Greetings, y'all.

I'll be brief today, lots going on. Dear Bob (MFP) is planting our bois d'arc seedlings (horseapple or hedgeapple) along our property line today. The bois d'arc tree is also known as Osage Orange, you can use it for dye, the saplings make great bows, the fruit can be used to make designs when firing pottery and they make a great fence - over a period of time, about 8 years. There has also been some reference to using the leaves in silkworm production. Sounds like fun, I can hardly wait until we have our hedgerow of them.

There was a mentioning of knitting in the car on Car Talk on NPR this morning. Check it out on their website www.cartalk.com. A woman who knits while her husband is driving was worried that if the airbag deployed her needles would be driven into parts of her body. Since airbags deploy at 200 MPH, you don't have time to react. In a recent car wreck we were in, a young woman digging in her purse rear ended me and ran me into the back of Bob's truck. We were on our way to work and taking the children to school respectively. Everything was so fast that there was no reaction time, I did not even have time to think about bracing the children (who came through the wreck without a scratch, but it shook them up considerably. The sound was like the double gun shot when their mother was killed and they had a flashback. They both said later that they thought someone was shooting at us.) If I had been holding knitting, I would not have had time to put it down. Then I thought that I usually knit with circular needles and don’t look at the knitting if it is something like the Harry Potter scarves, so it would probably be okay in a wreck.

Knitting and car wrecks reminded me of my second oldest brother's fiance. They were in a rollover wreck in 1970 in which she was killed and he was considerably injured (they were both 18 and had just graduated from high school.). She was knitting on a grey turtleneck for him at the time. Her mother retrieved the project and finished it for my brother. When we cleaned his home after his suicide in 1997, he still had this sweater along with everything else she'd made for him.

Please forgive me for taking a turn down Tragedy Lane. I've been on that road so often that I seem to detour there naturally.

Okay, enough car analogies and sad talk. Anyone have a knitting on car trips (KOCT)story? Anyone been KOCT during a wreck and lived to tell the tale?

Let me know at gari_strawn@hotmail.com

Take care, I'll be posting to you later.

Greeting, y'all.

I spent part of the morning fighting the cattail infestation in one of our ponds. I've read about how "you can use all parts of the cattail", so I decided to gather pollen for use in baked products (I only got 1/4 cup, I'll have to do this again tomorrow.) while I chopped down the leaves and tossed them on the bank of the pond. The leaves will dry and the children can use them for making a thatch roof on their clubhouse this summer. We'll also try basket weaving. No, I was not a hippie, I'm not old enough (I'm on the back end of the baby boom, early 40's born very late 50's), but I did have a brother who was in a commune. I'm just weird. I also practice "curbside conservationism" - i.e. I trash pick.

Little girl is having early onset of puberty - at 3 months shy of her 8th birthday. I have taken the probable murder of my best friend, the suicide of a brother, the murder of a sister, all the legal entanglements that ensued, and every other sad or challenging episode of my life in stride, picked myself up, dusted off, rolled my sleeves up, but this has thrown me for a loop. Our doctor says that it is because of better nutrition. Terrific. She also said that my broken tailbone (slipped on the ice - ICE in TEXAS - on February 25) had only healed at a 20 degree angle and that we could re-break it and wire it into place (with another 8-10 weeks of healing and wagging the "donut" around). Boy, she was full of good news. Dear Bob is not freaked out by it at all. Maybe he doesn't really grasp the situation. His mother had a hysterectomy right after he was born, he had 2 brothers and we raised 2 sons before the new kids came to live with us. I am BLESSED in that I have never had cramps, barely had morning sickness, PMS or any other "female complaint" (just a small problem with an IUD, but we'll talk about that later). This is his first exposure to having a small, rapidly maturing female in the house. I hope we get through this without drugs. At least, praise the Lord, I am not going through menopause at the same time. (see, I'm counting my blessings. There are worse problems to have!)



Anyone else have experience with this? Please email me at gari_strawn@hotmail.com and let me know what your experience was. The websites I can find I swear wrote the pamphlets that I got when I was pregnant, using terms like "natural", "wonderful", "positive". They never mentioned messy, toting "sanitary" supplies, concealing "sanitary" supplies, etc. I am not in any way against being a girl, I really like being one, I'm not squeamish, but it's TOO SOON!!!

Whew, I'm going to be okay, I just feel that she has been through so much that it would have been nice if God (or Goddess or the Universe, whatever system you ascribe to) could have put this off !

I'm still learning Blogger Pro, so I made my first draft - with pictures - of my kumihimo instructions. I'll be posting it to our website www.pocketponds.com so everyone does not have to wait on my ruminations. I'll put up the link as soon as Bob (dear, dear palindrome) puts it up.

Almost to the underarms of Older Sister's CNC. Older Sister is short and wide and the pockets seem unnaturally high, but that's the way she wanted them. Since she'll probably take it to work and leave it there, I won't have to be bugged by looking at it and thinking "the pockets are unnaturally high".

I got outbid on a Folkwear pattern on ebay, so nay, nay, I went and bought it directly from the company. It's the Japanese haori, haten and tabi pattern. Dear Bob loves his hakama and kimono that I made him and loves to wear thongs (the ones on his feet, what did you think?) in the summer, so I'm going to create a knitted tabi (split toe socks, like mittens for your feet, big toe in one section, the rest of your toes in another) pattern. I know that there's one already out there, but I think that I can contribute an extra something to the art.

The swiss chard is coming up nicely. We planted "Bright Lites" which has white, yellow, orange and red ribs and veins. I cooked a "mess" of greens last night, combining the swiss chard with radish tops. Along with black-eyed peas and cornbread (from scratch, using the Frugal Gourmet's recipe), we had a low cost Southern feast. Radish tops are wonderful greens, if you've never tried them, grab a package of radish seeds and start today! I forgot to add some of our lambsquarter (I'll put some pictures up of this plant, it's beautiful as well as highly nutritious).I'll be going to a plant swap on the 18th and will be offering some of these plants as well as some of our irises.

Take care, I'll be posting to you later.

*

May 5, 2003

Greetings, y'all

Happy Cinco de Mayo, big party day here in Tejas.

We are beat. The weekend was full of activities. We are normally homebodies and stick to a routine. Third Son was upset on Sunday because the smell of alcohol at the crawfish boil party triggered a fear response. He was actually shuddering and very pale. His bio-dad was a heavy drinker and the smell of alcohol meant someone was about to be hurt. Bob and I explained to him that he was safe, that we were right with him, that we would never allow anyone to hurt him and that most people do not become crazy when they drink. Little girl found a friend her age and had a great time.

I upgraded to blogger pro, because surprise, surprise, you can't post pictures on the free blogger. Since I promised pictures, I had to upgrade. I just did it this morning and I'll be reading the instructions and getting the pictures this week.

Kumihimo update:

Everyone has eaten their pint of Haagen Dazs and saved the lid? Excellent! Godiva ice cream, while divine, will not work since you want a solid plastic lid and they only have a plastic ring with a cardboard top, which is not sturdy enough. Good. The next step is to obtain 4 skeins of embroidery floss in 4 colors and the little plastic cards that you wind embroidery floss on if you are storing in a plastic box. They have two notches in the top. Wind your skeins onto the cards, you will have 4 sets of 4 colors. Now, take the lid and cut 32 notches evenly spaced around the lid. I suggest you snip first at 12, 3, 6, 9 o'clock positions and then divide evenly from there. Do not snip all the way to the crease, you will want that strength in the lid. Cut a small hole in the center of the lid, about 1" across. If you are feeling ambitious, dog ear the 32 notches by making a very, very small diagonal cut at the top of each one. This will increase the ease with which you place the thread. Pictures soon for people who learn visually.

Rip it, rip it! :

As mentioned before, I'll be ripping the blankie soon. I want to post pictures first. No, really, I'm not putting it off.

More knitting:

I picked up the Circumnavigated Cardigan (abbr. CNC - design by Medrith Glover) which I am making for my oldest sister. It is in Red Heart acrylic worsted weight Dark Plum, doubled. Since OS is short and wide, it is big and a chore to haul around. I last worked on it in November but last night was seized by the desire to finish it. If you want a good, utilitarian cardigan, something you can take to work and keep there, I highly recommend this design. Since OS works in a hospital, she needs warmth year round. Hospitals apparently have the notion that germs are torpid in sub-zero temperatures. In Texas, you end up needing more cold protection inside because the air conditioning is usually frigid (within an inch of your life, as Tom Wolfe said in his novel, The Right Stuff, good read) and will render you torpid and useless in moments. Movie theaters are the worst, you frequently see women taking in blankets and coats in the height of summer.

I had the CNC instructions for decades and kept putting off trying it. I finally got the courage gathered to try it and it's really fun. I've made one for me, one for Second Sister, one for Mother and am finishing one for OS this week. (I just decided that it would be this week)

Election Landslide:

The landslide was right over me. I only got 25% of the vote. That is still an accomplishment considering I was totally unknown, I spent zero dollars, I was second on the ballot and I was running against a 2 term incumbent. I'll run again next year. Robert A. Heinlein said in Double Star that politics were the only grown up game. I am beginning to understand.

Take care, I'll be posting to you later.