Macro Monday

Macro Monday

Despite the return to blessedly cooler temperatures, I have noticed that the calendar no longer says May at the top. I still have lots of flower pictures to share, however, and you know how I love my flower pictures, so I'm continuing Macro Monday for the time being.

There has been knitting and spinning, and I had a wonderful time at the Maine Fiber Frolic on Saturday. I saw the lovely and splendidly colorful Heather, her wares joyful banners rivaling the brilliant sky, as well as other favorite vendors and fiber buddies. There may also have been an Incident in the used-equipment shed.

Stay tuned.

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Things to Put in Salad

1. lettuce
   
2. cheese (bleu, cheddar, cottage, or whatever you like)
   
3. artichoke hearts
   
4. avocado
   
5. sprouts
   
6. carrots
   
7. berries
   
8. beans/peas (green, kidney, chickpea, lentil, snow... the possibilities are myriad)
   
9. egg
   
10. onion (yellow, red, scallion, chive — chive flowers are edible and sweet — or anything else vaguely onionish)

Easiest ToT ever.

Macro Monday

We hurtled headlong directly from dreich to high summer. New England spring is often like that: it comes and goes and occasionally comes again. I say seize the day, and as many flower pictures as possible.

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Mail-Order Catalogs

This was a tough one (hence the 11th-hour post, literally). There used to be a lot more mail-order catalogs than there are now, or at any rate we used to get a lot more; I attribute the drop-off partly to paper's having gotten more expensive, partly to the rise of online catalogs and partly to the fact that we hardly ever order out of actual paper catalogs these days from anyone but LL Bean (OK, and WEBS, and once or twice Knitpicks, but even with them I mostly shop online). In any case, I don't know if some of these are even still in business, or still in the catalog business, but I do enjoy getting them, all crinkly and smelling of splurge: I'm like a kid in a candy store, ooh, I like that one and that one and I'll take two of those and one of those in each color — and it doesn't cost me a thing as long as my credit card stays in my wallet, which it usually does.

1. LL Bean
   
2. WEBS
   
3. Knitpicks
   
4. Patternworks
   
5. Sharper Image
   
6. Coldwater Creek
   
7. Talbots
   
8. Museum of Fine Arts/Metropolitan Museum of Art
   
9. Barnes & Noble/Oxford University Press
   
10. Victoria's Secret

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Things to Do Outside
(if the weather is decent)
(guess I won't be doing any of these this week)

1. play catch
   
2. dry laundry
   
3. walk
   
4. swim
   
5. take pictures
   
6. knit
   
7. spin
   
8. smell the flowers
   
9. cook
   
10. eat

Macro Monday

This week I have learned a new weather term: omega block. The jet stream dips down in the west, then up over high pressure in the plains, then down again in the east, looking like a big omega, and wedging dreich in place on both coasts. The weathercritters say we might, and they emphasize might, get rid of it on Sunday.

So it's a good thing I took all those flower pictures last week, enough to last at least a month of Mondays.

Geometric Increase

Some time ago at Wednesday night knitting group I was talking about making squares for the Pine Street Inn Knit-a-Thon, and my friend Martha asked if I could use some spare yarn she had. Well, of course I could; one thing I love about the Knit-a-Thon is that it requires nine-inch squares. That's it. They can be any color, any fiber, any pattern, knit or crocheted, solid or lacy. I knew I could use the yarn, and I could always make a square here, a square there, put some of it to good use, sometime between now and November. So, about three or four weeks ago, Martha showed up with two large bags of acrylic yarn, containing, among other things, eight skeins of Lion Brand Homespun.


I don't know what came over me. Well, I do: the truth is that I am in a knitting funk. I have one project that I absolutely have to get cracking on, but it requires thought, and I hate that. And I have any number of projects floating around the back of my mind, but they all seem rather shy, and none of them has wanted to come up to the front yet.

So I decided that at least some good should come of this state of affairs. I have 27 squares, with #28 in progress. This is more squares than I've ever made for one KAT before, and I have almost six months to go. A blanket comprising 35 squares, five by seven, at this rate I could have quite a pile to take with me in November.

Of course I believe this amazing square productivity to be a temporary phenomenon. But I'm still thinking at least two blankets. Maybe three.

Two on Tuesday

Tips for Throwing a Big Party

1. Provide plenty of yummy food.
   
2. Ditto drinks suitable for all ages and preferences.

I know you are marking me way down for shorting you eight list items here, but, really, that's all I've got. In my experience, if you have those two things, and guests in a reasonably partyish frame of mind, to which free food and drink are highly conducive, you just wind 'er up and let 'er go, and merrymaking ensues. Some of our parties have had a theme, using theme in a very loose sense (Christmas, spring, blanket assembly), and some have involved guest participation (tree-trimming, maypole dance, blanket assembly, no, not all at once), but these are optional.

Truth to tell, we haven't had a party in quite some time (that's Miss B in the foreground, coming face to face with Dave; she is still shorter than he is, but not by much). I'll have to think on this.

Macro Monday

Clueless wonder that I am, I managed to glory in ignorance of Macro May these four years, until I stumbled across it chez Maryse the other day. I don't know if sticking a camera an inch away from things and clicking away counts as macro, but I'm going to pretend it does, since I don't know if my camera even has a macro setting. (See what I mean? Clueless.)

Anyway, I hereby declare Macro Monday, giving me two opportunities per week for a relatively easy post. I hope it will help. I could also tell you how the yarn diet is going (it was coming along nicely until I might have had a slight case of insomnia on a Thursday night), and the square count (better). We will not speak of the food diet, but there may be pictures of FOs and UFOs.

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Birds

1. ducks
   
2. robin
   
3. cardinal
   
4. goose
   
5. gull
   
6. hummingbird
   
7. finches gold, purple and any other color
   
8. chicken
   
9. owl
   
10. loon

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Snacks

Note that the assigned topic says nothing about health or calories.

1. Cheese and crackers.
   
2. Cookies.
   
3. Veggies and dip. All right, it doesn't say they can't be healthy either.
   
4. Mixed nuts.
   
5. Small, seemingly harmless candies such as M&Ms.
   
6. Berries. I like grapes, too, but can't eat them.
   
7. Raisins. Unless they're all dried up.
   
8. Cherries, fresh or dried.
   
9. Popcorn.
   
10. Hot fudge sundae. It is too.

Croci Invicti

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Cocktails/Mocktails

This topic takes me back to my drinking days. Even in more carefree times I never drank much, having discovered early on that more than three drinks in an evening would have extremely unpleasant consequences, and eventually I started getting wicked hangovers even after only one drink. Now alcohol is on the forbidden list, and I've bent the rule a couple of times at weddings, but not otherwise. There seems little point, what with the hangovers, but I am feeling a bit nostalgic.

1. Vodka and tonic. This used to be my go-to summer drink.
   
2. Margarita. It made a nice change from vodka and tonic.
   
3. Virgin strawberry daiquiri. Sadly, strawberries are forbidden fruit, but once in a while I sneak one anyway.
   
4. Sombrero/white Russian/black Russian.
   
5. Screwdriver. Chock full of vitamin C.
   
6. Cosmopolitan. What I drank the last time I got tipsy, which, with me, doesn't take much.
   
7. Tequila sunrise. I once got carded while buying grenadine.
   
8. Rum and coke.
   
9. Muskrats of various hues. The muskrat was an invention of a crowd Grant hung out with in college. The varieties included red (beer and tomato juice), black (beer and kahlua), white (beer and milk), and, my personal favorite, green (beer and creme de menthe). To the best of my knowledge and no one's surprise, none of these was ever actually mixed, never mind drunk.
   
10. Jack Daniels and Fresca. Marjorie once seriously asked my dad to get her this at a political function. My dad said if she really wanted it she would have to ask the bartender for it herself.