Yes, We Have and/or Are Bananas

Oh hai. This month has been so full of alarums and emergencies that blogging did not occur. I did travel a lot, cook a lot, eat a lot (perhaps too much), visit a lot, and knit a little. To keep things sane, I decided early on that I wouldn't stress about the knitting, not that I ever do really.

As things turned out, while visiting family in Honolulu I finished two pairs of socks: a pair of cranberry red Fake Cross Stitch Sox by Claudia Tietze, knit in String Theory Bluestocking, and the recuffinated pair of carbon footprint Canada socks by Nancy Bush, knit in Heritage Sock. I'm very pleased with both and would happily knit either again. When I finished them it was much too warm to model them, which made me reflect, not for the first time, that as useful as it is now my childhood love of knitting was at the time a bit odd.

 

Perhaps the most frequent topic of table conversation in Hawai'i was why some people on the Mainland still seem to believe in birther nonsense, which nearly all people in the 50th state find perplexing and deeply offensive. All I could say was while I don't really know, I would tend to guess its cause and persistence have something to do with one's perceptions of authority. Or perhaps there's a failure to distinguish between having bananas and being bananas. There's no lack of bananas in Hawai'i – this quite ordinary supermarket had four varieties in one display, plus a couple others not pictured.



The weather transitioned from autumny to wintry while I was there. It's a false myth that Hawai'i lacks seasons, the changes are just different than around Exit 151. One sign of the season: work crews were out trimming street trees to smarten them up for the New Year and the coming winter storms. That is, they were removing old fronds and developing nuts from coconut palms, which become a nuisance and hazard when they ripen and fall. Coconuts on the tree are several times bigger and heavier than coconuts in the supermarket because of their large outer husk. I once saw a bunch of coconuts fall like a cascade of bowling balls onto an imprudently parked car, which pretty well destroyed the body and glass.



Another sign of winter: a festive tower o' poinsettias in front of the Starbucks at the mall. (There are indeed malls and Starbucks and giftmas in Hawai'i.)



Poinsettias, native to Mexico, do very nicely when planted outside in Hawai'i (and other places), becoming quite large and slightly scary-looking, with multitudes of colorful bracts (the true flowers are tiny) at the very tips of long, bare, spindly branches. The familiar potted plant is merely the tip of the iceberg, which (ahem) could serve as a metaphor for this post.

Moving right along, next up, the year end wrap up.