Pictures in the dark

Posted on September 15, 2023 by wonkydonkey

The city I live in has an app where you can report things that need to be repaired or addressed – illegal dumping, potholes, broken stop signs, etc. As a daily pedestrian commuter, it’s much easier to report these items than when you are driving past them. Anyway: I got home late last night and was walking along a busy street in the dark. It shouldn’t have been that dark, but more than half of the street lights were out, and so I paused along my route to report each one that needed repair.

The app requests a picture of the issue you are reporting, probably to help verify and identify the location / issue.

I’m sure a few people wondered wtf I was up to as I snapped these. 🙂

Posted in photography, Random Thoughts | 1 Comment

A mystery unfolds

Posted on September 11, 2023 by wonkydonkey

In the word of knitting and crocheting (and likely other crafts as well), there is the “mystery-along”, in which participants sign up to make something without knowing what it will look like. They’ll know the type of thing (a shawl, for example) but the final shape, size, design, style, and so forth are disclosed one Clue at a time. I’ve done a few of these over the years, with mixed results.

You probably guessed: I signed up for a new one.

A knit designer that I follow, Lisa K. Ross of Paper Daisy Creations, has several patterns that I’ve earmarked but not cast on; she just launched a mystery shawl knitalong on Ravelry that I felt compelled to join on the basis that I like her other patterns and feel pretty confident that this one will suit me as well.

Spoiler alert: I’m showing my progress pic below.

The theme for this one is Secret Forest, and I’m definitely a forest person more than an ocean person so right off the bat I was interested. With fall right around the corner, a cozy shawl in warm autumn colors seemed like the perfect thing to knit, and I went searching for some color inspiration. This one struck a chord.

Then I went stash-diving to see what I had in these colors. Most of them, turns out. I did need to buy a tree-bark brown, but after a few attempts (and help from my daughter) came up with this array:

Remember: this is a mystery – I don’t know what the shawl will look like, I can only hope that my colors work out. Here is my progress after Clue 1:

This MKAL runs for 6 weeks, so I’ll have more updates as I go. Clue 2 comes out tomorrow!

Posted in Knitting & Crochet, Ravelry | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Summertime knitting

Posted on July 6, 2023 by wonkydonkey

Today’s knitting project is a Sockhead hat that I pulled out of hibernation (started last December, so a fairly short hibernation all things considered).

It’s such a great pattern – easy to do on the train, satisfying when done in striped or patterned yarn, and a versatile fit. It is miles of mind-numbing stockinette, but that’s easier to accept when it’s done as TV knitting or as in my case: commuter knitting. No charts or pattern to reference, just round and round while a podcast natters on in my ear.

I’m making this one with a sport weight yarn (pattern calls for fingering), in a fun self-patterned Cascade Yarn called Heritage 150 Prints.

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Farewell but not goodbye

Posted on July 1, 2022 by wonkydonkey

Yesterday one of my very favorite people retired from our office. I’ve had the honor of working with him for 24 years; he was on my original interview panel and I have enjoyed every single day that we’ve worked together. He is an honest, caring, thoughtful person, and while I always knew he’d retire before me, that didn’t make it any easier when he turned in his office keys. I could barely wish him well, though I do. He has earned his retirement no question, but I will miss him terribly.

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Take the call

Posted on June 7, 2022 by wonkydonkey

Like a lot of people, I don’t answer my phone if I don’t recognize the phone number.

I cannot, therefore, explain what compelled me to answer mine when it rang today; I glanced at the screen, saw that it wasn’t someone in my contacts, and answered it anyway.

It was a woman, whose name meant nothing. She said we’d met in 2019, at one of my street fairs. That she was a massage therapist. I apologized for not recognizing her name (I’m terrible with names). I was scraping my memory to find her face.

And then she said we’d done a trade —- and that did it. I can picture her, and remember her coming into my booth and the ensuing conversation. Her therapy office was near the street fair, and we agreed to a massage in exchange for an equal value of my soaps. The massage was great, and she clearly enjoyed the soaps since she kept my card. Her location, however, made it nearly impossible for me to do future massages and then the world fell apart anyway.

We had a lovely chat, and I was happy to hear that her business survived the pandemic; she was glad that I also weathered the storm and was still making soap. She said she’d been forced to move her office to save rent money, but her new spot is less than 5 miles from my house, in a location I know well.

She wondered if I’d be interested in another trade, and I’d like to say I hesitated even a microsecond, but I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Massage is one of the things I’ve missed from this whole pandemic, and my schedule makes it challenging to find a place that is open when I am available. With her close to my house and open on Saturday, most of my excuse is taken away.

Self-care, baby! Perhaps I’ll answer my phone more often.

Posted in Health & Wellness, Pandemic, Random Thoughts | Comments Off on Take the call

Murphy’s Law is alive and well

Posted on May 26, 2022 by wonkydonkey

Our office, like every business, is short-staffed. For me this means we don’t have an administrative assistant, so the accounting group is covering those tasks. This has been working fairly well – today not so much. The other two accounting folks are both on vacation and so I’m running solo. Again, this usually works ok, but today was a day where all the plates started to fall.

You know, the kind of day where Zoom meetings have tech problems, presenters arrive late for training sessions, lunch orders are incorrectly labeled, printer drivers glitch, the phone rings off the hook, and you send the wrong link to a meeting with twelve people. That kind of day.

Thank goodness it’s almost Friday.

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One pill makes you small

Posted on April 27, 2022 by wonkydonkey

Rough morning – I accidentally took my “evening” vitamin supplements instead of the “morning” ones — so I’m loaded up on sleepy things like melatonin and ashwagandha. Makes for a drowsy start to the day. (and yes, they are in one of those divided vitamin caddy things; the hall light was off and I was not exactly fully alert when I grabbed it. Only after I swallowed the pills did it register that they didn’t look like quite the *right* pills.) Extra coffee for me today.

Have I shared a pic of Poppy lately? He is fully acclimated to us now, and has staked his claim on certain “safe” zones in the house where he goes when he’s done playing. At some point in his chase game zoomies he makes for a safe zone and the game is over. Full stop. It’s pretty funny; no grey zone, either calm and collected or ripping thru the house knocking things over. He isn’t the most graceful of cats, but he more than makes up for it in personality.

On the reading front: I finished The Foreigner’s Confession, by Lya Badgley. The author attended our book club meeting last week, which was really neat; so much better than answering stock questions, we were free to ask her all sorts of things and hear her experiences that inspired the book. I enjoyed the book, I think the author did a great job keeping the tone mostly light while not ignoring the atrocities that were going on.

Now on my ereader is The Humans, by Matt Haig. This one is just fun, a sci-fi story with aliens, told from the perspective of one who finds himself on Earth with a mission to accomplish – except as he spends time with the humans, he struggles to complete that mission. I’m nearly done with this one, and would recommend it if you like “light sci-fi” and are a bit of a math / science nerd.

During my commute I’m working on a pair of Cably Wably socks for Sock Madness. I’m a cheerleader now, so not officially competing but I like the pattern and wanted to knit along with my team. I’m nearly thru the gusset and will turn the heel tonight. Lots of stitch manipulation so they are slow, but it’s an enjoyable knit.

Posted in Book Reviews, Health & Wellness, Kids & Pets, Random Thoughts, Read more books | Comments Off on One pill makes you small

Is this all there is?

Posted on April 26, 2022 by wonkydonkey

Today I am pondering the cadence of my days.

I sleep about 8 hours a night. Less than that, and you don’t want to be around me.

There’s an hour in the morning and three hours in the evening – a total of four hours a day – at home that I’m awake. The morning hour is coffee, packing a lunch, feeding the cat, taking a shower; the usual getting ready for work stuff. I may throw a load of laundry in if there’s time.

The three hours in the evening are spent making dinner, cleaning up afterwards, looking thru the mail, perhaps a bit of tidying, feeding the cat, catching up on any soap business, and squeezing in a bit of leisure if possible (TV / knitting / reading / social media). And if I work late, this window becomes even narrower.

The other twelve+ hours are spent working and commuting, five days a week.

It’s no wonder my weekends are so precious. There’s still grocery shopping, gardening, and the soap business to manage, plus any house projects or recreation we want to do. Housework is way down the list.

Posted in Family nonsense, Random Thoughts | Comments Off on Is this all there is?

Poppy Update

Posted on April 15, 2022 by wonkydonkey

This weekend marks two months since we took Poppy in. Though an initial look by a vet tech gave us a female verdict, a full vet exam the other day determined that Poppy is in fact a neutered male. So, a pronoun change and a cancelled spay appointment, and on we go.

Poppy got a clean bill of health from his checkup; no viruses or medical issues to be worried about. He got an estimated age of 5-7 years old, which is in line with my own estimate based on his behavior and body size / density – he’s well past any gangly kitten stage but also still quite active. A couple of shots to make sure he continues to stay healthy, and that’s pretty much it.

It’s been really great seeing Poppy settle into his new home. He has a wide vocabulary and is pretty vocal; he likes to touch people but not be picked up; and he really wants to be outside. This is the biggest challenge, keeping an outdoor cat inside.

He’s quite an active cat, and prefers his playtime to include obstacles — apparently it’s more fun catching a mouse if it includes chair legs and a carseat in the chase. At a sturdy 13 pounds, he makes a lot more noise careening around the house than our prior two cats, and he hasn’t fully adjusted to hardwood floors yet.

It’s been, what – fifteen years? since I had a male cat, and he’s just so easy going. He isn’t jumpy or easily startled, not much scares him, and he’s really tolerant of almost anything. He didn’t even freak out when he saw the neighbor’s cat in our yard, he just looked really interested (both Amelia and Snickerdoodle would hiss and growl at the intruders).

I’m glad we were able to take him in, he’s a great cat.

snuggle time
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A greenhouse!

Posted on April 13, 2022 by wonkydonkey

For years I have wanted a greenhouse so I could start my veggies from seed. Our house does not have good windows for seed starts, and up until a few months ago we had a voracious plant-eating feline. So I typically purchased starts from a garden center and only planted seeds for the things that didn’t require the added time (like peas and radishes – though the local crows make even this a challenge, as they have learned that I put nummies in the garden for them to pick out at their convenience).

Well – this year I finally decided to just order a greenhouse. And I’m super excited and glad I did! I got the smallest free-standing but not temporary one I could find, it’s got a 4’X6′ footprint, a real door, and is exactly the size I needed. My veg gardens are not that big, I don’t need acres of seedlings.

Anyway – I’ve started a bunch of stuff and most of it is doing great! We’ve had some late cold snaps so I’m really glad to have the protections from these April frosts, and to give the seeds a chance to sprout so the crows are less tempted to pluck them out of the ground.

(oh, and I’m out of the Sock Madness knitting competition, I didn’t make it thru Round 2. It’s ok, I was just surprised at how fast everyone was this year.)

Posted in Gardening, Knitting & Crochet | Comments Off on A greenhouse!