Little Things

For the past 20 some years I have sent a Christmas card to this one friend who never wrote back but occasionally telephoned. Then one Christmas, I got ill and did not have time for the cards, so I didn't stress myself about sending them out. Around New Year's, we received this panicky call from him wanting to know if everyone/thing was all right, because he didn't get his card! You never know about the little things like that, do you? What brought this on? This post by Terry Grant at And Sew It Goes.

And for those of you doing free motion machine quilting on your domestic sewing machine or for anyone interested here is a post about the Frayed Edges with an absolutely wonderful picture of FM quilting. Love the gloves, 'cause mine look like that! Scroll down to the image with the purple fabric.

Where've I been? Busy at work. I'm writing a proposal for a sculpture of a dead president. I can't say too much about it yet. We got the Request for Proposal and I am doing the leg/brainwork: gathering digital images, writing the artist narrative, figuring a simplified budget and vision of the project. Every waking moment seems to be filled with random thoughts about this. I've taken to carrying my little voice activated tape recorder to record my thoughts.

I've been knitting. Sox of course. I'm trying this new yarn by Regia appropriately called Regia Bamboo. It is a very soft yarn made with bamboo and I had to go down to a #1 needle to work with this. I'm using this pattern called EZ Ripple Socks by Knitaddicted. With the proposal taking up every spare spot in my brain I am having a hard time memorizing this pattern. I finally gave up and just sit with the printed copy and mark off the complete rounds. It is a 16 round pattern, so when I finish 16 rnds I erase my markings and start again. I'm just about to the toe of the first sock. I have a SNB meeting Monday night and if I'm not done with these sox by then, it is not what I'm going to work on. No way! I have to pay too much close attention. I'll just take something else that I can cast-on there, maybe a scarf or something easy.

And here's a photo for today. This pic was shot this morning (hence the long shadows) and I have not Photoshoped it. Is it too dark on your monitor? This is my birdbath in the backyard. The pedestal is a milk can from my FIL's dairy farm and the birdbath itself is from my great grandparent's farm. There is actually another piece to the stone that looks like a bowling ball with a bit of a handle. When the two are put together it is a rather crude mortar and pestle. Possibly used to grind corn by indigenous peeps? Yes, we still have a bit of snow laying around. That milk can is about 3 feet tall.