My-my-my-my Corona

Since I feel pretty secure with knitting and purling in the Portuguese style, I thought I'd try a stranded yarn project.  Something small - a pair of fingerless mittens.  I watched videos and bent two large paper clips to tension the yarn through, one on either side of my collar.  I'm afraid it was too much of a fiddly mess for me, and I ended up knitting the second mitten the traditional way.

But ouch, my fingers!  Thankfully, I discovered a product called a "Norwegian knitting thimble," which is a miniature metal coil that slides over your index finger.  It has two jutting coils that your yarn strands feed through, and thus your yarn is tensioned without smashing your fingers together too tightly.  Apparently this works for stranded knitting as well - one color of yarn in each coil.  I'll be excited to try this when my thimble arrives!

In other fiber news, Todd and I went to a quilt show this weekend.  I was interested in the color, detail, and design of the quilts...

...but mainly I was interested in the actual quilting.  I noticed that most people used a design called stippling, which is basically random squiggles across the fabric.  It's not a style that appeals to me, so I was glad to see many other designs implemented.

I even got to see a long-arm quilting machine in action.

One of these babies will set you back between $3500 and $5000!  You can program in an overall design and the machine will go to work, or you can grip the handles and quilt your own.  The idea of having so much space and freedom is really appealing, but the price tag is not.  For now, I'll stick to my cramped home machine.

We saw the full eclipse!  Here's the corona.

I didn't use a solar filter, just the iPhone.  I loved seeing the 360 degree sunset, then total darkness for almost 3 minutes!  A man near us in the parking lot where we waited had flown in from Denmark just for those 3 minutes.  He got in his car and headed back to Atlanta for his outgoing flight right after the sun came back out.  It just emphasized how special this experience really was!

Here at the house, we're still seeing swarms of hummingbirds.

Our red-tailed hawk continues to perch around the property, and thankfully he's grown out of his adolescent squawks!

Our average heat index has been between 95 and 100 degrees, and it's pretty unpleasant.  Even in Indiana, August is my least favorite month, and the last 2 weeks of August are always the worst.  My yearly ritual has begun.  "Look, the season must be advancing.  The sweet autumn clematis is in bloom."

"Nandina berries are taking on their blush."

"Beauty berries are in full color."

It's still tough, though.  At least we can enjoy the color...

...and take heart in the rapidly-shifting calendar pages, even if we can't feel an actual change.

And hey, we're always enjoy the antics of our indoor cats, even though most of those antics are relatively sedate.

Here's hoping for cooler days ahead.  Have a great week!