Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 7

Who'd a Thunk It?

In the past couple of weeks, I've discovered a whole passel of new relatives--through my mother's father's  line.   I always felt that I was way off at the far end of any family tree, pretty much a twig:  my grandfather had only three grandchildren, and only one (my cousin Jim) had children.   I'm my mother's only child.   And we lived away off in deep South Texas while the cousins she'd known when she was a girl lived hundreds of miles away to the north and east, children of her father's sisters Grace and Ruth, and I didn't get to meet any of them until I was almost in college.  My two first cousins lived in North Carolina and we saw them very rarely.

Now, however, I'm in touch with some second cousins, grandchildren of my mother's father's brothers.   And..one of them (so far...) is a fellow writer.   If you're a reader of historical romances, you might have read hers:  Martha Hix.   Here's a list of her books including two nonfiction ones, a history of the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio and a book about Pace Picante Sauce (which has been one of our favorites for years.)   See also http://www.amazon.com/Martha-Hix/e/B000AQ2Y12


Interestingly, though she has old family stories from her line, and another one has old family stories from *her* line, my old family stories (all via my mother, since my grandfather died when I was four) are interestingly different.   She and the others have done more genealogical research than I have, mostly (it looks like) via Ancestry.com, but my smaller amount was done before Ancestry became so dominant, via other public (and free) sources.   In their work, a certain situation suddenly looks more "respectable" than it did when (my mother having mentioned a deep secret) I ferreted out a little.  Should be interesting to see if the real story (whatever it is) comes out and if the respectable side is real, how the mystery secret enters into anything.    Most families have secrets, some of them hidden (or just plain forgotten) for years.

One of the things to come out of this sudden contact and expansion thereof is how connected the others are (all had siblings and multiple first cousins)  and how isolated we, in fact, were.   It's a completely different life, to grow up as a single little sprout a long way from the cornfield, or one cornstalk in amonst a lot of others with the wind whispering through you all.

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My browser updated this morning and blithely announced it had disabled some LJ add-ons, so I'm posting and checking out all the functions I use to see if that changed my abilitiy to use LJ.

And where have I been?

Working on the revisions of Cold Welcome.  Rehearsals and services for Holy Week.   Getting sick on Holy Saturday and thus unable to sing Easter Sunday.   A little knitting (presently close to the end of the cuffs on a pair of royal blue socks, which will be the 4th pair of the year.)  A little (in the past two weeks) taking walks on the springtime land and taking pictures.  A little cooking (including making up a new dish that is good but needs adjustment.)   Watching (with continued and increasing dismay and disgust) the self-destruction of the Republican Party by its various candidates for the Presidency and their entourages and overwhelming inability to figure out what they're doing wrong.

Not that I'm 100% agreement with anyone else, but the GOP began heading for this cliff decades ago and steadfastly refused to change course.

Soime photos of spring in late March, early April, below the cut

Cardinal and House Finch ignoring each other

       Bullfrog

Red-bellied Woodpecker, male

Bluebonnets & other native forbs--once covered with Ashe juniper


This was once bare, compacted ground, now covered w/native grasses & forbs.

When in Doubt, Knit

Or try to.   This pair of socks and I had some problems, when I got sick and kept knitting off and on while in bed.  Usually this produces a reasonable amount of knitting.  This time it produced an unreasonable number of mistakes which had to be undone, fixed, or worked around.  However, they're done, and here they are:


This is the 51st pair I've completed,  but the 50th to be started (the Birthday Socks overtook these for reasons partly related to color and partly related to how fast my birthday was approaching.)   It turns out that when I'm sick and having paroxysms of coughing--can't get my breath, sort of like whooping cough--I don't knit as well or as fast as usual.   These socks aren't really dark (as you can see--not a dark brown or a dark green)  but I still had problems seeing stitches well enough to avoid mistakes, or correct them when I made them.  And I was so, so, SO tired of not getting enough oxygen.  And--soothing as brown and green can be--they can also be a little depressing when you're stuck in bed and can't go find a chair where the light is better.

So I switched to the birthday socks.  (Shown almost finished, with one inside out to show the yarn tails waiting to be woven in.

And yes, they cheered me up, even when sick, and I could see the stitches except in that navy blue stripe.

But back to the "Woodsy" socks.  As usual with striped taller socks, I made the ribbed cuffs match, but did not try to match the stripes on the feet.   I used both wider and narrower stripes on one, and medium-wide stripes of similar widths on the other, just to see which I liked with colors similar in light/dark and saturation.


The left sock showing the ribbing stripes, the variable stripes on the foot, and the "frame" (heel and toe.)  One of the mistakes I made and did not redo on this sock was failure to decrease on every needle between the ribbing and the stockinette at the ankle--which is why there's a visible bit of extra material there. It doesn't bother me, though I usually snug in 4 stitches (one per needle) at that point and had decreased only 2.On the right foot, the striped on the foot are closer to the same width, which looks "quieter," not so busy.  Note the toe stripe of brown on the green toe--all my striped socks have a single row of a contrasting color just for decoration.   Plain socks may have a contrasting toe stripe if there are enough pairs of the same yarn made close together that I might mix the pairs (which would screw up the rotation of socks, intended to even out the wear.)

The yarns in this pair are Ella rae Classic (the brown heather) #178 and Cascade 220 (the green heather) #2446.   Both are obviously "warm-toned," with highlights of gold in both the brown and green, and orange/red in the brown.   The Cascade 220 yarn tails in the ribbed area really fuzzed and fluffed up as I worked on the socks, much more than other yarns I've used.  Yes, I try on the socks repeatedly during the toe-fitting stage, but was remarkable fuzzing, and made it harder to weave in the yarn tails.

All my "regular" socks are simple crew-sock designs, with five inches of ribbing at the top, an inch and a half of stockinette between the ribbing and the top of the heel flap.  The heel flap is worked in Eye of Partridge stitch, with this reinforcement continued through the heel flap and onto the start of the gusset decreases as a pad for my heel.   Socks are shaped to my individual feet, decreasing in circumference from 60 stitches in the ribbing to 56 in the ankle--and the gussets bring it down to 54, with another decrease at mid-foot (the bump on the top of my foot) to 52 stitches, a decrease of over an inch.  Toe decreases start on the outside of the foot, at the top of the little toe (L and R shaping is slightly different, because the feet are.)   This allows me to purse-string the toe, with the "point" of the toe right over my longest toe on each foot, giving toes plenty of room without bagginess.  The easy fit of the ribbed part prevents any compromise of circulation (and thus my feet don't swell up.)

I plan to knit 7 pairs of this type of sock in 2016, 7 pairs of short summer socks, and 1-2 extras  is possible.  Next in line is a pair of royal blue socks (one cast on and with six rows of ribbing on it, and the other one cast on and then frogged when I realized that...yes...I had twisted the yarn on a needle before joining.   I tried to do the join up with just the light of the bedside lamp, but clearly that's not good enough.  So when I've seen Cygnus head for the ISS, I'll go get that cast on and a stablizing row or two knit.  

A good day for washing socks.

After the deluges, a day of brilliant sun, warmth, and a brisk SSW wind.  Perfect for drying handknit socks on the line after a week of rain outside and dank humidity inside.


One side of the socks and....


...the other side, after flipping them on the line.

After the Morning Storm

Soft blue sky, little fluffy clouds, sunshine, temp in the low 80s, humid, breeze.



We had 1.5 inches of rain this morning, and since it came down hard, there's more runoff than the same amount would have produced had it been slow.


Downstream from #3 gabion, water is clearer


Upstream from gabion, water is more turbid, mosly runoff from construction parking lot


Entrance to crayfish burrow, first seen in years
I was out in rubber boots doing a water quality check of runoff, looking at turbidity (evidence of erosion and/or polluted runoff), velocity, signs of scouring.  In the multiple flash floods last fall, we saw more erosion than we had had for years.  Extreme rain events following drought always do more damage.

This morning's storm knocked petals off the flowering pear tree, but  did not much disturb the Texas buckeye flowering in the shade of other trees:



We also have the scarlet buckeye (both natives) but it flowers just a little later than the Texas buckeye.   Only a few florets were open today, and this year it had fewer bloom stalks than the Texas.  However:



Today also brought the first Bluebonnet--just barely opening--out in the near meadow, and Indian Paintbrush:

Storms

Yeah, we had Weather.  Including, very briefly, a tornado warning right on top of us.  The twister (if indeed it touched down) did so between us and Jarrell, off to the east, and I hope it didn't cause anyone a problem.   We got an inch and a half of rain (yay!)  in hard, heavy, windblown buckets and barrels (not quite so yay!).   No trees or branches down, no leaks.  No problems here that we've spotted yet (trees may have come down in the woods,  but we're not down there.)  More storms due later today, tonight, and part of tomorrow.

Birthday

The only interesting thing (I think, not being a numerologist) about becoming my age is that it's a prime number.  It sits right next to a very non-prime number which is divisible by lots of things (making it, by the way, a good number of stitches to cast on, giving you multiple choices for pattern repeats.)   My agent sent me a birthday card congratulating me on being in the prime of life again (although I'm not sure that prime number birthdays actually do correspond to the *felt* primes, but who knows?

I will be celebrating my birthday longer than one day because this is Monday (a) and I can (b, final answer.)  Today  I made a real, solid, home cooked meal for the first time in weeks, a largeish batch of beef vegetable soup with added smoked ham hocks just because.   (Approximately 2 and a bit pounds of beef and about 1 pound of the pork.)   Onions, celery, carrots, corn, tomatoes, green chilis, green Bell pepper, mushrooms.   I've had it twice today.  Yum.   Yesterday I finished dealing with the loose yarn ends inside the Birthday Socks (back a post or so) and put them on at daylight today, very happy.   I took a nap after getting the soup going well.

We are trundling along, awaiting the predicted storms and rain.   It was very humid today, but aside from some sprinkles we had no actual rain.  Lots of wind, though.

Nose to the Grindstone

Slogging along, making (slow) progress, a little more each day.  Energy returning much more slowly than I want.   Did get two loads of laundry done today, some other stuff sorted, linens changed, along with pages revised on Cold Welcome.  Made it outside to see the burgeoning spring (redbuds, rusty-black-haw viburnums, bear tree humming with bees, oaks flowering and the earliest leafing out, a confused autumn sage blooming now, knee-high weeds...)  Supposedly storms and rain are on the way starting Monday, so I was eager to see and smell and hear what's there now.

Nothing accomplished on the new book because I need to get all the revisions done before I can move forward (or continuity will be a worse tangle.)   It's slow-going because I'm trying to do all the levels of rewrite at once, front to the new back, using the marked ms. and the Editor Letter, which means a lot of looking back and forth and thinking "Does what I did just now affect what I did two pages ago, and what's coming up, or can I just go forward....?"  in general, whatever I change affects things both ahead and behind (in my mind, anyway) so the back and forth is...tricky.  But it's getting done.

Birthday Socks & Pair 50

It's not quite my birthday yet, but then these socks aren't quite finished, either.  But more about that later.  I wanted cheerful socks for my birthday.  This pair overtook the pair already underway because I made such a mess of one sock of that pair the first week I was sick.   This pair pretty much screams "HAPPY!" at me, which, having been sick several weeks and with a birthday days away, I needed.

I put them on right after closing the toes, went outside, and took the pictures.  Their first formal wearing will be on my birthday because...birthday.
What, non-knitters will ask, is left to do?   (Knitters know.  Knitters are sniggering now...)   Well...every time you change the yarn, for instance to make a stripe, there are loose ends.    And though you can stick your feet in them with the ends still loose, the right way to finish socks is to weave in every single loose end.  Neatly.   (If you knit with only one yarn, and it doesn't have a break in it, there are only two ends-one where you cast on and the other where you do some kind of bind-off.  I purse-string 'em at the toes.

This is what the inside looks like, laid next to the outside of the other sock:


I change yarns at the bottom of the sock--or, on the leg, at the back.  Weaving these ends in wlll take me several days, but I should easily finish these by my birthday.

One more picture: