City Outing and Appliqued Blue Birds

Lollygagging here this morning, mostly in front of the window with its view of the bird feeder...I saw a junco which I have not seen in awhile; also see two robins further down the garden combing a tiny circle of exposed grass at the base of the tallest fir tree.  The male cardinal is back again and such a flashy fellow he is especially amongst the chickadees, vireos and downy woodpeckers.
Yesterday we made one of our rare trips into the city; this entails frequent stops and facing down many lanes of traffic.  I keep advising hubby to drive like an old man instead of the racing car driver he fancies himself to be.  Sometimes he even listens but his old competitive instincts aren't to be denied just yet.
We had to get him to an appointment at one of the big inner-city hospitals and as always, parking is a challenge.  The parking garage at this one reaches to five stories and we had to wind our way to the very top to find a space then make our way down all the flights of stairs to cross a road to the entrance.  I have a distrust of parking garages born of too much t.v. and movie viewing where so many bad things occur in them.  This one did nothing to dispel those thoughts...old, grimy, poorly lit; a haven for some criminal activity of one sort or another, for sure.  I always feel a little relieved when we exit as if I've escaped something or other.  I could also legitimately grumble about the parking fees you have to pay for all this too, but I won't today. 
Afterwards, we went to lunch at a tandori restaurant nearby.  It was buffet style and I filled my plate with food that I couldn't put a name on.  It all tasted delicious and the homemade naan bread was especially good.
We made it home without further adventure and with enough light left in the day for me to work on my latest project.  I really want to improve my applique stitch so I thought simple shapes would work well to practice on.  I chose birds as a subject and picked out my prettiest blue prints; they show well against the white tone-on-tone material I used for the backgrounds.  I have six completed and here are three of them.

I am enjoying the stitching and trying my best to keep everything even and tiny.  It seems like a springy kind of project; I have no idea what I will do with these but I'm confident I will think of something. 
 
 

Elusive Shut-Eye

"When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up.   You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room."

                                                                                                                        Karl Kraus

I never have a problem slipping past that line and into deep sleep at the start of night.  I can fall asleep regardless if the lights are on, radio or t.v. playing, windows open or closed, or partner snoring; an ability that makes me an especially good roommate, I think.
No, falling asleep is not my problem; staying asleep, however, is.  Once I wake, it can take some time before I can return to a sleeping state. Occasionally when I have to go to the bathroom, I try to make it quick, keep one eye closed to attempt to fool myself into thinking that I am still sleeping.
This middle-of-the-night time is not always wasted time for me.  My mind wanders; I do ponder life's mysteries in ways that I never do when awake, sometimes I even have a thought or two worth recording.  (It is always fun to read these the next day). Now and again I can make real headway reading my current book... time well spent.
Periodically, though it is totally meaningless meanderings that this brain of mine seems determined to track. The worst is when I start in on the middle-of-the-night worries.  Why must they always be the darkest?  Maybe it has something to do with that old saying that the darkest hour of the soul is three in the morning.  But what is it about daylight that denies these worries their intensity, that flattens those spikes of fear and anxiety, that dials back the thinking to whatever normal is? 
Sadly for me, no matter how much sleep I've missed in the night, as I've said before, I can't nap during the day.  Now hubby is different, he can wake up in the morning sometimes already looking forward to having a nap.     

Microwaving Library Books

I've never been afraid of books, what is in them or on them.  There are people out there who are fearful of what may be on them.  In particular some people won't use library books because they are afraid of the germs they may be carrying.  Murphy has twice chewed up library books, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  Truthfully, despite all the hype, I was not that impressed by Wolf Hall, but I did like The Sense of an Ending.  Both times I said to the librarian I wasn't sure why my dog would suddenly choose these certain books (out of all the library books I have around) to chew up when this is not something she normally does. Both ladies said something like well you never know what people might have gotten on those books.... and left the rest to my imagination. 
I've read that you can microwave books to sanitize them, though I've never tried.  I've also read you can bake them in the oven to kill any germs; I'm guessing the way my mother used to bake soil to ready it for indoor plants.
No I've never worried about germs from library books; my worries are much more high-faluting than that.
For the record, Murphy has cost me with this book-chewing; it's a twenty dollar charge each time which I think is very fair and a small price to pay to support my on-going book addiction. 
  

Knitting Another Shawl

This is Lion's Brand Homespun in Regency and Mixed Berries.

                                      Here is what is on my needles now...

 I've reposted the photo of the wool I've been using because my photos of the shawls just do not capture the colours nor how lustrous this particular wool is.  Just above is my latest attempt at another shawl and this one is a simple prayer shawl pattern.  I am using the lovely pink and purple Mixed Berries Homespun. I cast on 80 stitches and am knitting in garter stitch till I reach the length I think will comfortably cover the shoulders.  I plan to crochet an edge around it to prettify the overall look. 

The forecast was correct; it is Arctic white everywhere again because it has been steadily snowing most of the afternoon.  No signs of spring to be glimpsed from any of my windows today.  This is Murphy, our Black Lab; she is just back from a walk and is a little tired.  Right after I took this picture she lay down in front of the stove and took a nap. Her 'dog's life' is a pretty good one, I think.

Bird Talk

First Purple Finch of the Season

A treat for me to see this little male at my front feeder this morning, and when I stepped outside, all kinds of bird songs and chatters from  the trees greeted me.  We are moving into spring in spite of the forecast for five to ten centimeters of snow tomorrow. 
They finished a major bird count for this area and I read the results with a little trepidation.  I don't want to know there are fewer robins, or nuthatches or the numbers of finches are down.  I always fear the worse.  I really want them all to be out there happily pecking, winging and singing and nesting or whatever. 
What I can't bear to think of birds is that there are killers amongst them.  They seem so tiny and fragile.  It is this very fragility, the biological fact of possessing hollow bones, that enables them to achieve their greatest feat-the ability to fly.  No, I don't want to think of any of them as killers. 
I showed you a photo of the two ruffed grouse that have been daily visiting the oldest tree in the back yard.  I love watching them. They are so fattish-looking and heavy, they actually wobble and bend some of the thinner branches they sit on.  They are so homey in appearance too, their colours the colours of old wood, certainly nothing flashy at all.  But it works so well for camoflage which I guess is nature's point. 

Taken through the kitchen window

Secretly Liking a Beatle

I have two music playlists, one is for my exercise workouts and the other is for the car.  I have selections from the Beatles on both.  I just realized there had been an anniversary marking fifty years since Beatlemania.  I took an online quiz to test my knowledge of the fab four and realized I did not know that much about them, especially their pre-Beatle years.
I was twelve years old when they had their famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Like most households in North America, we too tuned in.  Who could forget the images of all those shrieking, sobbing girls.  I think we were stunned to see such a reaction and I know my parents couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.
I had a better inkling because all the girls at school were talking about the Beatles every time we got together.  One of my classmates told us she had played her record of I Want To Hold Your Hand over and over till it began to melt; another said she had sung the words over and over till she got a sore throat and couldn't make a peep.  All my friends had picked out a favourite Beatle though I think most of them chose Paul. I don't know why but I just had to be different; I told everyone I thought they were unattractive and I didn't like any of them.  This was simply not true because I secretly liked John and I credit him with starting my liking of dark-haired, smart boys.
One of my favourite songs was written by a Beatle, George Harrison...While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  I play it in the car and still love its sweet words and melody.
I heard this story years ago; a man was in a record shop and overheard one teenager say to another, 'hey, I didn't know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings'.  Hard to believe because I'm sure it is understood that the Beatles had the most effect on popular music of any band before or since.

Island Life

 This book had been on my reading to-do list for some time before it worked its way through the library hold section and onto my night table.  The description of it and the fact that it had been long- listed for the Orange Prize made me want to read it. 
Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg is a good book.  What initially appealed to me, a story about living on an island, a young woman among people who were native and speaking a different language, accompanying her husband who felt he was on a mission to 'save' these native people with his particular brand of Christianity, all were themes that struck chords in my own past life.  St. Kilda, off the coast of Scotland, proved to be a wild, interesting setting and I think proved to be a character in the book as suredly as the people themselves.  I was not totally emotionally empathizing of both main characters, but just enough to make me care about them and want to know what would happen to them. 

Here is a photo of our aquarium with two of the three fish in sight; you can't see it but they are doing well.  I am finding there is much more to maintaining a healthy aquarium environment than I ever knew...water temperature, filtering systems, aeration, kinds of food.  It is a bit of a science.  Hubby has estimated we have about four inches of fish in our fifteen gallon tank and could add another inch or so.  I'm afraid to chance it, though.