Progress, of a sort

There comes a time in every knitter's life when she must realize that there is a cost to playing around. No pleasure comes without its price. Or as Heinlein would say, TANSTAAFL (this, by the way, is a watchword around the house; we've taught the girls this acronym already, and have translated it loosely as, "if it looks too good to be true, the chances are it is too good to be true)(admittedly, we mostly use it when explaining to them why it's not a good idea to send back all of those "get one free if you sign up now" ads that come in the mail).

It's times like now that I realize the cost of project polygamy.

You know what I mean. You knit here and knit there and maybe spin a little, and it seems like all of that should add up to something, but it doesn't. And you wonder why, and ask yourself whether you've fallen through a wormhole into some alternate universe (those eddies in the space-time continuum can be dangerous if you're not careful) in which knitting and progress are in no way connected. It's like a patch of Stockinette Slog, but without the stockinette.

And then it hits you. The reason that you're making no discernible progress on any particular project is because you've got three things on the needles (no, we aren't counting the ones that don't count, hush), and something on the spinning wheel, and all of that time that would add up to progress on one project has been spread thin.

Why, yes, this is all my way of constructing an elaborate excuse for having very little to show you today, why do you ask? Look! I changed out the yarn in my seasonal yarn bowl to pretty spring greens and purples and pinks:
Why greens and purples and pinks, you ask? Here's why:
That's the orchid tree in our backyard. It's covered with these beauties.
And my Douglas Irises have consented to produce some of their rare blooms (I live at the far southern reaches of their range; they infinitely prefer Mt. Tamalpais, but then again, don't we all?).
As for greens, our eastern oak has leafed out; time to hang the hammock out in its shade.
The orange trees are in bloom, and the whole neighborhood smells lovely, especially in the early morning coolth (I don't care what anyone thinks, that word should exist).
And our kitchen smells of champagne guavas, which, alas, no-one but Rick really likes (anyone want some guavas? we're a bit overloaded this year...).
Oh, right, knitting. OK, if you insist. I did get through six repeats of the scarf I'm testing out for Anne. I'd actually gotten through 5 and a half repeats, but then discovered that the half repeat was stuck in between two full repeats, which was most definitely not where it belonged. I frogged it and started over. I love the colors of this yarn!
And here's the spinning that I've been doing. I'm working to finish up the tencel-blend roving. One it's plied, I will move on (finally!) to Linguistics, which has been waiting patiently in my spindle basket. I need to start looking for some additional bobbins for the Traddie, as I only have one (!!), which makes for some interesting finagling during the plying stages of spinning.
Besides that, I've been working on the Dream in Color baby jacket, although it hasn't changed much since the last photo, and the pink and green plain ol' sock that I keep around for Meetings During Which I Ought Not To Be Staring At My Knitting. Stockinette is good for that.

Growth

Well, I think we've settled in, finally. Just in time for my mother-in-law to come take the kids to visit my parents-in-law on the east coast (eep!). But that's its own post. Part of our settling in has involved getting a new kitten. We have a cat. We used to have two cats, but our baby girl disappeared a year ago. Since then, Gwilim has been a single cat. He doesn't seem to mind most of the time (although he occasionally wanders around meowing loudly the way he used to do for Rhiannon), except when he's hunting. Once upon a time, when he caught something good, he'd bring it to his baby sister and let her play with it for a while (she just wasn't a fan of hunting things up for herself). Since she was lost, however, he hasn't had anyone to share with.

Except us.

And share he does. Mice, rats, gophers (one notable evening, the gopher wasn't even close to dead when he brought it into our bedroom; it woke us up gnashing its teeth at the cat), birds, lizards. We argue vociferously with him about the birds and lizards, but for the rodents, we let it be. But it's gross, and I don't enjoy scrubbing bloodstains out of the carpet. Hence the kitten. We're hoping Gwilim will be inspired to share with him, instead of with us. We named him Atticus.
He's pretty cute, and we have high hopes of him.

And, speaking of growth, remember the garden? Here it is now:
Buddha finally has some shade.
I spent two hours yesterday, weeding and harvesting. I think I finally had a Garden Moment. Those of you who garden know what I'm talking about; that feeling of timelessness that comes with moving slowly from plant to plant, weeding and untangling, checking how each one is doing, picking what's ripe and admiring what's not. I have not had one of these moments before; it reminds me a little bit of the first time I got one of those Second Wind moments that runners are always going on about when I was racewalking and I suddenly felt like I could go on forever. That's how yesterday was. It was a sort of moving meditation, and I found myself slowing down and relaxing and just feeling how good it was to stand (or crouch or bend) near all of these lovely growing things. And the girls were so excited about their cherry tomatoes and yard-long beans. All of them have been harvested, but there're more coming. And the squash blossoms are still so lovely.
It's hot, though. Even the dog says so.
I wish we could spend all of our time in the shade.
Yesterday, we finally set up a clothesline, which I've been wanting to do for ages. I remember hanging clothes out with my grandmother when I was young, and how much I loved it then (I do realize, however, that part of why this is fun for me is because, unlike my grandmother, there are options; I don't have to hang the clothes on the radiator to dry when it's wet out. I said to Rick it's funny, Nana hung clothes out because she couldn't afford a drier; I'm hanging them out because I can't afford an air conditioner! I guess this is a sign of progress.). I had to share the clothes with Rick, though; he wanted to hang them out, too. I think all of us were enjoying slowing down to do a simple task like that.

Last, but not least, the sock is growing. It's on my leg here, instead of my daughter's (she's at soccer practice), but you get the idea.
The heel is turned, and I'm headed down the foot. I may actually have these done for the first day of school (the day after Labor Day). Woot!

Now, I just need to be sure that I'm ready for MY first day of classes, on Thursday. I'm teaching a class I've never taught before, and the syllabus is confounding me. Although I know that I'll be glad to be back with students after the first week or two are over, when I know some of their names and I feel like I'm on top of my material, the first couple of days are always hell for me. Given that I am, at heart, fairly shy, that I prefer not to hang out with crowds of people I don't know well, but would rather be with small groups of friends (or even by myself!), teaching seems like an odd avocation for me. But I must admit, I do love it. Just gotta get over these first couple of days. Send me bold, confident thoughts!

A garden!

It was not all knitting and kilts this past weekend. There was also food and gardening. I have a bit of a problem. I really like food. A lot. And, in the last several years, I have become more and more into trying to eat food that is seasonal and local, when at all possible (this has led to some serious issues in the meat-eating department; can you believe that it is almost impossible to find California-raise free-range meat in a California grocery store?!). So, every Saturday morning, someone from the family hits the local farmer's market. The girls are a big part of this, and have an amazing amount of fun picking things out (this week, it was purple and green dragon beans; I don't know that we'll get those again). I am completely convinced that this is a large part of why they are willing to try most things at least once (that and my favorite kitchen mantra: I am not a short-order cook. I am making one dinner, and if that doesn't work for you, you know where the fruit bowl is.). They are at the point where they know most of the growers who come to the market, and they're recognized all over.

This is not a problem. My problem is that I'd really like to be the sort of person who actually grows some sort of food object. We have fruit trees, but I have these idealized visions of canning my own tomato sauce, from my own tomatoes (this is not completely fantasy; I have canned tomato sauce, I just had to buy the tomatoes, which can get expensive in bulk). This vision has been fueled in the past couple of weeks by reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It's a great book to read and I highly recommend it, even though I spent a considerable amount of time while reading it thinking that not everyone keeps an Appalacian farm in their back pocket for the day when they decide to eat locally (I have a real thing about good food choices being priced beyond the reach of most middle-class Americans, let alone folks who are living below that wage line). Nor does everyone have jobs with flexible enough hours that they can spend a significant portion of daylight outside. However, I do think that it's a good thing to grow something now and then, and I thought the kids might like it, too. Never mind that while I can cook up a storm, I have one of the brownest thumbs around (I am a big fan of gardens with native plants in them, because they require so little effort!). However, I took the girls to the plant stand at the farmer's market and let them have at it. Tess chose little bitty marble-sized tomatoes, and yard-long beans, and butternut squash. Kivrin chose soybeans and cucumbers and pumpkins. I chose some roma tomatoes and some heirlooms, herbs, and more pumpkins. And then we tilled and planted:
The girls learned how to get the plants out of the containers and into the ground.
And we ended up with a garden!
Lucky for my brown thumb, DH is an engineer, and a hydrogeologist at that, so he set up drip lines for the whole thing. These plants will not perish due to lack of water.

So, now if I can just find a nice chair to put down there, I can sit near my garden and knit of an evening, waiting for those tomatoes to pull themselves together and grow. If I could only decide whether to do an extra basket-weave repeat on Hanami...