Fidget

Today was World Wide Knit in Public day. Luckily it was also a Sunny Weather day, otherwise knitting in Eugene would have to be not-any-more-public-than-usual! I was sitting outside the Knit Shop with some knitters. A car drove up in front of the coffee shop nearby and the driver started honking the horn… apparently she was trying to get the attention of someone inside the coffee shop… not considering the knitters and farmers market shoppers who were deafened by the earsplitting honks. Just then, one of the knitter’s greyhound dog that was sitting with us started howling, a slow, melodious howl that lasted just a bit longer than you’d expect for a pair of mammal lungs. Evidently he heard a siren in the distance, his owner said he always howls with sirens. I couldn’t hear the siren, really, and I wonder if the honking driver thought maybe she’d provoked the howling. A little bit later I noticed a very old, feeble man getting into her car - and I wondered why she’d been honking for him rather than going into the shop. Must have been in an all-consuming hurry, or something…

Suddenly, the greyhound went bounding across the parking lot, his leash had gotten caught on a metal folding chair and he got scared and tried to escape, but the chair was still attached to him and clattered alarmingly against the pavement. One blink and he was already across the opposite street, and we gasped in horror as he sped uphill toward the main drag, a busy street with 2 lanes in both directions. In the time it took me to think that we should all have jumped up and chased after him he was already out of sight, and none of us could have come close to keeping up let alone catching him, and he was towing that chair as if it were a plastic bag. The owner did set out after him, and the woman next to me anxiously murmured that Eugenian motorists would definitely stop for a dog. (That is, if they even saw him, tearing along approaching the speed of sound!)

We were relieved to see him come safely back with his owner and her friend, mostly OK except for a bloody foot. (I think the chair had scraped it.) One of the other knitters got a first aid kit out of her car and someone held onto him while 2 others worked on bandaging him up. He stayed pretty calm except his brown eyes looked a little bulgy and he let out one sharp bark of protest.

I have been reading a volume of “short novels” by Anton Chekhov, and in the current story the narrator mentioned cruel adolescent townsfolk who would tie an empty kerosene can to a dog’s tail and the poor thing would run himself ragged trying to escape… I felt it was an odd coincidence that I’d just read that a day or two before today’s dog/chair incident.

Yesterday I tootled around on my bike. I’d waited all week for the combination of free time and nice weather. (After our crazy upper-90’s heat wave last weekend, we had a cold rainy week)

First I went to the church to help sort all the dishes and supplies into the new kitchen. It’s a lovely new kitchen, the other one was very old. The new one has a lot more storage and is all clean and shiny.

Later I rode over to the Knit Shop to hang out and knit. They recently moved to a different unit in the same shopping complex, so they had a sale and I got a book for 25% off. It’s called New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and I had checked it out from the library (had to wait in a long list - there are a lot of knitters in Eugene.) I was already pretty sure I wanted my own copy. I’ve already started the Spiraling Coriolis socks that have a shaped instep in the form of a spiral band that winds its way up the foot. Nifty.

I think the closest I’ve come to being acquainted with a celebrity is my friend Eugen Beugler. I didn’t realize he was fairly famous in the knitting world until after I’d spent a few afternoons knitting in the Shop. He’s a fixture there, and designs lace patterns for Fiber Trends. He’s the most cheerful and gracious 80-something that I know, and I know a few.
Yesterday, we were sitting around the knitting table and the shop was gradually filling up with post-lunch shoppers and knitters. One of the employees brought the laptop over to the table to show EB a project that a friend of hers had adapted from one of his lace designs - it was a beautiful chuppah, for a traditional Jewish wedding. We’d barely finished exclaiming over that when a woman came over and said, “Eugen… is that you??” She’d been a co-worker of his about 20 years ago and he’d given her an incomplete afghan project to finish. Then, an old friend came in and reminisced for awhile about taking workshops from Elizabeth Zimmerman back in the day. EB was mentioned in a recent Interweave Knits article about EZ. We like to tease him gently about what a celebrity he is, all the while so pleased he’s part of our local knitting community.

It didn’t start to rain again until the evening. I was glad to have gotten a day out on my bike.

Last night Barak Obama returned to Eugene to address the townsfolk at the U of O campus. He’d been there about a month ago, and we’d been amazed to see the line of people waiting to get into the basketball arena stretching clear around the entire sports area, a good city block. This time we were on campus again and decided to join the lineup and pack into the library quad for this second rally.

I felt very American, going to see a presidential candidate - never done that before. In spite of (or maybe because of) my lack of experience with campaign speeches, I was struck by Obama’s sincere and personable demeanor. The people there were excited and eager to throw their support behind his ideals of change. The idea of changing how the country is run, the idea of finally solving the problems that have plagued us for decades - the idea of bringing the war to an end. These are admirable goals. Is this “change we can believe in?” If we just believe it hard enough, wave enough “HOPE” signs, will it happen?

We had quite awhile to wait before the speech, packed together with lots of young Eugenians and a smaller number of middle aged ones. A youngish man sitting just in front of us had a Barak Obama campaign image sewed to his jacket. As he stood up, another patch became visible: a cross (Christ) crossed out, in the red “no-smoking” style. I guess that’s not the kind of hope this crowd is looking for. But I believe it’s the only real hope there is, the only kind that’s not just wishful thinking.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Romans 5:1-5

So, it’s starting to get a little ridiculous. This is what I saw when I got up this morning. Or, actually, once I was up, showered, and walked out to the living room - BN chuckled as I looked out the window and my jaw dropped.

It SNOWED. A good couple of inches. What month is it again? oh, yeah… April. April-stinkin-20th!

I just checked the Weather Widget. It’s supposed to get up to the high 50’s later this week. Oh, goody.

A Seattle blogger coined a great term for the odd season in between Winter and Spring. “Unsprung.” Perfect.

One week ago today it was in the 80’s here in Eugene. As I write this, what is falling from the sky includes a few flakes of snow. I’m just sayin.’

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day. Supposedly it got all the way up to 74, which felt more like high 80’s since we’d been stuck in the low 50’s in recent months. I was driving around town in the earlier part of the day, doing errands and gathering supplies for my silkscreening class that I’m taking at the Craft center. Later in the afternoon BN and I took a bike ride to Coldstone Creamery, which was doing a brisk trade on the sudden hot day.

No matter that this week has been cold and rainy again…

This weekend we had the most snow we’ve ever experienced living here in Eugene. We’re talking a lot of snow, even more than last January. Then we had 3 or 4 inches, I think this time it’s more like 6 or 8.

First, a little background information: It’s been really, really cold here for a few weeks - temps in the low 20’s at night and dry, clear, bitingly cold days. I’m always watching our pool, we have a direct view of it out front, hoping it will first of all freeze completely over and then it will snow right on top, making a smooth, pretty white pool instead of the ugly green swamp full of dead leaves that we get to look at 8 months out of the year. This is the closest we’ve gotten so far:

I think this was a slight dusting of very dry snow overnight, on Thursday. Sadly, it didn’t last. Then, on Sunday morning we woke up to this:

It had already been snowing for quite awhile and it just kept snowing until mid-afternoon. Not only were we planning to go to church, but it was the all-church potluck that we’ve been having every month or so, and I had spent some time on Saturday getting ingredients prepped to make a big batch of curry. I cooked it up while we debated whether to try to take the bus to church… but we decided we were pretty well snowed in and decided to go out and play. (We had neighbor K over for lunch later, so that was a nice result of having a surplus of curry keeping warm on the stove.) Out on the clearing next to our apartment complex, we constructed a Snow Arch:

It took a little bit of doing. First we built up two posts, leaning toward the center, and then we built two “lintels” and each lifted one up to stand on a post and meet in the middle. I held up both while BN secured them with snow in the seams. Cool! We were so happy with our snow arch.

Later in the afternoon, after it had snowed another several inches, I went out to look at the arch and see if it was still standing under the extra weight. Guess what? Some idiots on snowmobiles had completely mowed it down. Why is it that certain activities tend to attract jerks? Well, that just made me mad. And sad. But we did get a lot of joy out of making it, out of fresh snow that was falling down right outside of our very own home. All my life, snow has been a vacation-only experience. I’m kind of glad it’s only a once-or-twice a year experience here, because if I had to deal with it for months I’d probably hate it (nothing scarier than driving in snow!!) But it’s really, really fun to be “snowed in” once in awhile. And we live up in the hills of South Eugene, so there’s more snow here than in other parts of town. In the late afternoon we took a walk around the hilly parts of the neighborhood. Spencer looks so pretty all dusted with snow:

I wonder what it’s like at the top this week? I guess it’s probably not possible to hike up there when there’s so much snow. Or maybe the trees shelter the trail?

This morning BN had to get up extra early to find his way to school on the bus which doesn’t come up here in the snow… van shuttles and different stops are in effect. He’s teaching pre-calculus at 8am this quarter. I, lady of leisure that I am, went out for a walk in the mid-morning, rather than my usual run since the terrain is all snowy and I wanted to bring my camera.

Half a year ago I was running on this street, crossing the starting line for the Butte to Butte. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be so hot! It looks like a different place altogether today.

I’m supposed to go to ceramics class with my friend TW later today. Luckily she has 4-wheel drive, because our car still looks like this:

Last weekend we took a hike up to the top of Spencer Butte, a short-but-steep hike that starts just a short drive from our apartment.

It had been cold, cloudy, and even snowy since our return from California, but this day was mostly clear and sunny so we decided to take advantage! We hadn’t been up the Butte for quite some time, I think more than a year.

Here you can see the view from the top, looking north-ish toward town. Autzen stadium, aka the Duck Pond, is prominently featured just below-right of center:

Well, I’ve been riding my bike!

I’ve worked out a route to go from home, down the more gradual descent, a residential-street shortcut, and back onto the main drag to get to the hub of my activities: grocery store, bank, copy shop, etc - and then home, which is a bit of a long pedal in low gears, but it’s manageable.

I love being out on my bike. You really feel a part of things, out on a bike - you’re not shut into your little bubble of car, going too fast to look people in the eye as you pass and hear and see the finer details of the day. I get a kick out of accomplishing errands AND getting exercise AND working off some of the self-employed-cabin-fever - all without using a drop of fossil fuels. Awesome.

Eugene is a pretty bike-friendly town. (except for the part where your bike could randomly get stolen at any time!) There are bike lanes on many of the roads and bike paths all along both sides of the river if you’re just wanting a scenic ride. BN and I have, on several weekends lately, ridden all the way up to the north end of town where there is The Jamba Juice (a little taste of CA!) and Guitar Center. BN recently got all set up to record to the computer with his electric guitar. (That’s why I haven’t been blogging that much lately… added to the fact that if I’ve worked all day on the computer, I usually want to spend my free time doing something else.)

I made freezer jam out of my blueberries. It came out yummy! The pectin package, which has detailed instructions for making many kinds of jam, emphatically warned me that I shouldn’t mess with the fruit-to-sugar ratio or else my jam wouldn’t jell. But, seeing that they called for 4 cups of fruit, 7 cups of sugar, and a cup of corn syrup to prevent sugar crystals… I decided to mess with it anyway. I used 2 cups of sugar with my 4 cups of coarsely pureed blueberries, and my jam came out fine. It’s quite firm, too, it just has a lot of runny juice along with it. So it’s not so great for peanut butter sandwiches, though if you eat ‘em right away it’s OK. But excellent for other purposes such as a topping for pancakes or yogurt or ice cream or…

Even though my freezer was already laden with frozen whole blueberries, 3 jam jars and 4 yogurt cups full of jam, I decided to go blueberry picking again as I’d been invited by the K’s - GK and her daughters, M and A. Another friend, CO, came too. This time, the weather wasn’t nearly so hot, it was quite a cloudy day. The berry bushes were wilder, bushier, and more tangled. But, get this - the blueberries were twice as big as the ones I’d picked before, and those were big, too. Wow. I tried to restrain myself and not pick too many, because I’d run out of freezer space if I came back with another 6+ pounds of berries!

Team Blueberry

Gotta pick ‘em all!

Victory!

Aren’t they Bluetiful?

Left: normal-sized berry. Right: GI-NORMOUS berry. Told ya.