Recycling in the Middle of Nowhere. And other stuff.

No, Vickie, we don't have curbside recycling. The nearest drop-off spot is 13 miles away. I recycle cans and bottles, because I can collect them easily in a trash bin. Other than that, space is limited.

I don't subscribe to any newspapers. If I did, I'd most likely be using it for wrapping paper or gift bags. I do subscribe to magazines, and try to pass them on when I'm finished (library, hospital, friends), but sometimes they end up getting tossed, along with the catalogs.

This bench sits inside my front door. I keep egg cartons in the
basket on the left, toss burnables in the one on the right and
that box of magazines on top is ready to go to the library.

We discard plain paper in a basket – I separate and toss envelopes with glassine windows from the rest of the mail, and we burn the plain stuff and then spread the ashes on the garden, which improves the tilth of the soil. Or so my father said. It does seem to be working. The worst third of the garden plot has improved significantly since I started working on it a couple years ago.

It appears my cold wasn't a cold after all, but must have been some kind of contact rhinitis. I sneezed and blew my nose for an hour after I got up yesterday, but the rest of the day was, um, uneventful as far as symptoms go. I took a walk (I started walking regularly again on November 8 and have missed just one day since). And I did sit down to knit and watch some previously recorded episodes of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.

I worked on the hat again after dinner while watching part of Forrest Gump. Wasn't/isn't that a wonderful movie? I never get tired of it.

My granddaughter and I bought the yarn prior to choosing the pattern, so her hat won't have the subtle gradations of color in the designer's version. She chose bright pink and purple (she's five). After working a few rounds of the chart, the two colors are about the same intensity. But if I switched out the purple for something else, she would surely notice and remember and I don't want to disappoint her. Apologies to the designer, but granddaughters come first!

The cabled beret is still damp. I was able to get it a little wider, but not much. Might have to improvise on the top if it doesn't look beret-ish enough. The beauty of knitting is that you can get creative if something doesn't work out properly. If I were sewing, I'd have to go buy more fabric. When you make your fabric as you go along, you can either take off in a different direction (which is what I'm thinking about doing with the beret) or rip it out and start over.

Knitted fabric rarely ends up in the burn barrel.