Autumn

To quote one of the great philosophers of my childhood: Hello, Everybody.  It has been a bit of time since my last post.  Rest assured all is well, and that the knitting and silliness has not come to an end.

In fact, what happened is simply that I took the summer off.  Not off from work, or from being a husband and dad.  And not off from making things from various lengths of string.

No, I took the summer off from writing.  From worrying about what I might say next, whether it would be entertaining, whether it might offend, and whether it would be worthwhile for anyone to read it.

And what did I do with all my free time?  Funny you should ask.

Truth be told, we had a glorious summer here in the Pacific Northwest.  In fact, I think it was the best weather I've seen since Mrs. TSMK and I arrived back in July of 2000.  I remember that day well.  It was July 3, and as we arrived at the house we'd picked (sight unseen) to rent for a year - it was 46 degrees and raining.  A rough start.

But this summer?  Incredible weather.  The kind of weather that makes a guy want to go shirtless.  Of course, shirtless hasn't been so awesome for me of late.  I woke up one day during the spring and realized I'd just turned 40 and had been spending the better part of every day for the past 13 years sitting at a desk.  My abdominals were abominables.   So with my free time, I started trying to get into a bit better shape.  And just because we could, we spent a lot of time enjoying the outdoors - fishing and crabbing and just generally goofing off.  We hiked. We had evening picnics on the beach.  We enjoyed ourselves.

But all good things must come to an end.  And sure enough, our summer came to a screeching halt.  Mornings now are in the low 40s, with thick blankets of fog.  It is cold and it is damp.

A few weeks ago, I got the sweaters out of storage.  And of course thinking of sweaters makes me think of yarn, patterns, stitches and whatnot.  Quite a lot of whatnot, actually.

Like this, for example.  I know that people sometimes knit with wire (and make quite neat jewelry that way) - but has anyone ever knit anything with a section of garden hose?  Seems like it might be fun to try.

And what happens if you knit with two different sized needles at the same time?  Like say a size 000 in your left hand and a size 8 in your right?  I've moved needle size from row to row in various patterns - but never tried to do both at the same time.  I might need to try that just to see what happens.

Of course, I can't really try all these things, because the calendar tells me that Christmas is approaching.  I've got a few things I want to make and should have started already - so I better get clicking.  I've finished one gift and have two more on the needles.  That only leaves too many, so I should be fine.

Hope all is well.  I'll talk with you again soon.

Brian