Hello, Everyone,
It's a lovely night after a lovely, warm and clear Saturday in San Diego. The TV blimp for the Torry Pines golf tournament is showing the whole country how lovely it is here, sigh, they'll all be moving in come May.
I'm feeling good, listening to Nestor Torres play his flute. Dances, Prayers and Meditations, I think it's called. He incorporates his Gongyo into the 3rd track. Very peaceful and beautiful.
Dan had the day off, so we had some fun, ran some errands on Point Loma together, ending up sitting at the pier in OB watching the surfers in the choppy wind-driven surf as the sunset peeking through the clouds gave the sky a beautiful glow. There is a rain storm coming in a few days, so the surf was high, but blown out and choppy at the tops of the waves. Big surf but hard to stay up. Lots of wipe outs. Never thought you'd get a surf report from me, did you?
You gotta see the surfing sheep on the yarning for you web site. http://yarningforyou.com/site/ Shows you that wild sheep live on rocky crags and have awesome natural balance.
We haven't done this in a long time. Like a couple of romantic teenagers. I feel very lucky to have him right now. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. We went through an adventure this past week involving his heart and the emergency room, but then it turned out to be a bad reaction to his blood pressure meds, not a heart attack as his doctor feared. They changed his meds, declared him fine and sent him home to recuperate. Today he is finally starting to feel more like himself. But it was more than a little scary. I'm glad I had a pair of pink and orange socks in my purse to knit on, lo those many hours in the ER, or I surely would have gone batty. Dan being Dan he drove himself to the ER. Looking back on it, that's funny. Chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo of appreciation. I don't know what I would do without him. Beyond that I love him dearly, he literally dresses me, chauffeurs me, and does all the housework when my Shogrens acts up.
Heather sent me some pics of the interesting sweater kit she bought at the club holiday luncheon. It's almost done.
Very interesting construction. It's done is easy-to-take-along panels in extravagant fou-fou yarns and then assembled. The sleeves are especially interesting. First you knit a narrow straight rectangle for the top half of the sleeve. Then you make another long rectangle and fold it so that the end meets the side and stitch them together. Then it fits into the underarm like a gusset. It's hard to see in this pic as the underarm piece is black and so is the bedspread . I can't wait to see how it turns out.
I made a shirt with a big underarm gusset (7 inches on a side of the square, turned to be a diamond) one time. It was a historical reconstruction piece based on the battle shirt of the crusader king, Charles the 2nd of France, was buried in. The big gusset meant that he could constrict his waist with a heavy sword belt (maybe hang a 20 pound mace on it) and still swing his sword arm over his head without having to move the shirt under the belt, as the gusset unfolded as needed to let him swing his arm freely over his head. The shirt was an actual practical piece of battle hardware. When they renovated the cathedral in the 19th century they moved his grave, checked on him and measured the shirt. The pattern is to be found somewhere on the I-net. Everything is somewhere on the I-net. I had made it for Dan to wear to Heather and Ron's medieval wedding, but in the end Dan wore a Hawaiian shirt. He's an actor, go figure. Similar interesting gusset-based construction on this jacket. I think this gusset might be even larger on this jacket. When she's done I want to look at the pattern. I might want to make it, but it would have to be considerably up-sized. Sometimes with something like this, I might "knit" it in paper first to make sure the geometry still works in the up-size.
The Estonian white lace for Evva is coming along nicely, as is a pink woolly scarf in bulky yarn and size 10 1/2 needles I work on when my hands need a break from the tiny (size3) lace needles. I grip a big needle differently than a tiny lace needle, so it works my hands differently and creates a kind of hand-stretching exercise break when tense lace knitting cramps my hands. Sigh, every stitch "counts" in lace work. So I try to work lace paired with an easy, bulky project.
Lilo is being very good these days. Who are you, strange white cat, and what have you done with my usually naughty Lilo? No more "love bites". They really do know what to do when you talk some serious turkey with them. It's so warm she went outside where she is enjoying the beautiful evening. Maybe she'll be back in a bit with a gopher, a present for me to admire.
Nestor's Gongyo-song reminds me I need to go do evening Gongyo. I fell asleep after dinner and got a nice nap, so now it's time to play catch up!
See ya.
Julie
