…that thing that they tell you will make you blind, or your hand fall off…

I heard more about Elizabeth today (a hog wild story about her is here). She had gotten her 700+ pound self stuck in a small chicken coop (no chickens in there, just hay), and had to be strongly coerced out, all the while being her irascible self.  Because she’s going into heat. And she hasn’t had her beer. So I said to my coworker (not Elizabeth’s owner), well if the owner can’t or won’t get her spayed, maybe Elizabeth could have some sort of self satisfication station built just for her. Coworker laughs and says she does, they call it her mastubatorium. Something to do with old tires and cement, and Elizabeth likes it. She’ll use the car sometimes if she can’t use her mastubatorium. Ick, says I, not touching that car!

M is also for Moth

As in Polyphemus moth, a really big silk moth…

DH took these pictures (and said I could share). Check out the translucent windows on the lower wings,

what’s wrong with this picture?

Yes, there’s a driver, and a backseat passenger behind the driver in there!

I was on my here, for my first time,

What, I wonder, is with these red balls? Target…

I bought the item I was looking for (a specific gift), and then I found these, on clearance, which I’d been looking for. To send to Australia (since they don’t like the peanut butter/chocolate thing there). Gotta say, the dark ones are not so good… well, Adam West was such a goody two shoes batman, so figures.  (But I still like the old shows).

Speaking of send to Australia… Lucia’s hubby designed a triple bypass surgery shirt, in Sumarian (and would also have done it in Latin or Klingon)! He has the most excellent t-shirts, here, and seemed happy enough to do a special!

In Ancient Sumerian, it will read “The scalpel that has restored my heart in three places has not laid me low”.  How cool is that?

Last week Alphie, the ballet master from the Julliard, came over to hang out and knit (along with Jane, who is making a fish face in this post). Alphie talked about visiting the Helen Keller school on long island, and watching two blind women knit… I think it was something with cables. He asked them how they do it. By feel, which makes sense, and they are always checking their work, so they will notice a dropped stitch sooner rather than later. Then they wanted to feel what he was knitting…

mmmm, nice even stitches…. mmmm, fair isle… mmmm, you carry your yarn in the Swedish method.

Alphie asked if they knew colors, and they said yes… this is navy and white! Alphie said the sweater was actually navy and off-white. The womean said that different colors cause the yarn to feel differently, and that they can’t always tell exactly what color something is (but really, can sighted people always tell?), but that they know groups of colors. Mastery, eh?

kid proverbs

Two today, because I missed last time…

All good blankets must come to an end.

Actions speak louder than lying.

what I made and what I started this weekend

Actually, just yesterday since I worked all day on Saturday…

A shoulder/tote bag, from a skirt I got at that yard sale a couple weeks ago for maybe 50 cents!

the neat inside side, and the not so neat inside side…

You can see that I just sewed a tube, closed the bottom, and folded up the corners (under the straps). I used only half of the skirt for the bag, but all of it for the strap… The seams across the strap are for little pockets, one for my key card and one for my glasses.

full, and what it’s full of (don’t you like the waggy dog tail?)

Actual knitting!

Started these,

Gotta say, knitting the hemmed cuff closed was a pain in the butt!

Also finished the pair of maine morning mitts from the handspun, and have enough to make a second pair (if I start them with a couple rows of some other yarn…).

Mushrooms!

shiitake mushrooms!

DH has been growing these, and this is the second good flush from this log. We’ve been frying them up, either alone or with other veggies and teriyake style flavors. Yum!

He took a healthful/medicinal mycology class and has been gabbing about some things, including something called reishi. He brought some home today,

isn’t that just ganoderma? says I… (Guess I wasn’t listening all that closely!)

This is one of the shelf fungi that people carve those little scenes of their camps in the woods on,

It has all sorts of health benefits. We’ve cut it up to dry it and then will grind it up for tea.

looks like bacon! mmmmmmm…. bacon.

Mosses

Did you notice the little moss on the ganoderma stem? Probably not, but that’s ok. I am rusty with this group, and it is one you need to stay in practice with. But I still find them all quite beautiful. The bryonet listserve today had a bunch of mossy poems! Mostly they were Victorian odes that blather on a bit about the Creator and all things large and small. This one was my favorite…especially the ending.

Dirty Little Moss, by Dan Paquette (a recent poem by a bryologist on the listserve)

Dirty little moss
on the cottonwood trunk,
my spray bottle
washes away the debris.

Your stem snuggles close
to your siblings, green
unbrushed curls
of sun-loving leaves.

Your generation lies
criss-crossed above

tired wet scaffolding
twisted remnants
of your first borne branches
and some great, great
uncles and aunts
in mucous, brown

intertwined stems, leaves—
limp banners
of whom
they once were—

mosses.
One day, your skin
will be coal pudding
for some thermal bacteria

long after you and I

My Maniacally Mad Mutt girls

They are both now rather ball obsessed. But Gracie (on the left here) mostly just loves to run fast after it. Zuzu is the focused one, even if she isn’t such a wild and graceful athlete.

Gracie got there first, but Zuzu found it. You can tell Zuzu to go back and find a ball that she misses, and she usually does find it. Gracie just runs around like a mad thing.

Monster Snow Mound Update

not so big?

It is still humongous! And we’ve had a warm and rainy week. I’ll be very curious to learn at what date this melts away. The larger of the two at work seems to be all gone, though I haven’t walked down to test it.

Misunderstood

(If you are my aunt I apologize, I really do love you!)

Look what came in the mail… a box of cotton sweaters. … Picture sweaters. …

with kittens!

Honestly, this woman has known me all of my life. But clearly she doesn’t really know me.

But I almost wore it today just to be odd on Friday.

kittens! ack! and there’s a ball of yarn on the back! Maybe Chris or Dave needs this?

Which means the good news is I get to keep the gallbladder!  Am actually feeling some better and after a wicked good crunking at the osetopath’s I expect to continue feeling better.  Thank you all for your good wishes… will get around to responding soon.

I have lots of ideas for good M posts…. just need time and photos to write them!

Proverb for the post…

A rolling stone gathers no bugs.

Proverbs from 4 year olds from the local Montessori school… I think I’ll share these one in a post…

A woman’s clothes is never done

M is also just an upside down W

which is for whine whine whine. I have an ultrasound in an hour to see if I have gallstones. Almost hope that is the answer, because then there is a solution. If not, it is still a mystery, one that is making it exceptionally hard for me to work (and to blog… so I may be quiet here for a while). What is making me happy is that it should be only another 2 hours and I can eat something! I am unhappy skipping breakfast, but even moreso no liquid. Eh, almost over.  What also makes me happy is that the second season of Babylon 5 arrived (and 3rd is on its way)!  So I have something to watch when I lay on the floor for a couple of hours.

Made one of these recently… so I can ‘crack the whip’ at work. Except I can’t get it to crack. DH can. I said ‘how do you do that’. And his answer? ‘I’m a man’. ARGH! Which you can translate as ‘throws like a girl, can’t crack a whip’.

And here is something you will never see done to my dogs. Geesh! I heard about this on the radio a few weeks ago and had to go find some pictures. I’m not sure if it is scary or sad that the woman’s outfits ‘match’ the dog’s.