Looming looming

Hello again from your friendly carpal tunnel sufferer (who's checking it out with a doctor this week because Ow.) For days now I have been steering clear of typing and scrolling and knitting and unscrewing any lids from pickle jars, which leaves me with... the loom.

I know it looks like there's zero progress from last week but that's because weaving is a lot of repetition and same old same old until suddenly there's nothing left to weave into. And when I say repetition etc., I mean the following activities:

Wooden frame thing into upper notch

Push yarn thing from right to left

Adjust new yarn strand to track a 45 degree angle from right to left

Use wooden frame thing to pat the 45 degree yarn into place

Tug the end of the yarn to make sure the sides are even with the inches that came before

Wooden frame thing into lower notch

Push yarn thing from left to right

Adjust new yearn stand to track a 45 degree angle from left to right

Use wooden frame thing to...

You get the idea. And then periodically you have the thrill of unclipping the gears so you can roll your work onto the frontmost tube, to make room for more from the backmost tube. I know it's hard to see just looking at the back end, but I have actually done that quite a few times over the course of the week. All the buffer cardboard so close together tells me I'm getting close.

You know what would be smart when setting up a new project? Colour-coding the ends of the cardboard strips so you start with some red, then move to orange, then yellow, then green. Then, when you're rolling to the other end and start seeing yellow or orange, you'll feel like you're getting somewhere.

Knitting's much the same on the repetition front, but you can multitask with it if you get bored, even without adding in cables or lace or shaping. With weaving, all you can do is make the fabric more interesting by switching up the size of yarns you're pairing up, or doing a plaid, or both, or even doing a double width which is a magic trick I really do want to learn some time.

Since I can't do any of these things till I have this baby off the rails, I am gonna get back to it. It's cold and windy out, but I am about due to see a sun patch landing on this table, and I'm not sure there's much nicer than sitting in one of those to finish a simple project.

Hope you have a great weekend, and a great weekend next time too! I am begging off Hugs till April 5, in the hopes that resting this arm will get me back to normal faster. Meanwhile, take care of yourself via nice times and treats.

 

 

Knit Trip Fail

I was very excited to get out for two road trips this week - day trips, really, but covering a decent distance - and prepped knitting for them and everything. Here is the sock I worked on, during trip one:

It's all chompy! My favourite cute stage for a sock. And maybe you will be able to relate to this, but I was really loving working on it, too. 

Since I broke two fingers on my left hand a few years back, I've never felt the same about knitting. It's not smooth and effortless like it was, somehow. I am less confident and engaged in it. Not so as I sat in the car and needled the stitches, flying along, missing even that we were crossing the Skyway Bridge over Burlington Bay (which was just as well, as it's always kind of freaked me out.)

However! the experience was doomed. We stopped at a gas station bathroom and the soap in there smelled so very awful, I didn't want to risk touching my yarn again lest there be odor transfer. So I waited and, among other things, took pictures of the High Falls in Rochester:

Because on a day trip, you totally want to spend four hours driving to Rochester so you can turn around and come home again. To be fair I am glad I saw these gorgeous falls, right smack in the middle of downtown...

... and also that we were able to restock our dwindling supply of Kleenex facial tissues, which are no longer sold in Canada owing to shipping costs. 

Coming back we drove the south shore of Lake Ontario and that was lovely too. As was the view of the whirlpool downriver from Niagara Falls. 

I even liked the wild plants growing alongside the cliff path enough to take these pictures.

Plus clouds! It was a gorgeous day for clouds. And for rain, which drenched us before drying up again.

When we finally crossed back home to Canada and I didn't have to check my map every ten minutes, I washed my hands one more time to be sure the smell was finally gone, and pulled out my knitting for more excitement. Whereupon I discovered this:

A DROPPED STITCH.

So much for the return of all my carefree knitting flair.

I know I have to rip back and reknit, but I am telling myself I'll be able to pick it up with a crochet hook and carry on. I have to wait for that voice to quiet down. These socks are for Jan, for Christmas, and they have to be perfect. 

Later in the week we drove to Buffalo and I brought the other sock, but I was still tired from the previous trip and didn't have the heart to knit much. So instead I will show you pictures fro Delaware Park, which is incredibly lovely and well worth the drive.

That's Hoyt Lake, and here is the Rose Garden.

 

This time the skies were clear and temperatures were soooo hoooooot... no wonder I didn't pick up my needles as the day progressed.

That brief glimmer of joy in knitting did make me think about what I might cast on next, though, when I finally finish Jan's socks. Maybe a pair of mohair socks, which are faster and so lovely to work with? It might be that I need the change in fiber to claw back some enthusiasm. Or maybe I should make a sweater? Or even a vest. Just some random thing I might never intend to wear, even, launched for the love of knitting it. 

After all, autumn is only a month or two away now, and there's nothing nicer than a new knit when the temperatures drop. Not even the view of stunning falls, or a leafy well-groomed park.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend and again, thank you for joining me. I'm going to wander off now and think more about how to handle that dropped stitch. See you next Saturday!

Making adjustments

It's getting to be that magical cold-weather time of year where I live, and that means two things.

I get to wear my beautiful handspun twined mittens, and I get to feel guilty about the matching hat. Yay!

Or rather, ugh. I had such good intentions with this hat, and way too much confidence in my abilities to knit a garter band and pick up stitches for the rest. Not sure if you can see the problem in this photo, so perhaps we'll try another angle:

There is a LOT of ease on top. I think the handspun was just too heavy to flop properly, because the crown decreases are perfectly flat, a critical element I did get right.

Ignoring the fact that wearing this hat makes me look like the stem on a mushroom, I even did this elaborate trim feature:

I still really like this element, even though it's wasted on this hat. I look awful with it on, and it keeps sinking and shifting as I walk, too. It's way too big. If I had one of those gazelle necks I could tuck my long hair into it and stride out of the house looking like I have an attractive hat on. Sadly I was not so blessed. So I'm going to have to find a way to make the hat smaller. I see two routes to this destination.

Option A: tuck the excess inside the band, and stitch it down.

 

Option B: fold the excess over the band, and stitch it down.

And at this crossroads, I have stopped. I'm not sure which is better, and also, I need to dig out my leftover handspun so the stitches don't show. Otherwise I'll have to do decorative stitches that look like they were done on purpose, and that's another area where I'm more confident than adept, heh.

I do think it's worth it though, don't you? I mean this hat is WARM. The halo on it is incredible. The colours are beautiful. And, you know, I handspun this yarn and everything.

The good news is, we're doing a whole-house overhaul at the moment to accommodate home offices. I'm sure to find the leftover yarn in my travels, and when the work is done, I'll have a few more cosy nest options for actually doing the alterations. If I'm really careful and lucky, I'll be out in style in January. A girl can hope.

Another hope: that you are having a great weekend. Thanks for coming to see me, and let's do this again next Saturday!

Sock hop

Short Hug today my friends. After a brief recovery last Saturday, I spent the rest of the week with a rebound round of Covid. I'm only just clawing my way back to normal life again now, too late even for the good sunshine for taking pictures, yikes. However! during my brief hours of good health last weekend, I tackled a sock problem that's got to be six years old.

I don't know what happened with these. Normally I knit both socks in a pair at the same time, getting one through the cuff and then the other, then both to the heel flap, and so on. Knitting with this stripe, I got one sock complete to the point of a grafted toe with the ends run in, and the other as far a finished heel flap. Then I discovered I had cast on two few stitches right from the start, throwing off the entire heel math unless I fixed it. And fixing it would either mean adding two stitches and living with a tight leg, or ripping out and starting over.

I knew the harder option was the answer, but... UGH. Hence the six years. But in the euphoria of recovering from Covid, I wasn't in the mood for half measures, so I pulled out all those stitches. Okay, I admit it: not all. I couldn't face redoing the ribbing, so I guess that part of the sock might feel a bit snugger.

All the rest is what I managed to get done as my symptoms returned and then felled me completely. But hey, I'll take it!

Knitting with frogged yarn is kind of sad... the stitches are so gummed up compared to what you get with unknit stuff.

I'm pretty sure it will all come out in the wash... or most of it anyway.

The main thing is, I'm working through my knitting backlog, while still in time to produce a single pair of Christmas socks. No pressure, amiright?

Hope you've had a great week, with lots of cheery outside time! See you next Saturday, maybe even for a celebration of Something Finished. Meanwhile, enjoy your weekend, and thanks for making me a part of it by stopping by.

My laptop died but books are forever

Hello again and I so hope your computer didn't curl up and die this week, like mine did. Let's look at something pretty before we dig in to that awful story, shall we? 

Is it just me or does this remind you of a houseful of pets watching the day unfold?

 

I found this picture on an old blog post about matching up yarns to make quite a lot of sock kits, which reminds me that I still have a few of these left to work on. If anything else bad happens, I may race to the storage cupboard and get a pair onto needles. This mohair/wool blend has always been the best for calm blue ocean knitting.

So, my laptop. It was a slow-moving disaster, and one I certainly should have addressed before the crisis. It's not like I hadn't noticed the battery wasn't charging, or that the processor was moving like a geriatric turtle. But you know, if leaning a book onto the power cord is enough to improve the contact points inside the machine enough that they touch the points on the cable, why fuss?

Because someday the points will fail altogether, is why fuss. And maybe even when you've been working off the battery for a while, such that there's only an hour of life left in it.

You can imagine how I panicked as I saw what was happening and the implications set in. And no, I hadn't been on top of doing backups either. I did have an external drive, at least. Somebody else needed one and when I was picking it up for them, I spotted another in a pretty blue I thought would look nice on my desk when I was using it. I swear I am more computer savvy than this normally, but this is apparently what I have become over the last few years. 

Turns out not quite an hour is just enough to get a 97% complete backup, download all your browser bookmarks and note all your passwords, order a new computer, and email critical files to yourself. Thank goodness I had the wherewithal to think of this much.

Finally, with a startled squeak, my laptop shut down, and that was that. 

It's taken with it the title of every book I've borrowed from the library over the past three years, which means I finally understand why people keep book journals on paper. I figured, why bother when the library app keeps track? but for some reason, once I logged in on a new device, all that information was gone. 

Fortunately I remember the titles of two I particularly wanted to mention here, including this absolutely marvellous memoir/cookbook by Sally Schmitt with Bruce Smith - Six California Kitchens. 

 

I honestly can't think of another book I've read recently that I found as moving and insightful and riveting... I guarantee I will not make any of the recipes, with the exception of the one for pie crust, because I don't have easy access to the ingredients or the audience for most. But I pored over every one, learning a ton of kitchen techniques. I looked forward to every moment I could spend with this book. I learned so much about - well, so much. It's a very approachable, very personal story of a woman who became enormously successful doing exactly what she wanted to do in the way she wanted to do it. If that's not reaching the top of Mount Everest without tools I don't know what is. I cried reading it, and I laughed, and who does that with a cookbok? Highly recommended.

I dove into some Ngaio Marsh mysteries this month as well. These are 'golden age' stories published up to seventy years ago, now, but they stand up. 

The one I found most pleasing of the latest batch was Grave Mistake, because so much of it is told through the view of a witty, engaging character with a very practical view of the people around her. If you haven't read any Ngaio Marsh, I recommend this one.

Have I done any knitting? nope. I did however figure out a fix for my too-tight socks that only requires ripping back to the heel flap, so I'm going to do it. I thought I'd leap into that when my computer died, like it was A Sign I should turn my back on tech for a day, but then I looked at my upcoming deadlines and bought a budget backup laptop locally to keep plowing through the work.

Hope your week was a little smoother than mine! Let's meet up again next weekend and see if things have improved at all. I know there will be pancakes happening here in a few days so that's an automatic win, don't you think?

Can these socks be saved

Hello again from from the knitting fail corner of Hugs! Looking over past posts, I see I started these socks as a Christmas present to myself in October 2021 (or more likely, the year before that, and hoped to knuckle down and have them ready for December 24, to tuck into my stocking.)

 

The good news is, they all but finished now. The second sock, currently filling a cute tinyhappy knitting bag, is also ready to graft at the toe. But I haven't done any grafting, because when I got this far and tried them on, I realized.... (cue the dramatic music)

THEY ARE SNUG AT THE ANKLE.

Okay I am pretty sure I know how this happened. The yarn is practically all alpaca and it's a heavier weight than I normally use, so I had to improvise the number of stitches I cast on and trust in the stretchability of the fiber, which was asking too much of it because alpaca isn't known for its elasticity. I knew this at the time. I have no excuse for this error in judgement.

Alternatively, I may have gained weight. I mean we all know our ankles is the first place those extra cookies go, right? 

 

Apparently I've been considering this problem for nearly a year without coming to a decision, so perhaps it's time to go over the two options I've identified. 

I can finish them and never wear them, which isn't a much different outcome than the ideal because hello: white alpaca DK socks? I can only ever wear these on a chaise for reading while not even thinking about getting up to make more tea, or in bed for sleeping for the first twenty minutes before I wake up in a sweat and claw them off my feet. 

Or, I can rip them out and reknit them with more stitches, and hope I have enough yarn to get to the toe because my vision was so very much a monotone foot. This approach will probably involve ripping, skeining, Soaking, drying, and ball-winding because who wants to knit with seriously kinked yarn?

I guess these two options are really:

I can finish them and never wear them or

I can just not finish them. 

Let's leave this horrible thought for your subconscious to ponder, or not, and do what I've been doing all this time which is looking at something pretty.

Two people I like have birthdays coming up - well, more than two people, but two I'm actually thinking about making my own cards for - so naturally I got out my watercolour paints to make some rectangular backgrounds on heavy paper.

This paint - small specialty sets from Kuretake Gamsai Tambi - has a ton of glitter in it and, by some chemical miracle, none of it rubs off once it's dry. I'll tell you though, the water you use to clean your brush is like a glitter whirlpool when you shine light through it. 

 

 

Even with two layered together, the colours seemed a little depressing for a milestone birthday in particular, so I also painted some backgrounds in regular watercolour. After it all dried and I cleaned away the brushes, I got out a Micron pen and started doodling. 

I don't think any of these are ready for their Hallmark Card debut, but I am at peace with that. Well, mostly. After panicking just a tiny bit I decided to work with the depressing glittery ones.

At this angle you can really see the glitter, which kind of compensates for the meh colours, don't you think? And also, in the case of the middle doodle especially, the illusion of birthday snakes emerging from a basket to surround you.

 

Next up: the paper cutter and some double-sided mounting tape. Naturally, I have no idea where my art card stock with matching envelopes have gone, so I will be doing a flat panel and slipping it into a gift bag. Invention, meet your mom Necessity.

Hope you have a lovely week not grieving over the agonizing choice I am putting off for my beautiful, unwearable socks! Let's get together again next Saturday.

(oh, I just realized there's a third option. I can finish the socks and give them to somebody with very slim ankles and a chaise reading habit. sadly neither of my birthdaying friends qualify, but maybe if I wait long enough I'll know somebody else who does...)

Death of a motherboard

Here at Hugs, it's not all knitting and painting and box unpacking and looking longingly at the bag that has the loom in it - I wish!  One must also be a technological whiz, if only intermittently.  And today is the intermittently part because a few months ago my motherboard... died.

Reader alert: this creatively barren post will be illustrated by random arty photos

Thankfully when it happened I had access to a second computer, which is where as you may recall I have been conducting all my various online tasks for the many weeks it took for my computer repair shop to determine that the problem is not fixable, and for the many weeks since while I have been deciding whether and with what to replace it for reals.   This process is still ongoing.

I wonder whether it was a mistake to clean the keyboard of the original laptop with a Swiffer cloth?  (answer: almost certainly.)

Anyway, I miss my beat-up old laptop SO MUCH, right down to the painter's tape holding it together and the super worn down keys.  And I also miss all the stuff that was on its hard drive (especially every single detail of the itinerary I spent about 50 hours mapping out for our summer trip to the UK, which I forgot to back up), and in its browser software, which was remembering all my passwords for me.

Do you use the same password for every site?  It's so tempting, only needing to remember one!  But it's not a good idea security-wise, so I try to be imaginative and come up with a different password every time.  Sometimes I can even remember them all by myself, which is helpful for super-security-needing sites.

I still love stripes.  Here are some vertical ones on linen to balance out the horizontal ones on glass.

I also have multiple e-mail addresses just to make it all more complicated.  But I am juggling so many tasks these days, and so many sites also require usernames that are not your e-mail address, that even though it is easy to reset a password... it's not at all easy to renew access to every site you have to use (I'm looking at you, Presto, keeper of my public transit fare card.)

During a brief lull before Christmas I realized I also don't remember any of the details for accessing my websites to upload and prune files.   Huzzah.  Thankfully I do remember the details for my web hosting service, so I asked them to let me know the server settings I need for that job.  Today, or this weekend, or else Really Really Soon, I am totally setting aside time to make use of that information.  After I finish shopping for new software to allow me to transfer files up to the web and back down to oblivion.  My tech support friend recommends WinSCP, which I notice also has a portable edition... and that seems smart because if I have all the necessary server information on a thumb drive, it won't matter if my computer busts up again.

Well, it won't matter quite so much as it did this time.  I'm sure it will still matter at least a little.

Ugh technology, right?  But on the upside: the fact that I finally have time to address this issue plus the fact that Ray is remodeling somebody's bathroom on Monday means that our giant renovation project is pretty much done.  Whooo hooooooooo!

(except for the outside, which has to wait till spring.  oh well: more time to plan right?)

Closing with both kinds of stripes: plaid for the win!

Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday.  So glad to be able to say that with confidence after a whole week of posting every day - MAN I have missed Hugs.

And then I burned my hand

Just popping in to say Merry Christmas to everyone here at Hugs!

Thank you Wrona for the beautiful card

...something I wanted to do so much, I'm typing with all of the fingertips I have that aren't burned.  But more on that later.

It's been a lovely first Christmas for us back at the new/old house, complete with snow covering every horizontal surface outside, especially on the cedar trees beyond our living room windows...

and lots of baking that happened at the very last minute... naturally!

I wouldn't have bothered at that late date only I wanted my one aunt to have a treat given that she was stuck in hospital for Christmas Day, and the family of the other to have one for the same reason (that aunt is sticking with pudding.)

Of course, three different batches of cookies (chocolate chip meringues not shown) plus brioche buns for Christmas morning plus some handsewing of ornaments to top the odd present means No Sleep For Tired Girls.

Kinda worth it though?

Then of course,  there's 'Making Supper While Exhausted..."

The potato ring keeps the sweet potatoes from burning. Wish I'd had a potato ring...

Here's what happened with all that.

This afternoon, we went to see my aunt in the hospital to bring cookies.  No time for turkey when you do that, so it was Festive Pork Tenderloin on tonight's menu.  I had the idea to save time by searing it in a deep frying pan of stainless steel that can go right into the oven.  Sear with olive oil, add apple juice and put on the lid, cook it in the oven, then return it to the stove to make a sauce with the drippings while the pork rests. Forget the pan's been in the oven at 425 degrees for 45 minutes, shift it by the handle with a bare hand, and enjoy Christmas Dinner while standing at the sink running cool water.

In other news, Pete and I got our new-to-us 1950s cast aluminum lounge set home and onto the porch:

The cushions are in the attic. There's also a pair of club chairs, the ladies' one a little shorter in the seat. So cute!

Closeup:

Sock photos coming to this space, eventually.

Yeah... It's my right hand this time so I guess it'll be a week or two before I can knit, or type with two hands, or paint?

Next Christmas I will have to wrap myself in cotton wool because I don't want a third festive hand injury after the last two holiday mishaps!

Pale blue bird of hope on our new artificial tree. Thank you Balsam Hill - looks almost real doesn't it?

Hope you've all had a marvelous holiday! with no burns because Ooooowie.

The raccoons next door

There are times when I can't believe my life, especially these days when it's pretty much a long string of stuff happening that I don't want, plus dishwashing.  Brief digression to today's opening photograph:

It's fingerless gloves, both of them from Viola yarns... what is it about Viola yarn, apart from Emily's enormous colour sense and hand-dying talents?  I haven't worn the brown ones with the little finger stubs until this fall, and every time I put them on I deeply regret having messed up with the design I was improvising such that the thumb holes are too big, but they sure look nice on the counter waiting to go out, don't they?  The background for them is a stack of Christmas-present chocolate bars.  They are also extremely nice, in my opinion... I wonder whether I could do with one less of them?

No, I could not.  Back to this post, Mary.

Thankfully I have a drawer full of tea to enforce brief breaks for something I do want, which is in this case FINALLY writing a new Hug.  I have had at least one Hug a day write itself in my head, and I take probably three Hug pictures a day as well, but when I try to get upstairs to my computer it's like all the Stuff Happening coagulates into some sort of tentacled delay monster clutching at my pantlegs and dragging me back down to the main floor to resolve three more crises at once.

(this literally happened on Tuesday, by the way, apart from the monster which remains, thankfully, figurative.  Ray needed me for a bunch of decisions and a trip to the garage which will be detailed shortly; I was trying to get through to the hospital where another aunt for whom I am POA had been taken by ambulance on the one day I was absolutely not able to rush to her side in part because of weather issues; and the condo concierge was calling to tell me there was a leak in our unit and a flood averted by the duct cleaners, but that I had to fill out a maintenance form online, stat. I was dialing the hospital from the landline while the concierge called on the cell phone as Ray called from the side door.  And the sink was full of dishes the whole time, too.)

(my aunt is okay.)

(ish.)

Probably we should break for another cheerful picture after all those parentheses.  Yes?

The significance of this picture is
a/ I am still knitting socks
b/ I like the way the stripe on this shallow bowl looks with the current sock
c/ I really, really like sitting my knitting on this wide shallow bowl and am amazed I never thought to use it before
d/ I bought this bowl two years ago at the antique market for a friend who is an alumni of the school from which it was apparently removed, and whose daughter currently attends it, and forgot I even had it until two weeks ago
e/ I am wondering whether I could just keep it? I mean, she probably wouldn't really appreciate it anyway right?  It's probably not actually vintage to her time there, and she doesn't knit.  She probably doesn't appreciate a truly great stripe either.
f/ I am wondering whether I truly am the worst gift giver ever, even though I did just give Jan the incredible cabled purple alpaca fingerless gloves I bought for her birthday, in spite of really wanting them for myself.
g/ I am thinking being a bad gift giver is part of the reason I have way too much stuff in my house.


Okay, time to finish my original thought:

I am seriously thinking I need to set up my computer on the main floor to increase my chances of being able to post or do any kind of writing, because the idea of a soundproofed tiny upper-bough nest in which to write was wonderful in theory but in practise is simply too remote to access.

BUT

none of this is what I wanted to tell you about today.

Today, it's:

The raccoon story

Raccoons are everywhere in Toronto and everywhere else in this geographical area I expect.  Do you have any where you are?  Just in case not, they are large furry grey-brown animals with a distinctive burgler eye-mask and matching dark coloured nose who are SO ADORABLE to look at, ambling along the street by lamplight.  They are accessorized by sharp claws and teeth which enable them to tear up your lawn for grubs, rip open your garbage cans for the rest of their meals, and make wild and extremely noisy love to their chosen partners in mating season.

We have had many encounters with raccoons in this house, most of them causing my heart to swell with the longing to hug and cuddle them.  Not all, but most.

For example:

The house behind us has an odd, sort of 1970s modern upper addition which only now that we have a second floor of our own I realize is attached to the exact bungalow we are in - there are only five of this layout in the whole neighbourhood which is kind of cool.  Their addition includes a third floor window with a little roof over it and one rainy day a few years ago I watched from my desk under the back window a lone racoon taking shelter in the tiny dry spot in front of that window, surveying the landscape for hours and then eventually curling up for a nap.

In spring and summer, I would wake to hear raccoons horsing around in the back yard and would sometimes open the curtain to watch them scampering across the fence tops, their distinctive curved backs and stripey tails lending a certain undulating grace to their movements.

I mean they are SO cute.  Even the night Pete had to open our side door a crack to brandish a broom at one who was about to attack our garbage can we both had to admire its polite persistence, even as we were daunted by its size.

One time when I was not enchanted was actually a bunch of times - night after night in fact when a small family of them were living in our fireplace which I had boarded over temporarily with plywood for reasons I don't fully recall but am grateful for (otherwise, they would have nested on the living room sofa.)  I have always been a bit slow on the uptake as a homeowner and it was many weeks before it occurred to me I could call a raccoon removal service to install a one-way door on the top of the chimney to get them all out before capping it.  By that time, the unpleasantness inside the fireplace was unpleasant indeed.  This is when I learned that raccoon poop has a very bad parasite living in it that is very, very bad for humans and must not be touched without extreme hand washing lest it be spread.

We cleaned thoroughly.  And the artwork I had painstakingly applied over the living room side of the plywood went into the bin.

Recently I woke to hear noises on the roof - with a steel roof, you hear a lot of noises and none so gorgeous as rain falling, but this one was not that good sort of noise.  Coming reluctantly into consciousness I thought, this is either wind blowing leaves over the shingles or it's an animal walking around.  After about forty minutes of drifting back to sleep only to be wrenched awake again I decided it had to be an animal, but was it on the main roof or the porch roof?  I dragged myself out of bed and drew our beautiful new drapes a bit to the side so I could peek through, wishing I was in the habit of bringing a pair of glasses up to my bedside table so I had a better chance of seeing whatever it was, and quickly realized I did not need them because it was - of course! - a large raccoon.

It seemed to be stuck, because it kept walking to the edge of the roof and looking down with just its back legs holding it in place, then forlornly getting up and turning back.  It walked right past me three or four times - the bottom of the window is a little more than a foot above the roof - and then suddenly it stopped and looked up and saw me.

It got up on its back legs, its front legs and claws dangling softly against its clean white belly, and stared into my eyes through the window and the screen which, I was deeply thankful to remember, is on the inside of the glass.  Then it dropped down, and a moment later it was back up again, so that the two of us were staring at each other perhaps forever.  I was mesmerized... those animals are even more gorgeous up close than they seem cute at a distance.  Finally I raised my hand to wave - what did I think this was, a cartoon? - and it dropped down and ran away down the side of the house.  Not stuck after all, I guess.

The point is: raccoons live here.  

And apparently, they also live IN OUR GARAGE.

I have been thinking a lot about our garage lately.  It dates back to 1942 like the house, and its cracked cement floor to 1945.  It looks charmingly like a boathouse.  It is painted white with a dark roof and I love to look at it and also, fear to look at it because it is currently full to the top and front to back with Stuff.

Stuff that belonged to us when we first married and couldn't bear to part with when we stopped needing it later because it reminded us of those years, stuff we found in the house or at the flea markets we used to frequent with Pete's dad, stuff that belonged to Pete's dad that couldn't come into the house after he passed away because he was a smoker and we didn't have room anyway, and other stuff that belonged to Pete's dad that should live in a garage regardless, like a second lawn mower.  Also, stuff we stored there in bins while the house was rebuilt.

And for the last four or so years there has been a hole in one of the doors where a wood panel fell out, and mice and the weather have been getting inside. 

So I was actually happy to be in there on Tuesday with Ray after the condo leak had been dealt with, and the hospital had confirmed my aunt was okay ish, cleaning it out to make room for the imminent delivery of our porch railings... which are finally ready now that it's too cold to use the saw to trim them to fit around our round porch columns.

Another digression, please?

WHY did I not agree to square columns??? It's so much easier to buy those anyway.  We had round columns originally and that's what Pete wanted again, so I didn't even consider the installation question.  But I also didn't consider using wood, because I got so tired of scraping and painting wood every few years... and composite railings take a while to produce, at least when you're getting the good stuff.

Anyhoo.  There we were in the garage deciding what could stay and what could go as we metaphorically held our noses because it really smelled like a bad toilet in there in spite of the freezing temperatures, and suddenly as we neared the back of the garage I saw a light grey ball of fur, size large, moving from A to B.  I got outta there and called for Ray to follow and then we had to rethink.  Well, I had to rethink.  He had been pretty sure there were raccoons in there and was wearing gloves and telling me not to move anything myself since I had none.

Except that I did - I was wearing the stub-fingered fingerless gloves.  And I was trying to help, as I do, moving things out as I came to them, only to have Ray tell me again not to move stuff.

To my credit, I was only using my fingertips.  Some of that stuff was super dirty with - well, I now realize with what.  And I didn't want to get any of it on my gloves, obviously, regardless of what it was.  What I didn't remember was that I would have to get the gloves off over my dirty fingertips.

GAH.

Thankfully, we possess many containers of Lysol Wipes, so I was able to wipe off my exposed fingers properly, carefully peel off the gloves, wash my hands, and carry the gloves to the laundry room for a good soak and a dry on the laundry shelf rod.

Those thumbs are definitely way too big.  What was I thinking?

The raccoon crises has a resolution, and it's similar to the raccoons-in-the-fireplace one but on a bigger scale.  Raccoons mate from January to sometime in spring and their babies are born from March to June, then weaned by September, so this is not the worst time of the year to discover you must evict raccoon tenants not paying their rent.  I have bought a one-way door online and while we wait for it to arrive, Ray will repair a small hole near the garage roof (the raccoons would chew it to be much bigger if that was their only way in) as well as the garage doors so they shut properly and have only one 8"x8" hole, to accommodate said one-way door.  Then we will hang ammonia-soaked rags in the garage and play a radio on 'very loud', to make it unpleasant for them to stay on their side of the metal wire one-way door.  After Christmas, we'll remove the metal door, repair the rest of the real door, and hire a service to cart away the rest of the Ick; in spring, we'll wash it all out with bleach and start over.

Only this time, I'm hoping for less keeping of Stuff.

Whew.  That was a lot of post!  And I have so many more things to tell you, after I go wash the next round of dishes.  More on that exciting story another day.

See you again when I can and meanwhile, enjoy every minute of your precious knitting time!  I know I am, when I get it.