Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

Knitting.

This is a scarf I finished last week, still not blocked. Both yarns are Blue Moon Fiber Arts; the variegated sparkly one is the second half of the skein I used in this one.  I love their yarns. Looking forward to knitting down the stash so I can order more.

When I finished the scarf I cast on for a Baby Surprise jacket using some Knit Picks tonal fingering weight that had been marinating in the stash for rather a long time, plus some anonymous light blue fingering for the occasional stripe. This went into time out while I knitted the next item.

This is a nearly finished cowl using Darn Good Yarns silk roving that I won from Kim several years ago. The black worsted is Ella Rae. I have been wanting to use the silk for a long time but couldn’t quite figure out what it wanted to be. Looks like I will use only about half of it; the second half may go into another cowl using a different solid for contrast.

Reading.

Cripes, I haven’t finished anything since last Wednesday. Currently reading The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda. Not gonna recommend it yet; it is a bit confusing. Stay tuned.

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Wait. I have listened to several things that I haven’t posted about.

Cut and Run was so bad I quit midway. The only thing it has to recommend it, imnsho, is that it was free on Audible.

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The Man on the Mountaintop is a nice premise, but I got bored with it an hour or so in. YMMV.

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Second Skin by Christian White, another Audible freebie. Meh. Okay. 2✭.

The chance of something free is too alluring to me. I should learn my lesson.

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll. Although I am a big Neal Gaiman fan, I do not necessarily like the books he recommends. I am roughly a quarter of the way through this and not sure if I would recommend it or not.

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We are binge-watching Outlander every evening. Currently midway through season 3, which is the last one available on NetFlix.

::sob::

However, I just requested curbside pickup for season 4 at a library in the town where I am having an outdoor lunch with a friend tomorrow. Smokey is as eager to keep watching as I am, which, given that it is kind of a soap opera, is surprising. But he is intrigued by the historical, 18th century bits.

Photo by CDC on Pexels.com

Elder Son called yesterday. When he was on duty on Saturday there was a brief time when there were zero patients in the hospital, something he had not seen in his three years there. On Sunday the hospital cook was admitted to the hospital for COVID-19. She had been home sick for 2-3 weeks; the public health nurses at the hospital had been calling her to track her progress, and they decided she was getting worse. He described her low oxygen levels and the volumes of oxygen they had put her on and said that she had been airlifted by helicopter to an ICU in Albuquerque.

He said Gallup is still pretty much locked down, but the infection and death rates in McKinley County, which includes both that city and his hospital, have been declining after having been the highest in the the country a month ago. At that time the number of cases was doubling every six days; the doubling period now is 40 days.

The coronavirus has been smoldering on the Zuni reservation for two months . The hospital gets a sudden rush of a few COVID-19 patients and the staff thinks, “Oh boy, here it comes,” …and then nothing. That has happened several times. Initially the spread of the virus was primarily from the dialysis unit where their patient zero infected others, but now they are seeing more community spread from multigenerational houses. So the smolder may become a flame.

I had some requests — well, two — for positive stuff. You ask, I deliver.

I deliver… momentarily. This needs to be seen first.

“People have called to have conversations about their life stories. Single parents at home with small children have called, grateful to speak with another adult. Teenagers have called asking for homework help.” Here is a shorter article not behind a paywall. Here is the site referenced in the articles.

Volunteer cleanup in Minneapolis. WeLoveLakeStreet.com has raised over $3 million to help rebuild.

That last image of the bear is a screenshot of my iPhone wallpaper. I knew you wanted to know. And the newspaper story about dogs pooping is from an IG post by Adrienne Martini, aka martinimade.com.

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Last but not least, today is National Donut Day! I grew up calling these bismarks, but according to the internet they are berlins (or the famous Berliners that JFK claimed to be).