A Close Call

Yesterday afternoon I managed to spend some more time out on the deck in the late afternoon.  I was working on MONKEYSOCKS and of course had an adult beverage.  We don't have any furniture out there yet, so I just had everything set on the bench in front of me (and had to make sure my printed instructions didn't blow away!).  Oogyhubby sent me a text, and as I went to read it I heard the faint sound of a leaf crackling below where I was sitting.  I didn't think anything of it until I picked my knitting back up and saw that I had four Karbonz, not five, and one stitch just hanging there that had just been worked.  It was one of the Karbonz that had taken a nose dive off of the deck!

I tried not to panic, although I've lost a few DPNs forever underneath the deck at the cottage (I expect that someday, someone will be doing work under there and wonder where all the small, straight sticks came from!).  I first looked around on the deck, just to be thorough I think - on the bench, under the bench, in the gaps between boards.  No luck.  For the next step, I needed shoes.

After some poking around in the leaf litter, I found it!!  Fortunately, the silvery tips prevented a full camouflage, and I somehow managed not to step on it as I was tromping all around in there.  So - crisis averted.  I'd be OK with losing some random wooden size 0 needle, but these Karbonz are special!!

This won't prevent me from knitting on the deck in the future, but I can see that I'll need to enact some preventive measures!

On a completely different note - here’s another non-oogy book I’ve read recently and really liked - Plan Bee, by Susan Brackney.  It’s actually one of the few books that our book club selected that I didn’t read at the time.  (We’d just been to a lovely local wine bar and also had some amazing cheeses with honey there, so we were all filled with wanting to learn more about all of these things.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d be seriously contemplating some beekeeping of my own!)

There are lots of web sites, YouTube channels, and local resources to provide information about beekeeping, and I’ve even found a bee buddy who knows a few things.  This book provides a lot of information as well, but the author also conveys her own perspectives on these fascinating creatures, including her deep respect and affection for them.  She isn’t so much a keeper of bees as she is a caretaker.

I read the book back in January, and I can see that I’m going to need to read it again now that I’ve done some more research and watched a bunch of videos.  Even though it’s an easy and fairly quick read, it’s also got a lot of great information that I expect I’ll continue to reference as I start to make some decisions about setting up some hives in a few months!