When Knitting Was a Manly Art

Not one of my better days.

Crappy attitude, slept in later than I wanted, no interest in working on the sweater.

Finished the first of Eileen’s sock, but not a lot else accomplished. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow.

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8:30am – Fog/Low clouds – Current temp. 41.0F(5.0C)

Max 48.6F(9.2C) – Min 39.9F(4.4C) — 0″ precipitation

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9:45pm – Current temp. 39.9F(4.4C)
Yet another *beautiful* day. Once again broke 50F and lots of sun. An amazing winter compared to last year.

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The day started with the plan on taking one bad a** ram to the livestock auction in Woodburn, Oregon (about an hour south of us). That meant an early hour out of bed and a lot of running around getting cats fed, tea made, breakfast cooked, trailer hitched, animals fed, ram loaded, hair washed, clothes changed, phone calls made. We were on the road at 10:30am and nothing touched on the sweater and only a couple rounds of Eileen’s sock.

We actually got going early, as the auction yard doesn’t start receiving animals until noon on Sunday, so we stopped off at Eileen’s Aunt and Uncle who live in a retirement village in Woodburn. I nice visit with another elderly couple that really need to consider moving into something a lot smaller. They are about my parent’s age and both have sight and health problems. Still, my favorite of Eileen’s relatives.

Finally got to the livestock auction yards at about 2pm and unloaded the ram. In a way it’s sad, as he is a very handsome guy, but he was getting too obnoxious to stay.

We took back roads home, stopping on the way to get grocery shopping done and finally got back home at about 7pm to a bunch of critters complaining about the lateness of their dinners.

Dinner for the humans and last night’s tape of ‘Mystery’ on PBS and it’s now time for bed.

Tomorrow is house cleaning, which means a generally lazy day and hopefully more progress on the SOA.

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8:00am – Partly cloudy – Current temp. 39.4F(4.1C)

Max 44.8F(71.C) – Min 39.4F(4.1C) — 0.20″/5mm precipitation

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9:50pm – Current temp. 41.0F(5.0C)
Mostly dry day, but cool again. Spent most of the day in the valley where the temperatures reached the mid 50’s. Here on the ridge, we were in the high 40’s.

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Some our earliest plants are starting to show life. The Peonies are starting to push bright red buds through the earth and some of the early bloomers are putting up buds and flowers.

These pictures were all shot this morning in a drizzling rain.

This is a Water Hawthorne flower. It has the most wonderful vanilla scent. This is probably the earliest we’ve had blooms, but it’s a cold weather/cold water lover. The plant will go dormant in the hottest part of summer.

And another of the early bloomers is Japanese Butterbur (Petasites japonicus variegata). The leaves are months away, but the flower stalks are starting to rise and fill out. Each of the large ‘buds’ contain multiple flower buds, some of which can be seen in the partially open ‘bud’ on the right.

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8:30am – Light rain – Current temp. 41.0F(5.0C)

Max 49.6F(9.8C) – Min 39.9F(4.4C) — 0.94″/24mm precipitation

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10:15pm – Current temp. 43.2F(6.2C)
Another wet day. Mostly dry until about 10am, but pretty much constant light rain the rest of the day. Welcome to Oregon.

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Somewhere between 3 and 5 years ago, I purchased yarn and pattern for the Pacific Northwest Shawl. Somewhere along the line I misplaced the pattern and stuffed what little progress I had made into one of my stash boxes.

Over time the shawl was forgotten until recently. I was cleaning up the upstairs prior to finishing painting when I discovered a 3-ring binder and in the back pocket of the binder was the pattern for the shawl. A great find, but unfortunatley I had no idea where the yarn and partially completed shawl was.

This morning while digging through bags and boxes in the garage, I stumbled upon a big, black garbage sack that felt like it was full of yarn. Yea.. One of my stash bags. Inside, along with a lot of yarn that hasn’t seen the light of day in years, was a ziplock bag containing some pretty green Jaggerspun silk/merino yarn and the beginnings of a shawl.

Not very impressive, but it’s the first three pattern repeats for the Seagulls. I think I’m going to finish this before I start anything new. This has been on needles long enough that it just *deserves* to be finished.

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7:15am – Mostly cloudy – Current temp. 43.2F(6.2C)

Max 51.3F(10.7C) – Min 42.6F(5.9C) — 0.04″/1mm precipitation

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8:00pm – Current temp. 42.1F(5.6C)
Rain.. Nearly constant rain since about 1pm this afternoon. Nearly 1/3″/8mm so far. Ahhh. Glorious Northwest winter rain…

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8:30am – Overcast – Current temp. 44.8F(7.1C)

Max 49.1F(9.5C) – Min 41.0F(5.0C) — 0.08″/2mm precipitation

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8:15pm – Current temp. 44.2F(6.8C)
Morning showers, but other than that, a mostly dry day. Managed to push above 50F again. Rain forecasts have been backed off for the rest of the week.

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I’m about a month away from finishing the Son of ARAN and I’m already thinking about what’s next.

Unfortunately (for me), I’ve got a long list

Alice Starmore’s Cape Cod from ‘Fisherman’s Sweaters’
Beth Brown-Reinsel’s At Sea from ‘Knitting in America’.
Gene Beugler’s Frost Flowers and Leaves Shawl from ‘Gathering of Lace’ (no picture.. You’ll have to check out the book).
Gene Beugler’s Feather & Fan Shawl from ‘Gathering of Lace’ (again no pictures.)
And finally Polly Outhwaite’s Kiri Lace Shawl. Pattern is here. I’ve got some pretty Mohair blend lace weight in my stash that’s just begging to become this shawl

Oh.. And socks.. I’ve decided that I’m going to have some kind of a sock on needle from here on out. They make a good traveling project and I *love* the attention that knitting something on 5 needles gets when I knit in public.

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