

In August I went to visit Jack in the backcountry. While I was there I had a lot of time to think about my life, my choices with regards to how I spend my time, and how I connect and share with the ones I love. Also, I've given a lot of thought to the nature of letting go.

This blog has been with me for a very long time - over 400 posts, over the course of more than ten years! When I started it, I was in high school, still very much trying to figure out who I was in the world, and what I thought and believed. Not to say that I've completed my internal growth, but I'm incredibly distanced from that time in my life and I don't feel that I'm gaining anything by keeping these writings public. If anything, there could very well be something embarrassing back through there. I've tried to read through old posts to see, but frankly I don't have the time to spend on that.

This platform in particular has gotten more clunky and less user-friendly over the years - both for myself and for some of the folks who read this. Furthermore, I've had lots of feedback from folks who used to follow me on social media that they miss my updates. So I began to look around for a more stream-lined, less bells-&-whistles platform that will allow a smooth delivery of my blog posts to people's email inboxes, without the need to constantly remind people to look up the website (and please just click that email subscribe button that only works half the time!). In short, I found a platform that will support my blog, have streamlined email subscription for folks who wish to, and work smoothly on mobile devices and on desktops alike. 

All that is to say, that this blog, a.bird.named.jay, is at an end. I'll leave it up for a little while, but I plan to delete it by the end of the year.

So if you'd like to continue reading my updates, please follow my custom Substack subscription rabbit hole below to start receiving my new newsletter in your email inbox today - I hope to see you there!

Post-Spring Reading Round-up!

I've had a lot of time to read lately because I've been sick a lot - first a cold and when I finally thought I was shaking that I got a respiratory infection and am going through it all over again. By the end of this week I'll have been sick for a month straight!

But as I said, that meant lots of time to read, so I finally finished up a couple sticky ones that I'd been trying to push through. Not that they weren't good reads, but just that I haven't been doing all that much reading this spring - due to three main things: increasing activity outdoors, online streaming, and my ever-growing obsession with audio drama podcasts. So without further ado, here's the reading round-up since my last book dump here!

The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper - a past couchsurfer who is on my Boxing Day Letter email list told me about this book when we did our annual email exchange at the turn of the year. I was intrigued enough to add it to the list. Jack and I listened to this one on audio book and it was a little bit of a slog. But also quite fascinating. The main idea is that the fall of the Roman Empire was just as much to do with plagues and climate change as anything else. This book was written well before the current pandemic, and I was really fascinated with the ways it tied into thoughts and reactions today. But also, as someone currently taking antibiotics, it made me very grateful for the modern medicine advances that we have at present!

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson - my mom read this one and told me about it. It was a fascinating (and somewhat hard-hitting) historical fiction that followed the daily life of a pack horse librarian in rural Appalachia during the New Deal Era. The author definitely did a ton of research into the program, the lives of folks in rural Appalachia at that time, and what sort of things would get people excited. The only part I questioned was with regards to the main character being one of the blue people and getting treated the same as African Americans for that. I wasn't sure how accurate that was, or if it was just a tool to show the difficulties of someone who wasn't white in that era and place without writing from the perspective of an African American (which the author is not). Overall it was a good book, but I agreed with my mom that the ending felt very unsatisfying. If you decide to pick this one up, you'll have to let me know how you found the conclusion.

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately - this one was a Christmas present from my mother-in-law and it was quite a tome! Nearly 500 pages with small print and narrow margins! But it was SOOOO well written, you just didn't even notice the time passing by. That being said, it took me the better part of January thru June to read it. Gately writes from a British perspective, but he makes stops all around the world and all the way from ancient archaeology to the present day. It was most interesting to see the different rules that various cultures and times had regarding alcohol consumption. Some people felt you could give it to babies, others felt that you could only imbibe after the age of 50 or 70 (and then, as much as you could desire), yet another held that if you were born under a certain portent you were destined to be a drunkard and should have access to it whenever you wanted it, while all your fellow countrymen were not allowed! The development of the various beverages throughout time was also a very interesting timeline to follow. Overall, I found the book captivating to the last drop!

Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking - this one caught my eye on a visit to Powell's and I found it on Hoopla to listen to. I'm not really one for self-help books, but what interested me about this was that it was a focus on Dutch culture and I wanted to see what of Dutch culture existed in my Dutch American life and what didn't. In that regard, I found this book very fascinating and it allowed for reflections on myself, my family, and our culture. A love of the outdoors, of bicycles, and a tendency towards a more free-rein parenting all seemed to fit the Dutch norm in my Dutch American family. But somehow I feel like we skipped out of that "speaking your mind to the point of being almost rude" part. Another aspect of Dutch culture that I certainly took to heart growing up is the idea of not bragging about what you've done or are capable of doing. The brand of humility Mecking described as quintessentially Dutch gave me a lot to chew on. In America there is a tendency, especially for folks in this online, self-promotion day and age, to lead with all your accomplishments and try to stand out. Mecking reminded me that this is not a better or worse way to be, but rather just a cultural norm, which I don't have to feel obligated to join in on. I prefer to quietly do what I do and keep it more special and intimate when I step into the spotlight. It's how I was raised and the opposite just seems a bit rude to me. Needless to say, I found the cultural reflection in this book to be worth my while, though I don't think that was what the author was hoping I would get out of it.

The Yellow House by Sarah M Broom - not sure where I picked this one up (probably NPR?) but it was towards the top of the list, so it had been there awhile. Note the author, because there are multiple books with this same title. This book is a geographical history of the author's family (including her very large nuclear family!) in an area known as New Orleans East. (Part of New Orleans the same way that Tujunga is part of L.A., from what I can tell.) It follows the development of the area, the dreams for it and the ways in which that dream was deferred - through zoning, through finances, through family tragedy, through lack of opportunity, and through Hurricane Katrina. But also on the lives of her family, the loves that they had, the goofy adventures, the fun times, the accomplishments, and the mundane, too. The book was beautifully written! And throughout, I couldn't help but wish that they had offered one of the geographical history courses that were in the catalog when I was doing my masters because I find the power of place as both character and backdrop, mover and moved, in a narrative history to be so powerful.

Pretty slim pickings this go-around (again), but each of these was a sizeable, in-depth read (or listen)... except for Niksen, I suppose - I listened to 2/3 of that one while I was on a hike training for my upcoming backpack trip. Because even though I've been under the weather, I've still been trying to get my body trained up for the 20+ mile hike into Jack's backcountry camp this summer.

As summer begins, I'm gravitating towards more lighter reads. I hope to be getting back into a better swing of things with my reading progress... especially because the list managed to get up into the 90s again... 

Until next time!

What is lost, what is gained

Garter snakes eat many garden pests, such as slugs!

Jumping off my recent post regarding the way life has changed since the ubiquity of the internet (thanks to smartphones and wifi), I found myself meditating the other day on what is gained versus lost with all sorts of technologies. The one close at hand is the lawn mower.

Mowing the lawn always seemed a rather thankless task growing up, and in my adult life too. Run a machine to manicure your perfect yard and cough for an hour afterwards thanks to the exhaust fumes and hayfever. And to what end? Just to have a short, even lawn. Perhaps someone who knows more about the specifics of grass growing (or who cares more about it) could explain to me that this is actually important for anything beyond vanity. But it seems a bit vain to me.

In our current (temporary) home we've made a decision. Not because of my dislike of lawn mowing, but more due to spatial constraints and the fact that we don't want to purchase a machine that could be different from what we'd need in our future home. The lawn here is relatively small, so we bought a hand tool known as a "weed whip". Not to be confused with the weed whacker, the weed whip consists of a medium-length wooden handle with a serrated, two-edged blade at the bottom. It's a tool that Jack uses at work sometimes for brushing the trail corridor. It's remarkably effective at cutting things down to size. It just requires a bit more manual labor.

So as you can imagine, our yard looks a lot scruffier than those of our neighbors. And frankly, we like it that way. A scruffy lawn seems more inviting, more lush and semi-wild. More like a meadow. As P. Allen Smith said one time (I think it was him?) "Children love meadows." And I am a child at heart.

For a motorized walking or riding lawn mower, what is lost is the direct connection to the land, the manual labor (though some walk-behinds do require a bit more effort, but it's often more of just a leg workout, which is just like any other workout I tend to do), and the peace and quiet (and clean air, if it's a gas mower) for yourself and those around you. What is gained is time, especially if the lawn is large.

Time is what is lost with a weed whip. Although I have gotten good enough to get through the front lawn in 30 minutes now (I did it on my lunch break yesterday), that's compared to the 47+/- minutes it took me to do about 5x (or more?) that space with a walking mower at our Crescent City house. (I used to listen to the entirety of Pearl Jam's "Lightning Bolt" album while I mowed.) What's gained is pretty significant, though: peace and quiet for yourself and your neighbors (just a gentle swish-swish-thwack-thwack sound), cleaner air, a solid upper body workout, and a greater connection to the land that you're working. What do I mean by that last part? I mean that I know exactly what plants are growing and where in my little lawn because I recognize and trim them with my "eye on the ball" and so much more focus on the plants themselves than when I run a mower over them. Also, since I tend to strike higher than a mower and with less frequency/speed, I'm less likely to injure wildlife going about its business in our lawn. Wildlife like the beautiful garter snake in the photograph above. I've seen that beauty while "whacking" (as I like to call it, because "whipping" sounds weird) the lawn twice now!

For anyone who's wondering: what about a non-motorized, old-fashioned, walk-behind mower? The modern ones are full of plastic parts and we had one in Crescent City - it ceased to function effectively within a year. If I found a proper vintage one for a good price, I'd buy it and try it again, but I'm not impressed with the ones on the modern market. Not for these thick, lush, PNW lawns, anyway. On that same note, I'm certainly not opposed to the non-gas motorized options that are out there as well, and I may well look into them before the summer is over, perhaps an electric weedwhacker as a nice midway option.

If it's not obvious, I hope you recognize that I view this as a "right tool for the job" situation. And it's more along the lines of consciously deciding what technology we utilize in our lives and accepting the gains and losses that the type of technology we use affords. For this house at this time, something small with more of an upper body workout works well for me. This is akin to that question I've been trying to ask myself more lately: is this trip better suited to walking, cycling, or driving?

Until next time!

Shifting Gears

 For the last two months I have been training for a metric century ride as part of the Columbia Century Challenge, a supported bike tour on the other side of the Columbia River from where we live. The price was right, the photos were lovely, the course was challenging but not crazy, and I was hoping to be able to have a lovely day in communion with my fellow cyclists. But when I signed up, I agreed to a clause that said I would not participate in the ride if I exhibited symptoms of a cough, sore throat, etc, on the day of the ride. Today is the day of the ride, and I have a baritone chest cough and a recovering sore throat.

I'll be honest, I cried last night when I made the decision to request that my registration be rolled over to next year (something that they are very kind to offer for folks who can't make it). It's hard to shift gears sometimes, to let go of things that we had planned and poured ourselves into before they come to fruition. But letting go can also be a huge relief. I slept in this morning and felt good about my decision last night when I woke up to a heavy cough and runny nose that would have sucked even more while riding than they do in my comfy bed. No more stress of making a ride when my body is out of it, now I can focus on healing this weekend so that I can put this spring cold behind me before my mother-in-law comes up for the weekend in 6 days.

And already, my mind is going on to the next thing. Training for the ride was only a preamble to training for the backpacking trips I'll be doing this year - two trips to hike the 24 miles +/- to Jack's backcountry camp, and back! It will be the most I've done in less than 48 hours since 2014 when I was working at Sequoia and hiking mad miles every day. Back then, it was normal amongst my peers to get off work and hike 6 miles round-trip to visit a waterfall, and then to still do all your fun evening hangout activities. I hope in the coming weeks to capture some of that spirit. I will be able to slide cycling to the role of cross-training, alongside using the new roller skates that I recently acquired, and workouts at the calisthenics stations in the park. I intend to make a habit of walking down to the post office of an evening to mail a postcard or letter, perhaps wandering up and down the hillier parts of town, perhaps carrying a backpack with evermore weight inside to build up my load-bearing muscles once again. On particularly nice days, while the sun is up so late, I hope to drive to places with proper hiking trails at least once a week to put in some good miles. I intend to start wearing my hiking boots more often than my sneakers so that I can get used to them again, their weight, their stiffness, their strike.

Given the high gas prices, this next stage of my summer training will require more planning to make sure I'm not driving too much unnecessarily. Acquainting myself with the local bus may finally be in order. Planning days where I put in two training activities so that I can make the most of the drive - perhaps doing the SUP fitness class on Wednesday night and then riding my bike around the flats of Woodland dike afterwards. Perhaps pedaling to Longview and then walking around Lake Sacajawea before pedaling back home. At work they've restricted our use of "wellness hours" (3 hours each week that we can use to exercise) until the end of the month, so that will cut into my options a bit as well. But when the sun doesn't go down until 9 o'clock, the only thing standing in my way, truly, is myself.

So while I sit here, sick in bed, I am going to put myself to work, planning my outings and trainings for the next couple weeks so that the decision and guesswork is taken out of the equation. Because the best way to talk yourself out of a workout is to give yourself an option to do nothing. And if I can have a bunch of options pre-established that I just pick one from each day, that will go a long way to keep me on the right track for an enjoyable backpacking trip in July.

That's all for today, not a particularly beautiful piece of writing, but more just a check-in on where I am and what my goals are for the coming summer. Solstice is coming up, and I scored an invite to "Summer Rollstice" - a group outdoor roller skate event along the Columbia River in Portland - but I was also contemplating doing a big hike that afternoon. Perhaps something else will come up - or perhaps I'll do both activities! I'm looking forward to this, one of my favorite holidays, as an opportunity to check in and orient myself going into summer. To shift gears from the spring, where I've been getting started and dabbling in lots of different things and familiarizing myself with the flow of this new home, to a summer where I lock into more of a focus and fill my after-work hours with time outdoors and spending time with new friends and at new favorite places.

Until next time!

Back Before...

 I listened to an episode of NPR's LifeKit about what we've "lost" to the internet. I think it was billed as "how to get it back" but I didn't find a whole lot of actually tangible advice in that regard. Or perhaps I got distracted by my meal prep and the fact that my lunch break was almost over and I still had to pee... But I downloaded that episode (yes, I'm still downloading, not streaming, podcasts - old habits die hard) because the title resonated with a thought I've been having a lot lately. What did we give up in favor of the internet? in favor of smart phones? in favor of evermore cell and data coverage? Many of my friends these days are about 7 years or more younger than I am and I've come to realize that their childhood experiences were often vastly different from my own. They often cannot remember a time before the internet.

Something to ponder...

But the before I wanted to look at today was not before internet completely, but rather before internet completely overtook our lives. You might think that this is a bit silly for me to ponder, since for the previous three years I was living without internet in my home. But our weekly forays to the library to tap into that endless stream was still a major point of our lives and what so much of what we did revolved around before and after that download/upload session.

The period of my life that I'm pondering right now is when internet was intermittent, not guaranteed to be on my own personal device, and not something that I spent a whole lot of time every day - or even every week - engaging with. What was my life like when internet was a tool instead of an unending stream of content? And perhaps I'm also contemplating this because Jack's field season has started and I have been displeased with how I've spent my extra alone time so far. Let's just say that I've done a lot of looking for content and very little consumption thereof. An internet version of standing in front of the open refrigerator door combined with old-fashioned television channel surfing.

When I think about those days before the internet reached its inkblots into every blank moment of my life, this is what I can remember doing:

I would spend about an hour on the computer every few days, answering emails (these were almost exclusively from people I know in real life) and perhaps writing a blog post for that week. I think the old-fashioned Fb would have been a part of this, too, but my memories of Fb are too tied up in what it is now to remember what it was like before. I remember that I didn't like it much then, for different reasons, and that somewhere in my first or second year of college I deleted my account.

Every other waking-not-working hour would be spent doing something off of this list:

- walking/hiking/exploring

- yoga: my first exposure to podcasts was actually a yoga instructor in Minnesota whose 1-2 hour long yoga classes I would listen to and enact under the ramada in my backyard in Big Bend.

- letter writing: so many letters! I probably averaged 2-3 a week. And I always used to illustrate the envelopes, something I barely take time to do anymore even when I do write.

- reading

- knitting: usually without anything in the background like tv or audiobooks or podcasts. Just knitting and observing the world around me.

- writing: I was still filling notebooks back then. The number of story starts that populate the dark corners of my laptop storage show just how much I was actively creating worlds with my mind back then. And how seldom I've been doing it in the last ten years of my life.

- playing musical instruments and coming up with new songs or learning old ones - often with other people!

- making breakfast: this is something that I did almost every day when I lived in Big Bend, and quite often when I lived at Montezuma Well, too. The yogurt and trail mix that I have almost everyday now used to be my go-to lunch or afternoon snack.

- admiring the scenery: staring off into the landscape instead of into my computer or phone screen.

- planning: poring over maps and other resources to figure out where I might explore next; gazing at the empty spaces around me and deciding how I might fill them with growing things if I had the time and the resources; planning special get-togethers with my friends; planning what epic thing I was going to do on my birthday (something I really noticed myself missing when it happened this year...)

- chilling with friends: watching a movie (often on VHS), making a meal together, going on a hike or a bike ride, or just chatting it up and asking them about life's questions (they were almost always a decade or more older than I was).

- painting: it was brand new to me then! Also, sketching, which I still did a lot of (especially for envelopes).

Less than 30% of those involved looking at a screen for more than a moment. And all of those involved a finite amount of content to choose from.

On Tuesday I got off work and went for a bike ride for an hour, came home and showered, made and ate dinner, then walked to my first meeting of the local Artist and Makers Association. On the walk back I was struck by an inspiration for a story so strong, and when I got home I immediately sat down at the kitchen table and started writing. Yes, on my laptop, but using my old OmmWriter program that shuts out everything else and makes it seem like I'm using a tool instead of a Distractomatic 5000. In one hour I wrote nearly 9000 words. And it was GOOD writing, too.

Where am I going with all of this? I'm not sure at the moment. Getting off Fb was a big step (and I still haven't deleted the actual account, because of the ability to use the messenger side of things for certain people) but I think that I'm ready now to take the next. I'm just feeling around for what that is.

If you've read all the way to here, go ahead and tell me: what is it that you used to spend your time with before the internet became all-consuming? What did you used to use to fill your blank spaces? How did you use the internet back when it was only a tool and not a torrent?

Until next time!

Growth and Destruction

 Spring is trying to squeeze its way through the cracks in the clouds and I am here to say that our garden is halfway planted.

I know, I said no more gardens until we have our own place... I guess this is an exception. We are trying to go about it as cheaply as possible, though. So far we've spent only about $50 and unless I buy any starts, it will probably stay at that. I'm trying not to buy any starts (unless they're peppers? maybe I'll be some pepper starts?) because I'm trying to be a little less serious about the garden this year. It's the first time we've had a garden in a few years, and it's a house we hope not to be in for more than one summer (fingers crossed, we can buy a place of our own in the fall!). 

Still, we couldn't resist scalping the noxious weeds in the back corner and putting in some terraced beds, using cribbing cut from the downed branches we got after winter and spring storms. And I discovered a completely grown-over flower bed in the front that I likewise weeded and scalped and reestablished the bricks that edge it. And I made a little raised bed behind the bedroom window that I anchored the trellis in so that I can have a "green screen" of privacy and peas out my bedroom window this summer. Jack thinks I won't like the darkness, but I think it will add a green tint to the light and make it so that I don't really have to lower the blinds ever. This "bean trellis" plot, as I call it, has been planted already with peas, sunflowers, poppies, and marigolds. And in another couple weeks or so I'll plant some runner beans there as well, I'm thinking (hence my calling it the bean trellis). 

The front flower bed, which is already home to a flock of irises, some peonies, a rosebush, and a lone daffodil, has now been planted with sunflowers, poppies, carrots, onions, tatsoi greens, mustard greens, and basil seeds. Today I started soaking some bush beans to add to that garden by the end of the week as well. It may be a bit overcrowded for the space, but I don't think that the soil has done much besides grow grass for the last decade so I it won't be too crazy to flood it with flowers, root veggies, leafy greens, and bush beans!

In the back corner we've got three terraced beds, thanks to Jack's handiwork, and I spent a portion of the day going at it with the "Blister Maker" (hand rototiller tool) and working in some amendment for the clay soil. I'd be planting today, but the post office is holding our roll of weed-blocking paper (a much more palatable alternative to the black plastic that most places sell) hostage until we pick it up from behind the counter. In the past, I've put that roll down and then dumped tons of soil on top of it, but I'm trying to be cheap here! So we're using the soil that's there, plus a little amendment, and putting the weed blocker on top to keep the ivy, blackberries, and dead-nettle at bay. Then I'll plant it with all my leafy greens, more onions, carrots, beets, and perhaps some squashes or watermelons if I'm feeling frisky. (Our neighbor thinks it can't be done, which of course makes me want to try all the more!) I'll cut holes in it wherever I place my seeds and hopefully it will keep my weeding efforts to a minimum in those beds this year. Which is a good thing, because I've got my work cut out for me when it comes to plant destruction here.

What little yard this house has on two sides is bounded by a slope up to a road. It's thoroughly overgrown, a proper little woods. But it's also completely overrun by English ivy, the plague of the Northwest (and elsewhere - an acquaintance here tells me that in her homeland of Argentina they call it "yuyo"). This most noxious of noxious weeds grows up and around living trees until it chokes them to death. We have many large trees around us that I would prefer not to die and drop limbs on our little house while we're here, so I am making it my business to make an effort at reclamation. 

I've started by following the internet instructions and hacking away at the vines which go up the trees, disconnecting the upper levels from their nutrient source. Eventually these untethered vines will supposedly whither and die. We'll see if it's true. Further reading on the noxious weed material put out by the state says that, once dried out, ivy won't reestablish. So I think that a good portion of my time this summer will be spent rolling up carpets of ivy and leaving them to dry on a tarp in the sun. I would love to invest in some native plants to help encourage a take-back, but it is hard to spend that kind of money and tlc on something which is not your own and which you don't plan on seeing through a second growing season.

So that's where things stand in the realm of growing things. I will have my work cut out for me, in spite of my attempts at keeping it small. I will be thanklessly reclaiming woods from the tendrils of an evil invader vine, keeping flower beds weeded and watered while harvesting a bounty, and perhaps encouraging the growth of the volunteer strawberries I recently noticed on the part-shade side of the house... It's a good thing that even in April we already have daylight to 8:30 p.m. because I'll have lots of time to work on all this!

P.S. - I haven't forsaken the garden tower. It's got an active vermiculture going in its central column, still, and currently I have two levels of dirt in it. I'm debating if I would like to buy some soil and fill it up more (or all the way). At this time, I'm considering just keeping it at two levels, maybe adding a third if I'm feeling it, and using it to grow my nightshades, since it will be nice and toasty warm. But as of yet, no planting in there. I've got to figure out what my best course of action will be.

Until next time!

Spring Reading Round-Up

 It's been awhile, my list has gotten a little long, so I thought I'd recap the books I've read or listened to of late here, in no particular order.

Blood Moon by John Sedgwick - this history of the Cherokee people, with an emphasis on the Civil War era, was eye-opening, disturbing, and had a lot more levels of nuance than I realized. I'd chalk this up to me being very unfamiliar with pre-Civil War American history, but since the emphasis was on the Civil War era... I can't say I have any excuse besides this part of the story not really being taught in my schools.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick - I hated this book. I don't seldom finish a book that I detest that much from the beginning, but having watched the series to it's unfortunate non-ending, I wanted to see what from the series was present in the book. The answer is: very little. I would not recommend this book to anyone to read, unless female protagonists who don't ever seem in control of their mental faculties and racial stereotyping (ESPECIALLY IN DIALOGUE, UGH!) are things you enjoy.

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden - This was an interesting one as I realized more and more through the book that I really didn't appreciate just what was leaked with his leak, nor how he ended up where he did. It's a really fascinating story of how government bureaucracy works (or doesn't) as well as just how blatant our trust of the internet is and definitely worth your time.

The Pendulum: A Granddaughter's Search for Her Family's Forbidden Nazi Past by Julie Catterson Lindahl - Definitely worth the read! In a much more extreme way, she is traveling the path that many of us belonging to groups that have oppressed others are wandering around on these days. Such a mixed bag of emotions, such a struggle for uncovering the truth and allowing the terrors of others experiences to be acknowledged.

Winterlust by Bernd Brunner - I read this guy's book "The Mind of the Raven" a long time ago and found it very interesting. Winterlust was a pleasurable, snuggled-under-a-blanket-in-a-storm kind of light reading. I also felt that, unlike The Mind of the Raven, this book had almost no structure whatsoever. Chapters, yes, but within chapters it was practically a stream of consciousness writing exercise on whatever winter-science-history-cultural thing he had ever come across that was loosely related to that chapter heading... or to a random word from the sentence before. Still, it was an interesting read (would make a great bathroom reader) and had lots of good art plates that I appreciated.

Black Wave by Kim Ghattas - this is a book on Middle Eastern history with an emphasis on the countries of Saudi Arabia and Iran. It was very interesting, but I have to be honest and say that we listened to it at bedtime I fell asleep very quickly for this reader for whatever reason. As a result, I could only tell you the general gist of the thesis, which is that two different aspects of fundamentalist belief systems run both powerhouse countries, who in turn tug at the strings of everything happening in the Middle East. 

A Left-Hand Turn Around the World by David Wolman - thanks to this book, I've finally discovered that I can identify as left handed or "mixed handed" but never ambidextrous. It was an alright read, short, a little bit dated, and a tiny bit contrived at points (though the author admits to it when he's clearly up to something). If you're left handed and want to feel like that's something special, or find out that it might not be (some argue that us mixed handed people are the truly unique ones 😉), it's worth a read.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler - I listened to the latest edition of this seminal anthropological work on modern neo-paganism/paganism/heathenism/witchcraft/wicca/etc. It was very interesting to hear about all these different people doing different things, why they did them, and what it looked like, as well as her revisiting the people and groups from her original first edition in 1979 and noting the enduring presence or total dissolution of the same. If you're always interested in world religion studies like I am, this is particularly fascinating. And also if you have oodles and oodles of time, because this book is HUGE.

And that's it for now! 8 more books to add (or not) to your own reading list. I'm still prioritizing books I own and audiobooks at present (3 of the ones just reviewed were in my home library, the rest were audiobooks), but I'm starting to at least stretch into the realm of ebooks again so that I can keep making some progress on my list. Somehow the list ended up in the 90s once more... so much easier to add something to it than to take something off! At present, my audiobook game is waning a bit since craft season is passing away into the warmer weather. But perhaps I will get into a habit of audiobook walks or similar, as they really are the fastest way to reduce my booklist. Furthermore, if I need to start commuting for work (a pending possibility) that would greatly up my audiobook game!

Alright! I've got carrot cake that's starting to smell done in the oven, so I'll see  you next time!

Getting Around

 I've been pondering locomotion, of late.

Gas prices are high, we just finished a trip to visit family in CenCal, I'm planning out my summer visits to Jack and weighing the merits of driving, taking the train, or flying.

In our years of being together, I never paid too much attention to the cost of a visit - the cost of a relationship maintained is worth whatever I pay at the pump (or at the airfare counter, as may be the case this year). But what I have always nickeled and dimed myself on is the costs of unnecessary drives. Did I have to go to town for that? Did I add enough errands to my one trip to make it worthwhile? Have I driven far enough to make use of the car reasonable?

That last question has been especially preeminent given the high gas prices, the impending climate crisis, and my own general well-being. Town, I should state here, is only a downhill mile away.

Two weeks ago I rode my bike to town for my chiropractic appointment. The office is large, the waiting room almost always empty; there was plenty of room to lean my bike against a chair inside and not bother anyone with it. Of course, there is that massive Hill I have to pedal up to get back home...

Today I decided that a mile was an awful short distance to go through the trouble of getting out the bike, checking the tires, making my hair suitable for a helmet and my pants suitable for pedaling. Perhaps a mile is not far enough to make use of even the bicycle reasonable! So I walked. 

I strolled down the hill into the late afternoon sunshine as it pressed its way through cracks in the clouds; past the little girl who was playing by herself (away from the others) in the schoolyard grass, who bid me 'hello'; alongside the unkempt, grassy banks of little white daisies, yellow dandelions, and some kind of tiny purple flowers that I had not noticed the day before. (Because yes, I walked to town yesterday as well.) Up the little lane (for pedestrians only) which connects to the top of town and requires much less criss-crossing of the road to follow the sidewalk; down the Hill past the old (and occasionally Victorian-styled) houses, their lawns and gardens coming alive with spring flowers: here a magnolia tree in full fragrance, there a section of lawn overcome by little blue-belled flowers that the mower was unwilling to devour and so skirted round, despite the lack of any sort of true flowerbed. 

Then it's a turn into town - the first block is a gauntlet of delicious food smells: fried things and dough. It's intoxicating. The next block is a gauntlet of antique shops - equally dangerous, as far as I'm concerned. Then the library - I've resisted setting foot in there, too, so far, but I feel my steadfastness is beginning to ebb. Then there's the hardware store, where bags of soil vie for my attention (spring planting is already begun, spring pruning has been attempted, spring weeding is well underway, thanks to the hand weeder I bought from them yesterday). A fat, dry, dog turd is in the middle of the sidewalk and I nudge it with the side of my shoe, rolling it towards the base of a nearby trash can where it's less likely to end up in the grooves of an unfortunate's sole. On I go to the post office, where I notice that the "masks required" signs appear to be gone. Perhaps they decided to take them down after all? Once I've emptied my post box, I double back to the chiropractor where we swap weekend and birthday stories (ours are only a day apart). Then, straightened and limber, I set out up the main street once more, through the gauntlets (the food smells are especially intoxicating now - it's after 5 o'clock!), up the Hill, down the lane, up through the neighborhood, and back to our little home.

Now tell me, isn't that a better tale than "I drove to the post office, then to the chiropractor, then went back home?" And, one might even argue, better than "I rode my bike to the post office, then to the chiropractor, then huffed and puffed up the Hill back home." As much as I love my bicycle and riding it, there is only one method of transport I am fortunate enough to have use of which can afford me that much detail in my peregrinations: walking.

Antonia Malchik wrote a mind-altering book that I had the pleasure of reading a couple of years ago called "A Walking Life: Reclaiming our health and our freedom one step at a time." It comes back to me often, and all the more now that I live at the top of a hill instead of at the bottom of one. It's much easier to start the journey when with your first steps gravity pulls you away instead of the other way around.

Speaking of books, it's high time I did another reading round-up, but I think I will save it for a little while longer. I've read quite the assortment of odds and ends lately. Some more substantial reads are filtering up to the top of my pile just now, though, so my spring reading round-up should be a bit more lively.

Until next time!

A Foggy Forray

We wanted to explore. Safe and warm in our car, but engaging in the appreciation of nature that is hard to embrace while cruising down the interstate. On a whim (how did I stumble upon this?) I directed us towards a federal wildlife refuge just half an hour away where we could drive an auto tour and see the waterfowl, maybe get out and go for a little hike if we were feeling it.

The morning rose cool and clammy, a thick layer of fog enveloping everything. Visibility was low. We had initially tossed around the idea of getting up at dawn and heading down there for the "dawn chorus" and the (hopefully) best viewing time. But safety precluded an early morning trip, so we waited. Yellow tinged the edges of the fog as morning sun climbed higher and pulsed through, heat waves pressing against the clouds of vapor that surrounded us. By mid-morning the fog had lifted enough to see what felt like a safe distance for driving. Perhaps there would not be much to see, perhaps the fog would burn off completely by the time we made it to the refuge. Either way, we decided it was now or never and gathered our warm clothes, our water, hand-written directions to the entrance, my spyglass, and the digital camera... wait, where was the digital camera!? Sigh. My smartphone, then.

 

The wildlife refuge is on the Columbia River, in an area full of sloughs, bottoms, and oxbow lakes. To enter we had to first drive over an incredibly high, 1 1/2 lane bridge with an immense arch to it. The fog and the height of the bridge over the deep ravine below made it look as if we were driving up into an abyss. Luckily the fog opened up as we went along and it turned out to be a bridge after all.

At the entrance was unmanned booth and an iron ranger. I carefully used the community pen to write on the sodden envelope, stuffing it with our $3 vehicle entry fee, pulling away the receipt for our windshield, and pressing it through the opening in the metal cylinder. All this while attempting not to poke through or otherwise dismember the drooping paper sleeve that proved our right to enter.

And then we drove. Down a dirt lane, a generous car-and-a-half wide, between two ditches that were, as promised, full of birds. A kestrel sat atop a sign warning would-be wanderers to stay in their cars, its feathers so puffed up and ruffled as to make all its svelte grace disappear. A heron waded just a few feet away from our car, its long, slow steps contrasting with the fast duck dives of the coot in the ditch on the other side of the road. 

A massive creature of R.O.U.S. proportions emerged from the water just beyond the coot. Its yellow teeth and its bulk made us think it a beaver, until we saw it's characteristic rat-like tale. This was a muskrat - that creature which we had both seen gliding along at the edges of lakes so many times. Evidently neither of us had seen one up close - they are MASSIVE creatures. In my minds eyes they had always been something in between a weasel and a river otter, but now I know them to be much more robust, more like something halfway between a beaver and an opossum. Sharing his ditch was a small group of green-winged teals and another of cinnamon teals - my favorite duck!

All this and more we saw within that first stretch of maybe quarter mile of a 4+ mile auto tour loop. Jack drove expertly, creeping along, maneuvering around other vehicles when they were in the midst of changing camera lenses so as not to interrupt, angling towards one side of the road or the other so we could catch a better view of this or that. Shorebirds poked along in the weeds of flood plains; a pair of hooded mergansers posed at a log in the midst of a stillwater pond; dozens of ducks of a variety of species quacked and fed together in a more active section of flowing water.

A red-winged blackbird perched on a cattail just a few feet away from us sang into our ears; pintail ducks tipped upside down to feed, their eponymous pointy tails sticking out sharply from their otherwise fluffy bottoms; a juvenile bald eagle swooped through, causing a melee of confusion in the waterfowl below but on its way to someplace (or something) else this time; a large flock of Canada geese roamed over the grassy hills as if they were a herd of elk.

We were ready to call it a day when we reached the other end of the auto tour and found ourselves back where we had begun. Satisfied by the beauty of the landscape and the variety of the wildlife. It was fun to be a fly on the wall for their behaviors, an experience I've really only had while on vehicle safari in Zambia and in Botswana. I prefer to feel like my presence is in interaction with the other creatures around me, but there is something to be said for feeling inconsequential to everything around you as the world goes about it's business. We returned home, keen to look up all the birds we had seen that day. In particular, I was stoked discover that what I had called during our trip the "doe duck" for its resemblance to the coloring of a deer was actually a Gadwell Duck. I had never even heard of a Gadwell Duck before! All told, we easily saw a dozen species, most of which we were able to identify with grainy, overly zoomed-in smartphone photos once we were home. We didn't do much the rest of that day. We stayed cozy in our home and sipped warm beverages, grateful for what we have been given.

Until next time!

The (Winter)Green

 Two things of note:

1. I sold my mountain bike. Last post I talked about, this post I'm reporting that it's been done. It felt good, freeing, and honest. Not to mention that it opened up a lot of space in the back building. Now I can focus on my road bike and look into what it will take to get my cruiser project bike up to ride-ability. 

2. Today I finished a knitting project that I started on my birthday last year. The rest of this post is devoted to that project: The (Winter)Green

Awhile back I stumbled across a sweater pattern called The Green by ANKESTRiCK on Ravelry. It was loose, it was fluffy, it was cozy, it was beautifully textured... I decided that I wanted to make one for myself. So I toyed around with the idea for awhile, eventually deciding that what I wanted was a summer sweater, and that a summer sweater would be made up of cotton and alpaca. I found two separate yarns that would achieve this, but then: I found Knit Picks Kindred, a brand new yarn at the time that combined cotton and alpaca, was the size I needed for the pattern, and had two lovely shades of green available. Having been a Knit Picks customer for quite some time, I knew with 95% certitude that green yarns would go on sale in March. So I waited. 

When March 1st hit, I logged onto Knit Picks, and saw that only one of the two shades of green qualified for the sale, so that was the color I bought: Wintergreen. (By the way, if this yarn sounds delicious to you, it looks like it was only a short-run product; they're currently selling the final stock of it for a few bucks less per skein. And no, I'm not getting paid for this promotion.)

The overall pattern of this sweater is a slip-stitch rib that is such a breeze to knit, with collar, cuffs, and hem done in a twisted 1x1 rib, a texture that I discovered in the Fantastitch shawl that I knit last year and which I find absolutely titillating. This was the sweater that I brought on that cross-country road trip with my mother-in-law last year because, once you're past all the upper body shaping, the body is pretty mindless to knit up. The sleeves are similarly so, but in order to get through those I had to use removable stitch markers to keep track of my decreases. But the hardest thing to keep track of with this sweater? Which side is the front and which is the back!?! When I finished, I tried it on both ways, chose the side I preferred, and sewed a little contrasting thread at the base of the collar on the inside back so I don't have to keep guessing all the time. 

This sweater sat dormant from about the time I got back from Michigan until the winter. I picked it up here and there, but only really got serious about finishing it when we had finished our move to Washington. I finished one sleeve, then a second, then undid and reknit the bottom hem. I had tried to cheat and not change needle sizes for the bottom hem the first time around, but didn't like how it looked. Thanks to my mom gifting me the correct needle size for the hem, I was able to try again, and lengthen it! So now we've been in this house for about half a dozen weeks and I've finished my first knitting project in this house and my first knitting project of 2022!

And I love it! Now, this pattern was designed to be much more loosey-goosey than mine turned out. I was in between sizes and I decided to take the smaller option to make sure I had enough yarn (pretty good call, I ended up with 1 1/2 skeins leftover), and that meant that I only had a few inches of ease, most of which disappears in my bust. Oh well. It's still got a nice drape-y feel, something that cotton and alpaca yarns are both known for, so no surprise there! I made the sleeves a tad long, which only adds to the snuggle factor. The whole thing is RIDICULOUSLY SOFT! And even though it's warm, it feels cool to the touch - basically my instincts seem to be proving right that this will be an ideal summer sweater! Now I just have to wait patiently for the summer weather to come so I can test it out!

I'll do my best not to rush it. Last week was sunny and relatively warm - I even went for a bike ride! But this week is back to cold, wet, and cloudy. But I'm embracing the season, my vitamin D tablets, and the encouragement to nestle in to create - and hopefully this winter, to complete! - some more handicrafts.

Until next time!

Motion

The raised embankment of Dike Rd, location of this week's bike ride

How good it feels to be alive.

(I have to warn you - this is a pretty didactic post, not very poetic at all.)

The theme of this month has been motion. As we've settled into this new place (house, town, region) I've nestled into some nice grooves. It was a goal of mine, once the move was finished, to get back on the bandwagon with regards to my workouts. While it took awhile to get everything aligned, I continually reminded myself not to fall prey to feelings of failure: perhaps not now, but it will align soon enough and then you will achieve your goal.

I am now three weeks in to an exercise regimen that I totally eased into, and I am quite pleased with myself. 6+ weeks in, really, if you count that I started doing yoga every morning again during the last couple weeks of December and into the present (travel days excluded). 

Falling off the exercise bandwagon in the autumn of 2020 hurt; I was so burnt out on so many levels, and exercise became one more intolerable thing that I seemed to be failing at. I wanted to try something different, but couldn't figure out what. I would try something here or there, but I let my routine go in the process and - not wanting to perform poorly - chose not to perform at all. A walk here, a hike there, the occasional bike ride or swim - all perfectly legitimate forms of motion, but nothing that I stuck to with any consistency. I at least was able to maintain my yoga practice, for the most part, but even that was on the rocks.

Moving to a new place and starting a new job was an opportunity for a reset, and I took it!

We bought a rowing machine, and I have been rowing twice a week, along with my old Viking Method workouts. First just one set, then two, then three, until I've worked my mind back up to being confident in my body's ability to complete the exercises without bursting. Svava Sigbertsdottir, the trainer who wrote The Viking Method book, spends a good amount of time talking about how much "training like a viking" needs to be paired with "thinking like a viking," and it really is true. My body probably could have blundered through all 4 sets of one of the workouts the first time. But my brain needed convincing. So I worked with it, tried to go with the flow but also to divert it, and I've tricked myself into getting back up to snuff. 

It's worth noting that I've also made some changes to what I'm doing. For one, I'm not timing my workouts anymore. That was really important to me when I did them before, always trying to see if I could beat my previous time as an emblem of my self-improvement. But I've decided that, for now at least, it's enough to know that I am doing something, without having to catalog it down to the second. Yet at the end of my second week of exercising, I decided that there had to be a happy medium between over-recording every movement and not writing anything down at all. I've heard the studies: they say you follow through more when you write stuff down. So I opened up my old Exercise Log notebook, turned to a blank page, and made a two-column chart, one side for my plan that week and one side for my reflections. Nothing too detailed. No boxes to check off. But a framework to adhere to in my brain when it's trying to get out of it, and a space to give myself a pat on the back when the week is done. And at the end of the week, after I've reflected, I'll come up with the plan for the following week.

My goal? Keep doing yoga every morning, and keep rowing/doing Viking Method workouts twice a week. That's it! Because the best way to form a habit is not to make it demand your all, but to make it so attainable that you couldn't help but do it anyway. And yes, I will sprinkle in bike rides, walks, swims, paddle boarding, roller skating, as weather and whims allow on the other days of the week, but they're not a requirement. My goal is to not beat myself up over this. I've been feeling guilty for over a year and it was a poor motivator. My goal is to set myself up for achievement rather than failure. No inflexible standards. No endless check boxes. Just keep in motion.

So enough of that. You get the picture. If you've read this far, kudos. I'm not even sure if it's that interesting, but it felt worthwhile to get it out there. 

On the topic of bicycling, my stable is getting out to pasture for the first time in awhile. I've taken my road bike on two short jaunts and it was positively scrumptious, aside from the rear shifter not wanting to go into the easy gears for some mysterious reason. I'm having a bit of a reckoning with regards to my mountain bike which is leaning towards "sell the darn beast". It was great for what I needed when I was commuting on old two-track up and down a mountain to get to and from work, but it's a lot more bike than I really want or need right now and I'm sure it would make someone else very happy. Now that I'm back in a place where road riding feels safe, I don't feel much need for a massive mountain bike anymore. That old project bike of a lady's Schwinn cruiser that Aunt Sherry let me have, though: that is enticing. I told Jack that if I do sell the mtb, I'll actually get that bike painted and rolling again this year. I love the mental image of the two of us noodling along on our cruisers around some beach town, stopping for ice cream, and pedaling off into the sunset.

Until next time!

Finished! (A book log)

 It's been a season since I last posted a book log, so here I give you a very paltry list of reads. Life was crazy the last few months and my reading was most productive when listening to audiobooks while traveling between Washi and Cali. So here goes:

The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle - this should've been on last book log, but somehow I think it fell off the list. Jack and I listened to it together and it was eye-opening, mind-spinning, and made me feel a lot better about the author, who had been my cycling hero back in my high school days.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - I just noticed that this is a tv show on HBO now... I'll have to look into that. I did not realize that this was a pandemic book when I picked it up, not until I was a chapter or two in. But I kept reading it because it was beautiful, it painted an interesting world, had lots of little ruminations on life sprinkled throughout, and reminded me that our current pandemic could've been so much worse. If you feel like leaning into pandemic fiction just a smidge (and no more than that!), I recommend this book.

How to Be Fine by Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg - this is basically the book report of my favorite podcast. It summarizes what they learned by following the rules of over 50 self-help books and what they wish they saw more (and less) of in the self-help industry. It was a pleasant read, lots of short chapters. This would be a great bathroom or bedside reader, just gives you little tidbits to ponder each time. Not a great one for reading straight through as you don't get to digest it that way.

Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery - This is the 4th book sequentially in the series, but it was written at a much later date. And you can tell. It feels less like a through-line story and more like a collection of vignettes that the author wanted to publish but hadn't been able to fit into other stories. Very few of the characters appear in more than one part of the book, and Anne is mostly nosing into everybody else's business and solving their problems, which is frankly annoying. I still laughed out loud and possibly teared up here and there, but it was not as pleasurable as the previous books in the series.

Recipe for Persuasion & Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev - I read these two out of order; Recipe for Persuasion ended up on my list somehow (an NPR review?) and I devoured it in audiobook form when we drove up to Washington; then I realized it was a series and went back and listened to Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, which is supposed to be the first book in the series. These delicious reworkings of classic Jane Austen novels are beyond phenomenal. The Indian American semi-royal family intermingling with Americans and Brits of various social backgrounds creates the same level of gossipy intrigue that you find in the original novels. Plus the author ties in so much more from tackling serious topics like marital rape to her emphasis on food and flavors that really makes you feel as though you're eating your way through the book instead of just reading (or listening) to it. The romance novel aspect is there, but steamy scenes tend to fade to black before they get too intimate. And if you are not familiar/comfortable with reading names, phrases, and other words out of India, might I suggest the audiobook? Hearing words read aloud by someone who knows how to properly pronounce them is a big bonus when you're broadening your literary horizons.

Finally, two books that I started but chose not to finish:

1. Give a Girl a Knife by Amy Thielan - I got this from the library and was enjoying it in the midst of our move; but when it came time to turn it in or renew, I chose to turn it in unfinished. As interesting as it was, and as well-written, it simply wasn't the type of narrative that was compelling me in that moment. I was satisfied after the several chapters I had read.

2. The Prey of Gods by Nicky Dreyden - This landed on my list because I liked a short story of Dreyden's as read by LeVar Burton in his LeVar Burton Reads podcast. It was intriguing, but I just couldn't get into the book. A main part of the premise is this recreational drug that makes you have crazy hallucinations and I guess I just couldn't really relate. There were definitely aspects of it that intrigued me, though, like the little robot companions everybody has (like if your phone walked around outside of your pocket), or the witch-not-witch in the beauty parlor... so curious about that woman!

And that's it for now. I've got a couple different books that I'm partway through reading which I hope to finish up soon; I received several new books for Christmas (Jólabókaflóð!); and perhaps now that we're settled in I will get back into a better reading rhythm and be able to report back more finished books every 2-3 months again instead of 2-3 times a year. My plan is to focus on reading the books I own (because I just moved several across state lines that I only moved BECAUSE I hadn't read them yet!) and avoiding the library as long as I can hold out. It will be good to read through what I have and pass them on so that I can clear my shelves a little more. :)

Until next time!

Unfinished

It turns out that I learned something important in adulthood. The last several years I had stuck pretty solidly to the rule of only doing one project at a time - particularly with knitting. Start something, see it through, get it done, start something else.

Well in the winter of 2020-2021, I threw that out the window. Thought I'd try a little throwback to my teen years, I suppose. It did not go well.

So now I'm in the heart of the crafting season, we've just recently finished our move, and I have unfinished projects up the wazoo! Here's a little taste of all the would-be's that I have to finish before I'm allowed to start anything new:

1. The Green - I'm making this slouchy summer sweater with a cotton-alpaca yarn from Knit Picks called "Kindred" that I bought on sale and which I absolutely adore. What I don't adore is that I failed to make this slouchy at all - not being certain about my yarn quantities and being on the cusp of the suggested ease, I chose the smaller of two sizes and did not choose wisely. I appear to have a relatively form-fitting sweater on my hands. Except that I don't, because I put it down in June or July and never picked it up again 'til now. 1 1/2 sleeves to go (and that 1/2 that I did get done mostly happened this week). Plus, I'll likely need to tink the bottom hem and knit it a little longer because it really did come out a bit on the short side. We'll see how much yarn I have left to extend it with.

2. Sleeveless Taiga - this was going to be my take on the sweater vest. I'd lose the short sleeves in the pattern and make this to replace my much-loved puffy vest (the zipper finally went out or my bust got too big... either way it was 10 years old and it was time). I even fancied knitting up an interior lining with the bulky alpaca I bought for a failed nalbinding project a couple years ago (the texture was just off...). Trouble is, when I finished the vest my sleeveless look turned out to be more like snug little caps. What had I done wrong? Back to the drawing board... I have the zipper, I have the finished vest, I have the alpaca yarn if I ever do want to knit a liner for it... but I have GOT to do SOMETHING about those sleeves! Back to the drawing board... hopefully I can find a way to manipulate it that doesn't mean I have to undo the whole thing. Otherwise, it will be 2 points for Jack, who thought I wouldn't like this sweater when finished.

3. Roam Free Mittens - this is a pattern I'm designing that's inspired by the rams head symbol for official Icelandic sheep products. It's turned out very cute. Trouble is, I only made one mitten - and didn't even make the thumb! I've got everything I need to finish my pair, plus to make a pair for Jack with larger needles and bulkier yarn so that I can offer the pattern in different sizes. Yet there it sits...

4. Jack's Sweater, round 2 - The first one didn't go over very well. Too snug. Too dense. So we thought we'd try something different. I've got a lovely fisherman's sweater pattern called Stonecutter that I purchased and made for myself back in 2013. We decided to try and make the sweater for him. I gauged it and got going. But a couple dozen rows in, I wasn't liking the result - too dense (again) and the definition wasn't what I wanted. So I stopped. Also, it was using the same size needles as The Green, so that posed some issues as well. Anyway, this one needs to get a bit of a reassessment. Perhaps to be frogged and started over on a different size needle. TBD.

5. Artisan Dress - I bought the fabric and pattern for this when it caught my eye one day at JoAnn's. I cut out all the pieces, started sewing, got to the collar interfacing and froze. I don't do interfacing. It's plastic and stupid. But I learned recently, through watching Bernadette Banner's videos, about horsehair tailor's canvas. So I bought some and waited and put the dress on hold. And that was right before the fire season/detail/new job/moving craziness started. Needless to say, I never even cut out the horsehair fabric yet, let alone hand-sewed the pad stitching to connect it to the fabric (what a hot melty iron does for regular plastic interfacing). 

And this is to say nothing of the projects not yet started which have been on my list for some time: painting a label for our friend's new cider; making more envelopes out of calendars; making a rag rug (ok, this one JUST got on my radar and I already started the work for it... so yeah, I cheated a little bit...). I've also got yarn to knit more socks, a shirt, and other goodies. Not to mention I've got tons of other fabric (I packed at least 5 boxes full to bursting with fabric during our move) that would love to get used in SOMETHING!

So this year, 2022, I'm going to go back to what previous experience already taught me and finish what I started, rather than having half a dozen pies in the oven at the same time. Starting with that darn "summer sweater"! :P

Until next time!