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A View From the Field |
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May, 2008 May 31 I got to an interesting part of the story, and I didn't turn out the light until midnight again. Oh, well. I made up for it by not getting up until nearly 11:00. Not that it was such a wonderful morning, but the little birdies' breakfast was late.
When I went up to the north end last evening, I heard a couple of lakers sounding their foghorns out in the lake, so even though it seemed like it might be clearing up in the harbor, the lake was foggy. And the fog rolled in by the time it got dark, so thick I couldn't see the light in the lighthouse. I won't say all night long, because I didn't wake up for the first time until about 6:30.
Anyway, it was just as foggy this morning, according to the camera, and there was some rain as well. It was a nasty day again today. The temperature was in the upper 40s for most of the day, although it has now risen to 54º, and there was a brisk wind from the north that got into the 15-30 mph range for most of the afternoon. The wind is dying down now, of course, like it almost always does at sunset, and the sky has turned partly cloudy, although there wasn't any sunset tonight. Yuck.
My day was rather truncated, but I did go to the post office, where there wasn't any mail to speak of except for a graduation announcement from Debbie's oldest son. Egad, I remember when he was born!
I did work on the current bracelet, and it is almost finished except for part of the clasp. This one is a helix with garnet beads as the background and gold as the spirals. I want to do another one with gold as the background and garnet as the spirals, then I can go on to other things.
I guess that's about all I have to say. May is over with, and June is coming on, and nearly half the year is over now. It sometimes amazes me how fast time seems to go as I get older. My mother said that would happen, and I knew it would, but it's still a shock.
So it's a dull, quiet night in the field.
May 30 Of course, I can't just read for one hour, so it was midnight before I turned out the light. I apparently slept fast, though, and I think it was around 10:00 when I got up. That put a crimp in my proposed plans for the day, so I didn't leave until around 1:00.
My car is now spiffed up for the summer. They couldn't find any holes in the exhaust system, but it is still noisy, so I don't know what is happening there. It was 3:30 before I got out of the dealership.
Then it was off to the feed store, where the price of birdseed has gone up dramatically since last summer. The birds are as expensive as the cats! But I now have enough birdseed to last quite a long time.
I decided to go on to Wal-Mart, to get some more stuff to treat my elimination problem. I'm going to try something else, since the stuff I was taking has been only marginally successful. I picked up a few more birdy things, like thistle socks, that the feed store doesn't apparently carry, and a few other things as well (of course).
Then it was off (shudder!) to the gas pumps. I canvassed the stations, and the going rate in the Copper Country is $4.20. All the stations, including the BP way up in Allouez, had it for the same price. It isn't nice when half a tank of gas costs me $57. But what can I do? I need gas.
By the time I got through there, it was 5:00 and I was hungry, so I went over to Ming's Bistro and had a very nice dinner, except that there wasn't any rice on the buffet tables when I went through the line. However, there was both Chairman Tso's chicken and Sesame Chicken, as well as some other spicy dishes. And since it's Friday, they had several dishes with shrimp and crabmeat. I actually almost filled myself up on appetizers - egg rolls, crab rangoon, a little tartlet full of some kind of crab stuff, and pot stickers. I didn't know there were pot stickers there until someone else opened the lid. They are good, too.
I had to wait for my bill. I fill up quickly, and I guess the waiter kept waiting for me to either eat what was on my plate (noodles, mostly) or go back for more. Anyway, it was good to eat Chinese for a change, and their food is good.
So I started back for home at about 6:00.
It was a yucky enough day that if I hadn't had that appointment for my car, I don't think I would have gone out at all. Going down, it was horribly foggy all the way to Gratiot Lake Road, after which it was just hazy. By the time I left for home, however, it was very foggy all over, and less so north of Delaware. It was an interesting ride. There wasn't much traffic, though, so it wasn't like fog in the big city, where you have to worry about coming up behind somebody going a whole lot slower than you are.
The temperature here was around 47º for most of the day, then it rose to 53º briefly before it started to fall back. There was a strong south wind this morning, but it was calm all afternoon. It was a little warmer - not much - in town, and the fog was thick enough that I had to run my windshield wipers slowly all the time. Yuck.
The leaves are showing all over, and everything is green or reddish-green, depending upon the kind of trees, but the underbrush hasn't begun to grow up yet. On the way to Mohawk, I noticed huge patches of marsh marigolds in the boggy areas, and patches of bracken beginning to poke up and unfurl. The early cherries are coming out, but otherwise, there aren't any flowering bushes in bloom yet. Where people have planted daffodils and tulips, they are out. So it's still very early spring in Keweenaw.
I took the camera along, but I really didn't see anything worth stopping to take pictures of, except the marsh marigolds, which were in places I couldn't have gotten to anyway. Coming home, it was too foggy to take any pictures at all.
Buster was very glad to see me when I came home. I think he worries when I'm gone that I'm not coming back, even though I almost always do come back on the same day.
So that was my day, and it's time to toddle up to the north end and read some more. Hopefully, it will be a nicer day tomorrow.
May 29 Needless to say, I didn't do any reading last night. I did spend some time staring at the floor, but I went to bed more or less directly, around midnight, I think. The stars were shining in the window when I closed my eyes. When I woke up for the first time, around 4:00, it was beginning to get light, for heaven's sake! While I know how short the nights are around here, it never ceases to amaze me.
I got up around 9:00, I think, and it was a beautifully clear, sunny morning, with a few whitecaps on the harbor. The wind picked up into the 15-20 mph range during the afternoon, but since 5:00 or so it has been perfectly calm.
The clouds started to roll in about that time, too, and it is now fairly cloudy, although there is a little sunshine in the northwest. the temperature hung in the low 50s all day, so it wasn't bad, but I would still be happier with a little warmer.
It got so hot in the office that I opened the door and a window. At first, I had the east window closest to the computer open, but there was a draft right on my left side. The last time I did that, I woke up the next morning with a very stiff shoulder, so I closed it and opened the one behind the sewing machine. That has worked better, and it is a little cooler in here now. Ah, all that wonderful, free solar heat...I'm pretty sure the boiler hasn't gone on all day.
I don't think I did a lot. I started working on the bracelet in progress, but I got sidetracked. I went to the post office, and met the UPS guy, who had my English muffins, so I saved him a trip by having him put my package in my car. It's fine with me. I got a couple of new books on beading that are very interesting, about beaded lace...that is, lace made of beads. I looked through them, and it will be interesting to see what comes of them.
I have been having trouble with my trackball mouse for quite a while now. Sometimes it stopped working, or I could move the ball all around and the cursor wouldn't move. I think the problem is in the wire where it meets the mouse, and for a while, fooling around with it would get it back to working again. It was very hard to get it to point reliably at any small thing, and the cursor would get really shaky, even if my hand wasn't. It was a real pain, and this afternoon, it got up in the upper left hand corner of the screen and wouldn't move, no matter what I did. So I went out into the breezeway and dug out the one from the computer at Champine. When I plugged that one in, it worked perfectly. We shall see when I do my jigsaw puzzle tomorrow, but so far, it seems to be working.
I got the trackballs back in 2002, after I got tendonitis in my wrist from using the regular mouse. I have gotten addicted to it, not so much because it's easier to point and click, but it has two extra buttons on the right side that are programmed as "back" and "forward" in Internet Explorer...and I just can't do without them. I have a regular mouse that I use with the laptop, and having to move up to the top of a page to click on "back" in IE is a real pain after using the trackball. I certainly am glad I had the backup one. I will have to be careful of it, so that it doesn't go the same way as the other one.
The blue jays are really late in nesting this year. When I pulled into the driveway on the way back from the post office, there must have been two dozen in the bird feeder tree and the other pine south of the house. Usually by this time they would have gone away to do their thing. I'm waiting. They are noisy and bullies and they eat an awful lot. Just now, there is a male redwing blackbird singing his interesting song and trying to decide what feeder to eat out of. I did see at least one hummingbird this afternoon when I was on the phone. And Jasmine is crouched in the open door staring out at a squirrel in the platform feeder. I am going to have to figure out some way to get the big cedar feeder turned around so I can see both sides of it. The seed goes away, but I can't see who is eating it, because they are all on the other side.
The glass company will be coming Tuesday afternoon, and the guy I talked to seemed to think he can fix the office screen here, so I don't have to pack up the screens tomorrow. I do have to go to town, to get my car serviced, and I am toying with going into Houghton to get bird seed and gas, either before or after, depending upon when I can get out of here. I'm just as glad I don't have to get that sliding door out of its track. I had a horrible time the last time, and I didn't get it adjusted right when I put it back in. Maybe he can fix that, too, as well as the bedroom window.
I got a letter from the state saying they couldn't process my refund without copies of my property tax bills for 2007, so now I have to go through everything in the 2007 box and find those. I called my accountant about it, and she had no explanation for why they did that. We had a nice conversation, though, and I was glad to talk to her.
So that was my day, and I think I will go read a while again. It's a quiet evening in the field, but we may have thunderstorms overnight. We do need some rain, so that would be good.
May 28 I read for too long again last night, and then I had sort of a problem getting to sleep, so it was 1:00 or so before I finally closed my eyes for the night. It was beautifully clear, and when I turned out the light, I could see Leo taking a dive toward the horizon. I was up a couple of times during the night, and I got up around 9:00, for real, this morning.
It was a beautifully clear day, too, although it was quite windy for most of the day. The temperature hung around 50º and the wind got up to 20 mph from the north for most of the afternoon. There were some lovely whitecaps on the harbor. Then the wind dropped, and at 8:00 the temperature jumped up to 68º! Unfortunately, I wasn't out to experience it, but more about that later.
This afternoon, another friend came to help unpack and move some stuff, and we got quite a bit done upstairs. The clothes are all in closets, and the things that need to be in garment bags are in garment bags. I didn't realize quite how packed those wardrobes were. I only brought two, and I thought that was quite modest, until I got it all in the closets and saw how much stuff is there. Since it's mostly dresses, I will probably never wear any of it, but I would really hate to have to go out and buy something if I ever need to wear a dress again.
We repacked my mother's wedding dress in an acid-free box, and I got to admire it again. I remembered it as being plainer than it is. It is candlelight slipper satin, with a sweetheart neckline and long sleeves with puffs at the shoulders, and otherwise a-line, with a full train. What I had forgotten was the 2" band of seed beads and pearls from under the bosom around to a deep V in the back. It is really a beautiful, elegant gown, and her veil had a pearl beaded crown for a headpiece. Sometime I hope to find the pictures of her wearing it. She was a very pretty woman and the picture is beautiful, too.
Then we worked on the office a while and collected most of the trash and took it off to the compactor.
Mary Ann is a nice person and I think she is lonely, because her kids are all grown and her husband drives a truck for a living and isn't home much. She is a gardener and a knitter and crocheter, so we have quite a bit in common. It was a pleasant afternoon, but my feet hurt.
In the middle of the afternoon I got a totally unexpected call from my friends Chip and Nancy, who have finally managed to get up here. Nancy had a heart attack in early February, and before she finally had a very new procedure, she was on her way to death's door. She seems to be fine now, although it will be the middle of June before she has her stress test to be sure of that. For the time being, she is still wearing a combination defibrillator and heart monitor which is a real straight jacket, but it has saved her several times. Not until her stress test comes out all right will they let her take it off.
So we met for dinner at Harbor Haus, and it was so good to see them! It has been a very long time since they've been here, and an even longer time since I've seen them.
Nancy looks very well, I'm glad to say, not like somebody with heart problems at all, and I've seen enough of those. She seems in good spirits, and Chip has been holding up very well under the stress. They are such nice people, and I love to see them.
Oh, yes, and when I sat down, Julie came with an envelope for me, in which was a very generous gift certificate for dinner, from some readers of the website! For heaven's sake! I cannot thank them enough. I never knew I had a real fan club, but evidently I do. I keep saying, I do this journal as much for my own benefit as for yours, and I am most grateful that other people find it entertaining.
Then Julie came back with her 4 month old daughter Olivia, who is a real darling, and that was nice, too.
It was a beautiful evening and there were even a couple of up-bound lakers to watch, and we think we saw a pair of loons fishing in the middle of the harbor. What I nice ending to the day.
Now it is getting dark and it is time to toddle up to the north end and rest my poor feet. It's another beautiful night in the field.
May 27 Well,
I got to reading, with the idea of reading for maybe an hour, and two hours
later, I finally packed up the binder. Oops! I woke up all discombobulated, at
what I took to be 10:00 and which must have been 9:00. Oops! I have a combination clock-radio-telephone beside my bed, and its buttons are right on top of the unit and don't have any interlocks on them. I know when Buster was a kitten he would walk on them and change the time. A day or so ago I wanted to play something that was on the radio, and I probably hit the wrong buttons when trying to turn on the radio.
So I didn't get my full quota of sleep last night, but that's all right.
The sky cleared up about the time it got dark, and during the night I could see stars. I think my summer companion, Arcturus, had floated into the window view. From now until September or October, I will be able to see it at some time during the night. It is so bright and so pretty.
It was such a gorgeous morning I was glad I got up at a reasonable hour to enjoy it. It was quite clear all day long, and the sun was shining brightly in a blue, blue sky on the blue, blue water.
When I went outside to put out the bird feeders, there was a little chickadee in the tree waiting for me, and several were calling, as though to say, "Breakfast is served!". I think they come to the side of the cedar feeder I can't see. I had an abundance of goldfinches all day long, and I am happy to say most of the blue jays are gone. The bird I can't identify was back today, sitting in the feeder with one leg hanging out eating seeds. I am wondering if, whatever it is, it might be ill. I still have no idea what it could be. And at least one pair of nuthatches are around.
It is finally getting green! The trees are just popping out their leaves, and in a couple of days, the early flowering bushes will be out. There was one cherry on the way to town that had some flowers coming out this afternoon.
On my way back from the post office, where the rest of my thread came, I came down the hill to the culverts to see two Canada geese that had evidently just swum through the culvert...and with them were at least half a dozen of the littlest fuzz-balls I have ever seen! They must just have hatched, because I've never seen goslings that small before. One of the adults, mom, I expect, kept looking back and around to make sure they were all still there. It was one of those magical moments.
I was so sorry I didn't have the camera, but I don't usually take it with me to the post office. Maybe I will have to rethink that. The water in the creek from Lake Lily is calm and black, and it would have made an absolutely perfect shot. Sorry about that. I'll just have to remember, and you'll just have to imagine.
I did get the other big box unpacked this afternoon, as well as the small box. The small box had dresser stuff, so I now have a mirror tray with some old cologne bottles on it, as well as a couple of trinkets. Now to get the empty boxes out of there, and the full boxes put where they belong, if I can figure that out.
The house on Champine had a huge closet in the bathroom, and I have several boxes of stuff from there that I brought up here, and now I don't know what to do with it. There isn't room in this bathroom for all that, and based on some of the other things I've looked at, I really wonder why I brought all that stuff anyway. So I guess it will end up in the basement eventually. Or in the trash compactor.
It was a beautiful day, but it was cold. The high temperature was 44º, and it was more like 40º for most of the day. There wasn't much wind, though, so it was nice out, provided you had a jacket on.
I am getting really anxious to get the windows open!
I made an appointment to get my car serviced on Friday, and I will take the screen from the office door, as well as another one that needs to be re-screened, with me when I go. I hate to go all that way without several things to do. Eventually the glass company will come to look at the bedroom window, but they don't want to come all this way with only one service call to make, either. The price of gas is affecting us all.
So that was my quiet day, and it's time to go up to the north end and maybe read a while again. That seems to relax me about as well as anything does.
It's a beautiful calm and clear night in the field tonight.
May 26 - Memorial Day I hope it was a nicer Memorial Day where you are than it was here, but more about that later.
I sat in bed and read until about 11:00, so I was a little, but not much, earlier to bed. I woke up around 2:00 and there were stars, but they had gone away later. When I woke up at 7:30, we were socked in...it was very foggy. I could hear the lake making a fuss, and I thought that was strange, since it seemed to be rather calm here. So I went back to sleep, got up around 8:30, turned over, and didn't get up until 11:00! Wow! I guess I needed some catch-up again. There were the usual strange dreams, but they were good-strange, not bad-strange.
It was still hazy and cloudy when I got up, and I could hear the lake making quite a fuss, and I was puzzled, because I couldn't even see any of the trees moving. However, it looked like it had been, or was, raining a bit.
Putting out the bird feeders in the drizzle isn't my favorite task, especially since the temperature had plummeted to about 38º, but it didn't seem to bother the birds very much. When I first looked out the door, there was a pair of nuthatches pecking on the deck quite close to the doors, and all the seed that had been on the porch last night was gone. So I put the feeders out, and there have been quite a few visitors today. There was one bird, a bit bigger than a sparrow, that sat on the cedar feeder for a long time, and pecked occasionally at a seed. It was very dark brown with a pink bill, not quite the shape of a cardinal or a grosbeak. It must be a female something, but I have no idea what it may have been. I didn't see any hummingbirds, but they must have been here, because the level in the feeder is down a bit more. I confess, I wasn't looking out very much. It was too dreary.
I didn't do much of anything, I guess. I was going to see if I could unpack some of the boxes in the bedroom, and I did get two unloaded and some bedding washed, but the third large box was mismarked, and it has things like scarves and gloves in it. I have no idea what to do with those things, so I didn't unpack it. There are two more that should go upstairs, and one small box that I don't know what is in it. I guess my rationale is that if I get everything unpacked, I won't have to move. Besides, I am getting very tired of having those boxes lying around.
I need to get the boxes out of the garage, and I'd like to give them as many more as possible when they come to take them away. So I will peck away at them.
Actually, the cold, damp weather did its thing on my back, and there was no way I could stand for any length of time.
The weather was awful. It was around 38º all day long, with a brisk breeze out of the east, and it was nasty out. It still is. I really feel for anybody camping at the fort...or Bonnie having to give the invocation at the memorial service this morning...or anybody who had planned outdoor activities for today.
However, I guess I would rather be here than in Detroit, where it got up to 87º this afternoon! It wasn't humid, but still, that's way too hot.
When I was bringing in the feeders last night, I got buzzed by a very unhappy hummingbird, who thought I was doing that chore way too early. She got her drink, though, before I brought in the feeder. It is so neat to be standing less than two feet away from a bird who is eating out of one of the feeders!
There are some white-crowned sparrows around now, as well as a female redwing blackbird (I've been seeing the males for a while). I hate to take the feeders in so early, but I don't want to wait until it gets dark, either. I want this to be a sort of early to-bed again, and maybe I can get back on a reasonable schedule. It's really hard at this time of year, since it gets dark so late.
So that was my quiet day. Buster and I shared the rest of my barbecue ribs and chicken from Saturday, which he enjoyed, although I think he has another hairball. So now I will bring in the feeders and finish filling the dishwasher and toddle up to the north end and maybe read for a while again.
It's a nasty night in the field tonight.
May 25 It was around midnight again when I went to bed, but it won't be that late tonight, for sure. Birdies or not, I will be bringing the feeders in after I finish this, then I am going up to the north end and make it early to bed. So there.
I woke up maybe around 4:00, and there were stars out, surprisingly enough. It was also beginning to get light in the northeast, which was also a little surprising, but that's how it is at this time of year.
I finally got up around 10:00, then I finished the toe on the sock except for weaving it together, so it was late when I got to the office.
The birds are beginning to get with the program, and I had lots of goldfinches, several house finches, one chickadee that I saw, and a nuthatch or two. There aren't so many blue jays around. I think they are beginning their nesting, which means soon we won't see them at all. I didn't see any hummingbirds, but the level in the feeder has gone down, so they must be coming. There were a couple of contentious squirrels and a chipmunk or two, too, so things are coming along.
I neglected to mention yesterday that we are finally beginning to get leaves on our trees. It was amazing how much greener it was last night than it was Friday when I went to the post office. The flowering trees aren't out yet, but they will be soon, I'm sure.
It was a blah sort of day today again. It was cloudy all day, and there were even a couple of little rain showers. The temperature has finally made it to 62º, but it was in the 50s for most of the afternoon, and there was no wind at all.
Unfortunately, that lack of wind means the bugs are with us, but it's certainly time.
My second annual thank you dinner went off well, although Trevor (Ron's 13-year-old son) didn't come...poo on him. He missed a good meal. Mac and Ruby and Ron are all nice people, and we had a good time.
We were treated to a kayak towing a row-boat type thing to the dock at Harbor Haus, which was interesting. I'd like to know the story. This is when I miss Shirley the most: she would have heard all about it and would tell me what happened.
It wasn't very busy in Harbor Haus, or in town, which is disappointing but not surprising with gas prices the way they are.
And while I was sitting in my car talking to Mac beside his car, the bugs started swarming. I don't think I got bit, but they are around, and they are all black flies. I am certainly glad I'm not camping at the fort tonight! Yuck!
As for indoors, I finished the toe on the sock and cast on the second sock, and I worked on a red and gold helix bracelet. That was about it.
I did pick up the kitchen this morning. I have the very bad habit of leaving the larger pieces of trash sitting on the counter instead of putting them in the trash, especially once the bag in the breezeway is full, which it is. So I had a 13 gallon bag full of stuff that was on the counter. It looks much better there now.
So it was a quiet day, and it's a quiet evening, and I'm off to the north end, even though the sun hasn't set yet.
May 24 I'm not quite sure what happened last night, but it was still after midnight when I got into bed. I got up around 9:00, and that was nice. I started the toe of the sock this morning, but I still have half of it to go. It's coming along.
For some reason not known to me, Buster didn't come into the bathroom last night, so he didn't get his brushing until this morning. He is shedding like mad, and he coughed up a hairball the other night, so he really needs to be brushed as much as possible. He loves it, so I don't know what was going on last night, unless there was a critter outside that he was watching.
I finished the bracelet! For a while I was wondering if I would, since I kept having problems with the pattern, even the easy part. However, it's done, and I am fairly satisfied with it. Here are two pictures. There are two pictures because the camera was being cranky tonight. It wouldn't focus properly when the flash was on, so I took one picture without it, the first one, to show the pattern. But I wanted to show the glow of the silver-lined garnet beads, so I am publishing the not-very-good one taken with the flash. I do like those beads. I am trying to start a helix bracelet using them, and from the problems I am having, I think it's me and not the patterns...
It was a beautiful day for most of the day. It started sunny and clear, but by 11:00 or so there was a haze of cirrus clouds in the west and it got steadily more cloudy as the day wore on. There was sort of a sunset, but it was rather yellow and didn't last long. The temperature, though, got up above 60º for most of the afternoon, then between 6:00 and 7:00 (while I was eating) it dropped back to 57º. It tried. It was nice out. There was a light breeze from the south that made me close the windows, but it was nice on the front side of the house. The barometer has taken a dive, though, so I doubt it will be so nice tomorrow.
The tourist season seems to have started. There are lots of cars and quite a few people around town, which is a good sign. Much as tourists sometimes annoy me, I like to see them for the sake of my friends...and me, now that I am doing jewelry. Come and stay and buy!
Just the usual birds were here today, but I had the office door open for a while, and the fur faces were far more excited about them when they could hear and smell them. The squirrels interested them, too. During the afternoon, there was one smallish chipmunk eating out of the feeder on the deck. I wonder what happened to the mammoth ones I had last year?
I forgot to mention that shortly after I put out the feeders, my dock-tail squirrel showed up, but since the others have found the seed, he hasn't been around. He did look quite robust and rotund, so I guess he is doing OK, even if everybody else chases him. There was also a female the other day whose coat was patchy, dark and light. I don't know what that was. The little red squirrels we have here don't pluck themselves like the black ones in Detroit do, and this didn't look like that anyway. It looked rather gross, frankly. I hope she doesn't have some kind of skin disease she will pass on to her offspring, if any.
Now the shades of night are falling fast, and it's time to haul in the feeders and toddle up to the north end again. It's a quiet, cloudy night in the field tonight.
May 23 Fifteen years ago this morning, my mother tried to take her last breath at about 7:30 in the morning. That was a long time ago, but I still miss her.
I beaded until I finished the second repeat on the bracelet, so it was rather late - again - when I went to bed, but I made up for it by not getting up until 10:00. Buster was bothering me, including rubbing his whiskers on my face, for heaven's sake.
He was bothering me all day, and I just don't know why. I do wish I could figure out what goes on in his fuzzy little head.
I was afraid I had put out the bird feeders too late, but eventually, especially after the sun came out around 1:00, the birds came. When it began to clear up, I decided this was the time to put out the hummingbird feeder, and later in the afternoon, the hummingbirds came. They were all males - at least two, maybe three - and they were very suspicious, but they did sample my nectar, and I think they'll be back. The goldfinches also came, eventually in good numbers, both for the thistle seed and for the sunflower seed. I think I may have had a nuthatch, but I still haven't seen the chickadees. I wonder where they are?
I may have to take a trip to town just for birdseed! And with gas over $4 a gallon (the complaints on the PastyNet boards say it jumped 25¢ overnight!), that will be a costly trip. We'll see.
Otherwise, I beaded, and I am now working on the second end, which is about 1½" long. Then I have to figure out a clasp, since this bracelet is much wider than most others I have made. It's coming to an end, finally. I really like it, but it was so much trouble, I don't know if I will make any more. Since I like the colors so well, I think I will make a couple of helix bracelets. They go much faster, and they're fun to do.
One of my packages was at the post office, and I now have thread, cording and zippers for the cushion project. The thread isn't really the right color, but it will do for a couple of the tote bags. So now I have to dig out and rearrange the office so I can cut on the desk and use the sewing machine. Ugh! That's one reason I haven't done any sewing for quite a while. However, since it may be a couple of more weeks before the fabric comes, I guess I have time.
It turned out to be a beautiful day, although it was a while in coming. It was cloudy as usual this morning, but around 1:00 the clouds rolled away, and the afternoon was perfectly clear and beautiful with only a light north wind. The downside is that the temperature hovered around 45º all day long...not very good for romping on the beach! It was nice to see all the sunshine, blue skies and blue water for a change, though.
When I went out to bring in the bird feeders, it was calm and about 47º, but so humid I could see my breath. It is so beautiful about an hour after sunset when it's so calm. I think I heard a loon call over in the direction of Porter Island. And sometime at least a week ago, the Coast Guard slipped in and set the bell buoy, and now that is tolling softly, too.
It's a clear, quiet night in the field.
May 22 Well, the best laid plans, and all that. The computer has been behaving itself quite well lately, so I should have known it wouldn't last. When I have to use FrontPage to upload the website, like I did last night, I always reboot before I do the upload. There is some resource I can't identify that gets depleted after I have been playing around all day which causes FrontPage to abend if I don't.
So I started the reboot, and got a non-responding task, a total hang, and I had to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to get the reboot to go. I turned my back to do a row or so of beading, and when I looked around, I was in safe mode doing a disk scan. Egad! Oh, no! What in the world...
When the scan completed, I rebooted, and first Explorer abended, then the camera software didn't start. So I rebooted again...This time it appeared to be OK, so I rearranged my desktop the way I like it (which isn't so easy as it sounds - I had to figure out how to make some things move), then I proceeded to FrontPage to do the upload...
And FrontPage had completely lost its mind and decided it had to load the entire website, not (thank heaven!) including the pictures. By this time it was nearly midnight. Fortunately for my sanity, the upload did go OK.
So it was after 1:00 before I got to bed. I got up around 9;30 again, because I had to go to the bathroom anyway, but I certainly didn't get enough sleep!
And in the middle of the morning, the computer hung totally again for no apparent reason, and when it came up, of course my icons were all trashed again. This time I figured out what I have to do to move them quickly, and I rebooted once more just to make sure everything was more or less back where it should be. Geez. Computers!
I didn't do much but work on the bracelet and look at a couple of my pattern books for more ideas. I did look at the beads I had intended to use for my next project, and I don't like them as well as I thought, so I will go on to snowflake bracelets when (or maybe IF is a better word) this one is done. I just had to tear out six or seven rows because, as usual, I made an error on the row before I ended off a thread. Grr. Maybe I can get the old thread worked in and the new thread started before I crawl up to the north end. I had completed the first repeat last night, but with all the ripping I didn't make as much progress today as I'd hoped to.
It was another nondescript day, although this time there wasn't any rain. Even Environment Canada, which is usually pretty accurate, had this day all wrong. They had it sunny...and we didn't see a sunbeam all day. It was dull and gray and yucky. The temperature was between 40º and 46º all day, with a 10-15 mph wind out of the north. Blah.
I did get some time to birdwatch today, and I was happy to finally see a few goldfinches, but every time I tried to really look at them, they disappeared. I forgot to mention that yesterday I had a couple of house finches. And the bird of the day was a white-crowned sparrow who stopped by for a snack right after I put out the feeders this morning. I've heard chickadees, but I haven't seen any at the feeders yet. I'm disappointed in that. Patience.
So that's about all I have to report, and I'm tired. It's another gray, quiet night in the field, and I need go to bed.
May 21 Gee, it's only10:00 and I'm doing a journal! Imagine that!
Last night, I got so engrossed in the garnet bracelet, and I made so many mistakes, that it was 2:00 before I got into bed. Not good. I actually got up around 10:00, which wasn't enough sleep, either.
That showed up when I wrote the two notes to my sick friends. My handwriting looked like I was spastic (and don't anybody write me to complain about my choice of words. If I want to be politically incorrect, this is my website and my journal). Anyway, I got that done and trundled off to the post office and the general store for a couple of things.
I did work on the bracelet, and I got another inch done, with difficulty. This is by far the most difficult pattern I have ever done. And to think I designed it myself, with a little help from a book of patterns. I am going to have to work with very short lengths of thread, because it frays badly in the little holes of the garnet beads, and because I have to rip so often. That means ending off and starting a new thread, both of which I hate, and both of which cut down on production. But I still think it's very pretty. If I decide to sell it, or if I make another one, I will have to charge more for it...like about double. The next one is going to be an easy pattern just to give me a respite.
The weather wasn't very good again. The temperature was in the middle 40s all day, peaking at 48º. There was a wind in the 20-30 mph range from the north all afternoon, so it was a bit chilly out there. It was cloudy and dull and there were a few raindrops on occasion. Yuck.
I was so late putting out the bird feeders that almost no one came. I did have a redwing blackbird who just loves the seed mixture in the block in the cage. It was amusing to see him doing acrobatics while he whaled away at the block of seed, which seems to be rather hard. This morning while I was getting my breakfast there was a pair of mergansers out in front of the house. The males are so bright and mostly white at this time of year. They are so noticeable that I can understand why they molt so early in the year and turn dull just like the females. Anyway, I guess they are pairing up.
The daffodils across the road are just about out, but otherwise I couldn't see much movement on the leaf scene. It's just been too cold. They are saying it might warm up for the weekend, and then I expect things will begin to pop. I will try to get some pictures, although I need to fiddle with the camera first.
Oh! I almost forgot. After the yucky day, I was surprised to look up and see color in the west around sunset, so I grabbed the camera (actually, I dug it out from under the pile) and went out on the deck. Here is the result. Pretty, huh? The sun actually went down at that teensy bright patch on the right hand side, just to the left of the trees. That's way north of the lighthouse, and I don't have a very good view of it, but the sky sure was pretty. And despite being rather shaky earlier in the afternoon, I managed to hold the camera steady at 1/30 second. So I'm not gone yet.
I know I have taken pictures of a ton of sunsets, but I never get tired of seeing them. If I start doing note cards, I think I may do one set that is only sunsets. Each of them is different and they are all beautiful. I suppose if I had a clear eastern horizon, I might take a lot of sunrises, too, although that is more difficult, given my normal sleep habits. I do try to keep an eye on the sky during the day just in case something interesting happens, but that is more difficult.
So that was a nice end to my quiet day, and I'd like to get to bed a little earlier tonight, please. It's quieted down in the field tonight.
May 20 Oops! So I forgot to check the camera before I left the office last night, and of course it didn't come up right. Since I was late getting here this morning, we had about 4 hours of black pictures. Sorry about that. I will try to do better.
We were all in the bathroom last night, and the fur faces were dozing on the bath rug, when all of a sudden they jumped to full alert, then they ran off, I think to the nearest window. I guess the bear paid us another visit. Of course, I had taken everything in, but I did dump a little seed on the deck, which was all gone this morning.
I woke up about 9:00, but I just dozed for another half hour, and what with petting a cat and doing a little knitting, it was 10:30 before I got to the office and discovered the camera problem.
I put the bird feeders out right away, but there weren't many visitors today. Probably that had something to do with the weather, but I'm sure it also had something to do with them not being available early in the morning. Darn bear!
I sort of fiddled around for part of the day, but I did get the counterchange bracelet done, and I started a new one. This one is going to be beautiful but very hard to make. It is dark garnet silver-lined beads with gold. The garnet beads are some of the very few silver lined beads I really like (except clear). The glass is such a dark color that the lining just causes it to glow a bit, and it isn't as sparkly and garish as a lot of silver lined beads are. Anyway, those beads have very small holes, which has made me have to use a much smaller needle than I usually do, and they shred the thread pretty badly. It's a wide pattern - over an inch - odd count, and pretty complicated. But I have done enough of it, with difficulty, to know it's going to be really beautiful. Every so often I just have to try something different.
Before I got into that, though, I started fiddling with my printer. I needed to make a couple of note cards to send to some sick friends, and while I was at it, I just went ahead and made two sets of cards with six of my photos on them. They turned out pretty good, although I have a problem getting the pictures exactly centered on the cards. They're good enough that I think I will try to sell them, and if the people who are selling my stuff think they are OK, I will make some more. It's slow work, and I had to mess with the printer for a while before I got it to print nicely, but the results were pretty good.
It was not a nice day out. I think it was sunny early in the morning, but shortly after I got up, the clouds rolled in - much earlier than predicted - and the rest of the day was dull and dreary and sometimes dampish. The high temperature for the day was at midnight, and it was right around 41º with a north wind mostly in the 15-20 mph range from the north. There was a little rain in the middle of the afternoon and some drizzle close to sunset. Nasty.
It didn't do my aches and pains any good at all. My exertions with wires yesterday left me with very sore hands when I got up this morning, although after knitting a while they loosened up. I have a monstrous lump on my right index finger, which is an arthritic calcium deposit, and it really ached when I got up this morning. It's hard not to use my hands, though, so it got better later. The dampish afternoon left my back stiff, and I think I was concentrating on the garnet bracelet too much tonight, because my whole back feels stiff now.
Wonder of wonders, I unloaded the dishwasher that I ran last night, so it is empty and all the dishes are in the cupboard. Amazing...and nice. I can begin to load it again right away.
That was my quiet day, and it's past even my bedtime, so I will toddle off to the north end and let the wind and the lake sing me to sleep.
May 19 It was still after 11:00 when I went to bed, but oh, well. I slept fairly well, but I closed the window a bit, since it seemed cool, then I got hot. Oh, well. I got up around 9:00, after some really crazy dreams that included beads and water and some other things that wouldn't seem to belong.
It was a beautiful morning, and it was a beautiful day. It may have gotten cold and frosted in the interior, but it only got down to 41º here. However, it warmed up very slowly, and for most of the day it was in the middle 40s. It wasn't until 5:00 that it finally got up to 55º, where it stayed, pretty much, until 8:00. There was a brisk wind, in the 15-25 mph range, from the north. It is beginning to cloud up now, and there wasn't any sunset, but it was a really pretty day.
When I sat down at the computer and brought up my homepage, which is the camera page, lo and behold, there were no bird feeders! Oh-oh. So I took my first of many walks out on the deck. The branch the pretty feeder was on was broken off, the thistle feeder's hanging wire was all bent up, the thistle socks all had holes in them, and the platform feeder I keep on the deck was down below it. At first, I couldn't find the pretty feeder at all. And the old tube feeder was empty. So I fetched everything in and went to make my breakfast.
Then I found the pretty feeder, which was down by the doors to the great room. When I brought it in, it was all bent up, too, although nothing was broken. The worst part with it was that the rain shield and the grid had been pulled down so far that it was stuck under the piece of metal that is supposed to stop it. And the cage was out of true. I think I got it back together OK, though.
So after I had my breakfast, I got out the tools and got to work. That is one stiff piece of wire on the thistle feeder, but I managed, with some difficulty, to get it unbent enough that I could get the lid off. Then I got at the pretty feeder, and that took some time to get straightened around, too, but it is OK.
I decided that since I was in fix mode, I would put a new hanger on the big cedar feeder. That entailed putting some screw eyes inside the feeder and attaching a piece of very strong vinyl-covered laundry wire to it. The screw eyes may come out, and the branch may come down, but I don't think the wire will break.
Then came the problem of getting everything out again, with the branch I've been hanging most things from broken off right beyond where I was hanging the thistle feeder. It took me most of the afternoon to get it arranged the way I want it. There is another branch above that one that will hold at least one feeder, but the problem is getting it down to where I can attach something to it. I finally got the right hanger up there and put the tube feeder on it, but when I want to hang it up tomorrow, I will have to hook the hanger with another one to bring it down to where I can reach. The thistle feeder went back where it was, finally, and the place I put the socks will do, when I get some more socks. For the time I have hung a block of seed in a cage there. I didn't put out the pretty feeder or the white one I use for sunflower seed. I'm not sure where to hang them.
It seems clear that I was visited by a bear last night. Just from the destruction, with branches broken off and all, it couldn't be anything smaller. So tonight, about sunset, I brought everything inside. I hate to have to do that, because the little birds (of which I haven't had many yet) like to eat a whole lot earlier than I want to get up and get dressed. However, I'm not going to let a bear trash all my feeders and eat all my seed, either.
So I was out on the deck a lot. It was a bit chilly with the wind, but I wasn't too uncomfortable in a cotton sweater. When it warmed up, it was nice in spite of the wind.
Once I got the seed out, I was overrun with blue jays again. There were frequently eight or ten of them around the feeder on the deck all scarfing down sunflower seeds as fast as they could get them in their crops. One or two brave ones tried the cedar feeder, but the perches on the tube feeder are really too small for such big birds. As for the rest, all I saw were sparrows. The feeders haven't been out for a week yet, and things have been moving around a lot, so it will take several days with everything in the same place before the little birds get comfortable. Or I hope they will. I did hear a chickadee call this morning when I was picking up the debris, but I didn't see any come to the feeders. Of course, the way the cedar feeder is, they could be on the other side and I'd never know they were there.
All that was pretty strenuous, because I also filled the pail of thistle seed - 20 lbs - and hauled it into the office. So I mostly sat and beaded for the rest of the day. I did get into the front closet and go through the two totes full of embroidery stuff I have stashed there. I would like to get those out, but currently there isn't nearly enough room for them. There is some good and useful stuff in them, as well as a number of projects I would like to embroider sometime. I did find what I was looking for, so that was good.
The counterchange bracelet is about two-thirds done. I lost my concentration a couple of times and had to rip, but it's coming along. If I had worked on it all day, I would have finished it, but I find getting up and doing something else every so often is relaxing. It takes just so long to make a bracelet, and there isn't much I can do to speed it up.
So that was my day, and now the full moon should be rising behind the southeast corner of the office. After a couple of hours of cloudiness, it's supposed to clear up tonight and for part of the day tomorrow, so there may be a star or two.
It's a windy night in the field tonight.
May 18 I dropped into bed around 11:00 last night, and it is amazing how much better I am sleeping since I opened the window a bit. It is just cooler enough that I can get the covers right. So I slept well. I knitted a while last night and a while this morning, and I'm making progress on the sock, but I have big feet, so it will take a while.
I didn't do a lot today except pick up the kitchen a bit and I just finished the bracelet, and I am contemplating whether to start another one tonight or wait. I may start it tonight. It's so much easier to just pick something up if it is already started. While I have the beads out, I am going to do a counterchange bracelet in the original colors (silver and copper) before I to on to other things.
The one I finished today and the counterchange one are only 10 beads wide, and finish to 5/8" wide, and they go fast. The rope and post is 13 beads wide, and not only is it wider, with the odd-count peyote there is a peculiar turn on one side that takes time to execute. Unfortunately, all the really neat patterns I want to try are an odd number of beads wide, so I guess I might as well get used to it. In between those I can whip off a 10 count bracelet or a helix bracelet for relaxation.
I want to make a few of the original pattern in all three colorways, which I guess I never posted to the website. Bad me. Anyway, besides the green zig-zag, there is one with a blue zig-zag, and one in blue and green with a copper zig-zag, which I called the "Copper Harbor" bracelet. And of course, I want to make more than one snowflake bracelet, which I and a lot of other people like a lot. Some of my patterns I have adapted from books, but the snowflake is completely my own design. A bracelet a day...
The weather was cold but pretty. There were some clouds, but most of the day was sunny and windy. The temperature for most of the early part of the day was under 40º, but then it began to rise slowly to a max of 48º before it began to drop back. The wind was brisk - in the 15-25 mph range for most of the day, pretty much from the north, although it is dying down now. I didn't stick my nose outside. That was just a bit chilly for romping around on the deck.
There were a few birds, I think, but I wasn't watching very much.
Did I mention that my neighbor to the north's forsythia is in bloom? And the daffodils my neighbor to the south threw across the road are in bud and should be out by tomorrow. So spring really is coming at last!
I guess the fur-faces got over-stimulated yesterday, because they were pretty sleepy today. They spent the afternoon in the great room, where it was warm and sunny, and they looked resentful when I walked through and disturbed them.
I splurged today and didn't wear my compression hose. I suppose I will regret it tomorrow, but it felt good, if rather strange, to be free of them. I have not had very much swelling of my feet and ankles for a while now, for which I am grateful, but I don't want to stop wearing the hose. Just every now and then I can take them off and wiggle my toes...
So that was my quiet Sunday, and I'm off to the north end for maybe an early to bed. It's supposed to get quite cool tonight and it may frost, although it's not supposed to be completely clear, and that will help. The nearly-full moon should be someplace over behind the computer, but I can't see it.
It's a quiet night in the field...
May 17 I was late going up to the north end last night, and I think I only did one row on the sock before I took my bath and jumped into bed. It was quite comfortable in the bedroom with the window open a bit, and I slept pretty well and got up around 9:00.
It was a gorgeous morning, with all kinds of sunshine and whitecaps on the blue, blue harbor. There were a few clouds in the sky, including one really interesting mare's tail that I wish I could have gotten a picture of. It did cloud up a bit, but it was a lovely morning.
While I was sitting in the bathroom, a flock of at least two dozen blue jays flew over the garage and into the trees north of here. I suppose they were at my bird feeders, and there wasn't much left on the deck when I got to the office. Like I said, they are big, greedy birds. Right now I think they are mating and getting ready to nest, and shortly they will disappear, but for the time being, I have to put up with them.
Otherwise, it was a discouraging day. I did get rid of the jewelry, but on consignment, which was most disappointing. And while there is even an ad out for a clerk for the gift shop, she doesn't seem to want me for that job. I don't know why, really. Her excuses are that I can't do ladders and I have a hard time with stairs. I am sure we could work around those things, and if I had to do them I might get stronger and more agile. Oh, well.
The new mantra is "A bracelet a day keeps the bill collector away." So I came home and after I ordered the notions I forgot yesterday, I worked on the current bracelet, and it is about two-thirds done.
Once I get the notions, besides working on my porch cushions, I can work on using up all the samples of outdoor fabric I ordered. I will be making tote bags out of them, and I think they will be nice. The fabric is all very pretty, even though a lot of it is nothing I would want on the furniture in my house. They will be rather expensive, though, because the fabric was about $19 a yard, and I do have to factor something in for my labor and the thread. I have enough fabric on hand for 10 bags, which is enough to test the waters and see if they sell.
The only good thing that came out of the day is that I may be able to sell online through a collective store that is being set up amongst some of the merchants in town. It is not up and running yet, but I did say I would love to be a part of it.
The problem with a small town is that everybody has his or her spot and it's hard to break in to become one of the workers. I know if somebody would hire me, they would be satisfied with my work. The only thing is to get somebody to hire me.
So I went back to dinner anyway, and had a lovely piece of whitefish that was so big I brought some home with me. It's probably not enough for dinner, so I may have it for lunch.
Jasmine has been enchanted with the birds, and this evening she was so full of energy she was thundering up and down the stairs to the loft and around the great room. How a little kitty who might just about weigh eight pounds can thunder, I don't know, but she was making a lot of noise, and squeaking all the while. She can form a proper "meow", and I've heard her, but most of the time she talks in little squeaks.
Buster spent the early afternoon, when it was sunny, sleeping on the desk by the south windows. He has always loved to sleep in the sun, even though his fur gets so hot I don't know how he can stand it. Later, when he wasn't trying to sit on me, he curled up on the couch, which was also partly in the sun. I haven't checked the upholstery lately, but that couch seems to have about as cat hair-proof a covering as I've ever seen. Good thing, too. When I went to fiddle with the washer and dryer, the two of them were curled up facing each other, although Jasmine moved pretty quick to her favorite chair - the pink chair.
There were a few birds, other than the jays, and I was happy to see a couple of female goldfinches at one of the thistle socks late in the afternoon. If the females come and eat safely, the males won't be far behind.
I did several loads of wash, mostly very small, and I washed the towels. Which reminds me, the towels are ready to come out of the dryer, and there is one more load to dry. I found I had stuffed several hand towels into one of the laundry baskets in the laundry room, which I don't look into very often. One of them is one of the towels I use to wipe my brow in the summer when it's hot, and I need that.
The weather was OK. It was sunny or partly sunny and very windy until around 5:00, when it got completely cloudy, and there may have been a bit of rain south of us. The temperature got up to 57º briefly, before it dropped back to 55º, and, oddly enough, when the wind began to die, it took a dive down to 45º, where it is now. The wind hit a max of 25-35 mph early in the afternoon, pretty much from the north, before it began to die down. It did make for some pretty pictures of the harbor before the clouds came in.
So that was my rather down day, and instead of trying to finish the bracelet tonight - which I doubt I could - I think I will just go up to the north end and call it a day.
May 16 I knitted for a while and stared at the floor for a while, so it was after midnight when I went to bed, but it was a bit cooler in the bedroom and I slept pretty well. I did wake up with a stiff neck which wasn't helped by my activities of the day.
I had plans to finish the wash and do the trash, but not much of that got done. I had to rewash three sweatshirt sweaters. I have a lot of clothes from Eddie Bauer, and every single piece is almost impossible to get greasy stains out of. So I practically wear them out washing them. Anyway, that did it for the rest of the wash.
Then there were some things I needed from drugstore.com. And yesterday I got a notice of a sale of outdoor fabrics from Jo-Ann, so I checked out the site last night, and after seeing the picture in the email and looking at the fabrics, I completely changed my mind about how to recover the porch furniture. Not only did they have some patterns and colors my other sources don't, their prices were $2 a yard cheaper than anywhere else I have looked. So I was motivated to try to get my fabric there during the sale.
They have an awful website. It is slow and not laid out well and navigation is a trial, but with prices like that, I had to go there.
The first order of business, though, was to finally measure everything, then lay out the pieces to see how much material I need. Well...for some reason I thought my mother had not used piping when she made the cushion covers I am replacing, but she did. So not only do I need covers for four seats, four backs, three throw pillows, the seats of two wicker rockers, and a footstool, I need something like 50 yards of piping. She used 3/4 inch seams on all the cushions (why, mom?) and put zippers in practically everything. My mom was a wonderful sewer, and the porch furniture was just the last of a lot of slipcovering and upholstering she had done.
Anyway, when I measured it all out and added it all up, I need 16 yards of fabric. The seats will be plain navy blue, the backs will be a beautiful blue paisley (how could I resist my favorite pattern in my favorite color?) and the throw pillows and footstool will be a stripe with the colors from the paisley. I haven't decided what to do with the seats of the rockers, but they may be paisley or they may be striped. We'll see. Everything will be piped in navy blue. I was generous with my estimates, considering how hard it might be to get more material. I think it will be pretty.
Then, of course, I had to find thread and zippers. I have another source for those things that has very cheap prices on zippers, and I noticed that they were also selling thread for outdoor sewing, so I went to that website, and since I hadn't been there for a while, I had to look at everything.
All of that consumed the afternoon, more or less. I think I submitted the order for the fabric at about 6:30. Anybody who thinks it's faster and easier to shop online has never shopped for the things I buy at the places I shop. I could have done the whole thing in a store (if they'd had the fabrics) in under an hour. But the closest Jo-Ann's is in Escanaba, and it is a "smaller store" and might not have everything.
Of course, there were distractions. When I got to the office this morning, I discovered that the blue jays had discovered the feeders, so I put out a feeder full of seed on the deck, and the cats discovered the birds...I'm sure Jasmine didn't get nearly her full complement of sleep today. I had the east window in the office open for a while, and she was dividing her time between staring at the parade out there and staring at the birds on the deck. Even Buster got into the act, although he did have to take his mid-day siesta. He's too old for all this gallivanting around.
I find blue jays noisy and greedy, but they have to live, too. There was one chickadee who came to the pretty feeder, and in the middle of the afternoon, I looked up and there on the old three-tube feeder was a male rose-breasted grosbeak! He is big enough that he was having a hard time staying on the perch, but that didn't stop him. He is such a pretty bird! The second time I saw him, I decided to attempt to get a picture, so he immediately turned his back on me. Sorry, no pictures. There were chipping sparrows hanging around all day, especially when the jays went away.
Anyway, tomorrow I will have to see if I can repair the big cedar feeder and get that out there, since a lot of the birds really prefer it. So do I, actually, since it holds a lot and I don't have to fill it so often.
It wasn't as nice a day as it was supposed to be. Shortly after I got to the office this morning, I looked out and the harbor was full of fog! That wasn't forecast. It didn't last long, and then there was a little sunshine before the clouds came over. The temperature only got up to 55º for a little while in the early afternoon, and I had to close the window because when it was in the middle 40s and there was a brisk breeze from the east, it was cold and damp. Late in the day, the temperature dropped precipitously, back into the 40s, and around 8:00 or so we had a light rain shower. It was cloudy for most of the day, with a ray of sunshine here and there, and for a while it was quite calm, although the wind is picking up now from the southwest.
So that was my day, and I have finally solved the porch furniture problem. The only thing now is that I will have to find the time to make the covers. Oh, yes, and in order to cut every thing out, I will have to clear everything off the desk...ooohhhh!! However, it will be a week or so before the fabric comes, so I have time to worry about all that. It really is time to do something about the desk anyway.
And now it is a dark, moist night in the field, and it's bedtime again. This time, I don't think there is anything to distract me.
May 15 Before I went to bed, I turned the heel on the sock and started the gusset, so it was 11:30 before I got to bed. I didn't sleep well. It was warm in the bedroom and I kept waking up all hot and sweaty. I got up around 9:00, I think, and I knitted some more this morning.
I actually did several things today, none of them having to do with beads. I washed three loads of clothes, and the last two loads are in the dryer now. Tomorrow I will finish up the odds and ends. I collected all the working bird feeders, filled the pails, filled the feeders, and put them out. And I opened the shutters on the porch, although I didn't go out there.
It was so warm in the bedroom last night that I took the duct tape off the window and opened it. The window with the gap in it is on the east side of the window seat, and since the wind doesn't usually come from that direction, that is the window I normally open early in the spring and late in the fall when I want to cool down the bedroom for the night. I have no clue how that gap got there, but I did notice that the pin that you use to swing the window out when you want to wash it is much longer on that side and seems to be pushing the weather stripping out (isn't that one word? Microsoft doesn't seem to think so). So I called the glass company and someone should be out sometime next week to fix it.
I saw one bird at one of the feeders - a chipping sparrow. That's good. If it comes, other birds will come, too, although I expect it will take a while, since I'm sure they have given up on me. I am anxious to see the birds, but they need time to get used to things. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to fix the broken feeders and get them out. One is the mesh feeder, which I like to fill with sunflower seed, and the other is the big cedar house-shaped one.
One of the catalogs has a neat thing you put over a deck post and attach a feeder to, and that might be fun to have, too. Now, so long as I don't have critters...I don't mind the little guys, the squirrels and the chipmunks, but please, no coons and no bears!
It was a nice day, even though it was cloudy. The temperature was around 53º for most of the afternoon, then around 6:00 it rose to 61º and has just dropped back a couple of degrees now that it is getting dark. I have one east window in the office open, because it was hot in here, too, and the breeze feels good. There actually wasn't much wind at all, and it was calm for a good part of the day. When I went out on the deck to do the shutters, the wind was from the other direction, and it must have been over 70º out there.
Jasmine was delighted with the open windows, and she spent quite a while watching the parade pass by outside. I never have been able to figure out what they see, but it sure does interest them.
So that was my day, and it's time to totter up to the north end again. It's a quiet, cloudy night in the field again.
May 14 The late sunsets are beginning to skew my bedtimes again. It's really hard to think about going to bed when the sun has just set and it isn't even very dark out. So it was around 11:30 when I went last night. It was a dark and windy night, but that was good for sleeping, and I think I got up around 8:30.
It was a cloudy and windy morning, too, but it began to try to clear up by 11:00, but it was 1:00 or so before the last of the clouds finally went away, and it was a lovely, sunny afternoon. I spent it with the handicraft ladies, and we had lots of fun. I took the Angel of Love, and it got the required response, but there were other things to see, too, and Red Twarzik came to sign up people to man the community center, so I had to tell them I am looking for a paying job. But we had a good time. They are all fun people to be with and we had a lot of laughs.
I was sitting looking toward Carolyn's bird feeders, and I noticed that the goldfinches are back, so the designated task for tomorrow is to try to get the feeders repaired and hung out. I do miss seeing the birds! So I must remedy that.
By the time I got home, the wind was dying back, and the temperature, which was down around 40º for most of the morning, finally got up to 55º around 7:00. It is dropping back a bit now, and the sky, which was lovely and clear for most of the afternoon, now has a few clouds in it. I had hoped to be able to go out and search for Mercury again tonight, but that doesn't look like it will be possible, since the clouds are in the west. Someday before I die, I do want to see Mercury when I know for certain that's what it is.
When I got home, I worked on the second bracelet, which I got about half done last night, and I finished it. Then I realized that if I use the flash, I don't need to have good daylight, so I took pictures. Here it is. I kind of like it. Since I have the right beads out, I've decided to make another rope bracelet (this one). The only one I really like is the one with the silver and copper rope. The others don't have enough contrast.
Then I can go on to try some other things. I am thinking about light turquoise with a silver rope and copper post, and I made another pattern that is over an inch wide that I would like to try in garnet and gold. I am still trying to find the right pattern for those gorgeous garnet beads that are too dark for lots of things. We'll see.
I am still trying to connect with Peggy to give her the finished stuff, but the longer it takes, the more I'll have to give her. She is getting ready for the summer season, too, and I know she is busy.
I should mention that the days are just over 15 hours long now, and the sun is 61º up in the sky at noon. So summer |