kmkat and her kneedles

Evian = youth (or so they would have you believe).

Courtesy of Younger Son, who says, "...if you only watch one commercial this month, make it this masterpiece:"

Interim.

I am still working on the last post(s) about our vacation. In the meantime, watch this...

Animals.

Friday it rained. A rainy day during a camping vacation means just one thing: time to go into town. Smokey dropped me off at the library and went to do the laundry. (I love this guy.) When the laundry was done he joined me; we checked  email and I read blogs and generally had internet fun.

Dinner was at a gourmet feast at Taco John’s. While that was tasty (anything with as many fat grams as Taco John’s food HAS to be tasty.), it was not nearly as much fun as what we found when we drove around the building to leave. Right next door was an old farmstead with horses.

 

The white horses were big, not as big as Percherons or Belgians, but definitely larger than the others. The male has apparently been bugging the females in the herd; whenever he started toward any of them they ran away. “Dammit, can’t you think of anything else, you big brute?!”

And here is Lucy, watching them.

This was definitely the high point of her day.

After dinner we drove back to the campground, but realized before we got there that this was the time of day when the wildlife comes out. The sky had cleared, so we continued up the mountain and drove through several other national forest areas. It was indeed the perfect time of day, both for the lighting conditions, and when those got too dark for really good photographs, for animals.

 

There were animal sounds emanating from the pine forest in the background. It sounded like seals barking, but we agreed that it was probably moose talk.

 

At one point we were turning around -- I can see why a person living in this area might want to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle with high ground clearance; some of these forest roads get mighty rutted and rocky -- we looked out the windshield as the van was completely crosswise in the road, and guess what we saw?

Lucy missed that one.

We even saw The Majestic Moose.

 

What, you can't see him? How about now?

 

Cursingmama, this one's for you :-)

Mile-high posting.

Here we are in Wyoming; Buffalo, where I am wi-fi-ing in the library, is at a bit less than 5,000 feet elevation, and the campground where we are living is at something like 6,000 feet. So, on average, I am a mile high. No comments from the peanut gallery, please.

We had a bit of a late departure from home -- 24+ hours late, to be truthful. Car trouble, Smokey not feeling well enough to fix it, our eternal optimism about how long it would take to pack. But our good buddy Lennie came to the rescue and did all the tire mounting and oil changing and other stuff that needed to be done before we set out on this adventure.

A couple little giggles from Lennie's shop:

Twenty hours after we left the lake -- and one dead deer* later -- we pulled into the Middle Fork Creek campground.

 

That's Middle Fork creek viewed from my knitting chair.

 

Note the handy cup of tea and iPod. I'm on my second audio book already and have finished a pair of socks and the skinny cotton Clapotis.

 

No photo of the Clap until I get home and block it.

I am half done with another chemo hat, this one for one of Smokey's co-workers. This hat is from the same lace-edged hat pattern that I, er, *modified* for my friend Mary. Raydean's hat, however, looks exactly like the pattern photo. Yay, me! I can conquer a four-row lace pattern that has two plain knit rows! Photo of that one will be forthcoming after I get home and block the lace edging. I am feeling quite triumphant.

This is a dog that has just seen a squirrel/other dog/leaf twitch:

 

She practically went nuts when this pretty girl crossed the campground (sorry for the blurry photo; the subject is in the middle of the creek, crossing from right to left):

* Smokey hit a deer twenty miles from home.

The bumper is sad but the car was still drivable. He plans to putz with it while we are here and make it prettier.

Leavin' on a jet pl--, er, van.

We are leaving on Wednesday for the annual camping trip in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming. I have not started organizing the camping gear.

I have, however, gotten all my knitting projects ready.

The big project is to finish the kimono sweater that I started in November 2007. The back is done. Here are the two fronts, being knit more or less simultaneously, each on its own circ.

 

The red is actually maroon; the grayed lavender is accurate in the photo. The fronts should go fairly quickly (I hope), but the sleeves are enormous. Still, if not now, when? It's a good mindless project and I'd love to be able to wear it come fall.

I'd like to finish this child's sweater intended for Afghans for Afghans:

It has been in time out since September or so, when I realized I had been so busy counting rows for the sleeve increases that I had passed the spot where I should have begun the striping. You can see that I started it anyway, but it is not right. I need to sit down with a pencil and some graph paper and chart out how the increases and striping work out; then it will be a breeze to finish. I was planning on making this a knit-in-the-round saddle shoulder sweater, a la  EZ, but I may just do a seamless yoke. Depends on how ambitious I am when I reach the point to join the sleeves to the body.

After I finished the chemo hat for my friend Mary I got an overwhelming case of startitis. Swatched for a clapotis with the laceweight Knit Picks alpaca:

 

A US#4 needle makes a very nice fabric; now to decide exactly what it will be. Some of you pointed out that this is very sticky yarn, but I don't think I will mind dropping the stitches one by one for the clap, if I decide to make that. (I have lots of practice at that from fixing mistakes six or sixteen or twenty-six rows back.) The other option is to buy some more of this yarn and make something bigger, like a dressy sweater. Decisions, decision...

Clapotis on the brain inspired this, a long skinny cotton clap on US#10.5 needles:

It knits up wonderfully fast. I have two more balls of the Gedifra yarn and am hoping the length comes out right.

And then there is this, inspired by a couple other bloggers:

 

Angie told me about Faroese shawl construction and Myra Stahman's book on the subject when I complained last summer about how traditional triangular shawls always slide off. Cindy's Scrap Shawl, a make-it-up-as-you-go design, looked like a lot of fun to knit. So I combined the ideas and cast on with some Cascade 220 that has been marinating (and breeding) in the stash for three or four years. Thank you both! This is a fun project. I don't know if I will actually wear it in public, but I wanted a super-warm shawl to wear at home next winter. This will fill the bill nicely.

Of course, there will be some socks OTN, too. I'll finish the Indian Corn socks.

Then I need to decide which sock yarn to take along for the next pair. I had intended that my next socks would be knit from this:

 

since I need some blue socks. But then this gorgeous stuff arrived in the mail on Saturday:

 

and I am itching to cast on with it. 325 yards of Fleece Artist BFL Socks, 80% superwash blue face Leicester/20% nylon, and totally yummy to the touch. The part that looks fuschia in the photo is actually darkish red; the whole thing is darker than it looks here. I won this from Tammy in her latest contest, wherein she asked her readers to tell her about their favorite books. Thanks, Tammy! That topic is right up my street.

Okay, that pretty much wraps up the knitting projects. Now for the camping gear...

Summer Sunday.

Ceiling fan = on.

Sky.

Boats.

Hummingbird at the feeder.

Ants under the hummingbird feeder.

The ever-vigilant feline.

Hey! Whatchew you doin' out there? That's my lawn! Y'all go on back home now! Don't make me come down there!

Love songs of the loon.

Recorded @ 10:50 pm Saturday night.

The loons were late getting here this year and even after they arrived they were quiet for almost a month. Now they seem to be making up for it, yay!

WWKIP day.

My question is, exactly how public does this need to be? Does knitting in front of my computer count if I have Twitter open?

Probably not.

Google?

No.

How about if I knit while on the phone with one of my sons and he is out in public?

Still no.

What if he is in Central Park?

Uh-uh.

Times Square?

No way, José.

Well, okay then, this is my final offer: I'll go knit on my deck and whenever I see a boat on the lake I'll wave my knitting in the air.

Note: it is not that I am afraid to be seen knitting in public. Heaven knows I do it all the time. I'm just opposed to getting in the car and driving somewhere just to do it.

So if you read about a crazed woman arrested in Wisconsin for waving a half-knit sock in the air in a manner deemd to be threatening to boaters? That would be me. Please send bail.

They hum because they don't know the words.

The hummingbirds have discovered my feeder. The blue color does not seem to discourage them.

In case you cannot find him in that photo, here is a close-up:

These are ruby-throated hummingbirds. I know that because half of them -- the male half of the population -- have a bright red patch on their throat. I also know this because ruby-throated hummingbirds are the only hummers in this part of the continent.

In the interest of science I have been timing how long a hummingbird hovers to take a drink. So far, the median length of time -- and the maximum, too -- is exactly one thousandth of a second less than it takes me to grab my camera and boot it up.

That results in a lot of pictures like this.

And this.

 

Goldfinches tend to hang around much longer and thus are much easier to capture digitally.

Notice the captivating screen effect? I got that by taking the photo through the window screen. Notice how the screen is perfectly in focus but the bird is not? I worked long and hard to get that effect. Any and all feeder photos I take between now and, say, late September will have what I like to call Kat™'s Screen Effect.

Crap.

The message has changed.

Do I have swine flu?

(The title of this post will only make sense if you went to this site before yesterday.)