Small Moments of Happiness

Often during my day I see small events and vignettes that make me smile for no tangible reason. They pass so quickly that I rarely have time to save them with a camera.  Instead,  I save them up in my mind, take them out in idle moments, and thumb through them like photographs.  
A pair of beagle pups, joyful, with ears flying, noses to the ground, and tails in the air, do what beagles do best.

Bicycles and buggies line up neatly beside the little one-room Amish schoolhouse I pass on my way to work.

Two young Amish girls ride in a pony cart in a snowstorm, a scarlet blanket wrapped snugly around their legs and vivid against the gray/black/white world, snowflakes gathering on their shoulders and laps.

Three white-tail does in a cornfield raise their heads and watch as I pass.
A man jogs alongside the road with two white dogs on leashes.
A vee of geese fly south against the winter sky.
The sun sinks behind the hills surrounding a local lake, and the last rays set the opposing shore afire.

Old chairs and bits and bobs of odd household items lined up on the grass in front of a great red barn to be sold to passersby.

The shepherd dog tied in a farmyard who runs back and forth at the end of his rope in an ecstasy of territorial protection every time I drive past.

Bright red cardinals in the trees behind my house.

Small moments of happiness.

It is a good season for knitting.  I've been doing a lot of it.  Here is another pair of socks, finished last week.  The yarn is Fortissima and the diagonal rib pattern is from a knitting stitch dictionary I own.  I used my favorite Eye-of-Partridge heel flap stitch, and a Dutch heel.



On my needles: an experiment in toe-up sock-knitting.

A Mystery Sock pattern from one of my Ravelry groups

A test of a fingerless-mitten pattern for another designer.

I'm  becoming very excited about my upcoming trip to Germany!

It's less than a month away now.

I still can hardly believe that it's really going to happen...I'm betting on a three-day blizzard, beginning on February 7th, and preventing my plane from leaving Detroit.

Another adventure at work...

I performed my own scientific test in the store the other day.

Two ceramic salad plates, one persimmon in color and the other vanilla.

My question was apparently to find which color of glaze makes a stronger plate.

Here is the result:

When dropped at the same time from a height of approximately seven-point-five feet upon the head of a five-point-five-foot person,

persimmon-glazed plates are harder than the person's head AND the floor.

Vanilla-glazed plates are harder than the person's head but NOT the floor.

The person's head, however, will be bruised equally by both colors.

This experiment will not be repeated.

I hope.