Miscellaneous: July 2008 Archives
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!
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!
