This past Tuesday was election day in the US, as pretty much the whole world knows. I am relieved to see that Biden is the projected winner at this point.
A (much much) smaller personal victory also occurred Tuesday: I placed the last bead on the edge of my shawl. I then proceeded to mess up picking up the edge stitches for the next several days, finally succeeding yesterday about the same time the AP called a winner. I suspect that these are not entirely unrelated.
The yarn is very slippery so I couldn’t pick up every other stitch from the edge as instructed – I needed to pick up all stitches and knit two together along the edge. If I did every other stitch (as I did on try one), the yarn pulls up the slack from the skipped stitch, creating a giant whole. Happily the yarn, despite it’s ethereal name of “Whisper lace”, is actually quite tough and handled the repeated ripping back very very well.
Anyway, I finally got there, and you can see from the 2nd image below I’ve made a decent start on the short rows that build up the body of the shawl.
Yesterday my husband and I also had a fun surprise – there are sheep in a little enclosure in the woods below Ruineberg, Sanssouci.
The only signs indicate that the fence is electrified, you should stay back, don’t feed them, and keep your dogs controlled. So I can only share that I think they are German Gray Heath based on their appearance and what I’ve found online about common German sheep breeds.
As for the election, while there is a lot to celebrate and be both relieved and joyful about (including the relative lack of violence on Election Day), it hasn’t been an easy week. Not just because of the wait, but because even with a win, I find myself both saddened and disgusted that so many voted for an administration and congressional representatives who have been unapologetically bigoted, sexist, racist and xenophobic over the past four years, who have show such utter contempt for the vulnerable during this pandemic, and who have indicated time and again that they will bend and break rules as necessary to maintain power while suppressing the will of the people. And yet… also not surprised that so many of my fellow Americans let me down. And anybody who says they voted for Trump, but disagree with my statements above… you and I are not living in the same reality.
Yet I am hopeful that maybe we’ll finally start tackling the systems that support racism and sexism, and which allow hate to grow in people generation after generation. For all that far too many voted to continue the hate and disregard for the vulnerable, even more came together in this election to repudiate it. Thank you to every single person to voted, and especially to all who helped get out the vote.