what the...

there has been no snow or freezing rain for more than a week now, so i am going to take the bold move of declaring a start to iced-coffee season. yes, we are still getting overnight frost warnings in this part of the globe, but that only really affects folks who have a field of crops to worry about. so, yeh... i think Winter may actually... finally... be done. cheers!

naturally, this is the time of year when i usually have seedlings waiting to go for the balcony garden project, but we have not taken a trip to the nursery yet because... well... you know. instead, we ordered seedlings from a new-to-us supplier. they should be delivered in time for the customary Victoria Day start of the gardening season in these parts, which is the eighteenth of May this time around. i will never get used to having to wait this late in the year to plant anything outdoors. such an odd country this is. 

speaking of the balcony garden project, the animator started removing the covers from the containers, and he was greeted with the first fern fronds, poised to unfurl any day now. it is so heartening to be reminded that life carries on. 

you can almost feel that tension before those leaves open up.

he has some wacky plan brewing to squirrel-proof this year's garden, but i honestly stopped listening after "i can get some two-by-fours...", because i already know that nothing good ever comes after that. 

and speaking of squirrels...

i was transferring some photos from my camera one recent evening, when i noticed a strange new thing on the big maple tree. i had been trying—but mostly failing—to get a shot of a bird that was hopping from branch-to-branch, so this odd bulge had escaped my attention earlier that day. 

me: what the...?

him: what do you think it is?

me: don't know. could be some kind of mushroom and the cap hasn't opened up yet.

then we spent a minute or two joking that we might have to harvest it if the test-run-apocalypse gets worse. 

me: you do know that most of the mushrooms you stumble upon in the wild will probably kill you, right?

him: if it gets bad enough that we need to climb a massive tree to get one mushroom, we're probably gonna die anyway. we might as well have something interesting for our last meal. 

me: true.

it was my intention to give this strange new thing a closer look the next day, but it was gone by the time i got out of bed to feed the cats.

me: maybe the squirrels ate it.

him: good. i hope they die, then they can't ruin my garden again this year.

not gonna lie... i agree one-hundred-percent with that sentiment. 

so, i went back to the original image and zoomed in on that small section, and just stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what it was. then the old proverbial light bulb went on in my head. if you squint a bit, you will note that the bottom-right section of the bulge appears to have been chewed away, reveling a white substance on the inside, and that there is an interesting series of lines on the outer surface. that last part was the biggest clue.

me: i know that it is!

him: what?

then i showed him this... and we just shook our heads. those bloody squirrels!

Jultember: tastes like a whisper...

i slept for exactly zero hours last night, which means that this month of daily posts is off to an especially restless beginning. this has pretty much been the case most days of late, and i have given up any attempt at maintaining "regular" sleeping hours, which means walking around in an ever-increasing state of lunacy until sheer exhaustion gets the best of me... which usually takes about two or three days. good times.

i was all set to veto doing this month of daily posts, but i decided to go ahead with it, mainly as i desperately need to distract myself from all of the nonsense rolling around inside my head that makes sleep near-impossible. so, i grabbed the first piece of paper i could find (that being a subscription card from a knitscene magazine), and i made a list of whatever random nonsense came to mind. there will be no particular order to how they appear—some may not appear at all—and most of the posts will likely be very brief, because that is the limit of my thought process these days.

and... yes... that is iced coffee. and... yes... i know that it does not help. however—in my defense—it is a blend that is roughly three-quarters decaf with just a splash of regular coffee for flavor (as decaf only ever tastes like a whisper to me).

2: too hot for that foolishness...

i am drinking iced coffee out of a large jar that once housed pasta sauce (Progresso pasta sauce, if you need all the details) while intermittently staring out the wall-of-glass in hopes of some signs of the thunderstorm that is supposed to be headed this way.

if all of the Meteorologists who spend their days salivating over such things are to be believed, today stands a chance of being the hottest day of the year. that is, of course, unless it gets even hotter still.

it should be noted that i do not deal well with humidity. hot, steamy tropical rain forests are lovely for the awesome display of animal and plant life, but give me a chilly Autumn evening and a warm, snuggly sweater any day.

so, there i was, opening my precious mini treasure chest, when i had a great idea. i would let him pick the first topic. what does he pick? the super-thick, super-warm, super-woolly cardigan i have been neglecting working on. so, now i get to talk about, and look at, and touch a snuggly wool and alpaca cardi, on this, the—possibly—hottest day of the year. thanks, sweetie!

full disclosure: it was tucked away in a corner, in a plastic waste-paper basket that i purchased for the express purpose of holding this sort of large project. then i dropped a bag with some other thing on top of the cardi, and i proceeded to forget that it existed... since like last October. i know. i know.

but, there it was, all these months later, safe and snug at the bottom of that little bin.

it looks like an amorphous blob, but it really is the start of a lovely sweater.

this was my favorite project from the knitted cables book by my fave designer Norah Gaughan (i embarrassed myself gushing about her last year).

i absolutely have to talk about this yarn. it is the Cloud Mix by Drops, and it is sooo appropriately named!

this is what is referred to as a blown yarn, which means that instead of being spun like a "regular" yarn, the loose fibers are blown through a thin mesh tube, and they poke out through the little holes to form the soft, fuzzy surface of the yarn. it is the pillowiest thing you could possibly imagine, hence the "cloud" name.

i would take a picture of myself rolling around on the floor with this yarn, except it is way too hot for that foolishness. plus... you know... that would be just a tiny bit insane. trust me though. it has some serious squish.

the yarn was recommended to me by the owner of my local yarn shop, as she thought the wool content (7%) was low enough for me to wear with my allergic-to-everything skin. the tube is polyamide (21%), and the majority of the blown fiber is super-fine alpaca (72%), so most of what you "feel" is the alpaca... and i can (usually) tolerate super-fine alpaca. i fell in love at first squish.

naturally, it was discontinued, so i bought everything she had of the (almost) black yarn and crossed my fingers that it would be enough.

i just went digging through my tins of swatches to prove the next point.

do not ever knit anything in black... ever!!! you will end up losing your mind.

i could barely see the stitches as i was knitting, so all those fancy cables would be a nightmare. my sanity and i both agreed that it made sense to return to the yarn shop and swap for a lighter color. so now those cables are popping all over the place.

problem is, i had neglected this for so long, that i picked up the basket today, fully expecting to take a few quick snaps of the project, before unraveling it and starting all over again. it had been so long, that there was no way i could figure out where i was in that complicated array of cables.

however, i had already knitted far more than i realized—eight and a half inches from the bottom, to be precise—and it would be wrong to undo all that work.

plus, despite the apparent complexity of the thing, it really is a simple, straightforward design. i had marked the page with the cable i was using (as i preferred that over the one Norah used in the original design), and it took about five seconds to figure out where i was on that chart.

this is the original cable (#132, left) and the one i went for (#130, right), which is a slightly less-complex version of the same basic hexa-cable design. i am really excited to get back to working on this project. that is... once it stops feeling like a rotisserie oven outside.

there was a brief flash of light in the distance, so i have added a few extra cubes to my glass. now it is time for nature's own light show. cheers.

addiction starter-set...

it was warm around here for a whole couple days, so now people are  dancing through the streets, burning their insulated coats, and singing songs about Spring.

however, as it looked like this just a week ago, i am (decidedly) still not convinced.

truth be told, i had a really rough Winter, so i am definitely looking forward to Spring... once i convince myself that it is finally here. i have no idea how people handle life at even higher latitudes, as that 'Winter gloom' is really hard to bear, especially when your mood tends toward gloom on even the best of days. so, while there is a lot of rain in the forecast (it rained all day), there should be plenty of sunshine ahead.

it occurred to me recently that i have a habit of mentioning stuff in this forum, with the claim that i will talk more about it "next time around"... by which point, i am on to some wholly unrelated topic. so, i want to make a concerted effort in the next few posts to revisit some of that already-forgotten stuff. that is, if i can remember what i intended to say in the first place. this will not end well. trust me.

last time around, i mentioned that i had been drinking Turkish coffee. well, that part remains true. i have been drinking Turkish coffee...

and drinking Turkish coffee...

and drinking even more Turkish coffee.

it is his mom's preferred hot beverage, so she is most enthusiastic to get me addicted to the stuff. she even gifted me the pair of handmade mini cup-and-saucer sets she bought back when they lived in France (where my favorite animator was born). so, like many many... manyyy years ago.

note the checkered coat of arms from the Croatian flag on the side of the cup. i thought Caribbean folks were ridiculous with the constant need to display flags on everything, regardless of where we may have drifted to in the diaspora. turns out Croatians are just the same.

me: i thought she got them in France.

him: she did.

me: but it has a Croatian flag on it.

him: everything has a Croatian flag on it.  

me: that is true.

it should be noted that i usually drink hot beverages from my bucket-sized mug of wonderment, so this little cup is like something to rest the teabag in after a good steep.

so tiny. so cute.

the cups and saucers have only ever lived behind the glass doors of a china cabinet, so you know it was a big deal for them to be placed in my care. i used them exactly TWO times before nerves got the best of me. so now i mostly look at them from a safe distance, with admiration... and with fear. 

as a result, most of my Turkish coffees have been sipped from either one of the small glass cups we got as free gifts inside packets of tea from the Middle Eastern grocery store.

or, from one of the several Batman mugs knocking around our home. everyone i know has a few of these things. Batman Forever may have been a train wreck, but boy do i (still) love these mugs! this particular one is The Joker.

the hardest part of making Turkish coffee is developing that lovely creamy layer on the top. this, according to all of the You Tube videos i watched on the subject, is considered to be an essential part of the drink. there is no dairy involved, so it takes a bit of practice (and patience) to figure out that part.

luckily, my favorite animator—who, i might add, does not drink coffee—was most supportive in encouraging me to make as many cups as was necessary to get it right. the early efforts were pathetic. the cat is closing her eyes in shame.

getting better, sorta.

i eventually got the hang of thing. i actually had to blow a little opening in the creamy layer to show the contrast with the coffee.

it should be noted that Turkish coffee (left) is ground super-fine and has a texture approaching cocoa powder, while the coffee i use in my French press (right) looks more like burnt coarse cornmeal. random aside: i have been on a super-dark-roast kick of lately, so my "regular" coffee looks like pulverized charcoal.

additionally, the ground Turkish coffee is usually added directly to the water. they even make special pots for it. they look like metal corn cob pipes. this one was part of my addiction starter-set. note the pen for scale. my starter-set also included a bag of her favorite ground coffee. the woman is thorough in her enabling.

water, sugar (totally optional), and the ground coffee are added to the pot, which is placed on the burner. when the coffee is ready to go, the whole thing is poured into the cup. the fine grounds settle at the bottom of the cup, so you leave that bit behind when drinking the coffee.

so, now i am back to being hooked on coffee... again. last time around, it took a couple years to break the addiction, and i managed to develop a few even-more-absurd habits along the way. but that is a story that i will save for some other day.