This and that and a few threads

There are six columns in my flower afghan and eight rows.  48 granny squares.  4 borders each.  When I am done with this thing, I’m going to count approximately how many stitches there are in the entire thing.  Squares, borders, the whole thing.  And I’m going to figure out about how long this blanket has taken me.  I am fairly certain I am going to be appalled by the number of hours, but not surprised, exactly.

All six columns are now assembled, and two have been stitched together.  If you’re wondering, yes, this feels exactly like making a quilt, except FAR MORE labor intensive.  I never thought anything could be as labor-intensive as a quilt, but I was wrong.  After the columns are stitched together, then there are two borders of different color.  I could have just done one, however, I had to buy an entire new skein of red yarn to finish the last two red squares, so it’s getting a red border.

Meanwhile, I tried out a few stitches on my  birches quilt.  Take a look, because that’s the last you’ll see of them.  They’re supposed to be waves, but I definitely did not like and I ripped them out.  I think I know what I’m doing now (haha, sure).  Tell you what, all I’ll commit to is that I’ll try the next one I thought of, and I’ll show it to you regardless of whether or not I like it.  I can’t promise to keep it.

I wish my camera showed the color variation in the blue fabric well … the warp and weft are different colors, and it gives it an interesting depth.  The weft is the blue that you see, but the warp threads that were used are silvers and golds.  It’s so pretty.  Unfortunately, that means that most of the blue and gold embroidery threads I’d chosen do not show up at all.  Bummer.

To take a break from big projects, I keep cooking, hopefully nothing too hard.  I find I’ve been liking pureed soups for their simplicity and how tasty the simmered ingredients can be when blended.  Last week I invented some zucchini soup with basil, which I enjoyed very much.  I just looked for a similar recipe online with no luck – this one’s not chilled or curried or made with dairy or mushrooms or whatever else, so I’ll have to write it down sometime.

This week I tried my hand at African Peanut Soup, but made it a whole lot spicier than the recipe indicated (honestly, 1/8 tsp of cayenne in a tomato/peanut butter soup is nothing!  That’s not even respectable!).  I even made my own peanut butter for it, because I have a food processor, and I can.  I fell in love with the peanut soup at a local restaurant and had to try making it, and this is pretty darn close.  It was also pretty simple, even though I made the peanut butter.  Plus, I then got to mix the leftover peanut butter with honey, which I will apply to graham crackers later.  Winner!

I will leave you with The Two Troublemakers.  Oh, and they certainly are.  Audrey got a good report on her health the other day – she will probably never be totally well again, but we are told her recovery so far is unusual and really very good.  She’s out of the woods.  Callie, on the other hand, is completely well and leaping tall buildings and all that, and getting fatter and fluffier by the day.  She’s a year and a half old now, and thank pete she’s not a kitten anymore.  That was just a nightmare.  I’m kind of dreading spring as our temperatures climb above 85F – what will she be like when she sheds?! O the horror!

In the immortal words of Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation: “Later dudes.”

Taking Time to Look

I want to post about crafty things, and in fact I have been pursuing handiwork like mad, but I just don’t have enough for a respectable new post.  These things I’m doing, they take time, oodles of time to get things accomplished on them.  I’m making hundreds of tiny handstitches a day, but when I step back from the project after all those stitches, it seems like so very little has actually been completed.  And so it goes, another day, and other few hundred stitches.  Today I feel lucky I have very little feeling in three of my fingers, because otherwise I think they’d really hurt from getting poked with needles.

Apart from stitching, one thing I really wanted to start doing was wandering around Austin on foot to see what I could see.  Places look a lot different when you’re walking instead of driving, you know?  So I’ve walked around my neighborhood, around the University of Texas, around downtown and the capitol area, through parks, over rivers, up hills … you get the idea.

One Sunday, I think it was two weeks ago, I went to Waterloo Park, a place I drive by quite frequently but had never been to.  What I found was that this park suffers from a lot of that – thousands must drive by on a weekly basis, but only a handful probably ever stop.  Waller Creek runs through the park, and these pictures are from a pathway that has been built along the creek. I don’t think it was built recently, given the style, but I don’t know.

Thing is, this park and the waterway are falling apart and weed-choked.  It’s sad. It could be a beautiful place, that pathway, but no one seems to care that much that it’s so run down.  It’s a little surprising, honestly.  It’s in the middle of the city, mostly built already, just a few blocks from the University of Texas and the Capitol, in a well-traveled part of the city.  I can only think someone shows up to take care of it better in summer, but somehow I doubt it.

This bridge, for example, is one that I know lots of commuters, goverment officials and the like pass over daily.  I wonder – do people notice this older, pretty bridge?  Do they ever look over the edge?  Do they see this pathway below?  Do they know where it goes in either direction?  Does anyone think – why does this look so rundown here in the middle of everything?

A number of small beasties live down there – I believe we saw squirrls and a rabbit, even, and there are probably possums.  I saw a few turtles peeping up and sunning themselves.  Turtles are lovely creatures, in my opinion, even though they do tend to bite.  I’ve always thought I might like a small turtle pond.  This fine specimen was peering at me suspiciously as I wandered around him taking pictures from various angles.

Part of the pathway ends under a place called Symphony Square, which looks as though it was once used for concerts.  It would be awesome for the window scene in Romeo & Juliet.  The stage is set on one side of the Creek, and the seating is on the other side.  Above the seating, there is a restaurant.  If you stand on the walkway next to the creek you are several feet down from diners and they can’t see you and don’t even know that you are there!

So we stopped to note the details for a minute, and look at the rocks, and think about what could be.  And of course, there was enough time for me to wonder how you can make a quilt look like individual rocks, because that’s how I seem to be seeing the world lately … “can I quilt that?”

I hope one day someone decides that restoring the area is a good use of funds and time, and that they go back to using Symphony Square for concerts in the warmer months, though of course it would help to clean up the water some first, maybe a coat of paint or so would be good, and a gardening team for those weeds … ?  I hope the old byways and buildings in Austin are not forgotten amidst this city’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for new thirty-story buildings and condo developments.

Off to contemplate another few hundred tiny stitches! TTFN, Miriam.