For Norma.

And since I had the tape measure in my hand, I started measuring things…

Sid is 27 inches at the shoulder and 27 inches long from his nape to tail.
Zuzu is 24 inches at the shoulder and 24 inches long.
Gracie is 23 inches at the shoulder and nearly 25 inches long.

(This was totally scientific, ahem, fueled likely by the glass of wine involved with dinner prep)

But it did make me wonder if Gracie’s long leanness contributes to her graceful athleticism. And of course her overall beauty.

No good recent pics,

zuzu and gracie this summer

gracie, sid, zuzu about a year or so ago

Do you think she had a plan of cute lovableness to make us want to keep her? (here is her first day with us).

But you are a clever bunch!

I’ll get along to answering comments soon… you pretty much ALL know whose house that is. Not sure if this should worry me or not!

Maybe I’ll have to have several winners…

Heaters.

I was in Lincoln again, this time to teach self defense to a group of young women headed off to college… and I convinced my tae kwon do pals to visit the Slewgundy Heaters. But I was confused and thought they were the Sliders (which are not this place, but rather perhaps a drink, or a burger, or a turtle).

There were some very neat erosion holes in the rocks…

She is making a funny face here, she is really very beautiful…

The rest of the Slewgundy Heater pics are here.

Winnings!

I am lucky this week!

A book, Evermore from Nicole.

And one of these skeins of sock yarn from Eva. Wow! I haven’t entered many contests lately, but these two were in the same post over at Chris’s… Thanks Chris! Thanks Eva! Thanks Nicole!

A job?

grumble grumble grumble… yet again something that wordpress somehow won’t recognize (remember the dog pen1s trouble??)

(After several attempts to save some text…) So it’s something to do with the job title. Let’s see if I can just link to it. Our office, biology type, entry level job, most important is attention to detail… Here is the job description. That worked. WordPress will not recognize “biology spec1al1st”.

A contest!

(But first an update… the mega snowpile has melted sometime in the last two weeks… FINALLY!)

Guess whose house this is,

Here are some hints…

I was in Lincoln. I live in Augusta. We stopped someplace between for dinner.

And these are some closeups from the fence,

Last hint (and mom, you can’t enter the contest…) is that my mom has a pair of socks signed by the man that lives here. (OK, that’s two hints, you know I’m after the man).

Prize? Not sure yet. Maybe I’ll see who wins and what skein or two I have in my stash that I think the winner might like. It’ll be enough for a small project. I’ll try to match colors with what I see most recently in the winner’s blog posts.

Send me an email to lisasaint AT gwi DOT net. Contest ends Friday, August 29, 6pm EST.

more fungi

a humongous reishi, and black chanterelles! The pizza was tasty, but not sure we tasted the mushrooms so much… no digestive issues even with a glass of wine!

more oopses

Garter ridges, not purls…

Nothing wrong with the instructions, I just didn’t really read them that closely. So I dropped the stitches and repicked them up in garter ridge… I knit the garter ridge for the band back and forth (and will sew up later) rather than knit and purl rows as per instructions. Lazy I guess… However, when I joined them, I really should have put the seam spot in the center back so I could follow along with Jared’s instructions. Can you see how the right side is a little taller than the left? I’ve added a few extra short-rows so the back won’t ride up.

more proof that gauge swatches lie

I’m a few inches up and realize that my gauge on the knitted sweater is tighter by a stitch or so an inch than the swatch was. I’m just going to go up a needle size from here. Good thing he is widest at his shoulder/chest and not his belly.

experiments

Remember these (scroll to the bottom)? I dragged them out along with a washboard to try some extra felting. Then….

I put them on wet and put baggies on them and wore them around for a few hours.

DH was convinced that this is further proof that the aliens have control of me, or that I’m an alien, or something along those lines. He was especially worried that they matched the shirt I had on…

On another experimental project… Mom sent a few old hearing aids… but the project for which they are intended isn’t quite working out. But I have plans!

garden goodness

Gracie and some garlic.

I tried to braid this, but the stems are big and hard… it’s maybe a hard or winter type (??)… some others we grew had softer stems. We just hung it to dry.

Three kinds of beets!

work

Well work never ends… but I heard the craziest sound today, like a million glass M&M’s crashing onto a glass tray… It was this,

The spring from a logger’s dbh tape. The intern working on this was trying to refeed some new line… and it kept exploding out as soon as he thought he had it together. Next time I’ll just buy him a whole new tape versus the refill! I think it took him 4 hours and a lot of frustration to get the thing back in.

These hands.

These hands make music, teach, knit, heal, love, care for the sick, throw pots, build, love, care for the dying, write, paint, spin, reach out, bring beauty, come with compassion. These hands.

These hands belong to my friends.

These hands.

(They like their mitts!) It was a great day yesterday catching up with a couple of old friends.

Back in May this dock was pretty empty, but look at it mid-August!

Aren’t you glad that you live in a world where hands can do this?

Which I found because somebody sent me this Pilobolus performance on Conan O’Brien’s show,

These people are incredible! I also watched this one, called “A Performance Merging Dance and Biology”. It is beautiful, and both dancers are plenty nice to watch, their movements, their muscles, their grace. But I don’t get the title… anybody help me out here? (This one is long, 14 minutes, but entrancing)

knitting

I started a sweater for dh out of the teal marl… got about 2 inches up from the bottom (in a circular 50 inch sweater) and realized I do not have enough yarn! Rip rip rip. So I started again in the olive. He wants just a plain plain sweater. I planned on doing a basic Elizabeth Zimmerman style sweater, where I can make up my mind about the top when I get there… maybe I can convince him that saddle shoulders are a good thing? I’ll build it up like the Cobblestone Pullover from Jared Flood. I may make this sweater versus the saddle shoulder. I like the shaping that is in this pattern. Has anybody made it?