Glanalaw - delighting in pure song

I thought I was recovering from this cold and then wham.  Out of the blue today, about an hour before the end of my shift at work, my voice started dying on me.  I could feel it going.  The sudden hoarseness.  The need to clear my throat before addressing a new customer.  The drop in pitch to a low, rather sultry, cabaret-singer sort of voice.  That bit's quite fun while it lasts, but unfortunately it never lingers more than a couple of hours. Now I can't talk at all.  Barely a rasp when I tried to greet the cat.  I could verily be the "speak no evil" monkey because I cannot, in fact, speak at all.  So I shall drink lemon and honey tea and push liquids and not even try to talk at all and hope my voice will return to me before the choir callback auditions which are happening on Sunday afternoon.  (And that maybe they will let me clean theatres tomorrow at work instead of trying to work concessions with a non-existent voice.)

I'm reading through the delightful and useful book Sweater Design in Plain English  by Maggie Righetti, and came upon this section, which made me giggle: "NEVER GIVE IN TO THE FUDGE FACTOR Definition of the Fudge Factor: I will stop eating fudge and will have lost ten or fifteen pounds by the time this sweater is finished.  Therefore, I can make it in a smaller size. Optimism is an exemplary characteristic of human nature.  Without hope we cannot exist and, of course, we all hope for the best.  My best would be to lose ten or fifteen pounds, but I am a faster and more reliable knitter than I am a dieter.  It would be foolish for me to give into the Fudge Factor.  I hope I will lose the pounds, but I'm not betting on it.  If I do lose the weight, I can always take in width at the side seams and make the garment narrower.  Or I can give it away and proudly make another in a smaller size.  As surely as I depend  on the hoped-for happe...

Finally.  I've lived here for a full year and my room is only just now in a state which I'm comfortable showing you in pictures. Last week I got completely fed up with the mess and disorganization of my living space.  I have too much stuff and I wanted to cut back.  So I did a complete overhaul.  The main goals were to pare down my wardrobe so it all fit on the hanging rack and in my dresser, to get the craft supplies in some semblance of order, and also to get rid of all the cardboard boxes which I still had things stored in.  They make a place look like you haven't unpacked properly.  I wanted storage which was practical but also pleasant to look at. I bought the yarn dresser at a local antiques warehouse.  It has mis-matched drawer pulls and the finish is not perfect but I love it.  Eventual goal is to not have more yarn than will fit in this.  (I bought flowers to celebrate!  They're mixed in with my road-side sunf...

You are forgiven if you're thinking "but this is not the first quilt I've seen on this blog...."  You would be right.  This is not the first quilt I ever finished, but the first one I ever started.  The one that got me into this whole craft. I've learned so much since starting this.  Like it's a lot faster not to cut each square individually.  (The rotary cutter and mat I got for last birthday help a lot.)  Like make sure you cut the batting a couple inches bigger than the top (because things will shift around and "spread" and you'll end up with half an inch of quilt sandwich missing its filling along one edge.)  Like how to keep the backing from getting wrinkles stitched into it (pin better.)  Like how to hide the ends of the quilting thread so there aren't knots on the back of the quilt.  (There are here.  Lots of them.  But that's okay.) It's finished, and I love it, and this one isn't going anywhere.  It's ...

Red Dragon is the name of the yarn colour, of course.  This is my skein of Mithril, which I've been fondling almost non-stop since it arrived last week.  It's so lovely. And since it's destined to become Amy Pond's lace scarf, which she wears most memorably in the episode with Vincent Van Gogh -- I had to photograph it with my sunflowers.  I've been driving past a drift of them on the roadside for the last few weeks, thinking how lovely they are but not wanting to pick any... and then yesterday I saw that the mowing crew had been by and knocked down a lot of them.  So I immediately pulled off and went to see if I could rescue any.  They're cheering up a corner of my bedroom, now, in a bright blue ceramic vase.  Sunflowers should always be put in blue vases.

I finished another elephant.  This little lady is going to a grad-school friend's small niece. I never cease to find these little guys charming.  I hope the small people they are knit for love them as much as I do!

Photo by Stefano de Rosa. Check out his page , he's got gorgeous pictures! I got home from work around 12:30 last night and spent a couple hours lying in the front lawn star-gazing.  Partly I was looking for meteors or shooting stars (the Perseids were strong this weekend) but mostly I just looked at stars. So many stars. I kept repeating the beginning of Psalm 8 over and over:  When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the sun and the moon which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him?  and the son of man that thou visitest him?  For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Compared to all those stars I am so very small.  And yet God is "mindful" of me - I am one who is just a little "lower than the angels".   And that is almost as overwhelming as trying to count the stars.

I've become increasingly frustrated with the state of my material possessions over the last few months.  It's probably exacerbated by the fact that I have all my earthly goods in a single smallish "bonus room" without even a closet -- everything is in constant view.  But this week I decided to do something about it. I'm down-sizing.  I decided I shouldn't really need more clothes than will fit in my dresser (five medium-sized drawers) and on my hanging rack which is masquerading as a closet.  So yesterday I piled all my clothes (socks and underwear and everything) on the bed and did some sorting.  I ended up with a comfortably-filled hanging rack and a dresser a little over-full, plus one small crate for mittens, hats, shawls, and other knitted things.  This seems reasonable to me.  Some of these items are starting to wear out, also, so I'll be discarding them as they pass their useable life.  Three or four items went in the scrap-fabric pile...