Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Open the Gates!

Whew!  I am ready to open the gates!  I am soooo close now!  I am taking a day off from yard work to work on Mr. Vest!  I will cut the steeks, sew the ends together to make the shoulder, and tack down the steeks.  Then on to the rib!  Yeah!  It seems do-able to me.

And yes!  It is still March and my pink azalea is blooming!  It is too much for me.  I started tacking the honeysuckle and I know it is a stupid thing to do.  But I feel better for the poor little trees it is smothering if I try to rip some of it off.  I sometimes wish I could borrow one of the llamas down the street, but I cannot imagine how to manage one without fencing. 

Patty almost died last weekend from something she ate.  She has always gotten into the stuff my neighbor throws over his fence into the woods.  But I don't know what she ate, and it was not recognizable in the vomit she threw up.  She had diarrhea and vomiting on Friday after being up all night long Thursday night.  I ended up rushing her to the vet on Friday afternoon.  She is now quite the drama queen with all the attention and loving she got while sick.

Noodles has been adapting to the door being locked on his night adventures.  But with the warmer weather he wants OUT!  I thought I could do that Friday while I was taking care of Patty.  Oh, no, he immediately got into a tussle with a visitor crossing his yard.  So after dark we remain locked up.

Nothing new to report.  Same old, same old.  Have a great rest of the week.  I just wanted to report on the vest progress.  I am quite pleased!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Vernal Equinox! Duh!

"The Spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers."
                                                                                             Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Well, we had a doozy of a stormy night last night.  Poor Patty just shakes and tries to find hidey holes.  I don't blame her.   I have been a little bit nervous with all the tornadoes going on everywhere.  I finally took her into the spare bedroom with all the shades closed and finally got her to sleep.  She had her back to my back most of the night, but she did get to sleep after the major thunder booming stopped.

I also had to make her go outside this morning.  She peed twice just in case I tried to get her to do it again.

While we were walking along, I noticed that the grass that I mowed on Friday is already to my ankles in places.  My newest plants are swimming pretty well.  Luckily my yard is pretty porous and the water does not stand too long.

I am chugging along on the vest.  I have decided it will be much too hot on Easter for him to wear it, so I am not pushing so hard.  I also get tired eyes and have to stop and do something else.  Like mow the yard.

The flowering of things is fast and furious this year.  The redbuds are already putting on leaves.  More and more trees are putting on leaves.  The weeds and grass are growing rapidly now.  The forsythias are past their prime.  And this is still March!  Oh-and even the holly bushes are blooming.  Weird!

Not a whole lot of news.  CJE came over on Sunday for a spinning day.  I finished the gold singles, and I am now plying that.  She worked on her pink stuff that she is knitting.  We ordered pizza delivered so we did not have to stop and go eat.  It was gloriously nice to sit on the deck and eat pizza and just watch the birds for a spell.

So I noticed that the fiber fair season is starting to crank up.  Taos is having a new one, which I am tempted to do.  But I am trying to not think about it.  I found another box of fibers that I had dyed at some point in my life.  CJE and I dug through that, and marveled at the pretty golds and yellows.  I cannot even remember what fiber it is, but it is definitely a longwool variety with a lot of luster.  It feels a little bit goopy, so I am hoping that will wash out.  I am going to do a sample spin of one of them to test that out.

Well, off to knit some more on the vest.  Hmmm... maybe I will make a sandwich first and then knit.  Have a good week.



Saturday, March 10, 2012

March 10th-I've Mowed the Yard!


 Yes!  Those are leaves coming out on a tree!  It is early March!  The redbuds are already starting to put on little teeny pink things!  My forsythias are late blooming, but they are starting to show color!  I mowed the weeds yesterday.  I am digging grass out of the front flower bed as fast as my back will let me, because plants are springing up everywhere!  It is early March!  I decided to plant some seeds just out of reckless abandonment!

Now on to the fun stuff!  This is a report picture of the vest.  I have placed the steeks and I am climbing up the stupid thing.  I have never centered a  motif before; I have just started knitting willy-nilly and I thought it looked okay.  But now that I have experienced the way this looks, I am certainly going to do that next time.
There is a low-contrast color change in the center of the OXO pattern.  You can't tell that much in the upper ones, but the lower one shows that contrast.  The blue is really a beautiful color with a hint of purple.  I just looked up the color and it is Fjord. 

Now on to the bitching  part of the knitting.  Meg Swanson's video is a god-send.  I placed my steeks without any difficulty.  She says to knit around to the next steek and knit it.  So I started doing that when I realized that my motifs' vertical placements were not lined up.  It took a lot of swearing and futzing around and unknitting and a lot of grumbling.  I even stopped to look up steeks in three of my reference books.  Nothing about how to maintain the vertical motif markers.  I did find a reference that says to knit "being careful to keep the pattern motifs in established vertical alignment."  That's as much as I could find. 

So here's what I do-after all the problem-solving, I find the first center stitch on the motif, count back to the beginning, and start there on the chart.  It works for me.  I am starting to gain a little bit of speed now.  I am fortunate that I know how to "read" my knitting.  That helps a lot.

In the past I have never aligned anything.  I just knit along being quite happy.  But I do like the precise alignment thing.  It looks much nicer.

I am so happy to be almost done.  I have set a new goal of Easter, but I am not sure whether I will make it.  I think I have done really well to get this much done in two months. 

Yard work is calling.   I need to get this winter project off the needles.

I am going to call the groomer next week to get Patty's Spring-do.  She gets so hot and huffs and puffs.  Noodles has been fighting with ugly boys who are entering our yard while roaming around looking for love.  He is being locked in the house at night.  He is not adjusting well, but the cool evenings help.  I noticed he isn't able to jump or climb as well as before his broken leg.

So I am going to leave you with this quote I have on my refrigerator.  Remember a long time ago I mentioned that I collect quotes and place them everywhere.  I was getting something out of the refrigerator when I "saw" this again.  It seemed appropriate after last night's tantrum.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.
                                                                                                                 Renoir