I've been thinking about Alex since I recently ordered 3 copies of Rosenshontz Tickles You! for myself and as gifts. Am I exhibiting "rich" behavior now?

Yesterday I was driving home from Wilmington along a beautiful back road. The sun was strong at 6 pm and the soft air and blooming trees had me in a fine mood. I was listening to the World Cafe and they played I Scare Myself. I rolled the windows down and sped up.

Five years ago in the Yukon Territory, I bought a ball of qiviut at Folknits and spent about a year testing the accompanying scarf pattern on some waste wool. It took me that whole year to test the pattern, because every time I reached row 8, I suddenly had fewer stitches than the pattern called for. I set it aside numerous times. I showed it to yarn store experts, and read books, and counted about a thousand times. It finally made sense when I decided to chart the pattern. THE PATTERN WAS WRONG. NOT ME! IT! I corrected the pattern, not just eliminating the stitch count discrepancy, but converting the side panels of the scarf from side-by-side duplicates to symmetrical reflections of each other, like the picture showed. Finally, I broke out the qiviut and started knitting. Three years later, I am still going. I pick it up every 6 months or so and do a repeat. The satisfaction for me is the beautiful chart I made, but the scarf will be a nice reminder when it's done.

My latest project is a simple cabled sweater from this beautiful book: A Season's Tale. The sweaters, the location shots in Scotland, and the models are all gorgeous. I've already purchased a whole lot of purple-y alpaca yarn from the Technicolor Sheep (one of THREE knit shops within three miles of my office, and hands-down my favorite), but I haven't cast on yet. I'm still contemplating the perfect hip-to-waist ratio (mine vs. the sweater's) and imagining the most flattering fit. John has picked out a bulky turtleneck sweater for himself, too-- he might do well to learn to knit, because I think this is going to take a while.

PS I only paid about USD $40 for the yarn and pattern 5 years ago-- now it's $85. Hope they fixed the pattern!

In the same day, I was fortunate enough to get a note from a former boyfriend, bringing me up to date on his doings and the doings of a group of friends I'd lost touch with. I used to pooh-pooh all communications between former couples. It seemed to me that in contacting an ex, one was either trying to rekindle a lost flame or trying to feel better about one's own life by confirming that the ex is still living in Anytown and still working the assembly line and, most importantly, still looking for love. But this note made me feel uplifted. There was a genuine exchange of warm wishes, without any tentacles probing for inappropriate confidences or declarations. I feel very content, and lucky to have received such a nice note. And that's that.

Finally, PHOTOS! The shorts on the left were a Christmas present to my dad in 1996. At that time, I thought quilting was a dumb country craft, and I only sewed clothing. I found the loud fabric in the quilting section of my local fabric store, which foreshadowed my future love of (addiction to?) quilting and, even further down the line, my eventual part-time employment at the store. I secretly loved the 'ugly' fabric then, and am even more fond of it now. My dad wore the shorts A LOT and they drew lots of comments at the races.

The pair on the right are the replacement shorts Dad ordered for his birthday on April 7th. I found the perfect fabric online at reprodepot.com and did A LOT of fiddling to a generic shorts pattern to make an identical twin of the first pair. The weather hasn't been warm enough for Dad to wear these much yet, but he gamely tried them on for the camera. (That's my mom beaming proudly beside him.) If he enjoys this pair of "Jams" half as much as the first pair, I will be happy.

I am very tired of the rain, but hopeful that April showers will bring the promised May flowers. Meantime, I have a song from Rosenshontz stuck in my head. My brother got this record as a gift for his 5th birthday from our Aunt Betsy. It must have been pretty good, because I can still sing part of The Garden Song chorus. This song makes me think of knitting just as much as gardening, and both are on my mind!

Instead, I've been thinking about Daylight Savings Time and time zones in general. When I lived in Alaska, I was fascinated to learn that the sun rises and sets at different times within the same time zone! This is not a huge revelation when you stop to consider the width of a time zone, but when someone pointed it out to me, I was pretty interested. This helps explain why it gets dark so early in Seattle in the winter-- it's at the far west of its time zone. Alaska is of particular interest because it is so wide (equal to the entire width of the continental US) and it has only two time zones. (It used to have 4! But they changed it). Think about the variations in sunrise and sunset as you go from Ketchikan to Nome.

So, Daylight Savings. I discovered this year that I am not really against it. Sure, everyone complains when suddenly the alarm rings an hour earlier and the lengthening daylight is postponed an hour, leaving us stumbling about in the pre-dawn darkness once again. I don't like it much myself. But I noticed this year that the light was getting strong around 5:30, and I was starting to wake up before my alarm naturally. I'd rather get up and use the early light than languish in bed just because the clock says 6 a.m. And I feel more energetic and watch less TV on summer evenings because it's still light at 8 p.m. In my opinion the clock is an arbitrary light management convention anyway, and no more absurd than the idea of Daylight Savings.

I may be in the minority on this one.

Before Martha Stewart Living jumped the shark, I used to love studying the pages. I never made a gift box from a small, hollowed-out acorn, (I WISH I had a picture of this, but you all are familiar enough with Martha to know I am not making this up) nor did I convert to a handmade horsehair mattress covered with freshly ironed, 350-thread-count handmade linen sheets, but GOD it was beautiful. I could appreciate the vision. Just like when I took a semester off from college and spent 6 weeks on the sofa thinking about how to get back in shape while I watched Marky Mark lift weights in the video for Good Vibrations. Can you feel it, baby? I can too. I wasn't gonna do the work, and frankly Martha and Marky Mark are not performing their art because they want you to follow suit. They are making art for art's sake (okay, more likely it's for money or for sex, but I really don't think they care if you model your life after theirs. Just keep watching.)

Stay tuned for my conclusion. It's coming. But if I don't get to work, I may not have a job.

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