Cloudy With A Chance of Rain

Since Thursday we have had muggy, warm days with a chance of rain, but no rain.  This morning I woke up around 6 am with the wind blowing the trees sideways and whipping things around in the yard.  I was sound asleep, and I was jarred awake with a fear of a tornado.  It was very loud.  I grabbed my sweat pants and ran into the living room to turn on the t.v.  There was the cute young weatherman telling us where the heaviest rain was, etc.  No threats, according to him.  I lay down on top of the bed with all my clothes on, you know, just in case.  But I fell asleep again with the heavy, heavy rainfall.

So today is one of those freaky Spring days with all senses alert.  It appears the major storm has blown over.  Not much rain, but enough to calm the pollen for the morning.

I finished spinning the singles of the luxury yarn I wanted for a project.  The batts were 50% alpaca, 25% milk, 15% silk, and 10% camel.  Wow!  It was great to spin.  Very, very soft and easy to spin.  I bought what the lady had at the show last year, and it was only close to 6 ozs.  Not enough to do a lot, but combined with another yarn it will be just fine.  It was very expensive, but "I am worth it".

It takes me two days to mow with the riding mower, mow with the push mower to trim edges and tight spots, and then weedeat.  I get very tired, but I have to keep up or it will be a jungle.  So I am not knitting much or doing much of anything but yard work.  I am watering the potted plants already, and hopefully they will survive the drought when it comes. 

My friend from north of Wichita had open-heart surgery last Monday.  She went home on Saturday.  I talked to her briefly in the afternoon, and she was hurting and not doing as well as she would like to be doing.  I think she pushed them to release her too soon.  I left her a message yesterday, but have not talked to her since Saturday.

My nephew has finally set a wedding date.  It is too complicated to go into, but he and M. fought to have the wedding they wanted.  The two mothers fought them and each other over what they wanted.  I think he and M. won from the sounds of it.  This is another couple in their mid-30's, and I think they should do what they want.  I don't like the date, but it is not my choice.  I just have to figure out if I can get there.  It will be really expensive to fly, rent a car, and get a hotel room.  We will see.

So not much is new.  I haven't been sewing either, and so not much to report.  I have to close the spare room, because Noodles has been sleeping on the quilt top I spread out on the bed.  I am going to finish the backing and get that off to the quilter. 

Have a good week.  It is going to be another hot week here.  Enjoy the pollen and Spring gifts in your bounty.

The Last Week of April!

It so very hard to believe this is the beginning of the last week of April.  My cousin came to visit for our annual visit.  He always signs up to go to a convention in this area, and we spend as much time as we can around that schedule.  He always arranges one free day to go to Grove to take care of family business and to visit the cemetery.

Today one of my close friends had a mitral valve replacement surgery.  I am waiting to hear from her husband.  The longer I wait, the more nervous I get.  I certainly hope it went well.

My neighbors have gone away for a brief visit with friends.  So I am watching their house, getting the paper and mail, and the usual routine.  I think they lucked out when they got me as a neighbor.

I finished my scarf that was on the loom.   I didn't get the yardage I wanted, because I ran out of my blue yarn in the weft.  Oh, well!  It is still long enough to throw around the neck.  I think it is really pretty, and I like the pattern.

After our brief cool spell, we are heading for 70's tomorrow.  Back to warm weather.  I have two appointments this week, but will have to mow somewhere in there.  The grass is growing well.

So not a lot of news.  Just a few little items, and a brief catch-up.  Have a good week.

The Tale of Twin Sockies!

 The first sockie that was born is on the left in both pictures.  It is a plain-ole sock pattern with the goat's eye pattern by Nancy Bush.  I worked really hard on this sock.  When it was finished, I hastily tried to put it on.  Like Cinderella's slipper, the damn thing would not go over my heel.  I got really, really mad, and I threw it in the knitting bowl and cursed.

After a long, long time (maybe a month), I picked it up and examined it.  I was still mad, but I wasn't as angry as before.  I would lay in bed at night and think about this sock.  I finally got the brilliant idea to soak this sock for a very long time, and stretch it as much as I could.  I got up at midnight and started doing just that.  I finally was able to get it over the sock blocker.  When it was dried, I could get it on my foot.  It was very snug.

In the meantime, I took the yarn that I used for the background and warped my loom for a scarf.  I had dyed this yarn, so there is no match for it in the universe.

Then some time later, I picked up the nasty little sock and stared at it and thought about it.  I hate to admit failure in any knitting project.  If I don't like something, I will frog it all the way or at least until I like the way it looks.  This was a completed sock, and I hated it.  Then I started thinking again about how to make this right.

I thought-Maybe I could make a puppet.  Maybe I could make a coin purse.  Everyone called it a giraffe sock.  Maybe I could make a giraffe toy.

Of course, I will knit another sock, and it will fit.  Somehow I was going to make this one work.  I decided to knit it toe-up with an afterthought heel.  I did make a little glitch in the pattern work, but I was going to make this one work.  The other problem is what to do about the background color.  I used another skein of yarn from the same dye bath as the first, but it was much darker.  Was I going to be picky, picky, or was I going to finish this pair of socks?

So last night I finished the other sock.  I soaked them both again and put them on the sock blockers.  The second one did fit over the blocker much easier than the first sock. 

So now I have finished the awful pair of fraternal twins.  Right now I am just happy I finished this pair of awful socks.  I know there is a lesson here, but right now I just want to enjoy the view of finished socks.  And I have not tried them on.  No, I am not going to spoil my mood right now.

The End. 

Happy Easter!

 This is documentation that it is done and finished!  And it fits!

 Before I wrapped it up in the tissue, I got a picture of the inspiration picture.
So this journey is over!  Thank goodness!  And I made it in plenty of time of my self-imposed deadline.  As always, Easter is always a chilly day.  We had a little bitty cool-down, and a little bit of rain yesterday.  But it is still too warm to wear wool.  I did talk to my friend Friday night, and he had it on at a meeting to show everyone his new sweater!  It was too warm to have on this sweater.

So believe it or not, I got back to my sewing project.  I wanted to show how this pattern works.  First you sew three squares together to make a strip.  Then you make a nine-patch with three strips.

 Then you cut the nine-patch in half, and then cut the half into halves to get 4 squares that look like you really pieced the heck out of it.  And it was easy to do.  After all the squares are finished you can do all kinds of patterns.

 This is the fabric I am using-Terrain by Moda.

And am I knitting?  I did not do any knitting for two days, and a friend came to visit for those two days.  Good excuse to not knit.  We went to Goodwill instead, drank tea, and got caught up on all we have been doing.

And Friday I sat down and picked up my UFO de jour-the giraffe socks.  Man!  After that vest, this pattern seems so simple.  It is really quick to knit around one row.  I am now doing the afterthought heel.  The end is in site.  A finished UFO-what a novel thought.

And that's the week's news.  I spent a little time yesterday trying to do some more genealogy.  My friend that visits has been trying to find her family for 19 years, so I felt badly that I had given up finding mine.  I did find the names of siblings of my great-grandfather.  I found out that one of his sisters never married and lived in Washington, D.C. at one point.  That was interesting.  I wonder what she did.  I had found her picture once in a pile of photos that were in my grandmother's chest.  On the back it just said-Aunt Gertie.  She looked like a lot of women in the 30's with that waved hairstyle and girdled body.  Now I know a little more about her.

I saw my woodchuck yesterday during the rain.  Every time it thundered it would run back to a safe place.  Then it would run out and grab something to eat while standing up and watching for whatever it was that was making that loud noise!

My bachelor buttons have taken over the world.  But the color of blue is wonderful!  It looks really pretty with the pink of the weigelia and the coral of the red buckeyes.  The weeds are really happy with the rain we have had.  Sigh!

I want to finish with this quote that was on The Yarn Harlot's calendar a coupla years ago.  It is a great motto for any knitter, especially those of us that are crazy enough to put deadlines on stranded work:

"Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts."  -Ruth Gordon

Have a great week!

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!

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.

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