When Knitting Was a Manly Art

Nearly three months since my last post, the day after Thanksgiving and I feel an urge to type…

So… What’s going on?

I’d love to say that things are going along swimmingly, but I really can’t. Too much work, too little money, not really happy with the direction of my life right now.

Haven’t knitted a stitch since my last post, but doing a lot of reading and just trying to keep my mind busy in my limited free time. Work has become more than I expected when I started. What I expected to be just part-time has expanded to nearly full-time with the addition of being promoted to shift supervisor. Now when customers have complaints, I get to go out front for an earful.

Still riding a roller coaster as far as depression is concerned. Good days and bad days, though the bad days don’t seem so often and *usually* not so low. Today is a good one. Nice dinner yesterday afternoon with friends and work tonight, though it’s probably going to be a dead evening.

Picture — Blossoms on my Hindu Rope Hoya

Popularity: 46% [?]

It’s been a while since my last posting, but work and a slowly reviving nursery have left me with little time for much else.

Mentally, things are going pretty nice, but the restaurant has gotten crazy in the last two months. While I’m still cruising close to the 40 hour/week mark, I feel like I’m *always* working. I have a 10 hour shift every Monday, an 8 1/2 hour shift on Friday (which means closing on the busiest night of the week — sometimes that 8 1/2 hours expands to more like 9 1/2). And on top of that, Sunday is one of our only three closed days (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter) and to keep my hours up, I worked a 6 straight days this week with 5 closes. Ah, but I did get a pay raise (making *nearly* $11/hour).

Nursery is starting to come alive and Eileen’s first plant sale is less than three weeks away and that means when I’m not cooking, I’m planting and cleaning up plants.

Still knitting a tiny bit, just so I can say I’m doing it. Nothing of interest to report.

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and I spent it working. I’m closing the restaurant tonight, but I’ve got the whole weekend off and I intend to sleep in late tomorrow and then see if I can find a good way to celebrate.

Don’t Mess With The Old Guy

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day. He’d been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, have you ever danced?” The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No, I never did dance. I just never wanted to.” A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna’ dance now,” and started shooting at the old man’s feet. The old prospector was hopping around and everybody was laughing.

When the gunslinger fired his last bullet, he holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon. The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned around looking down both barrels of the shotgun. The old man asked, “Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?” The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, “No. But I’ve always wanted to.”

The lessons from this story are:
1. Don’t waste ammunition.
2. Don’t mess with old guys.

Popularity: 95% [?]

Just finished my usual Sunday day shift and found we have a couple young ladies who are less than happy with their employment. One 18 and one 19. Both have their own problems and both are unhappy with the hours they’re getting. One showed up an hour late for work this evening with lots of excuses. Sigh.. Just when I thought I’d start getting two days off a week…

But, I’m in a great mood this evening.. Listening to Buena Vista Social Club. Munching a Caramel Drumstick (I never said I ate healthy..)

No knitting pictures, but I’ve got a photo backlog of the unusual and interesting that I’m just going to start to share.

Da Tung is a 12 foot tall bronze sculpture that’s located in the North Park Blocks in downtown Portland. A replica of a Chinese antique, it was donated to the city by a Chinese businessman.

Every year Nora Barlow Columbine returns to my garden. A *very* old spurless columbine, it just begs to be photographed each year. And I’m usually able to get a shot that I really like. This is this year’s photo.

Popularity: 93% [?]

First around the yard. Lots of things starting to bloom, but these caught my eye.

An old fashioned flowering quince. You see a lot of these on older homesteads and the parents of these were probably planted soon after the house was finished in 1947.

And the flowers of Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) are another of our early bloomers.

And then into the woods above the house.

Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum) is one of the early indicators of spring.

And our pretty little Wood Violet seems to be everywhere on floor of the woods.

And finally, the elusive Calypso Orchid (Calypso bulbosa). We’ve got our own little plot of these native orchids and the patch seems to grow larger each year. This is one of the larger groups. Each little purple spot is an orchid.

And a closeup.

Popularity: 74% [?]

Our earliest spring violet. Marsh Violet (Viola palustris). Though it looks white, it is usually described as being purple to blue. These guys have just a touch of purple.

The native Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) is a welcome sight in the early spring. Nothing brightens up a day better than these pretty red blooms.

Another early spring bloomer is Winter Hazel. Bare stems with bright yellow flowers and red stamens make a striking statement in the garden.

Popularity: 71% [?]

Sort of…

Started the Gansey Sampler from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s Knitting Ganseys. I’m actually a bit further along than this, Just starting underarm gussets. I just needed to start something again and this is *fairly quick* and has some interesting techniques to try.

And it appears that spring is not *quite* here yet.

Popularity: 72% [?]

I use Firefox for my web browser on my Linux box. I’ve tried most of the various browsers available and always seem to come back to it.

One of the things I like is the ability to extend the capabilities of Firefox with “Extensions”. One of my latest extensions is Smiley Xtra plugin. It allows me to add any of more than 2000 smilies to my blog or anyplace else I post regularly.

Light snow this morning, but I took another walk around the yard anyway. Laurie asked for a close up of a filbert/hazelnut male blossom. If you look closely, you can see each of the individual flowers down the length of male catkin.

And just a the top of the male catkins are the *little* female flowers that will become the nut. Just below center are the tiny red petals of the female.

And bit more of the yellow crocus. Still nothing open yet, but a few more buds enjoying the chilly sunshine.

Popularity: 100% [?]

slowly to the ridgetop, though we did have a little burst of snow tonight.

I love the beginnings of spring. After a dreary, wet winter it so nice to see stuff starting to bloom.

It’s really been a warmer than usual winter and it seems to me that everything is starting early.

The yellow blossoms of our native filbert (aka hazelnut)

and the pretty beginnings of a little yellow crocus at the edge of the lawn

and it also returns to me too. I spent the day in Portland at the Portland Art Museum visiting the Treasures of Ancient Egypt: Quest for Immortality. It’s extremely humbling to view pieces of human art that have existed for as much as 3500 years.

Popularity: 88% [?]

Mine’s doing pretty good considering the circumstances. I’ve been getting out and having some fun on my own and for the most part enjoying doing stuff alone for the time being.

Thanks to Molly Bee’s suggestion, I took a look at www.geocaching.com and discovered that there 100’s of geocaches within driving distance of my house and even a few that make good bicycle routes. Yesterday I chose a cache that started in the little town of Banks, where I work. It consisted of traveling around town with a GPS finding different sites and numbers associated with those sites to finally work out the final coordinates of the cache. That was followed by a 2 1/2 mile bike ride north of town to the actual site of the cache — with a bit of wandering around in circles with the GPS in hand trying to find the exact spot. Cache was found, log book signed and whole thing put back in it’s hiding place and then back to town. Total time: about 2 hours. Lot’s of fun and I’m now looking down the list for my next cache.

Knitting: Still haven’t got up the courage to take a look at the Feather and Fan and see how much needs to be ripped/tinked back. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, the multidirectional scarf is coming along nicely. Even worked a bit on it last night at my favorite pub.

Flowers: Still a few flowers blooming up here on the ridgetop. In particular, the water lilies are still flowering and adding their beauty to the farm.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Busy weekend. I’m working all four days of the extended Fourth of July weekend, but we get to close at 9PM, instead of 10PM on Tuesday (7/4/06) so that we can enjoy the fireworks. My impressions, on talking to longtime employees, is that we’ll be lucky to get out before 10:30PM due to the crowds waiting for the local Banks, Oregon fireworks to begin. Nice gesture, though.

UPDATE: 7/7/06 – Managed to get out at 9:45, though we also managed a record for July 4th. Nearly $2000 for the day and $1500 of that between 3pm and closing. Whew.. What a night..

Work continues slowly on the Feather and Fan shawl. I may start a pair of socks too, for a diversion.

Can you tell I love this time of year? So much growing and so many pictures to take.

Don’t they remind you of three ballerinas spinning on their toes? Fuchsia magellanica

A hardy Blue Passion flower which has managed to survive three winters with us and has been bursting with blooms this spring and summer.

Rosa centifolia (aka Cabbage Rose). Amazing number of petals, wonderful scent. This one is an unknown. We’ve taken it to many Rose experts, but still no identification. It was on the property when we purchased it.

Popularity: 66% [?]