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Here you go, Melendy fans! Fresh from my microphone. :)

Spiderweb for Two: 05 A Pocketful of Gold

Oliver’s explorations remind me very much of when I was a little kid growing up on a mountain in the foothills of California. Different wildlife, but the same sense of wandering around and noticing all the life in the forest, and watching the birds and the insects, and foraging for edible wild plants. We sucked the nectar from manzanita blossoms, nibbled Miner’s Lettuce, and chewed the tart juice out of the stalk of a yellow flower that we called “sourgrass”. Fun.

Dearest readers,

I have just discovered that, months ago, my WordPress software stopped notifying me when y’all leave comments, which means that, since comments from readers who haven’t commented before need my approval before being posted, an awful lot of you have left comments that I never read and that never showed up here.

I’m so sorry!

Yesterday I went through a huge backlog of comments and OK’d all the non-spam ones. Except for the one from the guy who was complaining about content in one of the history books I narrated. Dude… I’m just the narrator, I didn’t write the thing. You’ll have to take your complaint about content up with the (dead) author.

And a BIG thank you to all of you who left so many kind and encouraging remarks. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you enjoy my recordings and look forward to them! When life gets difficult those friendly comments not only cheer me up but inspire me to keep recording my audiobooks.

I’ll try to record more of Randy and Oliver’s treasure-hunt adventures tomorrow :)

And I’l try to remember to sort through the unposted comments frequently!

Hey Melendy Fans,

There are two more chapters of Spiderweb for Two up on archive.org:

03 The Resting Place
04 The Emperor’s Abode (Don’t you just love Mr. Titus?)

I’ll put links to the whole book on my “Kayray Reads to You” page when the book is finished, and of course I’ll add all the chapters to my podcast feed.

Finished! I did a good job matching up the stripes, eh? That’s not so easy with a multicolored yarn.

All details on my Ravelry page (no log-in required):
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/little-prince-socks

To avoid that little gap, hole, or loose stitch at the top of the heel flap when picking up the gusset stitches:

http://wisehilda.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-picking-up-gusset-stitches-avoiding.html

WOW. Why did I never think of this? In case that link breaks — all you do is, while picking up stitches along the edge of the heel flap, pick up one more along the same column after you reach the top (bottom?) of the heel flap. On the other side of the heel flap, just start picking up stitches one stitch below the corner where the flap meets the leg, in the same column that becomes the edge of the heel flap. (It takes a lot of words to describe this trick, but just try it; it’s as simple as can be.)

Presto. No gap, no hole, no need to twist anything.

More details about these socks on Ravelry: http://ravel.me/kayray/lps

Look, no gaps, no holes:

Good job, little nephew! :)

Well I haven’t written a blog post in a very long time. So I just thought I’d write a quick one here and try to get back in the habit. I know no one reads blogs anymore but I like being able to read old entries and see what I was doing.

Today I went to my board game meetup and we played three games that were new to me — Boss Monster, Modern Art (an auction game — nothing to do with actual art. Pity.) and Race for the Galaxy. I had lots of fun! I find it so very pleasurable to learn new board games. I don’t know… there’s just something so satisfying about knowing nothing at all about the components or how to play, and having it slowly come into focus. Race for the Galaxy, in particular, has millions of seemingly indecipherable little symbols on millions of unique cards, but then BAM — one at a time the little symbols take on meaning, and it becomes a game instead of a mystery. Still not super-clear about the “consume” phase… but I’m sure on the next play I’ll master it.

Look what Elli sent me for my birthday (the package just arrived)! Books and yarn and a Zelda game for my gameboy!

And look at my handsome 18-yr-old boy. He’s the best, I tell you, the best.