I am a Children’s Librarian living in the Portland, Oregon area. When I am not Children’s Librianing I like to play with cameras and film. I also like playing the ukulele, knitting, sketching, and hiking.
I finally have a finished object to share! Actually these were finished a couple of weeks ago but I haven’t had much time to post. This summer has been INSANELY busy.
They are the Nanner Socks. Pattern by Wendy Johnson. I came across Wendy on Plurk way back in the beginning of June. Since Wendy has such a huge blog readership quite a few Knitters have jumped in the fray and it has been a blast connecting with all of them (Incidentally, if you are not on Plurk yet, I invite you to join me. It’s fun!).
This pattern needs a bit of explaining. On Plurk there are things called Karma points and the more you use the site the more Karma points you gain. As you gain a certain number of points you gain cute little emoticons. One of those is the infamous Dancing Banana. Some of us knitters got a little too excited about getting enough karma points to receive a dancing banana emoticon and conversations started about the banana. The banana took on a life of its own. So in good fun, Wendy actually created a banana sock pattern and offered it to her Plurk friends. Yay!
I absolutely LOVED knitting these. These were my first toe up socks. Loved it. I think these are the best fitting socks I have ever knitted. The lace pattern was super easy, too. I definately will seek out more of Wendys patterns. Here is my Ravelry page if you are interested.
Hope you all are having a fantastic 4th! I’m looking forward to a 4 day weekend. W00t!
Here is a picture of a little flower in my hanging flowerpot that I took last week. I am really behind uploading my 365 pictures. I took a billion pictures last weekend at Hoopfest that I’m trying to get through.
Thanks for the well wishes on my knee. It is actually doing well. I did talk to my doctor and she gave me some excercises for it. I guess it’s a common injury. I will be wearing a knee brace when I go hiking from now on. Don’t want to go through that again!
I am now a member of the Plurkette Hencircle Hmm…how to explain this. Let me start from the beginning. In the beginning (of June) I joined Plurk. I found it to be a wonderful thing. A total time-suck but very fun. I have met all kinds of wonderful people of all sorts in the few weeks I joined, most of them knitters.
Miss Violet came up with the idea of starting a Plurkette Hencircle. A Hencircle, I am learning is a group of women who wish to embrace the Farmgirl lifestyle. She had me at farmgirl. So I joined. Our first assignment is to write and introduction. So here I am.
I am a 39 year old happily married woman without children or pets. I grew up in Spokane, WA and lived here until I was 19. Then I moved to New York to be a nanny for a year. After that I moved to the Bay Area where I lived and worked in various jobs until 3 years ago when I moved back to Spokane. For 7 of the years in the Bay Area I lived in Santa Cruz, CA. I loved living there and I miss it very much. I feel like I left part of my heart there. I graduated from UCSC with a degree in American Literature and I graduated from SJSU with an M.L.I.S. degree. I worked as a Science Librarian for about 2 years at Santa Clara University, and now I am a Youth Services Librarian at Spokane Public Library. I absolutely love working with children and I am very passionate about children’s literature.
I also love photography. I would love to someday be a travel photographer or something like that. I have been interested in photography for as long as I could hold a camera. You can see my photography on my Flickr page if you are interested. I shoot with a Pentax K10D.
Now for the farmgirl part. I have this deep desire to make things from scratch. My knitting journey is a great example of this. I got into knitting because I saw a book in a bookstore about spinning yarn out of dog hair. This really appealed to me on a deep level. I like the idea of recycling dog hair into something usable. I bought the book and read it. I was a live-in nanny at the time and realized that this was not feasible for me at the time. It just looked like too much work and where on earth would I fit a spinning wheel? So I decided I should learn to knit instead. The rest is history. I finally learned how to spin year ten years later! And I absolutely love it. There is something so primal and satisfying about spinning fiber into yarn.
My grandparents had a farm so I know this is where I get my inner farmgirl. Until very recently I never really thought about why they had the farm. I am currently reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and it got me thinking about my grandparent’s farm. It was very small. I think it was primarily used to feed the family. I think my grandfather sold some of the things he grew locally but it’s primary function was food for the family. I must have been a hell of a lot of work. I mean, both my grandparents worked regular jobs on top of taking care of this farm. When I think about this it kind of blows my mind. They wanted to have fresh food and they wanted to raise and grow it themselves. They came up during the depression so this probably had a big influence on them. I think it’s really cool that this “home grown” idea is something that I am also thinking about now as an adult. I think it is really cool that there is a community that wants to go back to this kind of living.
The next thing I want to learn how to do is make soap. I’ve been obsessing about this the past few months. So I will probably post some of my adventure in soap making as I learn how to do this. Yeehaw!
I am really looking forward to being a part of the Plurkette Hencircle community! Nice to meet all of you!
It is a rare treat to find a book that I can’t put down. Don’t you love that? Reading a story that is so interesting and exciting that you just want to keep going? This week I read “Dead Lucky: Life after Death on Mount Everest” by Lincoln Hall. This book was so good that I read the acknowledgments at the end. Seriously. An absolutely amazing story.
Lincoln Hall is a veteran climber from Australia. He has written several books in the Mountain Climbing genre and is quite well known among these Mountaineering types. He attempted Everest in his twenties but was not able summit (I believe White Limbo chronicles this attempt). He continued climbing through the years but then settled in with his family in Australia living a nice life. However, when he was approached to be a photographer for a climb involving the youngest climber to attempt the summit he decided it was something he had to do.
He makes the summit but on the way down, just below the summit things began to go very wrong. He started hallucinating and when he fell down in the snow to “rest” he could not be revived by his team so he was left for dead not far below the summit. News travelled fast. His family was notified, the media were notified and people in Australia and around the world mourned Lincoln Hall’s death.
The next morning another team of climbers were attempting the summit and saw someone sitting up and moving around. The went over to him and the man said, “I bet your are surprised to see me here.” The men asked what his name was and he said, “I’m Lincoln Hall.” Unbelievably, Hall survived a night at the top of Mt. Everest. This has never happened before. Even more unbelievably, Hall walked down most of the mountain! Albeit confused, but he did it. His walk down the mountain is even more unbelievable. I won’t give you the details because I want you to read the book, but the story is absolutely jaw dropping.
The book is very well written, as can be expected by an experienced writer. He puts his reader on the mountain with him as he his sitting through the night. You are going through the hallucinations with him and you are there with him when he suddenly realizes where he is and that he as to survive this. Amazing stuff.
This has to be one of the best books I have ever read. The story is truly amazing. I highly recommend it.
On Sunday Raf and I went for our weekly hike. We chose to got to Farragut State Park in Idaho. I love this park. We used to camp here when I was a kid and I have good memories of swimming around in Beaver Bay.
We decided to follow a trail laid on in the appendix of the book, “100 hikes in the Inland Northwest” by Rich Landers. It was called High Trail (or something like that) and it took us climbing up rocks and boulders high above Lake Pend O’Rielle. It is beautiful, but also more strenuous than I’m used to.
When we were about a mile away from the car, on more level ground (thank god) I stepped down a small hill and my knee gave out. I’m not sure what happens physiologically when this happens but I think my knee popped out of joint, and then right back in.
This has happened periodically for most of my adult life. The first time I was in a mosh pit and I think I injured something. I couldn’t walk without crutches for awhile. I went to urgent care but didn’t have insurance so didn’t go see a doctor for follow up. The knee popping out thing has happened ever since with varying amounts of pain. I’ve been pretty good for awhile now. More than ten years I think.
When It happened on Sunday I fell to the in the most excruciating pain. Seriously. This is the most painful thing I have ever had to endure. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that it will subside shortly, and it does. But for about a minute is it the worst pain ever. When the pain subsided I tried to get up and walk to see if I had torn a ligament or anything. I hadn’t and I was very relieved. My knee ached but I could walk. I started down the path but then started to feel kind of woozy. I had to lean on Raf as I was feeling this way. It started to get worse and I started to kind of worry. I broke out into a cold sweat and my hearing started to get “tinny” if that makes sense. Everything was muffled. Raf said he thought I passed out while he was holding me and I might have for a second. He had me sit down and rest for a bit. I started feeling better. I was so relieved. It kind of freaked me out that this was all happening in the middle of the forest! After awhile I felt good enough to stand up and walk. Raf found a nice branch that acted as as staff and I was able to walk back to the car.
My knee seems to be o.k. I have been taking it easy with the running but I have been able to walk to work with no problems.
I finally have a finished object to share! Actually these were finished a couple of weeks ago but I haven’t had much time to post. This summer has been INSANELY busy.
