17 July 2006

Feeling Empowered and Confident [strangely, about knitting]

Well, I am starting on the pie shawl with the rainbow mohair. After the clap, I am feeling strangely confident in my knitting abilities. And, I actually read the pattern and could understand it. And I understood the abbreviations, gal darn it!
This is odd for me.
I am not usually like this.
I think I am ready to tackle short rows and more abbreviations. Especially if I get to use this decadent and glorious yarn.
We had a good weekend filled with driving. For two weekends in a row, we have driven home to our hometown. This makes 20 hours of highway time in two weekends. I used the time by finishing the book I've beeen reading, "Lake Woebegon Days" by Garrison Keillor. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever lived in a small town. It is HILARIOUS commentary on the town, its inhabitants, its history, its quirks. I could really identify with it, and it was also appropriate reading for going home for these two weekends.
My husband got baptized this weekend. It was in the town swimming pool. It was over 100 degrees and sunshiny, so you couldn't have asked for a better day for a baptism. My husband's parents actually attended the event, so that was a victory in and of itself as they are not exactly the church-going types. Billy seemed really happy about doing this and making this step in his life, and I was happy for him. Plus, it meant we could all go swimming afterward, and that was the only thing that could have really been called for for the fifth day in a row of 103 degree weather and high winds.
But, I do love the heat. I love the humidity even more.
My dad and brother are harvesting already which is WAY too early. But it is nice that they are one of the first farmers in the field (for one of the first times ever), and their crop is turning out better than expected so far. We went and rode around in the combines for awhile on Saturday and got to see the sun set over the most beautiful barley field I have ever seen. I will ask my brother to send pictures of this field and others just so you can see how amazing the color of the plants was and how amazing the sun filters thought the onds--it looks like tiny spikes of gold--about 20 of them on each plant. It's neat.
I also got to practice wedding music with Margaret (aka the woman who taught me most things i know about music) who is going through the very real pain of doing wedding music for my grandmother's wedding. At least I am not alone. And we got to swap stories of how much we've been hounded already about the music. Margaret must be pushing 80 by now, and she said she has never in her life practiced wedding music this far in advance of the event, ever. But she added that the price was worth it if it meant we could tell my grandma that the music is "done."
I agree, wholeheartedly.
And we even played some music together that we knew we weren't going to be doing for the wedding--just purely for fun. So, that was great. She played violin and I accompanied her. That's very fun, accompanying for a violin. I can't say I've ever done that, but it was very enjoyable. Very different but very much the same as accompanying for a singer.
It is so dry out west that the animals, especially the birds, especially the young pheasants, are dying left and right. There just isn't any water for them to drink. So, all weekend the dogs "rewarded" us by bringing dead birds up to the yard and the porch and other such places where people live and where dead birds shouldn't.
Billy and I agreed last night that "treats" are just far too available when we go home and also far too difficult to resist, so we need to have a nice long cleanse and then a nice long respite from any further sugary things for a while. Sugar has a way of making me feel shorter, crabbier, and fatter.
This week will hopefully be a week of finishing up odds and ends around the house so that next week (i know, i've been saying this for a month, but that's how long it takes to get words to become a reality) we can really actually start the bathroom demo. There is a man that actually agreed to come install our skylights this week, so that is totally and completely exciting, and I am almost peeing my pants in anticipation of actually having the luxury of someone doing this for us, and then just coming home and "boom" there's the skylights.
This week the discussion group is getting together. We are discussing feminism. I think it is going to be a good topic for discussion and will probably lead to some good anecdotes as well. Those are always good to keep things lively and light hearted.
Other than that, I plan to just soak up as much heat as possible outside and hopefully store it in my body to be used at a later time (i.e. winter...January...blizzards)

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

FYI: The preliminary test on the barley shows that the protein content is too high. Funny how something that sounds like it should be a good thing is really a bad thing.
Mom

8:08 PM  
Blogger Kiersten H. said...

I don't really know anything about barley...but I'm glad you had fun at home. About Thursday (don't cry) I won't be able to show up with my...fun dessert...because I'm scheduled to close and it seems there's no way out of it. Plus, I was very excited about this topic. Very interesting to me. Hopefully next time... I think the dessert would've been the perfect "icing on the cake" of discussion as well. Darn.

3:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

awns, not onds

12:28 AM  
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