A hot, and hardworking morning. I climbed up on my roof (don't tell my mom I actually went up on it; for the record I did it all from the ladder...) and brushed off as many of the fallen pecan catkins as I could, as the insurance company is coming out to take a photo of my new roof Monday.

I noticed this afternoon they're back, almost as many, again. Maybe tomorrow early evening I'll have to get the broom on a long stick out again...

I also cleaned what was probably 5 or 6 years worth of what looked like compost out of the back gutter. The gutters had those wire mesh things over them, but that just made the problem worse: pecans couldn't fall in but all the little gritty stuff could and it got caught. So I pulled the screens off and used the "jet" option on my hose to squirt all the "compost" into my garden.
(Hey, if it looks like compost and smells like compost it must fertilize like compost, right?)

I also mowed the lawn and edged with the weedeater. My arms hurt now and are a little shaky.

I'm relaxing this weekend (well, except for the yard work) and I've decided I want to finish the "Spanish Shawl". By my estimation I have about 25 rows to go before casting off and applying fringe...as long as I have enough yarn left. I've decided it's better to go fringeless than to have a skimpy shawl. I have broad shoulders (for a woman) and shawls that are too short are sort of useless to me.

Two links for today: Knitnet has their new issue up. And they are looking for (responsible) people to design for them! (the reason the issue was so delayed was that apparently some people they contracted with didn't come through...and it seems that there are fewer patterns in this issue. But if you like twin sets, there are two of them, and a felted vest, and a cotton nautical-looking sweater.

And an interesting story (a medical mystery really) from the New York Times magazine. The case of the spreading rash. Apparently kids in schools around the country came down with some weird pseudo-rash. And because it was after 9/11/01, it got a lot of press, which means more kids got the rash, which means that parents got suspicious, which means more kids got the rash....it seems that it was basically a case of kids being suggestible, and living in stressful times.