August 2026 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

A truncated project

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned playing yarn chicken with multiple crochet projects, including a historical temperature blanket project.

Umm… that blanket was for my mother.

And wasn’t done yet… I was partway into month nine when she passed.

A crocheted chain link blanket in a variety of colors.

The decision not to finish it was an easy one. After all, who else would need a historical temperature blanket tracking the high for the day in her city of birth, starting at her birthdate?

The real question was whether to frog (that means undo) the seven or eight days in month nine that were already done – leaving me with awkwardly small sections of yarn for each – or finish off that row. As it happens, the row I was working on already included the date she died, so it seemed logical to finish just that row. I also decided to mark that chain with something extra, in this case a gradient white to gray yarn, to make it stand out.

And now we have another crocheted blanket in the living room, of different styles and weights for all our blankety needs.

RIP Sarah Rodgers

Sarah (Edelson) Rodgers, age 79, passed away in Guatemala after a brief illness including anemia, fluid in the lungs, and, unshockingly (to anybody who believes in science), extensive scarring in her lungs after decades of smoking.

She was born in Portland, Oregon on December 14, 1946 to Elizabeth Ruth Thompson (Stevely) & (absent) Harold (Hal) Miller, immediately adopted by Zan & Mary (Lonergan) Edelson, and further raised by Bunny Edelson.

She met her husband, Frank, while attending Portland State University, quitting her role as Student Body President and the related protests at faculty events that she was now invited to after marrying the Director of Libraries. They moved with their young daughters to Miami, Florida in 1979, just in time for Hurricane David to turn around off the coast, leaving them with boxes of avocados rapidly harvested before the storm and a desperate quest to use them all, thus introducing avocado lime pie as a family favorite.

She fell in love with Antigua Guatemala on her first visit in the 1980s, following with subsequent visits, enrolling her daughters in middle school, and ultimately buying and renovating a house that became known as Sunshinetenango, merging her personal sun logo with the “tenango” suffix from many Guatemalan towns. (Oddly, “tenango” arrived from the Nahuatl people in Mexico with the European conquistadors, rather than from the Maya people of Guatemala.)

Her fascination with Guatemalan textiles involved buying many used clothing items and repurposing some of the fabric into pillows, bag holders, and other common use items. On one occasion in the late ‘80s, she and housekeeper Salvador took an overnight trip home to a remote village with someone they met on the street to buy the clothes off his back. In addition to the clothes for her collection, she brought home a twisted ankle, acquired descending a slope to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

She is, as best we know, the oldest of her siblings: Syl, Charles, Rich, and Andrea (all surviving) from Zan; Betsy, Janet, and Doug (only Janet surviving) from Elizabeth; and Stephanie, Karen, and Christine (unknown status) from Hal.

She was preceded in death by her adoptive parents, birth parents, and husband, Frank.

She is survived by her amazingly resilient stepmother, Bunny; daughters Hilda and Frances; grandchildren Jesi, Alex, and Cassandra; and a fabulous array of nieces and nephews.

Altered invitation, changing Sarah's 80th birthday party to a celebration of life.

Due to the unfortunate circumstances, her planned 80th birthday party will be repurposed as a celebration of life. Whether you can attend or not, we would appreciate if you share some memories – and photos, if you have them – of both her and our father, Frank, so we can assemble a combined memory book.

So many yellow flowers!

By a combination of chance and design, we have a wide assortment of yellow flowers spread across our yard this season, and that’s in addition to the bison bur flowers I mentioned recently.

Pumpkin flowers around and on the Eastern Redbud in the front lawn, as well as some yellow on the many dill plants, mostly in the mulch.
An evening primrose volunteered in the front yard with small yellow flowers.
Yellow flowers in our cantaloupe bed and the first indication of a formed cantaloupe.
So many yellow flowers on the tomato plant, many of which have already become delicious cherry tomatoes.

While the pumpkin flowers are deliberate, the pumpkin vines climbing up the redbud are not; we have been removing young fruit as it forms there. The redbud is barely taller than I am, and the pumpkins are the large white carving pumpkins we grew last year. (And then saved the seeds from, of course.)

Playing “yarn chicken”

If you’re unfamiliar with the game of “chicken,” there’s a Wikipedia page about it. The short version is two cars drive towards each other, and whoever swerves first – avoiding a crash – is the loser. That is a game I have never played, since I value both my life and my insurance rates.

I do frequently play the much tamer “yarn chicken” game though, which is the gamble between the quantity of yarn possessed and the quantity of yarn needed for the project. You may recall that this year’s temperature blanket is a scavenger edition, using leftover yarn from my stash. I have lost once at yarn chicken – I ran out of the orange I was using for the 80s and had to pull something similar from my stash – and am closing to losing again on the green for the 70s. The replacement green is nowhere near the bright green I started with.

Part of a crocheted blanket made up of different colored links, showing two different shades of red next to each other.

I’m also working on a historical temperature blanket – a year and location in the past, so the counts were set before I started – and woefully miscalculated on my remnant yarn for that. You may recognize these colors from last year’s temperature blanket; this is the leftover yarn from that project. I specifically mapped the colors I had more of to the more frequent temperatures for this blanket, and realized recently that I would not have enough of two or three different colors. When I checked the nearest craft store, I was able to purchase two of the three in the same brand’s style and color, but the third one, a red, was not available. In poor lighting, it won’t be noticeable, but one of the two reds pictured is definitely a burgundy. So that’s another loss to yarn chicken.