Saturday Sky, Overheated and New, New, New

Saturday Sky on Sunday - yes, I do feel like I have been lost in a time-warp the past few days, resulting in no new posts. The temperatures decided to climb rather than fall, and everyone has gotten a little cranky as a result. While we were barely tolerating the high 90s, the triple-digit temps (109 in Grass Valley yesterday afternoon - luckily it wasn't my car with the thermometer, or I might have perished at the realization) are simply pinning us down to the house near the cooler, or the air-conditioned car. Today's sky is a reflection of the way that such heat waves bring cloud build-up, and sometimes dry lightening, to our mountains. While the clouds look pretty, I tend to get a bit uneasy and pray that this batch won't develop into thunderheads.

There were some inevitable things I simply had to do at the end of the week, including a lot of family business at home on Thursday, leaving me no other computer time afterwards, and a fast trip to Chico, since it was time to bite the bullet and re-up for another two years of cell service. I have a four-line family plan, and had hoped to dump my present carrier, but unfortunately adding DH last summer, when he finally decided he needed a phone of his own, got him out of sync with the rest of us ... the good news was the other three of us got new phones.


Trying to decide, Cody checks out the features on the phone Nikki later chose.


DD followed me back home late Friday afternoon, but first we had to stop at a big box bookstore to get iced coffee drinks to fortify us. That is where I picked up a copy of Knitting (on the left in the photo above) - the English magazine with such a unique title. It was quite a bit of fun to find a knitting magazine I hadn't discovered before, and that it had an article about teaching children to knit, as well as some great information about fashion/knitwear design (quite the well-developed industry in UK, perhaps because they seldom have heat waves).

Also on display is my new phone.... yes, there really is that trendy side of me that just had to have the pink Razr. I am still searching for a suitable ringtone (maybe a donkey braying), and have to find some time to get started putting music on it. I am really not much of a gadget person, hating to spend perfectly good money that could go to books or yarn, so I have never gotten around to getting an MP3 player (although youngest son got one of the earliest on the market for a BD present several years back) or an IPod, but now that a mobile phone has become "almost a necessity" (I do remember doing just fine 89% of the time without one), why not in pink, and why not with music?!

The phone is partially obscuring A Handspindle Treasury, which arrived in Friday's mail, and traveled back and forth to Chico, unopened, since there really wasn't any reading time. I still have only had the chance to thumb through and get oriented, as this Interweave Press publication includes the best of the articles they have featured on spindle spinning over the past twenty years, and there are some great gems of wisdom in here. The best gem for me was realizing that it was spindle spinning and not wheel spinning that has gotten me interested in spinning once again. I am all about carrying handwork around with me, making more time to visit with people while doing a piece that doesn't need full concentration, such as knitting a sock or spinning on the high whorl (once I get the hang of it). The process of spindling is identical to wheel spinning in so many ways and yet different in the ability to be mobile. Perhaps it is my aging body, but I have tended to shy away from sitting at any kind of apparatus in a cramped position for hours, and don't regret that I no longer weave and rarely spend a whole day at the sewing machine any longer. Different tools for different stages of life...

The book to the right is a very cute book, Kids Knitting, that is written to the level of a mid-elementary aged child, and has great kid-oriented patterns, such as bean bags (and you were wondering what to do with all those gauge swatches!), hats, toys, the ever-recommended "first project scarf", and even socks. Why did I pick up this book yesterday, when DD and I ventured out into the heat to Grass Valley to search for rentals for her and two of the three DSs? I have been knitting since I was five and my kids are all too old for the instructional style... but I submitted an application for a job as "handwork teacher" at one of our local public charter schools, and am hoping for at least an interview, so I can talk them into hiring me to teach knitting and other crafts to elementary students! Please, please think good thoughts about this being a good match, both for me and for the school. It feels like a better match than teaching at the county jail, where I visited the classrooms last week (intimidating, even though I know I didn't commit any crimes).


This final photo, taken at one of the Chico parking lots, is for Carole - the other new thing is the beginning of a second pair of Trekking socks, using Mim's Simple Trekking Socks pattern. Somewhere in the chaos between teaching Thursday night, getting the burros ready for the farrier, and assisting him with hoof-trimming Friday morning, then dashing around Chico, I managed to finish the first pair, and cast on another, in color #18 (a light lavender and blue fleck). I figured, what the heck? Summer is still young, and there's lots more trekking to be done! There will be photos of the finished socks later in the week, when I can manage to have clean enough feet to put on brand-new, hand-made socks... that are wool and hot!

There will also be other catching up to do, as I had planned a nice, chatty post about how there are finally a few other fiber bloggers within a 75-mile distance of me, but that will have to wait, as well as doing a Local Meal post for Liz. I have been eating local food, but I wouldn't call much of it a meal --- too hot to work in the kitchen.