woolythyme

winter wonderlands...

Our world was encased in ice again...almost 10 years to the day.  This time, though, it didn't last, didn't do much damage, yet left our world sparkling and pretty...not destroyed and devastated. 

And it was cold.

Just not this kind of cold...

This was taken in Iceland last December....and just got accepted into the juried photography show at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, sponsored by the Garden Club of America.  

Who has time to knit any more?

getting ready to be bored....

I don't think I've ever had a month quite like this October.  There was Ghana, a 45 minute presentation for my literary group, hosting book club, a 40 minute talk for my church's fall gathering (too bad the two talks couldn't have been on the same subject!!!), a two week visit from a Guatemalan stranger who left a friend, wrote a talk for next month's garden club program (why not, as long as I'm writing all this stuff!), a photo critique at school, a 2 day garden club meeting in Winston-Salem, NC---a 10 hour drive from home, and 5 shawls to knit for a friend's daughter's wedding (#6 was already sent off to make sure the pattern and fit was what they wanted).  

I know.  I know.  Everyone's busy...probably much, much busier than I am. 

But....I'm retired. 

And I'm a slug most of the time. 

But, now, I'm home,done,done,done,done,done,done,home,and DONE! The last 'done' was the hardest.  The shawls.  Big needles.  Chunky yarn.  Yuck. Yuck.  Double-yuck.

And yet, I think they turned out lovely.  I hope the bride and her mom are pleased.

5....count 'em!

The Winston-Salem garden club trip was wonderful.  New friends and fabulous, funny speakers.  But unquestionably the best part of the trip for me had absolutely nothing to do with anything green and growing.  It was the opportunity to see the Georgia O'Keeffe Living Modern exhibit at the Reynolda House.  This is the only other north American venue to host this show. I was so envious earlier in the spring as I read about it; it seemed EVERYONE was talking about it when it showed in NYC.  And then, I found out it was going to be in W-S---and I was going to be there!!!  Georgia's art! her clothes! photographs of her! photos of her--wearing the clothes being exhibited!  Her clothes were so much a part of her persona...and the show was curated magnificently.

And I had fun with my camera.  (an aside....I came home with a blue ribbon first place in my photography division of the flower show...squeeeeee!)

I'm sure you all have heard of Stefan Draschan, the photographer who haunts museums, matching people with the art they are seeing.  Since I live under a rock, he just recently came to my attention, and I couldn't help but 'play' while I toured the exhibit...

Jeans man at the denim display

 

Women in white

 

Georgia?

Our garden club communication chair was on the trip with me, sent these off to Reynolda House, and they snarfed them up for some kind of promo.  Fun.

So....three more days left in the month (with out of town people we haven't seen in about 10 years due to arrive any minute).  

Can't be bored quite yet.

yarning along....

One of the many reasons I like making blankets is that you can fake the finish pretty early in the process.  Here the worsted mitered blanket is....just a mere 57 squares...and already it can (sort of) drape over the back of the sofa when not being worked on.  It looks like almost looks like a real afghan.  OK.  You have to use your imagination just a little bit, but soon it will be an honest-to-goodness fake blanket, looking pretty spiffy and finished---but not.  (Only you and I will know the truth.)

The book I'm reading while knitting is a real gem, recommended by friend.  Not one that would ordinarily have crossed my radar, but I'm so glad it did.  The End of Night is a beautifully written treatise by Paul Bogard on the night time sky...or more specifically, the lack thereof...because of the inundation of artificial light in our society.  He begins in Las Vegas at the Luxor Beam, the brightest single spot on the planet, and travels around the world looking at the sky...how it looks now, how it looked in the past, the use and effect of artificial lighting though the centuries.  I'm not far into it, but I'm relishing ever page so far.  A book that makes you think...and makes you want to turn off some lights.

One place to see real darkness in Manhattan is at the MoMA....Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Oil on canvas, painted in 1889--pre-electric light.  It was painted in his asylum cell at St. Remy...mostly from memory...but was it really the painting of a madman?

In a letter Van Gogh wrote in 1888, he described a nighttime walk on the beach in southern France:

'The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way.  In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparkling gemlike than at home---even in Paris:  opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis, lazuli, rubies, sapphires.'

Who are the madmen now---erasing such a view with the power of the electric light.  In 2001 John Bortle created a scale on which he described levels of dark skies, ranking them from 9 (brightest) to 1 (darkest).  In this book, Bogard is in search of a 1; he questions whether such a thing even exists in the Lower 48.  He strongly believes that most young Americans and Europeans have rarely if ever experienced a night dark enough to be considered a '3'...a rural sky where only some indication of light pollution is evident along the horizon. 

 

Just look at what we're missing.