For the Bird(s)

Somehow Monday mornings are harder when you've had a long weekend -- or maybe it's just because a certain someone woke me up with his snoring at about 4:30 this morning. In any case, I'm dragging a bit, but I'm enjoying my second big cup of coffee (to which I added a splash of hazelnut syrup just because), and I'm sure I'll get moving soon enough.

It was very nice to have the extra day over the weekend. Friday was indeed a washout, so we put off our shopping trip and instead I got my usual Saturday chores done a day early. We also spent some time watching Downton Abbey; Mo recently discovered that she now enjoys watching period dramas after she got hooked on The Gilded Age with me, so she requested that we watch Downton next. She was way too young for it when it was originally on, and I haven't watched it in years, so we are enjoying starting from the beginning. We're already into Season 2 -- I'd forgotten how few episodes were in each season!

We did end up doing our shopping trip on Saturday and were very successful. The main objective was finding a dress for Mo for a school dance that's this coming Friday night, but we also have a family bat mitzvah next month. Mo found three dresses -- two party dresses and one that she's planning to wear for her middle school graduation -- and I found three as well. Two of them were on the clearance rack and on sale for amazing prices! I wasn't necessarily planning to shop for me, but what I found all fit perfectly and was too good of a deal to pass up (plus I probably needed some new dresses!).

When I wasn't cleaning or shopping this weekend, I was working on a chicken. (Yes, you read that correctly.) And it's done!

This is the ubiquitous Emotional Support Chicken that everyone seems to be knitting right now. When I bought the pattern, I originally intended to knit one for myself, and I still do, but this first one is for my nephew for his upcoming first birthday.

I know some of you were interested in some feedback on the pattern, and having now knit it, I can understand why there was some concern. Although I didn't have any trouble following it, I can think of many ways I would improve how the pattern is written. There isn't a ton of consistency; sometimes it says "Step 1, Step 2," and sometimes it says "Row 1, Row 2," so there's that. It's also not always indicated which side is the right and and which is the wrong side. And to add to all of this, there are a lot of short rows, which I know not everyone is comfortable with. But I have enough experience that I could see what needed to be done and how it was shaped, so I didn't have any issues. I do have in mind some adjustments for my next chicken, though, and I'll certainly detail my modifications when I make my own. For this initial chicken, the only change I made was to leave off the wattle. I did make it, but Mo and I both agreed that it looked awkward and was likely to get pulled off by a toddler who doesn't know his own strength.

As far as the specs go, I used all Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton Worsted that was leftover from an earlier project. I used a total of 234 yards, and I believe the colors I used are Bone, Dandelion, and Mediterranean (the tags are long gone). I used a US 7/4.5 mm needle and worked at a slightly tighter-than-specified gauge; I think I will likely use an even smaller needle for my next chicken to ensure that the fabric is tight enough. This yarn is rather robust for a worsted, plus with a cotton I didn't want to make the fabric too tight, so the called-for needle size worked well to make sure the stuffing didn't show through. And speaking of stuffing, I can see that I need to work on my stuffing technique a bit because this chicken is looking a little lumpy! One thing I did do that's not in the pattern is add some poly pellets for some weight; they're sewn up in some fabric so they don't escape and cause a potential choking hazard.

Now that the chicken is out of the way, I've turned back to my Bereket sweater, and I hope to have another FO to share with you later this week. But for now, I've got to get my work day started. Have a good start to your week!

Gone Afoul

Happy Friday from a very wet Pittsburgh! I am technically "on vacation" today, both because I was bumping up against my accrual limit and because Mo is off from school today and we wanted to have a girls' day. We had planned to go to a mall and do some shopping, but we had a lot of rain move through yesterday, resulting in a lot of flash flooding around the area, so I think we will put that off until the weekend and instead have a quiet day indoors. Frankly, that's just fine with me, as I am a bit obsessed with my current project:

Does it look like a chicken yet? I started this on Wednesday and got both tail sections done that evening, and I did most of the body yesterday. I'm now partway through the head and have only the rest of that, the comb and wattle, and the belly panel left to do, all of which I'm pretty sure I can do today. I'm planning to add some poly pellets inside the stuffing, and I'm going to sew them up inside some fabric to make sure they stay safely inside, so I'll have to get the sewing machine out as well. And yes, I'm aware that blue is not a traditional color for chickens, but I wanted a little variety and I had it. I highly doubt a 1-year-old is going to complain.

We have nothing planned for the weekend, so I hope to catch up on some sleep and get outside when it dries out. I hope it's a good one for you!

Poetry in April: Ross Gay

It's Thursday again, and that means it's time for another installment of poetry! This week we are all sharing poems by Ross Gay. I've chosen to share the one I haven't stopped thinking about since I read it two weeks ago. It's a long one, but I hope you'll read it all and enjoy it as much as I did.

burial

You're right, you're right,
the fertilizer's good--
it wasn't a gang of dullards
came up with chucking
a fish in the planting hole
or some midwife got lucky
with the placenta--
oh, I'll plant a tree here!--

and a sudden flush of quince

and jam enough for months--yes,

the magic dust our bodies become

casts spells on the roots

about which someone else

could tell you the chemical processes,

but it's just magic to me,

which is why a couple springs ago

when first putting in my two bare root plum trees

out back I took the jar which has become

my father's house,

and lonely for him and hoping to coax him back

for my mother as much as me,

poured some of him in the planting holes

and he dove in glad for the robust air,

saddling a slight gust

into my nose and mouth,

chuckling as I coughed,

but mostly he disappeared

into the minor yawns in the earth

into which I placed the trees,

splaying wide their roots,

casting the gray dust of my old man

evenly throughout the hole,

replacing then the clods

of dense Indiana soil until the roots

and my father were buried,

watering it in all with one hand

while holding the tree

with the other straight as the flag

to the nation of simple joy

of which my father is now a naturalized citizen,

waving the flag

from his subterranean lair,

the roots curled around him

like shawls or jungle gyms, like

hookahs or the arms of ancestors,

before breast-stroking into the xylem,

riding the elevator up

through the cambium and into the leaves where,

when you put your ear close enough,

you can hear him whisper

good morning, where, if you close your eyes

and push your face you can feel

his stubbly jowls and good lord

this year he was giddy at the first

real fruit set and nestled into the 30 or 40 plums

in the two trees, peering out from the sweet meat

with his hands pressed against the purple skin

like cathedral glass,

and imagine his joy as the sun

wizarded forth those abundant sugars

and I plodded barefoot

and prayerful at the first ripe plum's swell and blush,

almost weepy conjuring

some surely ponderous verse

to convey this bottomless grace,

you know, oh father oh father kind of stuff,

hundreds of hot air balloons

filling the sky in my chest, replacing his intubated body

listing like a boat keel side up, replacing

the steady stream of water from the one eye

which his brother wiped before removing the tube,

keeping his hand on the forehead

until the last wind in his body wandered off,

while my brother wailed like an animal,

and my mother said, weeping,

it's ok, it's ok, you can go honey,

at all of which my father

guffawed by kicking from the first bite

buckets of juice down my chin,

staining one of my two button-down shirts,

the salmon-colored silk one, hollering

there's more of that!

almost dancing now in the plum,

in the tree, the way he did as a person,

bent over and biting his lip

and chucking the one hip out

then the other with his elbows cocked

and fists loosely made

and eyes closed and mouth made trumpet

when he knew he could make you happy

just by being a little silly

and sweet.

"burial" from catalog of unabashed gratitude, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015

You can learn more about Ross Gay here. Be sure to visit Kat, Kym, and Bonny to read their selections!

Unraveled, Week 15/2024

It's Wednesday again, so it's time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers! I'll give you one guess as to what's on my needles this week.

The exciting news is that I'm ready to bind off the second sleeve! So all that stands between me and a finished sweater is the neck ribbing and the ribbing at the bottom of the body. But I have quite a lot of yarn remaining, so I think I am going to add some more length to the body because the sweater is quite cropped as written.

I will likely be starting a chicken soon, if only because I'm craving some color other than brown. Also, you all know what I'm not typically a monogamous knitter, and as much as I'm enjoying working on this sweater, I need a little variety.

Despite feeling like I've been doing a lot of reading this past week, I've only finished one book, but at least it was a good one!

You may remember that I started reading There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak's forthcoming novel, back when Mo and I were in Florida, but I paused when a library hold came in. Once I could get back to it, though, I was hooked. This novel follows three characters in three different timelines: Arthur, born into poverty in Dickens's London; Narin, a Yazidi girl living in Turkey with her father and grandmother in 2014; and Zaleekhah, a water scientist recently separated from her husband in London in 2018. These three seem entirely unrelated, but their lives all find a connection in water and in the culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Arthur finds success in being able to read cuneiform tablets unearthed by archaeologists and finds his life's passion in translating the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Narin, whose mother died and whose father travels for work, suffers from an illness that is rapidly taking her hearing, and as the Turkish government is planning construction that threatens to flood the village where she lives, her grandmother is determined to take her to an ancient holy city in Iraq to be baptized. Zaleekhah is trying to make a home on a rented houseboat and reflecting on the work of her late mentor, whose theory that water could retain memory destroyed his professional reputation, and of the rivers that have been buried over the centuries. Connecting these three storylines are the themes of memory, of hatred that arises from misunderstanding, and of the many important roles that water plays in life as well as the dual nature of all humans -- that even those who create beauty or knowledge are still capable of cruelty. I really enjoyed this book, though I found the characters to be a little flat and underdeveloped and would have liked to have gotten to know them better. I gave it 4 stars.

I received a digital ARC of this book from Knopf and NetGalley in return for an honest review. This book will be published August 20, 2024.

I am still reading Martyr! and also have started an audiobook from my TBR, From Scratch, as well as another ARC, Long Island Compromise.

What are you making and reading this week?

Rested and Eclipse Ready

Happy Eclipse Day! We are not in the path of totality here, but we'll see something like 97% coverage here (assuming the clouds don't roll in). The timing coincides perfectly with school pick-up, so Mo and I have a plan to meet on a side street near her school to watch it from there.

The weekend was relaxing, which I needed. I did have to get up to an alarm on Saturday because I had to go get some routine bloodwork done and needed to be fasting, but I had nothing else on the schedule and was able to get in a couple of good walks and lots of knitting time. Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day. It started off a little cold, but the sky was clear and the sun was warm. We had the blinds up on the sliding glass doors in our family room all afternoon so we could get all of that beautiful sunshine in the house. Mo and I watched the women's NCAA championship game in the afternoon, and I got a ton of work done on my sweater:

I'm in the home stretch now! I'm working decreases on every round of the sleeve for a while, so the stitch count is going to go down rapidly. Once the sleeve is done, all that's left to do is the neckline and the bottom hem. I still have plenty of yarn, and I may make the body a little longer than called for because of it.

Today I have a special guest keeping me company:

My brother was concerned that the dog walker might come to take him out during the eclipse (yes, he's a little overprotective), so he's staying with me while he and my sister-in-law are at work. We also have some workmen coming today to fix an issue with our sliding glass doors, so there will be lots of excitement around the house. The only real difference this will make for me is that I'll move my "office" downstairs for the day.

Hope your week is off to a good start and, if you're near the path of totality, you're able to see the eclipse today!

A Soggy End to the Week

TGIF! It's been a long, wet week. We've had some pretty extensive flooding in the area, including at the Point (the tip of the triangle where the Allegheny and the Monongahela converge to form the Ohio River). This video from one of our local stations shows how the water is covering the entirety of the fountain. Yesterday we had a brief break in the rain and even a bit of sun, allowing me to get out for a walk, but the rain soon returned and we even had some hail/graupel in the afternoon! It's been cold again and I'm back to wearing sweaters and hand-knit socks. It's not unusual for us to have multiple "false springs" in this part of the world, but after having several days in the 70s in February, it feels rather cruel.

I am making the best of the situation. I haven't been able to get outside to work out other than my walk yesterday, but given that I just donated blood on Tuesday, any run I would have taken likely would have been extra hard. And being stuck in the house means I'm getting things done in between work tasks -- and getting a fair amount of knitting done. My Bereket is moving along at a good clip; I think being more familiar with the stitch pattern and the decreases are combining to make the second pattern section go a lot faster than the first.

I'm really trying to stay focused on this project, but I've already pulled out some yarns for my next cast-on. Do these colors say chicken to you?

What about these?

By chicken, I'm of course referring to the hot knitting pattern of the moment, the Emotional Support Chicken. I had already bought the pattern for myself as a birthday present but then learned that my youngest nephew is currently obsessed with chickens. His first birthday is coming up on May 1 and I wasn't sure what to make him as a gift, but now I know exactly what to make. I'm going to be using the yarns in the first photo, all of them Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton leftover from the doll I made for Mo many years ago. I figured cotton was a good choice for a baby gift, and it always makes me happy to use up leftovers, particularly leftovers that have been in my stash for a decade. The yarns I've selected for mine are a skein of Fibernymph Dye Works Cozy OOAK that I recently won and some HipStrings Buoy DK leftover from a sweater. Apparently knitting one of these chickens often leads to knitting many of them, but I'll start with these two.

This weekend should be a quieter/calmer one than last. We're having dinner with my parents tonight; they came home from Florida earlier in the week and are babysitting my nephew this weekend while my brother and sister-in-law are taking a quick trip. I'm planning on a trip to Costco and will have the usual cleaning to do but otherwise hope to catch up on sleep and reading. I'll leave you with a photo of my permanent veneer, which was installed (is that the right term for it?) on Tuesday morning and looks so much more like my actual tooth that I ever expected!

Have a great weekend!

Poetry on Thursday, 2024 Edition

As I mentioned yesterday, April is National Poetry Month, and to commemorate it, Bonny, Kat, Kym, and I are once again going to be sharing poems with you every Thursday this month. Each week has a theme or featured poet, and for this first Thursday, we are sharing poems about peace and/or humanity. This is a very timely theme, in my opinion, because the current conflict in Israel and Gaza is never far from my mind. Though I don't claim to have any expertise in diplomacy, I firmly believe that a very key step toward ending conflict is seeing the humanity of those we might view as our adversaries. With that in mind, I picked a poem to share this week that beautifully illustrates how much more we have in common one another than we might realize.

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will
    go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make
    women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us as our
    poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
    the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last
    sweet bite.

From The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1994)

If you'd like to hear the poet read this poem, you can listen here. And you can learn more about Joy Harjo, former poet laureate of the United States, here.