Day two of blogging

Solar Update:
The solar system went on-line exactly one week and two hours ago. Since then we have had 67 hours of usable sunshine and have created 56 kWh of electricity. Please note that previous to this gloriously sunny winter week, Seattle had been experiencing its dreariest, rainiest winter since forever. Summer is when the system will really shine.

Knitting Update:
This morning Zach was curled up under a blanket on the couch knitting and said with a sigh, "I remember back when I was really bad at purling." Really takes me back, doesn't it. All the way to January. Me, well I am still bad at purling, I prefer to knit backwards instead, guess that's the left-handedness in me shining for once.

See, I was the left-handed kid in a family full of capable, crafty, right-handed girls. While they tried to show me how to crochet and knit, it just didn't sink in. I was klutzy and never succeeded in even a scarf. Not til I discovered left-handed scissors in my twenties could I cut a straight line. Yet I have and use handmade items from my sisters.



There's my macrame plant hangar made by Marianne some time in the '80s. The afghan Kathy crocheted for me when I was a freshman in the college dorm, 1978.

















And these placemats. Maggie made them for me, (I think, gosh is that correct?) when I was a junior in college and had moved up from a dorm room to an apartment on campus.


Gosh, thanks again, guys.

As for sweaters, Marianne once made me a sweater of her own design. It was in this dark grey wool with random bits of primary colors, with knitted baubles in a diamond pattern on the front, and puffy baubled sleeves. Not something I would have ever chosen for myself. I wore it, at first mostly because it was handmade for me, warm, I lived in Chicago and I didn't have a lot of clothes. But then I really grew to love it. I accidently shrunk it a bit, it became a cropped sweater --- one of the funkiest, hippest pieces of my wardrobe. I wore it for years, it finally shrunk too much (and/or I did the opposite) and I passed it along.

Now that I am hard at work making my first sweater, I am appreciating even more all the time and love that went into that one. Thanks again, Marianne. Maybe someday I will knit you a sweater. I promise it will have baubles.

For now, here is the update on my Olympic Knitting sweater --- the back, finished and blocked. Melinda, note that the differences in the variegations are noticable. I was expecting the whole sweater to look more like the top portion. C'est la vie. My job as I am knitting the front will be to rotate through the skeins well enough that it look less weird, but not so less weird that it doesn't match the back.