This isn't California.


An afternoon packed with awe and angst. This 300 acre fire is a little less than a mile from my home as the crow flies. The hill that you see in the last picture is "my" hill. I gazed at it out of the front window of my childhood home, and I enjoy gazing at it out of the front window of the home I own now. I have never seen it burn. I have had the sound of helicopters and 'fire planes' flying low over my home all afternoon. Night is falling and it is still not contained. My camera's battery died soon after I started taking pictures, so I did not catch the worst of it in pictures. The fire quickly swept across the hill. My home is safe as long as it doesn't jump the road and burn the orchard and field that borders 2 sides of my neighborhood.

I am teaching myself to knit with a yarn held in each hand. It is fun teaching my hands new motor skills. Stranded knitting has always been stressful - stressing about the tension of the floats and trying to be perfect to the point that it took the fun out of it. However, I am enjoying this project immensely. I think the shift in my perception of stranded knitting occurred after I read this ...

"A Selbu knitter wouldn't have thrown away a project because it wasn't perfect. She would have made what fix was practical, then continued knitting." Selbuvotter, Biography of a Knitting Tradition

I will be practical in my pursuit of perfection.