The longest day of the year: reason to celebrate! Simple awareness usually leads to things of interest (people, places); doing some ritual enhances this. Crepes at a sidewalk table on Government Street at the French restaurant that opens nicely early – hours before the parking meters go into effect! – at a time when eager visitors to this very beautiful city are out and about and seizing the day – crepes fresh and fragrant and fruit garlanded; this seems a fitting way to have breakfast on the longest day of the year. The day has already been greeted with a garden salute to the dawn; misty, breezeless, cool.
The experience of the longest day of the year will be knit into something or other; a few things are on the needles, of course.
While deciding on what wool and what needles to use to make a pair of summer socks with the Woodsman Sock pattern (email if you want a copy) I realized I was switching needles and wool all on the same swatch. Maybe everyone does this. I don’t recall actually seeing the procedure mentioned in print anywhere – so I am doing it here. And it has suddenly occurred to me that "swatch" may be too formal a term for the informal "sample of experimenting" that comes about as I "wonder how this would work……"
The next ‘tip’ is one seldom needed but, boy, should I ever need it again I am glad I discovered it this time. Here is what happened. Ages ago I put together four strands of a linen/cotton yarn and knit a purse. I wanted to separate what was left on the ball into single strands again. Trying to pull one strand away resulted in twists and tangles after a few yards. I said "oh darn" or something like and let my fingers do the walking while thinking what to do next and found that I was pulling one strand out of the other three, if you see what I mean, and since it was bunching up but not tangling I continued to do so for the entire ball. I did it with the next two strands, ended up with four piles of yarn on the floor which wound nicely into single balls.
Happy Solstice!