#2 daughter got safely back to school.

At the party on Sunday, I was talking with a woman about my age who has a daughter about the age of #2. Her daughter went to Texas to visit an errant boyfriend and moved in with him and became a Beer Girl. Now, of course I would still love my daughter if she had made those life choices, but I am so grateful that she didn't.

By this time next month she will be completely finished with school and will have a home of her own. She has a job. We sent her back up with a planner, a working wardrobe, a budget, and a set of dishes.

A friend called her yesterday morning to ask her plans for the Fourth. "We're going to eat," she said blithely. It is true. There was a fresh peach pie, and fried chicken and deviled eggs and potato salad and baked beans and corn and really all sorts of things. After #2 daughter left, the boys went to visit friends outside the city limits where firecrackers are allowed.

My husband watched TV. He likes to watch about eight programs at once, switching back and forth among them in a way that ensures that any one of them that actually interested me would only be on for about six minutes.

So I sat with him in a companionable manner, ignored the sports events and gunfights whizzing past on the TV, and finished the front of the Silken Damask Jasmine sweater.

There's a bit of history here. During Spring Break, I made an idiotic mathematical error and decided that I needed a smaller set of needles to knit this sweater. Really, I needed a larger set. Had I been able to purchase a set of  0s and swatch with them, I would have discovered my error straightaway and nothing more would have happened. Instead, I set off on a road trip with my knitting, figuring that I would surely find the right size of needles somewhere along the way.

By the time I finally found a yarn shop that stocked those needles, I had finished the piece of knitting on the wrong needles. I knit these on size 1 needles, thinking I really needed 0s, and -- here is the crux of the matter -- skipped the bottom ribbing. I figured I would add it with the 0s when I found some.

I found the needles and quickly discovered my error. I actually needed 2s to make the gauge. So I set the piece of knitting aside, intending to frog it later, and went ahead and made my friend's Jasmine sweater.

Having sent it off, I then got going on my own -- the pink one. Yesterday I finished the front and went to get the piece to be frogged so I would have enough yarn for the back.

Knitters, you know that feeling. You are looking at something lovely, something that took a long time to make. You know you must frog it -- rip all the stitches out and start again. It is a poignant moment, isn't it?

But then it occurred to me to measure the piece that was doomed to frogging. It is only a little narrower than the newly completed front piece. I had just read a suggestion at Sew Intriguing to knit the front in a larger size than the back if you are buxom, so I thought I might actually be able to save the piece and use it for the back (back and front are identical in this pattern).

Here they are, the old piece lying on the new piece for comparison, and there is the problem: the length.

It is nothing to pick up the stitches along a stockinette edge and knit on a ribbing. No one will ever know. However, the old piece is 3 centimeters shorter than the new one, before the ribbing. One might think that one could pick up those stitches and do a couple of rows of stockinette. But stockinette knitted up and stockinette knitted down are going to be half a stitch off from one another.

Feel free to say "Huh?" if you have never tried it. But it is true. Garter stitch can be done up or down with no difference, but stockinette just doesn't match.

Will this be noticeable over two rows? Should I go right into the ribbing in order to avoid that little mismatch, and have the front 3 centimeters longer than the back? Should I go ahead and frog it and do it over properly? Decisions, decisions.

Ladies, in going over #2 daughter's plans for the school to work transition, we determined that the final thing she needed in order to be completely prepared (besides a car, which she will have to get for herself) was a proper grown-up handbag. I will be getting her one for her birthday later this month, and I want to fill it up. Thus, a poll. What, apart from your cell phone and PDA (both of which she owns) do you keep in your purse? Or what do you think you should keep in your purse?

 

This postcard says to have a Glorious Fourth. Please do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would you like to join me on an urban hike? First we have to load up on nutritionally empty calories. We were going to go to the bakery where they would have had croissants with ham and cheese, Danish pastries, Earl Grey tea, fruit salad, and hot chocolate made with steamed milk. However, they had closed for the holiday, so we ended up grabbing a box of doughnuts at the grocery.

I ate one in solidarity with the kids, even though it didn't taste good to me, and drank a few sips of the nasty Orange Flavored Fruit Punch as well. Doughnut picnics in the park with my father are one of my happy childhood memories. He died when I was six, so memories of him are naturally few. So I guess that is what the doughnut was for.

 

Next we headed for nearest urban trail.

Our town is working on a network of trails and "greenways." We have 10 miles paved right now, but the plan is to have 129 miles eventually. A lot of them are just a matter of paving the trails that are already there, which seems odd. However, I think that paving them and having the city take charge of them will preserve them from being made into subdivisions and parking lots in the future, so I am for it.

We started with the Raven Trail, but it is only .3 miles, so we quickly walked to the end of it and back and didn't feel that we had really had a proper hike. It is mostly just to provide safe walking to school for the kids in the neighborhood -- a laudable goal, but not what we were after. We pressed on to the Mud Creek Trail.

The Mud Creek Trail is 2.1 miles, and then of course you have to turn around and come back.

Usually, when I hike, I am on trails in the local national or state parks, where the trails are arranged in loops. The urban trails allow you to go from one place to another, which is handy, but are not in loops. Therefore, you have to turn around at the end and return.

Just a heads-up, here. It is going to be twice as long as you think.

 

 

 

 

 

Such a lovely trail, though, you cannot object to the distance. Along here pretty soon is a Wetlands Mitigation Area. I have to confess that I find that an odd name. What are they mitigating? Why would you want to mitigate wetlands? Or are the wetlands themselves mitigating something? There is a number for the Army Core of Engineers and it says to call if you have questions. This may not be the kind of question they had in mind.

 

 

You can see a peep of the creek here. There is lots of honeysuckle, and there are trumpet vines and mimosa and stuff. It smells heavenly.

On the other side are people's back yards. I think that you would have to feel a bit of responsibility if you lived there, and they seem to. There are more little figurines of geese, fishing boys, gnomes, and deer than you would think possible. They clearly want us to have something to look at besides their bedroom windows.

 

 

I like this little bridge. It is one of those humpbacked bridges, very sweet and pretty.

 

 

 

Here is the view from the top of the bridge, looking down. There are plenty of fronds and rocks and things to admire, even if the water is still invisible.

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, we crossed a less quaint but larger bridge and got to see the creek in all its muddy glory.

We were a little confused here. We were almost to the freeway, and yet the trail was still going on. We had thought when we found ourselves in the parking lot of a mortgage company that we must surely be at the end, but no, the trail continues.

 

In fact, it goes right under the freeway. This sign points out that walking under the freeway when it is full of water would not be a sensible thing to do.

Under the freeway, there were some cute little children playing in the creek. The cars boomed and whizzed above us. The whole thing was pretty cool.

 

After this, I ran out of memory in my camera. We fetched up at the parking lot for Target and Old Navy, and turned around to go back. It makes sense to have the trail go to parking lots, of course, so you can drive to the trail and walk and then drive home. Alternatively, you could go shopping and stuff the gear in your backpack before returning to the trailhead. Altogether, we walked 4.8 miles, and it was getting hot, so we were properly red and sweaty when we got back to our vehicles.

Since we live in a small town, we ran into approximately 14 people we knew while we were in that condition.

We picked up some hem tape and a bunch of movies that I hadn't heard about and therefore hadn't put on my Netflix list, and spent the afternoon having a needlework and movie marathon. That hem tape is great stuff, by the way. The lace kind in particular gives you a pretty edge to your knits, inside and out. (I mean things sewn of knit fabric, of course.) I am grateful to the Sew? I Knit community for telling me about it.

I finished up a top and skirt for #2 daughter and she put the zipper into my print skirt. I then switched to knitting and did three repeats of the lace. Unblocked lace looks like nothing at all, of course, but isn't it a pretty color?

#1 daughter called from a bookstore in the Frozen North, currently not frozen but rather soggy, to ask for book advice, and to give #2 daughter some advice on love and work. The guys came and went. The Schwan's man brought ice cream for today's festivities. We have a rather lavish menu planned, and perhaps sparklers, but #2 daughter has to return to her state this afternoon, so mostly we will be hanging out with her and helping her pack and so forth.

Happy Independence Day!

For today's American Heroes, I offer you the Jubilee Singers. They were founded in 1871, a group of former slaves and children of slaves, well-trained musicians who performed internationally to help support their school, Fisk University. They sang patriotic songs and popular ballads, and it would have been heroic enough, perhaps, that they used their talents to make education possible for African-Americans, who could not, at that time, expect a welcome at most American colleges. It must have taken a good deal of courage for these young people from Tennessee to travel such distances, and to sing for the likes of Queen Victoria.

But they soon added to their repertoire the traditional songs of the slaves, the songs we call spirituals. Most of their audiences had never heard this music, and the Jubilee Singers are credited with preserving this important part of our American heritage. They were able to raise $150,000, enough to buy the present campus of Fisk University, which had till that time been a struggling school (the Fisk Free Colored School) for African Americans of all ages, housed at an old Army barracks.

Here you can hear some of the songs the Jubilee Singers sang. You may already know them -- and if so, you can thank the Jubilee Singers. And here is a very interesting article about their Welsh tour, undertaken at a time when the Welsh were feeling rather put upon (for good reason, you will find if you follow the link) and could really relate to the trials the singers had faced.

We faced no trials yesterday. We sang rousing songs in church, we grilled hamburgers and zucchini spears (with a little olive oil and Cajun seasoning -- yum), we went to a party and also to do some shopping.

The point of the shopping was that I should find a cheap, simple pair of sandals. I am not sure that I was successful in this, because I now have a pair of slides in "seaweed" rather than the simple leather sandals I had in mind. #2 daughter, however, was able to buy some charming new pumps for her job, which doesn't include as much physical labor as mine, and her evenings out in the city, of which I have essentially none. While I know that my only feeling toward a pair of flirty burgundy pumps with an open toe and a frill of leopard-print chiffon would be -- after I had worn them for an hour at work -- profound hatred, I admit that there was a moment there when I wished that I still had occasions for wearing really pretty shoes.

I should say that I know that, had we gone to a shoe store like serious shoppers, we would have been able to find simple leather sandals. However, we were at T.J. Maxx, with a settled intention not to spend more than $16 a pair. That is like going hunting, not like going to the butcher shop. #2 daughter was in luck, because dressy pumps were what was in stock that day. However, I was also in luck, because she spotted a hoard of Yorkshire tea, and we snagged the lot.

Then there was further progress on the finishing of garments, which is sort of what I had planned to accomplish this weekend. I say "sort of" because accomplishing things is fairly low on my list of goals for the weekend. But I have finished my two blouses, with very pretty buttons. An Art Nouveau lady for the blue, and a Celtic knot for the paisley.

Any minute now I am going to try to winkle the kids out of bed. I am luring them with a promise of a visit to the bakery for pastries and hot chocolate, followed by a nice long tramp on one of the new trails -- our town is working toward hooking up all the local walking trails into a grand network of walks that will extend throughout the town. This walking business must obviously be done before we get up into the 90s.

It was market day yesterday, so we went to the market, #2 son and #2 daughter and I. Peaches, nectarines, blueberries, cabbages, bread, croissants, and long beans for us. There were long lines for tomatoes and salad mix, and it was very crowded, so we gave up on those. Our own tomatoes have not ripened yet, so those ripe tomatoes are probably from hot houses anyway. Patience, patience.

The French farmer gave us the secret of the particularly concentrated flavor of his vegetables: limited water. This is also my husband's secret gardening tip. "Giving lots of water is the safe thing to do," said the French farmer in a mysterious voice as he vouchsafed this secret to us, "but it weakens the flavor." We always withhold water for a few days before picking, ourselves, though I have never before thought of it as a daring thing to do. Now you know.

If you got bored with standing in line, you could talk with your friends, fondle the produce, and admire the dogs (actually, we were kind of pointing and laughing at them today, but that is surely a form of admiration). You could also get a massage or have your hands painted with henna, or your portrait done.

We skipped those choices, but did listen to the music a bit. Here are the vibes and guitar on the Northwest corner. These guys were causing a bit of a traffic jam, enough so that people were climbing up onto the walls and cutting through the garden to move past this corner.

And here the solo tuba. He was right by the masseuse. Is it relaxing to hear tuba jazz solos while getting a massage? I do not know.

The tuba is so rarely used in this way. It seems, really, that a tuba would be a monstrously inconvenient instrument for a busker. You feel that you should give him something just for his valor in trying this.

For today's American Hero, I offer you Alice Waters, patron saint of farmer's markets and originator of the Edible Schoolyard project, which seeks to bring gardens into schools.

Here you can read what Alice Waters has to say about fast food vs. slow food, and why it matters. It is an interesting and thought-provoking essay. Waters works for sustainable agriculture, making healthy foods available to inner city people through urban farmer's markets, and education.

Later, #2 daughter and I went to the LYS for a button, and admired Touch Me, a wool and microfiber yarn that knits up into something like velvet, and an all-silk yarn that was quite beautiful but so expensive that we might as well have been in a museum for the likelihood there was of my actually getting to knit any of it. #2 daughter was carrying the purse that her grandmother crocheted for her and the nice lady in the shop showed us the bag she had made as her first crochet project. Our 96 cent purchase didn't help them pay their light bill that day, but I intend to save up for some of that Touch Me for Christmas presents

We then saw the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," shared a banana split in a new local ice cream parlor where they give you actual walnut halves instead of mystery chopped nut topping, prowled around in the bookstore for a while, and came home to do some hemming (me) and piano practice (#2 daughter). We transformed our fresh fruits and vegetables into dinner, and had a relaxing evening.

Today we have church, and a housewarming party, and we are to take #1 son out to shop for climbing shoes.

I hope everyone else is having an equally pleasant weekend.

The Yarn Harlot doesn't get to be an American Hero for the 4th of July, because she is Canadian, and thus American but not in on the whole fireworks thing this weekend. However, she is once again doing a wonderful thing with her power in the knitting community by helping to get the word out for an initiative to encourage breastfeeding among low-income women by giving out hand-knitted baby hats at WIC informational meetings. Click on her link to get the details.