A Treatise on Many Things

Okay, so probably not really a treatise...I just always wanted to use that word in an offhanded and breezily intellectual fashion, almost as if I were naturally glib and clever. We all have our fantasies.

First, squares. This first picture shows six squares from my beloved sister of the heart, Marianne:
Delightfully soft, and one of them (the purple one) even has a dragonfly that stubbornly refused all attempts to photograph it.

This next photo shows two really beautiful squares from Kitty Mommy:


Kitty Mommy, I'm in awe--how you got these done with all the other goodness going on in your life, I'll never know. But I'm grateful. You've also convinced me that I absolutely MUST buy some of this yarn in the pink colorway...or maybe the blue and brown...'cause, you know. I don't have any yarn to knit with.

The next picture is extraordinarily special....see if you can guess why:

Yep, they're beautiful but no, that's not why. It's special because one of these squares is number 180. I'm not sure which--the one with the stripes was given to me by Kristy a couple of weeks ago, but the other three were handed to me last night by Marti so they are 178, 179, and 180 in whichever order you care to look at them. Marti says she doesn't want a prize for last square--just recognition on the blog. Marti, you got it. For those unfortunate enough not to know Marti, she is funny, talented (beyond belief, actually--she can knit, spin, design, draw, write, and play soccer, and probably a lot more that I'm not thinking of right off the bat.), and an all around delightful person to know. Her dry wit has caught me off guard more than once, and I adore people who can do that. She's also trying to teach me to spin, which is a HUGE testament to her patience (as is the fact that she hasn't told me to quit whining about it not being perfect...or even in the same zip code as perfect). Marti rocks. And she is officially the maker of square #180.

As to the rest of you, I am speechless, tearful, and in awe of the goodness that each one of you represents. Look what you did! Okay, wait until I finish sewing them together and edging them...then I'll put up a photo of all the blankets and THEN you can look what you did. I know the families are going to be deeply touched and will be wrapped in all your love all winter long.

If I ever again doubt the power of knitters, just thwap me upside the head with one of those "pound of love" skeins of acrylic baby yarn. It'll serve me right.

As long as we're talking about awe-inspiring, breathtaking things (which we were and which you are), Mr. K took this picture last night from our hot tub on the back deck:

Those giant trees are in our backyard and, on nights like last night when they're not threatening to throw branches like javelins at the house and the car, I love them.

So, back to Sears on the weekend. Mr. K has spent much of the summer nursing along the Exxon Valdez, also known as our 12+ year old riding lawn mower which developed a disconcerting habit of spitting oil out randomly in the yard. (Some people are trying to shrink their carbon footprint; thanks to the Valdez, we could fit ours with an Olympic sized swimming pool.) Surprisingly, this did not alarm Mr. K as much as it did me, and neither did the occasional expulsions of thick, white smoke that made me wonder vaguely if my ass had caught fire while simultaneously avoiding that particular bit of knowledge. Oddly, the possibility of flaming ass was less concerning than the fact that the smoke made it difficult to see the spiders before running into them. My ass will heal...my psyche, after finding a tomato sized striped spider on my head planning a meal for 170 friends....not so much.

Even that didn't really budge Mr. K, but he caved in at last a couple of weeks ago when I noticed the mower not cutting all that well and opined that "perhaps the belt slipped" and he went to look and the belt was actually hanging out the side of the mower like a very tired snake. He initally went to replace the belt but, as he wandered around the manly area of Sears (you know the one--lots of tools and machines and men scratching in an undignified fashion and burping a lot), he was suddenly lured by the siren song of new lawn mowers. Shiny ones, at that. It was a candy store with horsepower.

He gazed upon these wonderous creatures for some time before finding me trying on jeans upstairs and encouraging me to "just come down for a quick look." And, much as I love attempting to avoid spiders while choking on smoke and dribbling oil down my leg, I finally agreed to come look at some mowers that actually turned on, stayed turned on, and cut grass. A novel concept.

Now, those of you who read this blog or know me personally know that Mr. K is my dearest friend and greatest love and I adore him. However, I am not blind to his foibles, one of which is making decisions at a glacial pace. Which is why Saturday afternoon found me seated on a riding lawn mower in the Sears basement, coat still on, sweating all over a plastic bag containing my pair of jeans, and repeating several times "they're both comfortable, I'd be happy with either, I don't think it matters much." Good times. Still, I must admit that Mr. K almost invariably makes very good decisions, likely because he thinks them through (and through and through and through and through and through and....), so I sat patiently and answered his questions and sweated on my jeans bag. And we were nearly there...heartbreakingly close, in fact, had it narrowed down to two....when the salesman said brightly "Of course, there's also this one over here, have you looked at it yet?"

I'm assured that the salesman will be fine, and that it's not necessarily fatal to have a crazed sweaty woman try to stuff a plastic bag full of jeans in your mouth. He got off lucky in my book.

But the upshot is that we brought home a shiny, black riding mower with a loud, manly engine and enough cutting power to take care of the astrodome in about 15 minutes flat. It really is quite macho.

I think I'll call it Black Beauty. Or Spider Crusher. I'm not sure which.