otherwise

I blog through Picasa, which I like very much, except that it limits me to four pictures per post, so there were four neckwarmers in yesterday's post and one leftover to share today.

This is a pattern of tiny cables, knit by Leah in deep forest green alpaca along with a strand of laceweight variegated tencel that gives just enough of an accent to keep the color from being flat. Feels fantastic around the neck and alpaca is toasty warm.

When we're not slogging through technological/automotive/insurance/financial/political and other grown-up-like cruddy issues and life-suckers in the past week, there has otherwise been a continued bunch of funstuff. For instance, we've discovered the ultra-cool ukelele club in town and are participating in the monthly gatherings for playing uke (Leah's been doing the freebie beginner sessions and her continuing ed uke class will start soon), which are then opened up to the public for the last hour for a big singalong.

There are maybe 30-40 uke players in the club, who are joined by harmonica players and guys on electric bass and sax. A local dermatologist is the leading ukelele enthusiast and he is an awesome combination of great teacher, uke cheerleader, singer, musician, leader of the band, and comedian. We started going to this because Leah loves to sing, but it's actually a crazy lot of fun for anybody and now I wouldn't want to miss it either. Lots of seniors come for the singalong, but plenty of families with kids too. There are leis and Hawaiian shirts galore, ukes available to borrow, and they get you playing about five songs within the first hour of instruction. The thing I like best is that I've seen everybody from a 6-year-old girl to a maybe-90-year-old guy with a walker strumming along, wearing leis, and grinning from ear to ear, having good, old fashioned, low tech fun together. The world needs more of that, don't you think?

During the singing and playing, I get a good bit of knitting done at the uke parties. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the second Edelweiss mitten. I'm running low on red yarn, so they might become fingerless gloves instead, which is just fine with Leah.

There's also been paintball, Airsoft, the Pequot Museum, ice skating, and historic miniature gaming, all with pals, and lots of reading about a remote-controlled underwater vehicle that Scott and Jesse are planning to build. Yup, still plenty of good times to enjoy in this week of challenges.

As has become an annual tradition as soon as those first chilly autumn days arrive, the season's soapmaking is underway. I don't put any effort into selling my soap anymore, but I still have a good number of orders that come through from past years and I'm happy to oblige because I do so enjoy making soap and keeping a good stash around here for little gifts. Luckily, one of my munchkins is also an enthusiastic soapmaker who joins in every time. So nice to have his help for the >100 bars we made last night and to wake up to all the fantastic fragrances this morning.