No matter where you live, you’ve surely heard about or experienced the obscene heatwave happening throughout the Pacific Northwest, here in North America. It has literally never been hotter here.
We’ve kluged together a bearable indoors in our hundred-year-old bungalow, for which I’m incredibly thankful. I do not intend to leave it over the next couple of days, other than to walk the dog early in the morning and late at night. We’re pretty sure we won’t even send the kid to school tomorrow, where his second-floor classroom reached 30C during the day even before the heatwave started. An unusual end to an unusual school year.
We live near a bog, and it’s one of my favourite places. Just four blocks away from our house is this small landscape unique enough in its ecosystem that it creates its own microclimate. It’s almost always more humid and cooler in there than it is everywhere else.
At 6:30 this morning when we took the dog through, the bog environment was different enough that I even felt a tiny bit of a chill, just on the surface of my skin. Like magic.
I’ll spare you my existential dread, and talk about making instead. (But also, please tell your elected representatives that climate action as it stands now is too little too late, and far, far more action is needed.)
Weaving is a lovely thing to do when it’s oppressively not, since it doesn’t sit on your body and you don’t even need to run the yarn through your hands. Have I mentioned I’m in love with weaving? I’m in love with weaving. (I just accidentally typed “heatweave” elsewhere in this email, and now I’ve decided that’s my theme of the week.)
I’ve also finally picked my Willow Cardigan back up, after making two of the three beginning pieces. The cardigan is crocheted from the top down, first by making these three pieces, then by seaming them at the shoulders and joining them at the underarms, then working the rest of the body in one piece. It won’t take me long to make this third piece, and I’ve set myself the goal of joining them all together by the end of the day, so then for the rest of this heatwave I’ll have mindless crochet to keep my hands busy, when I can bear to have a project on my lap OMG.
Onward!
Kim
Items of Note
Doing this interview with author Jenn Ashton was a highlight of the last couple months for me. She’s a delight, and the knitting-focused short story we excerpted in Digits & Threads is also delightful ❤️.
Absolutely desperate to see this.
This… is an astonishing specimen. It’s got all the key elements: mansplaining, severe hints of “little lady,” stating the obvious while missing massive obvious things, total absence of knitters of colour. It was sent to me by a friend with a note: “I think you’ll enjoy this hate-read.” I felt seen.
What I’m making: A woven stole and a crochet sweater.
What I’m watching: Motherland Fort Salem. It’s… ok?
What I’m reading: Well. I’ll let you know next week, after I’ve decided if I should put aside what I’ve been reading for a library book that came up. The kid and I are just over halfway through The Wanderer, by Sharon Creech. I’m really loving it. I think he is, too.