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

Sherbet Blanket, Outlander, Exercise Oh My

 

Making headway with the Sherbet blanket.  The middle section is just about an inch short of what I want.  I want the blanket to be in 3 parts.  The first section is all the colors, the middle the bright pink, and then repeat the colored section for the third section.  Didn't work on it while in England for 2 wks, which I've been blogging about on my travel blog.  But did take it on our road trip to Williamsburg, which I'll blog about when I've finished the England tour blogging.

The entire series (9 books), of The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon is 413 hours in audio books.  Whew!  But, is soooooooooo worth it.  Sadly this picture is not in order.  Not sure why, maybe a color thing.  Yes I've watched some of tv series, but not the last 2 seasons and decided I wanted to read the books.  The narration is so well done, I think you would miss something if you read them vs listened to them.  Here's the proper order.

1. Outlander                         33 hours
2. Dragon Fly in Amber              39 hours
3. Voyager                           43 hours
4. Drums of Autumn                 45 hours
5. The Fiery Cross                    56 hours
6. A Breath of Snow and Ashes     57 hours
7. An Echo in the Bone               46 hours
8. Written in My Own Blood          45 hours
9. Go Tell the Bees I'm Gone        49 hours

Davina Porter is the lady that narrates all 9 books.  She is English, her father was a real Londoner= Cockney, her mother was born in St. Andrews Scotland, and she married Glasgow born Scot.  So lots of diversity in language/accents.  She truly does a wonderful job!!  I highly recommend all 9 books with her reading them.

All I can record for the month of August is steps/miles walking which would include mowing the yard.  I was in England for 2 wks and got a good number of steps while on tour.  My highest day was 20,473 steps (9miles) in the month which was mid month, while in England.  Additionally I had 2 days with 17K in steps (7 miles), again while touring England.  So, I'm happy with the steps/miles  The month total is 126.58 miles (306,953 steps) which is more than the July total of 102.54 miles.  Elbow is better, but still not 100% so have not tried to do planks.  I have started doing some yard work with the fall clean up of flower beds.  I am not however using the spudbar which caused the injury.  I am able to dig up lilies with a shovel because they  don't have hard roots in order to thin things out in the flower beds.