Transition

The past few weeks have been a time of transition. The desert is slowly unfolding from the dark coziness of winter. Days are righter earlier (although still not at my bus stop, the morning chill has less of a bite, and the flowers are still in full force (pictured above, my beloved Desert Bells). Blazing, unremitting sun and soul-crushing heat will come soon, but for now everything is so pretty and fresh we can pretend that leaving behind winter is a good thing.

At the same time, I have transitioned from my old job & volunteering at the University for a new internship, which means a new schedule, new bus, and new work. It promises to be quite an interesting time.

If only the same could be said for my knitting. I am down to the last...few...rows..of my Icarus, and it simply will not end. There was rawther an ugly scenario involving a third knot that, in a fit of pique, I snapped right out of the skein. It involved a lot of yarn, too. As we were untangling the first knot, Querido asked how one reattaches yarn. In a desperate attempt to make my knitting seem remotely interesting, I will present it here.

* Like casting on, binding off, and holding one's yarn, this is one of those things that everybody does differently. For lace in particular, where the fabric is delicate and you don't want any nasty lumpy areas, there are enough different techniques for rejoining yarn to fill an encyclopœdia. This shawl is for me, however, and I am entirely out of patience with it, so I rejoined the yarn the way I always rejoin yarn, which a statistically significant portion of the knitting population will undoubtedly feel is wrong on so many levels. All of them can go read Knitting without Tears and see what EZ has to say about "right ways" of knitting.

Ahem. Rejoining yarn:



Start with the ends (ends, not end, because I'm working with two strands of yarn at the same time) in a place away from lots of holes so you don't have to worry about the ends working loose, coming to a hole, and unraveling. I have one strand attached to the skein and one not, so I need to reattach just one of them. I place the new strand next to the old ones (one unbroken, one broken), smush them all together so they're like a single strand, and knit for an inch (or until I'm in danger of running into another section of holes).



Then, I drop the endy bit of the broken strand, and I'm left with just two strands again, which is how it should be. In this picture, you can see (right to left) the tail of yarn where I started the new strand, the tail of yarn where I dropped the broken strand, and the two strands, both connected with the skein of yarn, which I will continue working with.



Now push those tails out of the way, pick up the two strands attached to the skein, and keep working as if nothing happened. Which it did, and you will be reminded of as you knit past the place where you rejoined the yarn, at which points you will think uncharitable thoughts about Merino laceweight. You can also think uncharitable thoughts about Merino laceweight as you weave in these ends later, but that step belongs to a tutorial on weaving in ends.

And that, Querido, is how to rejoin yarn.

What else...

Little news on the knitting front here; after finally untangling the Gorgonian Knot and skipping through Chart 3 of the Icarus' border, my skein decided to disintegrate & form another tangle. I hate the idea of breaking the yarn again to get this one out, so I'm trying to limp it along. It's slow going, to be sure.

In other news:

The aloes in our backyard are blooming, and this year we have not one but *two* mutant flower spikes. Ooh!

We've had some deliciously cool weather, allowing me to hide what has gone from an uneven sunburn to an uneven tan. My weather widget assures me these temperatures will last through the weekend; I may need to take this opportunity to even my tan out a bit so as to look less ridiculous.

I am caught up in the middle of a rawther deliciously dark novel called Johannes Cabal, Necromancer. I never recommend books until I've finished them, but this one looks, at page 125, to be perfect for anyone who enjoys Neil Gaiman's superbly British style of black humor.

Crossing Paths

One of the many things I love about blogging is the way you can cross paths with other bloggers in another state or another country without even meaning to.

This summer, I became intrigued by the flora of the UK. As my springtime forays indicate, I am reasonably familiar with the plants that grow here in the Sonoran Desert, but most of the plants I saw in gardens and fields in the UK were total strangers.

I like to know things, just for the sake of knowing, so not knowing the names of the plants all around was driving me nuts. This was especially the case with those tall, spiky plants with the purply-pink flowers. We saw them all over--on the embankments on the side of the road, in the waste beside the train tracks, and cutting purple swaths through fields around Dalkeith.



My first thought was that they were thistle (perhaps the one UK flower I can identify), but getting a good look at some real thistles (picture taken at Dalkeith Park) proved they were not. I had resigned myself to shelving them at the back of my mind with the UK hills, monuments, and villages I had seen but whose names I would never know.

Then I read Kate Davies' post about the Braids.



There the flowers were! And Kate knew their name: rosebay willowherb! (Her pictures are much nicer, too)

So utterly random, so utterly unessential, finding that name totally made my day. Now I know. I can go back to all my pictures of those swaths of purple and add the tag: rosebay willowherb.

Week 13: The Universe, Simplified

That little message when I opened up the packet containing the instructions for my new MacBook Pro. I love it--your set-up booklet is not thrown in among packing peanuts, it comes in its own little sleeve tucked in a recessed section of the tray holding the computer in its box. And when you open it--a little assessment of the universe. That is what I love about Apple.

So yes, my computer did arrive, Mum and Hermanita did have to wrest the frothing Stella away from the door to retrieve it, and although I am not yet over my beloved PowerBook, I have to admit that Snow Leopard is pretty spiffy.




In other news, the profusion of blooming things has shifted: the wildflowers are all but done for, the oranges blossoms have faded, and the puff-balls are disintegrating, falling off the mesquites to drift in dirty golden clumps in the gutters. Just getting started are the hesperaloes, aloes, and cacti.



In keeping with the season, my knitting has been all leaves and flowers. Above is the left sleeve to my Lace Leaf Cardigan, just a few inches short of being ready to join with the body. I still love that leaf motif.



And there is my coveted Flower Basket Shawl. Both projects have been traveling around with me in my bag, and I've been bouncing back and forth between each one as the situation dictates. Last week had a spate of trips to the car mechanic's, so I had a lot of time to peg away at the shawl. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the flower basket pattern is very simple. And addictive. That's my favorite part of these top-down lace shawls: adding just one more row. And another. And then finishing the repeat. And then holding it up and seeing all that crumply lace on the needles, knowing how it will block out into amazingness--!!!

But this week looks like it'd going to be heavy on final semester projects, so it will be back to the sleeve, which is excellent company while staring at a computer screen and racking your brains for what to write next.

Week 11: Beauteous Plague

Everything, and I mean everything is blooming. I took a walk around the neighborhood and was amazed at all the different flowers I was able to find. Trees, succulents, wildflowers, you name it--all the plants are covered in flowers, and both perfume and pollen lie heavy on the air. Hello seasonal allergies!

These little guys are not the culprits.



These (non-native) orange blossoms are.



As are these (native) mesquites. My auto zoom punked out at this point and refused to focus, but mesquites aren't particularly pretty trees, so don't be too disappointed by the low quality. Just know that those little yellow puffballs are tufts of pollen and every other house and strip mall has at least one of those trees.



I was surprised to find one of my friends from the mountain--brittlebush--in someone's yard:



And these little guys in the bare gravel along the side of one of one of our neighbor's fences:



Seeing the desert decked out in its best is so much fun, it almost makes up for the itchy eyes and random sneezes.