Independence Day

In Chicago, the official Independence Day fireworks always happen the night of July 3rd, and the general populace (and surrounding suburbs) are left to put on their own shows on July 4th.  Even though the sun is still out and it's 4 PM, this incredibly beautiful afternoon is being punctuated by the noise of firecrackers and M80s.  By the time it gets dark, I know that it will sound like a war zone outside my house. The air will be filled with smoke from pyrotechnics.  The cats will flee to the basement and John and I will perch on our upstairs balcony watching the displays of our neighbors, some of which try to rival some of the larger suburban shows.

This is something I had no idea about until I moved to Chicago.  In fact, even when I lived in Hyde  Park, the neighborhood was relatively quiet.  But where I live now, in roughly the center of the residential part of the city, the 4th of July makes you wonder about all those laws banning the sale of fireworks in Illinois.

At one point I would have been irritated by it.  Annoyed with people who seem to think that their desire to celebrate outweighs the public need for safety and quiet.  But after my 7th year in our house, I've come to see it as part of the fabric of the year.  People blowing off steam and trying to create some explosive beauty in their back yards.

I've been spending the day, or rather Z's afternoon nap, doing some things that are good for my soul.  I finished a small spinning project and spun up and plied some lovely silk -- just 30 grams, but since I got about 160 yards, I think it will make a nice small summer scarf.  And I got my blog archives working correctly again.  It had been causing me a lot of mental distress that these weren't functioning correctly.  So now I have achieved some measure of independence from the frustration of having a partially functional blog.  There's still a lot more to do on the blog, but at least now I am making progress in the right direction.

My other little project has been to identify the ongoing craft projects I have going on right now.

They are:

• My Diagonal Squares quilt, in which all the blocks are complete, but have not been assembled into a quilt top.
• My Blooming 9 Patch quilt, which I have gotten about halfway through sewing the strips together.
• A doll-sized version of the Children's Delight quilt that I created for my god-daughter.  I have the top pieced together, but I want to try quilting and binding it myself.
• And a quilt project I haven't talked about yet, Modern Thinking.  This is a project I started this month as part of a color theory in quilting course that I took at Quiltology with Amy Walsh of Blue Underground Studios.  The color theme is "Fire and Ice".  I don't even have all my fabric cut out for this one yet.
• The Zebra Striper baby dress for Ms. Z.  I am in the long endless yellow knitting trip that is the skirt of the dress.  The advent of warm weather killed my enthusiasm for this project.
• A pair of toe-up socks that I haven't blogged about yet that takes nice advantage of striping sock yarn.  I'm about 1/3 of the way up the leg of the second sock, so these socks will make an appearance here soon, I hope.
• My Kushu Kushu scarf that uses that Habu Textiles stainless steel yarn.  I like this project but the fine yarn and big needles with dullish points don't make for fast knitting so it's been sidelined for a little while.
• John's Stained Glass Scarf which is not quite to the halfway mark now.  I made a lot of progress on this thing when I was home full time with Zosia (it was my nursing project).  The double knitting is neat but takes so darn long. 
  
• And my Three-Ply Targhee Log Cabin Blanket.  I've decided to use some log cabin squares in this project and just some squares of garter stitch on the diagonal.  This project sits in my living room waiting for some love.  Something it's unlikely to get any time soon since it's a thick wool blanket and it's getting warm here in Chicago.
• My Rogue cardigan.  Now that I am post baby and on my way to getting my post-baby body back into shape, this project may get some air time as it gets closer to the fall.
  
• My Moorit CVM spinning project.  There's still a whack of a lot of that big ol' ball of moorit CVM to spin up.  I'm going to try to load up my iPhone with podcasts and get cracking on this.  I did a little test spinning to see if I would have any problems matching my previous singles and it still looks pretty good.  I still have this dream of spinning the wool and designing a sweater to use it with!

The scary thing is that there is probably more lurking around that I am not remembering.  Clearly I have a little quilt startitis right now. I need to get my sewing machine into action.

Happy 4th of July to everyone here in the US and elsewhere that's celebrating the day.  To everyone else, I wish you a great weekend!

Kill the Cookies

I discovered a little issue with being able to post comments to my blog.  If, for some reason, you try to comment on my blog and have difficulty doing so, please clear out the cookies for my site from your browser.  Apparently the cookies hold on to information that refers to my old Movable Type information. 

I'm learning lots about MT that I didn't know before, but don't feel like I'm getting much closer to an installation that makes me happy.

Thanks for your patience.

Finished Fairy Wings

With my niece's 5th birthday party only a weekend away, it was clear that I needed to finish her wings.

Baby Steps

Whoever thinks baby steps are small ones has never had the opportunity to watch their own baby take them.

Ms. Z took her first independent steps on Monday morning to try to get a glass of water that John was holding (she loves drinking water out of a regular glass).  She took three whole steps without help.  She was acting like she might do something like that for a little while and I was getting nervous that she was going to do it when John and I weren't there to see them.  But she saved it so that both of us could see.  Of course, she went right back to crawling, which she prefers to walking because speed is better than verticality in her book.  But real walking is not far away now.  And we all enjoyed her new triumph.

There would be pictures, but my camera and my SD card conspired against me and I seem to have lost most of my baby pictures from June.  Color me not very happy about that.  But at least I was able to get my blog problems straightened out.

Updated to add: I know that clicking on my comments link leads to an error message.  If you click on the "Permalink" link just to the left of the Comments link, it will take you to the entry page (which isn't really any different than the comment link operates) and let you leave a comment should you be inclined to do so.  Not sure why this is happening.  More of the magic of migrating from MT4.01 to MT4.12 -- or just something I don't quite remember from the last time I did this...

Just a Test

Trouble here in River City... I'm trying to get things restored.  New version of MT and all the fun that goes with it.  Sigh.  This is what happens when you don't stay up-to-date with your understanding of the tools you rely on.