Voting, Knitting, Fall, Fungus, and Civil Rights

 

Voted today and have my fingers and toes crossed, that issues 1 and 2 in Ohio pass.  I'm tired of the government telling women what they can do with their bodies.  What happens should be between the woman and her physician.  The far right needs to stop with all the disinformation.

The Sherbert Baby Ghan/blanket is coming along, but slowly.  Got the large center pink section completed and am now working on the mint green section you see on the far right.  So, 2/3rds of the blanket is done.  Been doing lots of yard work, so haven't spent much time knitting of late.  But, now the fall clean up is almost complete.

I don't tend to decorate except for Christmas, but do like to change out the placemats seasonally for the various holidays.  Pumpkins have been out for about a month for phase one of the fall decor.

Had some pretty mums on the front stoop, until just a few days ago.  After several hard freezes they have gone by wayside.  Too bad, they did provide some color.

In my last post I posted an interesting fungus I spotted one day on my walk, here again is another one.......totally different.  These, I think are far more "Normal"?  Looks like Chinese writing almost on the cap of the mushroom.

Another must read book.  A good follow up after A Fever in the Heartland, that I blogged about in the previous blog post.  This will be an eye opener for many.  Even though as a young teen I saw some things on the nightly news, I did not see how truly cruel White Men in Power were.  Birmingham Alabama was a very dangerous, poor city with one of the lowest literacy rates in the country.  973 children....yes children were arrested by Bull Connor in a single demonstration.

Wanting to absorb a bit more of this horrible time, I watched the movie The Long Walk Home about The Montgomery Bus Boycott.  It's very moving.  Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek were both phenomenal in their rolls.  If you're much younger than me, you might not have seen these 2 historic events during your lifetime.  

My steps for October are down considerably and I'm still not doing yoga or planks due to the elbow injury.  Sigh.....I did what seemed like lots of yard work, but that doesn't necessarily give you lot of steps.  And now, the weather is getting cold...so, I'm not optimistic about steps increases.  On a good note, I did manage a handfull of days with over 14K in steps for the day.

I'm continuing to blog about my 2 wk tour of The UK

A Finish, Fall Color, and Child Trafficker, Georgia Tann

 

Done, but not very happy with it.  Snail Hollow Shawl.  This was a kit with yarn and pattern sold by Crafty's.  It's listed on Ravelery as well.  I do not recommend this kit, or the pattern.  The pattern is not well written.  I've not used any other patterns by Erika Flory; but 3 different people I've spoken to have interpeted the pattern 3 different ways and none ended up being happy with the end result.  I am in their camp as well.  It's much much smaller than it should be and can barely be a scarf and certainly not a shawl.  The yarn, Cloudborn is also not one I would recommend.  The yarn separately badly while knitting which caused some issues.

I like the color combination, rich colors but very hard on the eyes.  If I were to ever do this pattern again, I would choose more contrasting colors, a different yarn...a heavier yarn.  It will look better after it get's it's soak and get's blocked, and hopefully it will be a tad larger afterwards as well..

I've continued to work on the fall colored asymetrical scarf; but while I've worked on it a good number of additional hours, it doesn't look much different, so I've not taken anothe picture.

Sharing a particularly pretty tree from a walk through the park a few days ago.  Yes, fall has arrived.  And yes, I'm able to get some walking in so my monthly numbers should be better; but perhaps not by a lot.  I am over Covid and trying to get back into doing planks etc.  So, we'll see how things shape up.

Since it's fall, I added fall table settings to the dining room table.  That's the extint of my Fall/Halloween decorating; though I have shared some of the outside decorations I've been seeing around the neighborhood.  A good fall meal, chicken enchildas and black beans.  Had to take a picture because this one presented better than they sometimes do.  Sometimes getting them neatly out of the casserole dish is tricky and they don't look as pretty.  I was happy with how these came out nicely.

Decided I needed a wee break from all my WWII books, so started this one in print on the plane coming back from my ill fated France tour, and then finished it with the audio version.  I'm glad I switched to the audio, as the voices added to the story.  "Before We Were Yours", by Lisa Wingate is a novel, but based on lots of facts about The Tennessee Children's Home Society Orphanage scandal whose director was Georegia Tann.  This starts in 1939 in Memphis where children were kidnapped, stolen, separated from their siblings, and sold.  This horrific situation lasted for years.  About 25 years.  

Georgia Tann made lots of monthly stealing and selling these children.  Though initially she was credited with the idea of adoption, what she did was illegal start to finish with very few exceptions.  It's estmated that about 500 children died in her "care", or lack there of.  She was successful with the help of the police force.  Truly a horrific scandal involving about 5,000 babies/children.

More than a million copies of this book were sold.  Lisa Wingate has organized a reunion where many adoptives have become acquainted and shared their stories.  Some have been reunited with their siblings and other family members; but even with good research many have not been and won't be; as she changed their names when she falsified the adoption records.  

Sadly, this woman, Georgia Tann never paid for her crimes, as she died a few days before the daming report came to light.

The paper back is 356 pages, the audio book is 14 hours.  I finished it in just a few days.  I couldn't put the book down, and highly recommend it.  It's important to know about things in our history so the horrific events don't get repeated.

I'll be adding "Before and After", another book of Lisa Wingate about the lives of those adoptive children to my reading list.

Beauty and Work

Beauty is all around us this time of year. These little trees are called service berries. I've never heard of them until my neighbor planted 2. Now I see them everywhere. Aren't they pretty? I can see these looking out my side kitchen window.
Not sure you see really how many leaves are piled up here; but took hubby and I blowing and raking several hours on Sunday. We have leaves at the curb ready for pick up the full length of the house, on both sides of the drive. As do the 2 neighbors between us and the end of the street. Our neighborhood has a large truck vacuum that picks up the leaves about 5 times during the season. The leaves are then composted at a facility where we buy our mulch in the spring. It's my understanding our community was one of the first in the nation to develop this system. It's really a good system. They don't fill the landfills with them this way, and it's far easier than cutting up leaves yourself, and or bagging them which is what many neighboring communities do.
This is hubby's new leaf blower. He had just finished blowing all the leaves off the roof and out of the gutters when the one we've had for years broke. So, he ventured out to the hardware to make a new purchase.

Do you rake or blow your leaves?
What's your communities method of collecting the leaves?

As it's continuing to get colder and colder with each passing day, I'm reminded what a hard time of year it is for those who are homeless and less fortunate. And with that, please read about my homeless project here. I'm betting, there's something you can do to help.