Author: Sarah

Sweater Weather

img_20161014_103019769_hdrThe amount of knitting I do waxes and wanes, but this past summer and into the fall I definitely got my knit on, as they say on Mason Dixon Knitting. I thought I’d share the newly finished and current projects on Fridays until I run out of fun things to show.

This is my new warm sweater made with a vintage Aran pattern I purchased on Etsy after eyeing it for a year. The pictures are a bit wonky, but you get the idea.

There were a few stops and starts along the way. First, I ran out of yarn before I’d finished. Thank goodness Knit Picks had another skein of the same dye lot. Thank you Knit Picks!

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Then I found six buttons at JoAnn but needed seven. After a frantic internet search (The best JoAnn could do for me was to send me driving all over the state with no promise that other stores would have the extra buttons I needed.) I found matching buttons at Pacific Trimming  in New York, and they sent them right off to me.

So now, just in time for cool temperatures I’ve got a vintage look, brand-new, superwash wool, Aran cardigan WITH POCKETS.

I do love sweater weather.

 

One For the Book Wish List!

footsteps-of-sheepI have a feeling this new column on Mason Dixon Knitting is going to dictate the direction of my wish list for a time, but this first one is especially appealing: knitting, spinning, Scotland, socks! Yes, Please! (Though you’ll find me in a B&B rather than a tent in a cow pasture).

Debbie Zawinski’s In the Footsteps of Sheep reviewed by Franklin Habit.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

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This picture is terribly misleading. This was last year’s beachy vacation. Only one day at the beach for us this summer.

I grew up reading about the dreaded “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essay. It seemed nearly every character in the middle grade and young adult novels I read was stuck writing such an essay at the start of the school year. So much so that I eagerly anticipated the year that it would be my turn. (Don’t judge. When you’re the youngest child, keeping up with your elder siblings means eagerly anticipating even the worst eventualities because having endured them might just mean you’re finally old enough to be taken seriously.)

Somehow I never had to endure that particular rite of passage in school. I guess that my teachers didn’t think so much of the tradition. Nevertheless, I continued to think about it and contemplate what I would write if asked. It’s not that I would have had a great deal to report. My family did not take exciting or luxurious vacations, and as I grew older I had very mundane summer jobs, but somehow I still wanted to write about it.

It wasn’t until several years after college that I got my chance. A job I applied for required a writing sample, and rather than pull out some dusty Religious Studies paper out of the basement file box marked COLLEGE, I wrote a “What I Did for My Summer Vacation” essay.  In February.

I don’t have the faintest memory now what I wrote, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t keep a copy, but perhaps because I’d been musing on the form of what I would write for so long, I got the job. And perhaps because the idea’s stuck in my head, or maybe because my one attempt was successful, I still  tend to approach summer with an eye to remembering, at least until the following summer, what interesting and noteworthy things I did when school was not in session.

Now the kids are back in school for another year and I’m thinking back over the summer days. I won’t write an essay this year, and I’m sure to avoid the more mundane details of my summer life, but I thought it would be fun to post a record here of my summer vacation 2016.

 

Some Nose!

Some Nose!

She was a rescue, our Gypsy, and despite more than three years of eating really well, she still searches for food wherever we go.  Usually when we’re out on our early morning walk. I’m looking ahead to see what goodies might be there. “Leave it” is not a command she seems likely to master–ever. However, as the week drags on I tend to be sleepier on our  jaunts and more likely to miss smelly sidewalk morsels.

Yesterday along the road with shops and fast food places, the route that usually has the best pickings, there were no prospects. At all. Not one doughnut crumb, French fry, or blue jay wing. As we headed onto the more residential streets I relaxed. We were days past trash day when chicken bones abound, extracted from trash bags by the neighborhood raccoons. Surely there wouldn’t be anything for her to find.

Suddenly, Gypsy pounced, head disappearing entirely into a hedge. She came out with a branch sticking out of one side of her mouth and a Ziplock bag with half a sandwich in the other. Half a sandwich. In a Ziplock bag. In the middle of a bush. That’s some nose!

She carried that thing home double time hoping to get a chance to scarf it down when I wasn’t paying attention, but in the end, thwarted by my unwillingness to stop and let her eat it, she dropped it on the stair landing and went off in search of water.

Today’s walk was different. She scored treats from two gas station attendants simply by walking by. Then, as we were nearing home and I was preparing to warn her off a garbage bag of corn husks the squirrels had gotten into, one of the scamps tried to bean her with a corn cob from the tree above. No harm, no foul for Gypsy. She carried that sucker all the way home.

The squirrel must have known it’s #NationalDogDay.

I’d Had It…

…with my old hosting company. And there were some security problems that made me want to build the site again from scratch. So please bear with me as I do. I may be writing to no one, as I’m not sure if subscribers make the jump automatically or not.

I’ll be moving some of the old content as I get to it, and the link to MGYABookReviews works. New reviews will be coming up there beginning tomorrow and continuing on Thursdays, so check in or add MGYABookReviews.com to your feed.

Best,

Sarah