People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air,but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
~Thich Nhat Hanh 
 
I think it was Walt Whitman who said something about there being a miracle in every square inch of creation.  Emily teases me frequently because I believe this wholeheartedly.  Sunsets, dandelions, snowfalls.  They all have their miraculous side.   We just need to open our eyes and appreciate it.
 
So, I thought I'd share this with you on this beautifully bright sunny Sunday morning. 
 
Miracles.  They're everywhere.

One way to tell that Spring is coming is to watch for the crocuses to start breaking the soil.  Another way (for me) is to notice that it's not dark in the morning when I leave for work.  This was Wednesday morning and you can see the sunlight just starting to show.  It was beautiful and I stood outside just watching the sky.  It's less depressing to go to work when it's not dark.   Unfortunately, this will only last until March 14 when Daylight Savings Time hits the east coast here again.  I keep hoping we'll give it up and just leave time alone but not this year.

I am inordinately proud of this.  It's the beginning of my Evenstar shawl.  It's only the center and I haven't even started the actual pattern.  It took me about 10 tries to get the circular cast on and keep the stitches on the needles and not get them all twisted and to not leave extra large holes.  I was determined last night to do this.   After 3 additional tries, I finally got it using Emily Ocher's crochet cast on.  It makes beginning stitches that are more stable and easier to manage.  This is the thinnest yarn I've ever used and it's like thread.  I just managed to get it onto the smallest circular needles in the options set.  As I look at the photo, I can see it's not perfect but it looks good to me.  I don't know if I have the heart to start again and blocking will help even out the center (I hope).

We spent our hour at the gym after work.  I'm getting used to walking around slightly sore all the time.  I look forward to the day when I can get up from a chair and not feel the soreness, though.  It's not bad at all, just a gentle reminder that my muscles would rather I leave them alone.  I sat in the whirlpool yesterday.  It is set to 101 degrees F.  (38 C)  I felt a little like I was being parboiled for some soup!  If I had seen some carrots float by, I would not have been surprised.  The chlorine level is so high that it made my eyes water but the warmth felt good.  I am going to have to find a bathing cap if I want to swim in the pool.  Chlorine levels this high will play havoc with my hair color.   (image borrowed from Wikipedia) 

As I came back to the locker room yesterday, I could hear the sound of a hairdryer.  There was a woman standing in front of the mirrors drying her hair.  Naked.  Now, I am not a prude and have no real problem undressing in the locker room or have any problem with other women undressing but it seems a little strange to stand naked in a semi-public place and dry your hair.  I'd have to put on my clothes (at least my underwear) first.  Or am I hopelessly old fashioned and this is normal gym behavior?  It's been many years since I was using a gym on a regular basis.  This woman was my age or older and was a little loose-fleshed, not a young, taut body showing off.  She was totally un-selfconscious and complimented my hair color.  It was weird. I don't think I'll get to the point where I'm that easy with my body but who knows?  I kinda admire that.

The snow is shrinking a little bit every day.  The temps today are supposed to be above freezing so we'll see some more shrinkage.  The grass is starting to show at the edges of the lawn.  As long as it continues to melt slowly, we're ok.  In December when we got all that snow, it was all gone within 12 hours in a warm rain.  Talk about flooding......

This is a long weekend for us.  Pk's birthday is Tuesday and we took off Monday and Tuesday to give ourselves this weekend.  No plans, just time.  I'll get the laundry going and start the pattern on the shawl and spin some more of the lovely roving I have on the wheel.  I have an angel food cake to bake and some ice cream to buy (I'd make some if I could find the dasher for the ice cream maker) but otherwise, my time is my own.  What a luxury that is.

Today when Pk and I got home from the gym, we found our Calvin lying motionless on our bed.  He didn't move when Pk put his gymbag down and Pk leaned down and felt him and said, "he's cold".    We thought he was dead.  Pk picked him up and wrapped him in a towel and took him downstairs.  Then he called "Hon, he's not dead".  I took Calvin and held his limp body as he took shallow, shuddering breaths.  We waited for each one to be his last.    He lasted for about two hours. It never occured to me to rush him to the vet and take heroic measures.  It was obvious he wasn't going to live.  His pupils were fixed and unresponsive.(I've read too many medical books for my own good).    We held him and talked to him and waited.  He finally took that last breath and died. We think he had a stroke.

  Calvin was our "kindergarten cat".  Not terribly bright but awfully cute.   He defied the "cats are graceful" rule by falling off a shelf (where he didn't belong) and breaking his leg.  6 weeks of listening to him stomp around in a bright red cast is something I'll remember forever.  (The first night he had the cast, we set him up downstairs with a small, low sided litter box and food and water within easy reach.  In the night, we heard strange noises and found him on the top bunk bed in Em and Kate's room in the morning. He dragged his broken leg (and dislocated knee) up the bunk bed ladder to get on the top bed he loved.)

 I'll miss him every day.  

 I love you, Calvin. 

"When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space."
~Pema Chodron

I have  no real reason for posting this, except that I can.  WebSense let me on today so I am taking advantage.   I am such a rebel.

We're waiting on another inch of snow today.  It's dark and cloudy and grey and a perfect day to crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head.  I treated myself to a french vanilla cappuccino this morning and it's delicious. 

Have a good Tuesday! 

There will be no more posting at work.  At least not for the forseeable future.  On Friday, I was waiting for some phone calls to be returned and decided to read blogs at my desk.  WebSense (our web monitor) wouldn't let me read my own blog or anyone else's.  It wouldn't let me log onto ravelry.  It would let me read web comics but not "social networking sites".  Like Facebook.  Personally, I blame Facebook for this.  I think so many people are spending time at work on facebook (like when I go into the scheduling room and hear the cows there in farmland mooing, I know they're not working), that they have to step in and do something.  WebSense is a strange program.  You can do an end run around it sometimes and get onto the websites you want but then it suddenly catches up with you and blocks your access.  I don't know how long this will last but I'm afraid it's permanent. 


I want to show you my hat.

First off, let me say, I don't like hats.  I never have.  They make my head itch, even baseball caps.  I only wear them when it's below freezing (which it has been quite a bit this winter).  When I finished the Sisters Hat, I was so disappointed it didn't fit well.  It made me look like I have a bullet head.  Then I saw this.  This is the Naragansett Hat from A Fine Fleece.  I saw it and thought that this could be the hat for me.  I measured my head (22" around) and made the 23" size rather than the 21" size so it wouldn't be tight on my head.  I had some of the angora/wool/bamboo left and this is it.  It was an easy knit, only took me from Friday night until Sunday afternoon (and there were chores and errands in there, too).

It fits like a bucket hat.  Just like I wanted.  It's light and warm and just about perfect.  And now Elanor wants one, too.  There are several patterns in that book that I am admiring.  El took the photos.  I tried to take a photo of myself wearing the hat but that's harder than taking a photo of myself wearing socks.

And thanks Bells for the link to the circular cast on.  It is easy to follow and I probably wouldn't have any problems if I weren't knitting with this dental floss yarn!  I finally decided to use some bamboo dpns to start so it wouldn't be as slippery.  I have some that are a little bit bigger but I don't think it'll make any real difference.  I had all the way up to the third round of increases when I noticed a hole.  I pulled it out and I'll start it again.  Soon, but not tonight.

Last night I decided I didn't like the glynnis pattern from Cookie A's book and ripped out the cuff I was almost finished.  I decided the yarn should be Embossed Leaves instead and cast on for those.  I love that pattern.  I'm going to work on those for a bit. 

And then I'm going to put my tired self to bed.

For date night last night, Pk and I went to dinner with Kate and Patrick.  It was nice but a little weird to double date with our daughter.  We then went to Borders and I found a book.  Actually, I found three books.  One was My Lobotomy by Howard Dully.  I heard Mr. Dully speak on having a lobotomy on npr about two years ago.  It was one of the most moving pieces I have ever heard.  Mr. Dully's step mother and a doctor worked together to have him lobotomized when he was 12 years ago (in 1960, yes, lobotomies were still performed until 1968).  He's a tour bus driver and happily married now but had a harrowing time of it as a child.  I found the book on sale and snapped it up.  I'm going to figure out a way to share it with my group.  We've talked about it often and they're fascinated (in a morbid kind of way).


I also got a knitting/spinning book.  I know I don't need another one but this one was different.  It's called A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd.  There are a lot of really good patterns and they made each one with commercially spun yarns and then handspun so you can compare.  Funny thing is, I like the handspun ones better almost every time.  There's something more organic and textural about them.  I found a pattern for a hat (I gave the last hat I made to Kate since it doesn't fit me) and cast on for it last night.  So far, so good.

(The third book?  The Four Agreements by M. Ruiz.  I lent my copy and never got it back.  We also bought two calendars for 1 dollar each.  The Dangerous Book for Boys and the Daring Book for Girls.  Elanor asked if they were for my niece and nephew but I said no, they're for Pk and I.)

The Evenstar kal began last night.  I got my clue but didn't feel ready to cast on.  It needs a circular cast on and I need to watch videos since I have never done it.  I wasn't in the mood for all the complicatedness.

We spent today running errands.  We had to find a new snow shovel, some snow melt (more snow is due early next week),  and groceries.  We also decided to treat ourselves to tiny mp3 players to use at the gym.  Something small that could be kept in the gym bag and if it got broken, wouldn't be too big a loss.  We decided on the Sansa Clip.  It weighs less than an ounce and holds 4 GB.  I've been ripping some music to exercise by and I'll put a book on it so if I'm just sitting in the whirlpool, I can listen.  They are so cute!  And they'll clip right onto the collar of our shirts and not be in the way.  You can buy a tiny little card already loaded with 1000 songs for working out which I may buy in the future.  My problem is that I love to sing and if I am listening to music I know, I'm afraid I'll forget where I am and sing.  So, if I buy the little card, the odds are I won't know that music and won't be able to sing.  For now, I went looking for some upbeat music and found enough to keep me moving.

Tomorrow will be laundry day.  We're thinking of going to the gym and doing some light workout and then swimming or sitting in the whirlpool and then having brunch.  Whatever we do, it'll be slow and easy.  I like my Sundays to be slow.

How're the Olympics going?  Everybody knitting away at a breakneck pace?

Can you stand one more snow photo?  This is our backyard at 7:30 this morning. Those are pine trees laden with the snow that fell well into the night.  I went to bed at 10 and it was still snowing.  I am home from work (Pk's office is closed again but because we are part of a hospital, we NEVER close).  I can't get in until we shovel the car out.  Peter Kevin is outside now starting the arduous process of clearing the walkway and shoveling out the car.  It's a little harder this time since there was that freezing rain mixed in there for a while yesterday.  We lost a small pine tree.  A volunteer tree that sprang up all on its own.  We decided to let it grow and the snow and ice were too heavy for it so it fell over.  It's probably uprooted but we can't tell.  As the sun makes its way to the back yard (the front gets the morning sun, the house faces almost due east), the snow will start to fall off these trees and the branches will (hopefully) spring back.  Some of them will remain permenantly pushed down.  It was rather spooky looking out there last night.  The weird diffuse light and these giant monster trees all covered with snow cloaks.

  So, what did I do yesterday?  I did a little spinning.  This is some roving that Em and Jim gave me for Christmas.  I'm not sure what it is. It feels like it might be romey or bfl.  That doesn't matter as much as the color. I think of it as sunrise/sunset.  It's pinks and yellows and gentle oranges.  It's spinning into a thin laceweight single and I'm rather happy with it.

I also gave myself permission to have three pairs of socks otn at the same time.   I work periodically on the bayerische socks but they are hard and there is a lot of charts so they require more concentration than I have a lot of the time.  I have my train knitting, the Go with the Flow socks.  They're coming out really nice in the Patonyle that Tinkingbelle sent me.  But I wanted something different.  I wanted to use the yarn from the Artwalk sock yarn club that came on Monday. It's an Andy Warhol painting and particularly appropriate for February. I love this yarn.  These colors are pretty true.  It's a grey and greyish red color.  I know it doesn't sound beautiful but it is.  And it's a wonderful base that is soft but not too soft and squishy but not too squishy.  It is becoming glynis socks from Sock Innovations from Cookie A.  Kate gave me this book last May for Mother's Day and I have't made anything from it, yet.  As I was browsing patterns on ravelry, I remembered the book and decided to use it.   

I like this pattern.  It's not complicated and the stitches are easy enough if you knit loosely.  There are k3tog and sssk (I missed that 3rd 's' the first time and messed up the stitch count.)  I'm going to spend some quality time with this sock today.  And I'll probably bake or something.          No matter what, we'll probably be inside.  The wind is blowing and it's cold.

And here's a snow covered tree against a cloudless blue sky.  That's taken out the bathroom window.  I haven't been out in the back yard for a while.  We don't shovel out there so no one goes back there in the winter.  It's a little nerve wracking to see how tall these trees are compared to us.  It's a good thing trees are friendly.

Have a good day!