Two Years Today!

Guess who has lived here for two years as of today? Miss Maggie! She is pleased to continue to honor us with the gift of her presence.

Here are a few of the photos I've taken of her in the past week, to commemorate the occasion.

Just Don't. Stay Home, Stay Safe

Look, I get it. I really do. We are all so over this pandemic and desperate for things to be back to normal. But they aren't, we aren't there, and pretending we are will not make it so.

The number are already going up so fast, so fast. A quarter of a million Americans have died from this. So many deaths could have been prevented if everyone wore masks, kept their distance, reined things in.

And now Thanksgiving is next week, and I'm truly afraid of what is going to happen next. Look what happened in Canada after their Thanksgiving:

Our local cases are already flying up. The tourists keep coming, the snowbirds keep coming, and on the one hand, there are lots of people I want to see down here, plus the economy frankly needs the tourism money. But on the other, pretending there is no pandemic is mysteriously not stopping the disease from spreading. This is my little town:

Please. Think twice. Then again. Be careful. For yourself, for others. Please. How many more people have to die? A year where we instead don't travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but eat turkey by ourselves at home (or grilled cheese sandwiches, or sushi, or whatever you want [seriously, whatever you want!]), is worth it for once.

Pictures! A Yarn Issue

I'm glad that photos are working on Blogger again! I don't have time/energy to do the car show tonight, but let me throw this little yarn situation up to show you.

I placed a Knitpicks order last week during their big sale, and one of the yarns I got was a ball of Chroma Fingering, in the colorway Vermont. I was a little surprised by what I got. It didn't grab me, you know? 

I suppose that your monitor may differ from mine, but that's quite different from what they showed on their website.

I looked on Ravelry, and there are a whole bunch of people whose Vermonts look like this:

Which is more what I was imagining! Now, I'm not complaining; I recognize the risks of ordering online, and especially at half off, this isn't going to break the bank or anything. But it's odd, don't you think, that they would have changed the colorway so much?

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

I haven't forgotten I want to show you the car show pictures, but I am having trouble with Blogger, in that when I go to add photos to a post, instead of the box popping up with the photos to choose from, a blank box pops up and just sits there being useless. So that's frustrating. I tried different browsers and the same thing happens, so...no idea. 

I had in fact started to draft the car show post yesterday, and the pictures weren't loading right, so I figured I would try again today, but today it works even less. Charming. Perhaps it's time to look into what's involved in buying my own domain. How does knitreadcatshockey.com sound?

 

A Message From the Books

Read the titles. Librarians rule.

 

An Outlier

This is not what I want to blog about from yesterday:

A snake skin that drapes over both ends of two tables together. All the other photos I will show you (next time) have a theme, and this one does not match. But it is queasily impressive, isn't it? 

Beginning to Look

Christmas is going to look very different this year in so many ways, mostly very serious, but in one light-hearted way in particular for me, thanks to the latest shop update from String Theory Colorworks: 

I'm not usually drawn to holiday colors like this, but here we are.

I ordered on Monday, and thanks to her being in Florida too, the order took next to no time getting here.

I'm picturing a simple rectangular shawl, with alternating blocks of each color. Nothing too challenging! (That's my 2020 motto.) If any pattern comes to mind, please do suggest it! Happy weekend, y'all.

What Kind of Day

How was my day? Well, do you remember this book?

Yeah. Nothing catastrophic, but I started the day by stretching and totally messing my back up somehow, ow-ow-ow, and the day didn't improve from there.

Well, if the book taught me anything, it's that there's a chance for a better day tomorrow. Here's hoping.

Blowing On By

So far at least, the hurricane/tropical storm, Eta, has blown on by us. We've had a lot of wind the last few days, and a few inches of rain (they got tons more on the east coast), but this afternoon the sun came out and showed us the lake where the lawn used to be. 

And a few dozen ibis, come to feast on (presumably) all the bugs in the water

 Pretty neat!

Oh, Y'all, It Happened

President-elect Joe Biden.

And the FLOTUS, Dr. Jill Biden.

Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris (Madam Vice President!).

And the SGOTUS(?), Douglas Emhoff. (I don't know that that's what he'll go by, Second Gentleman, but I'm delighted that we'll be finding out.) 

What a RELIEF.

Ceci n'est pas une chatte*

(*from the Magritte painting)

Sometime, Maggie is not a cat. 

Sometime, she is a knitting inspector.

Or a salad bowl inspector.

Or a sunflower.

Then she can be an herbivore.

But also a hunter.

And sometimes a tiger. Rawr!

She's a judge.

And a model.

She can be an oval.

That gets rounder.

And becomes a circle.

Often, she is a cat loaf.

Loafing.

But then sometimes, she's more like a focaccia. 

Or a baguette.

A cat of many modes, is Maggie.