More fun with sheep

The sheep in Scotland are not comfortable with people. Or, at least, the ones I met weren't. On my next-to-last day in Iona, I went out for a walk with someone I met in my hotel dining room, determined to get a photograph of me touching a sheep. Turns out, this quest was quite a process. (And yes, that's my Shalom cardigan.)

First I sidled up close to the sheep in question -- a mama with two lambies grazing on some rocks by the ocean, on the far-northern tip of the island.

I drew closer and closer...






And then she tried to pee on me. It was hilarious. And quite an effective deterrent! While I was laughing, she went to a different part of the rocks.

I did eventually have success, and got photographic evidence.

Hooray! Victory!

Sheep!

So, on my trip in June, I went to Iona. It was amazing.

I went because I'm working on a book -- yes, I am! Hence less knitting lately, and less blogging as well -- and I was given a fellowship that would allow me to get away and write for a while. So I went to a remote and holy place (Iona), holed up in a hotel room, and wrote.

I also did other stuff while I was there. Like take long walks every day. And often these walks took me through pastures... with lots of herds of sheep! Like this one, who looked at me like I was an idiot for getting so close:

And this baby, born just a couple of months earlier, who had no idea that it was supposed to be scared of me yet.And a sheep I assume was that lamby's momma, who was pretty mad that I accidentally got between her and her baby. She was NOT happy, and I got out of there quickly.

Back after a Long Absence

It's been far too long since I've updated. Since you last heard from me, I went to Scotland. Also Chicago. Also... probably other places, too. I've accomplished relatively little in the way of actual knitting in the last couple of months. But I've tried.

See?

That's NHM #13, from Selbuvotter. Random mitten for travel knitting. And that's a Trossach in the background -- part of the mountain range just north of Loch Lomond. Really, really in Scotland. Picture taken out the bus window. Why on a bus? Because the train I was supposed to take from Glasgow to Oban had derailed the day before I got there. Oops. Bus it was!

More on the trip later. For now... mitten in progress!


Yarn: same as usual, MC is Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca&Silk in Lavender, and CC is Frog Tree Alpacas Alpaca sportweight in Forest Green. Lovely combo, but the lavender gets washed out and looks like a slightly off-gray.

Not-an-update

I have been knitting, I just haven't been taking pictures or writing blog updates. But I will soon, I think. Stay tuned.

I made a pretty shawl and a kitty toy. And went to Boston. And my parents visited. And I've got, like, a job and stuff. Lots of real-life going on, very little blog-life as a result. But still a knitting life! (Always a knitting life.)

The Language of God

In case anyone was wondering what kind of a church I serve... it's a pretty awesome church. Check out the United Church of Christ!

Good Thing I Like My Shalom Cardigan...

...'cause it's going to be in my passport photo for the next ten years.

I stopped in to the post office to buy some stamps and ask where I could get a passport photo taken... turns out, they take them at my local PO branch. Next thing I knew, I was getting my picture taken: unshowered, un-makeupped, post-Easter, and wearing whatever I threw on that morning.

Ah, well. We must always be ready to accept the consequences of our actions, right? Really, it's not a bad picture at all.

Doc on a Rug

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to milk any more blog posts out of Kiki Mariko... but Doc the Cat just looked so contented sitting there on the rug. He really likes this new addition to the floor (a.k.a. "his territory"), and it made me happy to see him curled up there all on his own.

Of course, when I started taking pictures, he shut his eyes firmly and pretended to ignore me. What you can't tell from this picture is that, every time I said his name, he flopped his tail.

Happy kitty on a rug! How could I not post it?!?!

Easter photo!

Also, I wore Shalom on Easter Sunday. It made me happy to dress in bright colors like an Easter egg!

This is not the most flattering photo of me, but it is the most flattering photo of the sweater. That's the front door of my church, photo taken after two Easter services, a breakfast, an egg hunt, and a coffee hour. I'm not so much "casually leaning" on the pillar, as I am using the pillar as a support so I don't fall over from sheer exhaustion. (Shortly after this photo was taken, I went home and took a four-hour nap. Made a quick hospital visit first, though.)


I totally knit a sweater in Lent. NOT something I had planned to do or set out as an intention. Knitting a sweater was not my Lenten discipline -- it would have been kind of bizarre and maybe even unprofessional of me to have made knitting a whole sweater start-to-finish an actual goal at such a busy time. But it's kind of cool that I did it. Now I guess I know that I can (if it's chunky yarn and size 10.5 needles and top-down-no-seaming, anyway).

A church member/knitting friend and I talked about this for a while. She, too, knits more during stressful/busy periods. It seems a little counterintuitive, because there's less time for knitting during more busy times: but that's exactly when we *need* the act of knitting the most.

For me, the knitting helps me to create balance -- during busy times like Lent, I need something that's NOT work to occupy my energy and my brainspace sometimes, or I'd burn out. I've got all this nervous energy from the stress of having so much to do, but there are plenty of times when I can't actually use that energy for work-work (can't so much make pastoral care phone calls in the middle of the night, for example). There are times when I *must* do something else -- something that forces me to sit down and relax and spend time with my husband (but without spending a lot of money) and just BE for a while. Knitting is my Holy Timewaster.

We all need a Holy Timewaster. That's where we find sabbath.