My mom once had a year that was just horrible. She was in a car wreck that totaled her car. She took a terrible fall, broke her pelvis, and had to use a cane for a couple of months. Okay, she took the fall while roller skating: she was that type of mom! 🙂 While still using the cane she was struck by a rattlesnake that was napping under her car when she put her key into the car door to open it. The only good luck in this was that she had the cane to beat off the snake after it bit her. “Some years you should just stay in bed,” we teased her. What can I say… we kids were brats!
My goodness, but 2020 is really turning out to be one of those years! We all know about the pandemic, the lockdowns, the resulting economic downturn, and the protests against police brutality and racial inequality that are churning through our cities here in the US. Then there’s the murder hornets, and the methamphetamine-crazed alligators (AKA Meth-Gators) in the American south. How crazy is this? I mean, I kind of expect earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters (seriously, at this point I am kind of nervous about the volcano in Yellowstone National Park…), but how much more crazy can there be in one year? I mean it: what would be the most outrageous thing that you could ever imagine on the 2020 Bingo card?
That’s right. There was a news alert that Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease, V2, AKA Bunny Ebola, was spreading through rabbit populations in Colorado on my phone this week. It’s highly contagious and fatal to rabbits; the alert had a lot of warnings for rabbit owners and people who might come in contact with rabbits… The bunnies above are the ones that live on my block and hang out daily in my yard…
2020, KNOCK IT OFF!!!!
Some years should just be spent in bed…
Knitting
It was hot this week, so I really stayed indoors and got some knitting done.
I had about 50 grams of yarn from the stash to make these gloves, and this finished one with all of the scraps of yarn attached weighs 23 grams, and there is still 27 grams on the ball. It’s going to be close! My Ravelry notes are here.
The Breathe and Hope shawl is designed with textured sections, each different, between the corrugated stripes sections. I’m getting better knitting the textured stitch sections; they feature knit-below stitches which are new to me so I need to pay attention to what I’m doing. Now that I’ve mastered the new hand motion I’m getting much faster and hope to get the shawl finished this coming week. My Ravelry notes are here.
Garden
It has been really hot this week with no rain. I mean, crispy leaf hot! The plants are all feeling pretty surly and there isn’t much blooming going on, and even less growing. Poor plants. The only thing that is even halfway interesting going on in the garden is the appearance of a potato plant.
I didn’t want a potato plant. What I wanted was a new rose bush!! I tried to get a new Charles Darwin rose plant from cuttings in potatoes using this technique that I found online. Right. I now have two potato plants and not a rose in sight. Sigh. Still, they might be interesting in the fall… I think that these are Yukon Gold potatoes, which I like. The way the world is going I might be happy for these potatoes…
Books
I am reading the most wonderful, thought-provoking book this week!
I hardly know how to describe this book. It’s clever and tech-oriented in a way that people much younger than I am relate to better, but I think I’m keeping up okay. Here’s the plot: there is a battle for the future of our species being waged between two envoys sent to Earth to save us; our team of heroes are working through social media, online cryptomining, and virtual reality with one of the envoys, the robot we met in the first book known as Carl, in an effort to secure the future that Carl is constructing for us. The alternative envoy has launched his own effort to mold the future of humankind while destroying the good guys. What’s in the balance? Free will. Carl would preserve it for humankind, and the other guy…Â not so much. There is lots of action, and twisty turns, as we are told this story through the voices of the different participants of “Team Carl”. This book is very imaginative while also being timely; as the online war swirls around me over Covid-related issues (open the schools, wear a mask, testing, etc.) in my own community, I can completely imagine the path of humanity being determined through constructed alternative realities and directed messaging; in other words, you can transform behaviors through culture shifts instead of policy. What a thought provoking book!
Oh yeah, there is also a potato plant in the book. How weird is that?!
Have a great week, everyone!!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Footnotes:
My city went under a mandatory mask mandate this week. Finally! Yay! Am I now safe to move around in the larger community? Nope. Not so much. The culture hasn’t yet shifted… See why that book is timely? Several states near my own are experiencing huge upticks in cases, and as our hospitals continue to fill (with patients from these other states) I’m thinking that the shift will eventually come. In the meantime I’m happily home knitting with Hannah.
Yarn, Books & Roses 