Tuesday's Red Hat / Red Forehead Adventure

So Kathie, you mentioned the Norwegian Protest Hat,* the red hat knitters are making to wear to anti-ICE protests.

So here's a story:

My workplace, Evanston Stitchworks & Union Pizza had a fundraiser this past Tuesday -- $25 one free drink and all the pizza you could eat, everyone buy the pattern ($5 goes towards immigrant support groups) bring your yarn & needles, knit-a-long. It was a success: 200 people, over $5000 raised. I was waiting at home for Richard to get back from the library so I could head up to Evanston. I sent him angry texts "when are you getting back" only to hear his phone ping from the kitchen table. I kept getting phone calls from unknown numbers. Finally I answered one -- it was the phone of a security guard at the library he'd borrowed -- the EMTs were about to take him to Swedish for stitches. He'd tripped in the foyer and gashed his forehead on the inner door and was bleeding all over the place. Gigi was in a panic listening to my end of the conversation. The two of us hiked over in the freezing cold to get the car at the library about a mile away then drove to the ER where there was no sign of Richard.  Long wait. Then Richard shows up in a wheel chair looking like the flute player in that famous American Revolution painting. 

Finally they got a room for him -- in the psych area because the other triage areas were being used (no locks on the bathroom door, no pictures on the wall, etc.) Gigi & I sat with him. We were there for 5 hrs! Didn't get home until almost 11pm. BUT...

I had packed my bag for the knit-a-long. Richard & I had a bet -- would I finish my hat first or would they finally show up to give him his stitches? Hat finished first!

In the meantime we posed Richard to be Jacque Louis David's "Death of Marat." Nine stitches but he is recovering nicely.         

That's the update from here. I started on another red hat because this one was supposed to be for Richard and it isn't long enough to keep his ears warm. Send requests for hats to me and I'll make them until I run out of red merino wool...

Karen

*In the 1940’s, Norwegians made and wore red pointed hats with a tassel as a form of visual protest against Nazi occupation of their country. Within two years, the Nazis made these protest hats illegal and punishable by law to wear, make, or distribute. As purveyors of traditional craft, we felt it appropriate to revisit this design.

Merry Crispness

Dear Family: The saga begins the week before Christmas. Dan had a plumbing emergency with the toilets backing up. More importantly, Daphne got sick, sick enough that they took her to the emergency room to make sure it wasn't pneumonia and to get early treatment if it was. It turned out to be Influenza A, so she didn't have to stay at the hospital. However, then Roslyn came down with it. The next day, their new puppy came. She is a shelter dog that was being brought up from Tennessee, so they couldn't very well refuse her. Plus, she really is a nice dog. Meanwhile, Sally and Alex were wrangling two toddlers into the bus for the airport and only then saw the notification that their flight was moved up an hour. Fortunately, they got to the gate in time for the flight...only to be told it was delayed. By the time they got to Milwaukee the plane was only 5 minutes early. If you remember from the summer, Misha does not like the car seat; or maybe the car ride. At any rate, he cried the whole way. Luckily, it is only a 20 minute drive. So, then the New York contingent went to visit friends in Chicago for the weekend. It went better because public transportation in Chicago is not much different than in Manhattan, so the visit went easily. They enjoyed the Aquarium with their friends. By Monday, Daphne and Roslyn were still very under the weather, so we changed plans. Originally, the second and third generations were going to trek to Illinois to have Christmas dinner with Aunt Nancy and her family. Not wanting to infect Granny Jo if she came, or Gracielynn (Nancy's granddaughter who is three months old) they opted to stay home. Roslyn still wanted to host Christmas Eve for all of us and her family as well. So, of course, their toilets backed up again. They have found a good plumber who came out and fixed the problem and diagnosed the greater problem. Basically, what their renovation contractor did was not best practice work even though it is up to code. Christmas Eve was a yummy dinner with present pandemonium afterwards. A good time - albeit a loud one - was had by all. Christmas Day was at our house; a little quieter, but not much. Misha and Sofia are warming up to the grandparents, but still having moments. Daphne was pretty good with her cousins, but they are all very young. I will skip what Daddy used to call my organ recital, and just say we are loving the situation but it is very tiring. I hope you all had a delightful Christmas, full of precious moments. love, Gill

Bounty of the Earth - or at least our corner of it

Dear Family, Congratulations for all the good news. I tried reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners one year, but some were hard to find and some were just not my cup of tea. I see why Edith Wharton and Henry James got the prize, but I can't say I enjoyed reading their books. So, kudos to you, Kathie! Congrats to Geoff and Sue, and welcome home (I hope!) to Karen and Rich. Rick has been hard at work harvesting and we had a true bounty of cucumbers to make pickles.

whoops! We can't eat those chickens! Try again. I am so done with programs suddently doing things differently! or maybe it's just me. I can't get this to put in the photo from this tablet. We have lots of jars of pickles and gobs and gobs of peppers. I t guess that's it then. Resigned lyrics, not to mention autocorrect!!!!!!!! Gill

Reading

The Last Book! #104!

Hello all:

My news is just that today !  I finally completed reading my Newbery list of books - it took 5 months to read 103, from the end of April to the end of September, when I finally finished up the last (rather boring) ones from before I was born (!) and a few I thought I had read but hadn't. But I was avoiding this one, the winner from 2022 because it was one of those future dystopian/apocalyptic stories where people are put to sleep on a spaceship that will travel for 400 years to the inhabitable planet on a distant star. I've never liked anaesthesia!

Other than this, our life is pretty quiet. We are waiting for them to start repairing our roof and siding (since July!) that got damaged by hail when there was the big tornado in May. It finally rained and now it is suddenly cold and I finally cleaned up the vegetable garden that I hadn't worked in for ages (since July!). I'm glad I did that yesterday since we got our shots this morning and I feel yucky, but that means I did finish the book! Does this sound like a Daddy-letter yet?

Waiting to hear more from Karen and Richard on their exotic adventures, it was fun to see the photos, thanks!

love, agelaius

PS to Richard - I did finish Rifles for Watie - once I got halfway through it was really good, I guess I was really turned off by the romancing of going off to war, but you have to have that part to make the realization of the soldiers make sense.

 

Happy Fall

Hello-

 Here's some news from the Hoyer/Greenlee clan this fall.

After our annual Fall Color Tour with friends, Geoff and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Petoskey in northwest Michigan. We also had a nice visit with Tom and Chris Hammond

 

 

We also did some arty things during Detroit Design Month

 

 

 

And Geoff fixed my friend Lucretia's bumper

 

 

And to end with a nice early morning shot at my work (Cranbrook Sunken Garden SunPatiens beds) 

Love to all! Sue
 

Catching up...

I finally got my certificate on Saturday!

and then on Monday, we hit thirty years - I think the tequila has aged enough...

Now, working backwards to February, here's Rubén's beautiful Icon from the June workshop:

You probably heard we had a tornado...here's the 10 minute destruction at Bowood (also had to replace the main roof and the roof + solar panels on one building) (really nothing compared to all the neighboring houses and buildings) as well as our front yard - it was all hail in Overland:

In April we had a middle-eastern Easter celebration with matzoh from the Holy Land!

Lastly, Karen's birthday presents from the last two years for my Herb Gardening Design class:

Back to the future...

with the monster fence up there aren't any good pictures from the garden, but here's R's chilis:

and my Alley Garden sunflowers attracting pollinators:

See you in two days!

Agelaius

My turn

There’s not much newsy news from our house…
just a few pictures to update since the reunion (some were on instagram already)

The Big Event at MoBot went well, a full house of garden members - Lizzy gave an overview of the history of  Bowood Farms and I declaimed on how to build four-season container plantings [something I don’t do myself]. I’d been very nervous about this event especially since Lizzy didn’t work on her half until the week before (!) and not until I had made a powerpoint of photos to be an outline for her talk. She really hates public speaking but we worked really well together with a lot of back and forth during my half, I talked about the concepts and she explained her plant choices.

Next I took care of Boowood which was based on the Olympics for some reason, sprinting plants and a boxwood panel of breakdancing judges. Then voting - we were hopeful because there were NO republican signs at our polling place, but it was not to be and frankly I’ve more or less shut down ever since then.

 

Stir-up Sunday (figgy fruitcake)

Solace from cooking and baking and sewing with Lucie and our nightly escape with the Doctor. [aside to Rick and Gill: when I used to watch with popcorn and you after S & D were in bed, did we just watch one episode? because they’re only 20 minutes long…or were they all strung together without the repeat scenes at the beginning of each episode?] We started with the 5th Doctor last summer because Lucie doesn’t like the 1st and I don’t like the 4th, so by October we'd gone all the way through to movie 8th Doctor (bleghh) so we went back to start the 1st and so far we’re halfway through the 3rd, which seems much more political and feels very apropos to the world we’re in right now.

Winter Yoga

We don’t do much besides work, church, and grocery shopping and (not) cleaning the house, but Rubén and I went to another reunion with our pilgrim friends in early December which was happy/sad, we were joined by family members of our friend Lisa who died last spring - she had brain cancer but had lived four years beyond her prognosis, the last of which she went to the Holy Land with us, such an inspiring person to know.
In another self-imposed anxiety binge, I spent November and December cramming for a test I thought would be in January or February but it turned out they changed the scheduling so it won’t be until June 27th, cross your fingers for me! If I pass I will be a certified Grow Native! Professional - it’s all about native plant landscaping but so much of the topics don’t really intersect with my actual job, burning the prairies and all that - but Lizzy is supporting me since her father was such an advocate for natives and habitat restoration.

January 6th

January 13th

February 18th

 

February 19th

January and February have just been a lot of snow, I couldn’t even remember when each of the big three happened, good thing pictures have dates on them!

We had a lot of animal tracks in our yard as well, though we haven’t seen “the monster” since November but we did see a racoon !!! running along the top of our back fence on January 6th (the first big snow) but now it sounds like I’m conflating a racoon with josh hawley and the groundhog with The Beast, which mark is on the forehead of his followers. I told Lucie I won’t call him the anti-Christ because I didn’t want the name of Jesus anywhere near El Bobo.

But I won't finish on that note, instead, here's a squirrel for you!

lots, of love, too, Agelaius