Although I usually dread the stress and tension around Christmas, I will be so-o-o-o happy when the end of the year comes this year. That will be ostensibly the end of my yarn diet. I am getting so overwhelmed by the new yarn temptations I am encountering. It’s like having a warm plate of your favorite food passed slowly beneath your nose, the aroma sending you into some sort of tailspin. The silks and linens and soys and bamboos and milks and gorgeous hand-dyed and spun alpacas and wools and………it’s so hard to be good! I now delete any email that I even suspect will showcase a new yarn – that’s after already canceling any online lists or subscriptions to yarn companies and hand-dyers and spinners. I’ll have to knit like mad, night and day, and whatever falls between them. I’ll never make the slightest dent in my stash! I am arranging to barter and trade some items from the stash, though. That seems reasonable. I don’t even dare touch any yarn in any LYS that I happen to visit – it’s almost too much torture to tolerate. Come January! Wouldn’t it be nice to see the stash visibly reduced by then ?
Someone once asked the president of an insurance company if he’d read all the books in his library. He replied, “Have you spent all the money in your savings account?” I think that can apply to yarn, too. After all, it’s not like it goes bad if you store it….
Saturday next is annual Knit – and Crochet – in Public day, all over the world. I plan to join DH at the local Farmers’ Market in the morning, to sit and wiggle my sticks in a most productive way. He will be manning the Master Gardener’s booth. Never mind that rain and thunderstorms are predicted. There’s a roof on the booth!!
New sock KAL has arrived – a Mother’s Day gift, so I didn’t buy the yarn. I’m dying to get to it, because it has a few new techniques for me. Always more to learn. This one is a cable and ribbon design, and part of the cost of the kit is a contribution to Breast Cancer research….I did choose pink, because it’s such a beautifully-realized dye by the spinner, although there were lots of other colors available. I made some socks a few years ago for someone in a similar design and also in pink – and also with a contribution for Breast cancer. Hope she took them when she left.
Heard that the Alice Starmore book “Tudor Roses”, with patterns for several astonishing Fair Isle sweaters, is now going for $300 to $500 on eBay. That’s one I’ll never see!! 
It’s the book that birthed another really pleasant read, “Sweater Quest”. Knitters are truly crazy, as well as talented and warm and giving and creative…….
A few graduation parties in the Cities and a few birthdays close by. That means some good eating at favorite restaurants. Can you say Olive Garden? Culver’s? Vietnamese?
Summer is easing in, and the greenery is getting lush, as usual. Lovely warm days, enough rain, lots of flowers, although the lilacs made but a brief appearance because of early May frost. Tulips and iris and tall poppies and almost-peonies and lilies are abounding. Every year there are more, and the MG carefully spreads them around for next year. Most things make it through the winter. We even have had green onions from last year! But asparagus – not so much. Time for reading in the pavilion ….taking a short scooter ride for the mail…. watching the hummingbirds in their incredible activity…..
Mosquitoes are hanging back. I can almost picture them – gathering in huge legions, preparing for the first attack……..marshaling their strongest warriors to create that total impression of annihilation. But I never want to see those terrible tent caterpillars again – they were here about 10 years ago, and I think I even prefer the mosquitoes to them, if you can believe it. At least spray tries to protect you from mosquitoes. The tent things drop out of the sky, from the trees, like a herd – wrong noun, I know – of locusts. Aaack.
Reading Stieg Larsson’s 2nd mystery – the 3rd arrived the other day and I’ll be on that one shortly. I learned about him months ago, and thought I was the only fan. Imagine my surprise to see his books on best-seller lists! Usually that’s enough to keep me away from a book. But poof – the reading public had just found him, too. It’s too bad he died before creating a massive oeuvre like some of the other Scandinavians. It’s developed into quite a genre.
Slowly learning bits of Ojibwe from friends, as we converse on facebook. DH and I went to a large powwow a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed it. We were allowed to sit in the seniors’ booth, which was lovely, because it gave wonderful shade from the hot sun. We also were served the meal, while everyone else had to line up at the kitchen building – all hundreds of them. A drum friend said there were 32 drum groups performing, at various times. It’s such an amazing display of all the dancers, too, in their costumes and jingle dresses and feathers and so much decoration. The dancing goes on and on, with contests and special displays, always to the beat of the drum. 
A whole different world.
I’m in the business of college transcripts these days. Carefully requesting one from each of the many schools I’ve attended, from high school (which is no longer in existence – what a surprise!) to the most recent university. It would be a miracle if all those tumbling credits would add up to a small degree of some sort. And it would be nice.
“I pray every day that I won’t get comfortable in my old age” – Daniel Barenboim at 67.
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