Miscellany Of New Photos March 22, 2016

    Letter box                 Ready for jiu jitsu           Work in progress

Tree stump

 

   OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

  Neglected knitting – striking pink but what should I do with it?

Henry Ingalls, 1586-1648 October 3, 2015

                                                                      Henry Ingalls – buried in the Old North Parish Burying Ground. Andover Massachusetts

I wish I had been able to visit this cemetery when I was in New England.    Henry is just one of my many ancestors buried in New England soil.  He was my     Great Grandfather.  His father, Edmund Ingalls, was born in Lincolnshire England.  He left England for America arriving in Salem in 1629.   He resided in Lynn from that time until his death in 1648, age 62.

How many other ancestors came to America in the early 1600″s?  I intend to try to find them and to establish their circumstances when they made the decision to emigrate.

New/Old Knitting May 31, 2015

   new color combinations but still scarves – or maybe I will join the strips to make blankets

  My cat takes a keen interest in my computer work – a nice buddy

Lazy Summer Days June 24, 2010

knitting in the garden – an array of blankets

where our cat Slinky usually resides

    

 my favourite cat has found a new place to lie in the fading sun at this time of year – upstairs on the window sill, on top of Ian’s papers

I Knit While I Read June 14, 2010

Lately I’ve been blogging a lot about books and my travels and what I’ve been reading.  The knitting has not been neglected because I can often knit as I read.  That’s why I choose quite straight forward knitting so that I don’t have to count stitches or strand yarns across the back or pay attention to a complicated pattern.  I can just knit and occasionally have the joy of choosing a new colour.  My most recent project was to be a big blanket – big enough to fit a single bed.  But the other day we went drove down to Ashford in County Wicklow to visit The Yarn Room, and I was looking at a new book by Kaffe Fassett, Kaffe Fassett Knits Again.  One of the photos in the book showed Kaffe modeling a colourful blanket, draping it like a shawl.  That made me think again about what I was knitting – bingo, I decided I had knit enough and my big blanket has now been terminated to become a big shawl.

big blanket as a work in progress

  diminished stash

  the blanket/shawl, finished

  another work in progress – to be a sleeveless sweater but the yarn shop has run out of the red – will wait for the next shipment from The Brown Sheep Company in America.

The Blanket and the Stash May 18, 2010

  this is my current knitting project – a blanket, hopefully a big blanket.  Progress to date is approx. 16 inches.  The blanket is 34 inches wide (160 sts).  I’m using a size 4.5 mm circular needle (bamboo tips), 75 cm long.  I’m using one strand of the blue and white yarn you see on the right and one strand of a colour from the stash.

I’m using yarn from the stash here in Dublin.  That’s mainly yarn sent to me for the tapestry I was going to make for the Guild Exhibition supplemented by yarn purchased for other projects.   Today I went in to town to This Is Knit to get more supplies – I wanted to get yellow and I ended up with orange and a very bright yellow from Uruguay.

 stash before the trip to town

stash after the trip to town

To change the subject, on my walk down the hill to get the LUAS I passed the following display of litter

Fly tipping urban style.  Are the people who live in the houses nearby supposed to pick up the bags and put them in their black wheelies and pay for the extra weight thereby incurred?  (Here in Dublin we pay for rubbish disposal by weight.)  What is the mentality of people who are leaving their rubbish like this?  I feel incensed enough to write a letter to the editor.

Some Colours of March in Seattle March 31, 2010

Only a few more hours to post my colours of March, so here is my selection.  First, to the left – our new doormat

and below, a colourful sweater being modelled at the Whittier Elementary School Science Fair.

    The person who made the granny square sweater does not knit or crochet.  She is an expert seamstress and she made it from an old afghan and a knitted garment she found in a thrift store.  It’s called recycling!  I love it.

  my grandaughter Ashley’s science fair project – note Ashley is wearing a matching pink jersey and socks for the occasion.  Is that to match all the pink cherry blossoms in Seattle this month?

  with better weather the cycling season is beginning in earnest

  window display of old science fiction paperbacks in Ophelia’s Books in Fremont  – serious time for book browsing

  knitting with Franklin thanks to Renaissance Yarns in Kent, south of Seattle

  Colourful wall graffitti in Fremont

   one of the many mountains of papers from the unpacking

  beautiful flowers appearing everywhere

  and finally the fresh green of Spring

Crochet Item March 27, 2010

In the past couple of weeks I have been doing more crochet than knitting, partly because I felt that my shoulders were getting sore from being hunched up over the knitting.  This morning I was delighted to find a reference to crochet in the Seattle Times.  There was a little clip about a book written by a mathematician at Cornell University in Ithaca New York.  The title of the book is “ Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes.”  This title won the Diagram Prize for last year’s oddest book title.  According to the article, the Diagram Prize is Britain’s quirkiest literary award.  The book charts the frontier between handicrafts and geometry – sounds interesting.  I must look out for it in my wanderings to book shops.

Now for a few pictures, quirky or not.

     one of my crochet blankets in progress

     

                                                                                                                                                                                                       crochet  project no. 2

  crochet blanket nearing completion

and a change of subject – a vintage (1973) baritone Giannini ukelele from Brasil

A Bit of Crochet and Bicycles and Books March 22, 2010

As a change from my knitting projects, I have been doing a bit of crochet.

  progress continues on the big blanket using mainly rug wool – it is almost finished – just a bit more red to do and then some grey and then a border of some sort

  a smaller blanket with softer yarn

  a acouple of squares to form the center for another blanket

And then yesterday was such a nice sunny day, I made a trip to the Dutch Bike Company

  this is one of the bikes I tested – I ordered a step-through version.  My limbs are not as supple as they used to be so stepping over that slanting crossbarwas a bit difficult.  One of the other bikes I considered was the OMA – the grandmother bike – I am a grandmother to be sure but on the OMA I felt I should be pedaling slowly to church in an Irish village and wearing a bandana.

Back to the house and the sorting of our books

  we don’t have bookcases yet so these are just the piles of books waiting for their shelves – this photo is of HIS books

  and here are some of my books

No Knitting Today March 10, 2010

Today I decided to take a break from the knitting – but not from the reading.  I finished the Henning Mankell book The Man Who Smiled.  I was initially going to go over to the University District to get 2 more Henning Mankell’s at Half Price Books, but as I finished TMWS I decided that after reading 2 in a row, I wanted a break from that also.  TMWS, while very good, there was a fair bit of repetition from previous books and it was getting to be a bit like having been written to a certain formula.

I pottered about with some more unpacking and started reading a book I bought at the Nordic Heritage Museum.  In Their Own Words, Letters from Norwegian Immigrants.  So far so good and quite fascinating.  As I go through my own family archive I can now relate to what was happening in other people’s lives at a similar time in U.S. history.  These letters are like reading the person’s blog if such a thing had existed in the late 1800’s.  I will try to develop this idea a bit more as I go along.

  The Man Who Smiled – Henning Mankell, 1994

  In Their Own Words – copyright 1991

  and progress on the crochet blanket