Who knew it could be done, a sweater knit in 4-days? Well, Marie Greene for one. While I did not make an actually four-day finish line, I did complete my version of Soundtrack in less time than allowed for the 2020 knit-along (KAL), July 1-31. The pattern officially dropped on July 1 for the thousands participating in this KAL but as a Knit Camp camper I had 24-hour advance availability. With yarn purchased from my local yarn store (LYS) Northfield Yarn and my swatch meeting gauge in hand, I cast-on on June 30 and completed my second sleeve on July 21. My final progress report with ends woven in and sweater off the blocking squares was posted on July 28. Soundtrack is a top-down sweater with rows of colorwork representing LP record grooves, hence the name. My progress reports incorporated some of my favorite albums in keeping with the KAL theme.
Author: annbh356
The Directors

We had planned a July trip to the popular destination of Nissawa. Yes, I know this Minnesota town may not be on your travel go-to list, but we enjoyed time together in August 2018 that included good conversation, shopping and attending Wine & Words. It was while we were at that first author brunch that we named ourselves, The Directors. Plus, a walk in the Grand View gardens is always a beauthiful setting. But Covid-19 foiled our 2020 plans. Initially, we simply thought to forego the large dinner/brunch gatherings but then the event planners managed a major shift from on-site to virtual and so, today, we connected online to hear the six 2020 Wine & Words authors. This year the brunch social hour had the authors video chatting from their kitchens and, appropriately, sharing drink, food, and summer canning recipes.
Thyme, thyme, thyme…

This summer’s bounty includes a bottling of herbed vinegar. My standard combination of apple cider vinegar as the flavorful base, with peppercorns and freshly harvested thyme from my porch pot. Good for salad dressing and delicious with sliced cucumbers fresh from the garden.
Ocimum basilicum
With an abundance of gorgeous basil and two batches of pesto already in the freezer, I began exploring new possibilities. These Lemon Basil Cookies featured crushed pistachios for a different culinary experience

Breakfast Treats
The first of the season – Rhubarb Pecan Scones. A delicious blend of spring tartness and warm nuttiness. An easy to make breakfast treat from the Rhubarb Renaissance by Kim Ode published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Migrating
I have resurrected my long dormant WordPress skills to recreate this new personal website. While I have never been a real writer (unlike someone such as Elizabeth Klein who said that for her “writing is like breathing”), I tend to periodically dabble. In the immediate pre- and post- retirement days, I wrote to capture the swing of emotions as I left my professional days behind. And, since I preceeded a good friend into this next chapter of our working lives by six months, she had requested I share any insights. She claimed my musing were useful although I am still skeptical.
At the onset of our Covid-19 confinement as days merged totally undistinguishable into one another and spurred on by The Isolation Journals, I thought to capture some of the emotions of these unprecedented times. And it worked – sort of. But, never having taken a creative writing class, the daily exercises felt artificial. So another nonstarter.
But nagging at the back of my brain was the fact that my Raverly profile included a link to my long-abandoned Tumblr account, The Bead Working Librarian. This site was initially created in December 2013 as Thing 1 at the launch of 23 Mobile Things (the mobile edition of 23 Things on a Stick). As the title suggests, my artistic focus at the time was still on beads but the individual posts reflect my switch to fiber. My first thought was to simply migrate all the content to its own page within this new site so as to not loose the thread of my early knitting experiences. But, having gone through the painstaking work of migrating content several times for the SELCO website, my earlier writing simply did not merit that amount of time and work. Hence the content will stay at The Bead Working Librarian until Tumbr or this link disappears into cyberspace. What I will migrate from Tumblr is the crisp formatting that fits my writing style – – lots of pictures with short descriptive phrases to describe the current events in my life.


