Mardi Gras

Tonight´s sky

My first knitting pattern (for lilttle hands)

As usual, the cold weather has resparked my (k)need to knit.

Usually I think that a successful knitting project is just a sign that a person is good at following directions. So when I wanted to make fingerless gloves last week, my first reaction was to search for a pattern that I liked online.

No luck. I didn´t want a cable stitch because I was planning to use a self striping yarn and thought a simple pattern would look better. All the simple patterns were approximately twice the size of my child-sized hands.

So I tried combining two patterns I had seen with intuition to make my first Kristen-sized fingerless glove pattern.



My pattern:

Cast on 27 stitches in the round on size 5 or 6 double pointed needles

Knit 6 rounds in seed stitch

Knit 18 rounds in stockinette stitch



To set up for Gusset, Knit around until 2 stitches from the end of round. Place stitch marker. SM. M1. K1. M1. Place a second marker. SM. K1. You should be at the end of the round.

For Gusset:
Round 1 - K around
Round 2 - K around
Round 3 - K to first marker. SM. M1. K to next marker. M1. SM. Knit to end of round.

Repeat Gusset rounds 1-3 until there are 15 stitches between the stitch markers. K one more round, slipping these 15 stitches onto a stitch holder or safety pin.

Knit 10 more rounds in stockinette.

Knit 8 rounds in seed stitch. Cast off.


For Thumb:
Slip stitches from stitch holder onto 3 double pointed needles. K one round and pick up two stitches across the thumb.

Knit around and knit the two picked up stitches together.

Knit 6 more rounds in stockinette (knit in the round). Cast off. Weave in ends of yarn.



Here´s what they look like:

Voice

Sound is naught but broken air: and
every speech that is uttered, aloud or
privily, good or ill, is in substance nothing
but air.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)


Currently Reading:
http://assets.booklocker.com/pdfs/3026s.pdf


Tonight I´ll be singing and playing the ukelele in front of a room full of staff and guests for the indoor campfire. Thankfully I´ll be one of between 3 and 5 people singing, and there will be some guitars, so there´s less pressure.

I haven´t sung in public in a performance setting since I dropped out of the Kalamazoo Children´s Choir in fifth grade.

Maybe this is the world´s way of telling me to get over myself and my secret fear of singing in front of people.

There was a need for people to perform since most of the usual ¨band¨ members are out of town this week. I can harmonize. Not particularly well, but I can do it. Apparently none of the other girls on staff feel comfortable harmonizing, so here goes nothing.





Even before this all came up, I´d been thinking about voice especially after a series of conversations with a guest here a few weeks ago. The role of voice in communication, in determining what story is passed down as history, in teaching and correcting, how a person´s voice changes in different languages, in singing, in laughing, in yelling, in whispering, and the role and power of rhetoric in society. (I just began reading The Praise of Folly by Erasmus.) She´s a retired speech language pathologist who also worked teaching English as a Second Language for some time. She left me her copy of A People´s History of the United States by Zinn after I asked her about it and expressed interest. Fascinating woman. Here´s an idea of its content from the back cover:

¨There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged.¨ - Howard Zinn



For today I´ll just be focusing on the physical voice. Practice is at 4. Performance is at 7:30. Songs include but are not limited to Wagon Wheel, I´ll Fly Away, Angel from Montgomery, She´ll Be Coming Around the Mountain with segway into You are my Sunshine, and Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Let it snow........

It´s been coming down all day. All the Colorado natives here at the ranch have been complaining about how little snow we´ve had. To me it´s seemed fine most days, but now I´m getting a taste for it.

It looks like a snow globe outside. A little unpleasant to walk from cabin to cabin in the bitter cold with huge snowflakes falling down the back of your neck, but it´s so lovely, and I can´t wait for it to stick and stop falling inside my jacket while I walk between cabins so I can go SKI.

One of the guests told me that she did a snow dance last night. Apparently it worked marvelously. Best snow we´ve had yet.

Ice Fishing

Augering friends


I´ve always wanted to ice fish. Today that dream became reality.



Where: Clark store in Clark, Colorado, Steamboat Lake, SLO restaurant

Who: Evan, Kathy, Becka, John I, Krista, me (day off buds from the ranch)

What: Making snowballs with a snowball maker at the Clark store, augering holes through 18 inches of ice, 3 fishing lines - one with a flag, 6 ¨catch phrases¨ ready to yell while running in case of a bite, 4 buckets turned upside down to use as stools, 4 layers of clothes, 2 sets of backcountry skiis to ski on top of the lake, 4 packages of apple cider powder, 1 bottle of cinnamon Schnopps, 1 trout caught, 3 tackles on the way to pull up the trout, 1 glorious sunset over the mountains while skiing

Some days I wonder if Colorado might actually be heaven.

Horchata: A December evening sitting on my floor

Horchata
Vampire Weekend

In December, drinking horchata
I'd look psychotic in a balaclava
Winter's cold is too much to handle
Pincher crabs that pinch at your sandals

In December, drinking horchata
Look down your glasses at that aranciata
With lips and teeth to ask how my day went
Boots and fists to pound on the pavement

Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten
Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on

You'd remember drinking horchata
You'd still enjoy it with your foot on masada

Winter's cold is too much to handle
Pincher crabs that pinch at your sandals

Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten
Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on
Oh you had it but oh no you lost it
Looking back you shouldn't have fought it

In December, drinking horchata
I'd look psychotic in a balaclava

But winter's cold is too much to handle
Pincher crabs that pinch at your sandals
Years go by and hearts start to harden
Those palms and firs that grew in your garden
Are falling down and nearing the rosebeds
The roots are shooting up through the tool shed
Those lips and teeth that asked how my day went
Are shouting up through cracks in the pavement

Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten
Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on
Oh you had it but oh no you lost it
You understood so you shouldn't have fought it.