Why I haven't been here

I'm without my computer this week and working with our laptop that Dark Garden revived from the dead.



Until I can dig up the camera software, I can't download photos and it seems everything I want to talk about requires a visual. I haven't figured out how to access our "network," so I can't even use my old photos, nor do I have any of my bookmarks.

The laptop is rather cumbersome to work with. You put the cursor somewhere to start typing and, with no warning, it will jump somewhere else; or it will lag behind and you're well into a sentence and it's just not showing up. So you start over and all of a sudden it shows up along with what you just retyped.



At least Pandora works off the laptop and that's what I've been doing: sewing a skirt I can't show you and knitting a lace scarf I can't show you while listening to 70-year-old music. It goes with my coffee pot.

What was I thinking?

Gray pants in March? Who in their right mind would work on gray pants in March?

I have had this fabric since the beginning of time. The fact that I got it at WalMart should tell you how old this is. It's a nice, light spring gray, but gray nonetheless and I have about as much ambition to work on it as I do to, say, clean the microwave.

I would shelve it, but I really do need some decent pants that don't look heavy and wintery and, while I could push a few buttons on the internet and have, in a few days, a pair of nice lined linens, it seems a waste when I have yards upon yards of gray linen, the likes of which actually match this

(the yarn, not the cat) and could, conceivably, match these, but don't necessarily have to.

It occurred to me recently that my wardrobe is sufficient and serviceable. So I decided that any additions would be handmade* (which, in my case, means made by my 35-year-old Singer or on the knitting needles). I don't know how long I can keep up this particular resolution. I'm quite a slow worker and have the attention span of a gnat. I'm sick of the fabric/yarn long before I'm done with the garment.



*Except for underwear, which is even more boring than gray pants to make, if you can even find the supplies to do it and when you do find the real supplies, you have to buy so much you need to start running a sweat shop on the side to make underwear for the entire county in order to justify the order, not to mention the problems with I.N.S. Of course you can indulge in the truly handmade, meaning no sewing machine, which bypasses the need for special ready-to-wear elastic and the sweat shop. Please note that I'm going on and on about the underwear just to drive Mamma K nuts, who couldn't believe I wrote an entire post about new underwear, when we all know how important comfortable underwear is to the future of society.

I hear something is going on this weekend...

I have been informed that tomorrow is the Super Bowl. Each year this weekend appears as a blip on my radar only if the Redskins are involved and the locals enter into a period of temporary insanity, saying things like "I hope we will win" as though they'll be rolling around on the field getting pummeled into the turf. In those years, the Super Bowl become a minor annoyance, rather like a coming snow "storm" of anything over 2 inches.

Since the Redskins are not in the playoffs, Super Bowl Sunday doesn't affect me. If we don't have anything going on, Dirtman will probably descend into the Man-Cave and watch the game in the little box in the corner of the screen while he surfs the other channels for some enigmatic program that has yet to be filmed. Or an old Gunsmoke episode.

Sometimes John Boy comes over for the Super Bowl, in which case Dirtman will use the full screen -- maybe -- and John Boy will recite a litany of interesting (to him) statistics. Dark Garden hates football, so never shows up for these events.

Me -- I steer clear of the television for the entire weekend because I can't stand all the ads selling me crap "for the big game," not to mention the programs about the ads during the Big Game and the "news" stories about the ads during the Big Game. Then there are the pre-game shows speculating about what may or may not happen during the Big Game, as if it makes a bit of difference.

So I'll spend the weekend drafting a pants pattern (yet again), knitting on Evening Breeze, considering making this my next sewing project and this my next knitting project and listening to Diana Krall.

Sorry -- no beans this weekend either.

Dirtman and the blustery day

Well at least the top of the window box cushion* is done...


Here being attacked modeled by the lovely Dirtman

...who, I think, lost.


*This is probably the closest I will get to quilting, though it's really not that because it's just the patches without the quilting. Whatever this is, this is the closest I'm likely to get to it.