Knitting Moonsilver: March 2008

I adore Sundays. I like to sleep in, hang out and knit with morning coffee without having to look at the clock every two minutes, maybe do some chores or visiting that I didn't finish Saturday. Today it was beautiful out. The day lilies are coming and the snow drops just bloomed. We nailed some cedar shakes to one side of my little garden shed. I played with the dogs and did loads and loads of laundry. The big goal was to not take a nap (last night I was up until 2:30 a.m. because I took a nap - can't stand this time saving process) so I'd sit and knit a bit and when my head would nod, I'd pop up and do something. On that line, I started doing some cleaning on the road today. Every year, spring and fall, I pick up bags and bags of garbage in the ditches. You'd think it would cheer me up, doing good for the earth and the neighborhood but it always ends up pissing me off to no end. The garbage has been worse in the last few years. Someone goes to McDonalds and throws the garbage out of their car at least twice a day. I want to hide in the bushes with my night binoculars and a paint ball gun and nail the mothers. We've got Listerine Man too. He drinks bottles and bottles of the stuff. How he isn't dead from it by now I don't know but I tell you what, someday I won't have to read the obituary to know he's croaked because I won't have to pick up his bottles every year.

Two Hefty bags and halfway down the hill, I came across a pristine white bag - the kind you might get at Home Schlepot, with brand new twine tying the top shut. I knew it was something dead so spent five minutes pacing back and forth to and from it before I got the courage to open it. I poked the twine open with a stick, dumped it over and found five dead Bantam roosters and a hen. They had their heads and feet on. They didn't smell. Their feathers weren't sticking up or worked over. I can't figure it out and can only think someone around here is killing small animals. A farmer wouldn't have bagged them - he would've put them wherever they put dead animals (in a ditch covered in dirt?). I left them where they fell with the bag. The coyotes (or coydogs - whatever) could use them for supper and if not them, the crows in the morning (though I don't know - do crows eat other dead birds?).

I grew up here. In this place, my great-grandfather planted trees 80 years ago and my father planted trees when I was a little girl. My grandfather farmed up on the hill and the wide fields are still there. I don't understand the shift and change of energy that is going on. I wonder if it is that I am getting older and less patient with those who disrespect so much. Maybe 80 years ago or 45 years ago, people then were killing small animals too and leaving them on the sides of country roads. I can't help but think, though, how it is possible that anyone not know that every action we take effects every single thing around us.

Off the rant, Nantucket's sleeves have been abandoned, though I really should finish them soon because once it gets warmer I won't want to work with thick wool so much.

Yesterday I took a ride over to a local LYS to use a gift certificate I'd gotten for Christmas for a skein of something or other for our knitting group's KAL (the Blue Jeans Lace Leaf Shawl). I can't believe how much new sock yarn is out there! I ended up getting a skein of Paca Peds in Grapevine. They give you an extra 25 grams for heels and toes, but the wonderful LYS owner suggested I use it for the border and I think its a brilliant idea.

I worked on the little Easter sweater for a bit, but am concerned. One sleeve seems so much narrower than the other and I haven't figured out how to fix it yet.