Felt Like Knitting

WIP Wednesday - Brambler

            

My goal for this week is to finish Brambler.  I decided to change yarn, so on Saturday I went to a LYS and bought some Shibuiknits sock yarn in Mulberry.  I also bought some Bristol Yarn Gallery Buckingham in a beautiful grayish-blue color (picture coming later).  It's so soft and I thought I might opt to use it for Brambler, but I couldn't resist the beautiful berry color of the Shibuiknits.  The scarf is much farther along than in this picture.  It also has more dog hair on it!  This has been a fast knit and I can't wait to block it.

I know I'll be tempted to cast on for another lace scarf when Brambler is done.  But, I'm going to try to finish up a few things first.  I'm close to being done with the Bubble Bag and the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.  Maybe I can have those finished by next Wednesday, too.

Fiddlehead Scarf

                 

                     Fiddlehead Scarf by Anne Hanson, yarn by The Woolen Rabbit, size 3 needles

I just love this scarf!  I ran out of yarn, but it still blocked to the proper length.  While I thought I'd like to make it a bit longer, this length is actually just right.  Don't doubt the designer!  :)

Another scarf had to be started right away and I chose Brambler (also from Anne).  This one is being knit from Berroco Ultra Alpaca leftover from my Forest Canopy Shawl.  I'm not sure this yarn is going to work and I'd like to ask your opinion.

                                   

This is pinned out to the recommended width and the pattern doesn't open up as much as I'd like.  (Click on the pattern link above to see what it's supposed to look like.)  This yarn is a DK/light worsted weight so it's a little heavier than recommended.  Should I keep going?  Should I start over with a narrower width so I can block it more?  Or should I use different yarn?  I'm torn because I'd like to use what's in my stash, but I want the scarf to look more like the one in the pattern.

Happy knitting (or crocheting/sewing/crafting/reading/...)!

Some flowers, a project, and six things

Recently, Lynne's beautiful flowers inspired me to plant some of my own.

                                  

It's so nice to have some flowers on the deck.  Since we've had rain lately, they're doing well.

In my last post, I promised something crafty:

                                  

I'm finally out of my dishcloth rut and I've been trying to finish my Fiddlehead Scarf.  Anne's patterns are great and this pattern is wonderful, too.  I'm really looking forward to blocking this.  The yarn is from The Woolen Rabbit and is left over from my Shetland Triangle Shawl.  I'm hoping I have enough for all of the repeats, but it's going to be close!

Have you all been enjoying the "six things" meme that's been going around?  I've enjoyed reading about everyone.  Iris and KM tagged me and I'm just now getting to my answers:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?  In 1998, our daughter was four years old and we had all just moved to a subdivision in suburban Atlanta a few years before that.  So ten years ago, there were dance classes, preschool, little manicures and pedicures with some neighborhood friends, going to the pool, etc.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Get my hair cut 
2. Take my daughter to an appointment for a volunteer opportunity
3. Knit (and possibly finish) my Fiddlehead Scarf
4. Take more garage sale items to the basement
5. Go to trivia night

3) Snacks I enjoy: Chips and salsa, chips and guacamole, anything chocolate, leftovers 

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Pay off my church's building debt and make building repairs, make a large donation to Habitat for Humanity, pay off my relatives' debts, helps some friends, pay off our house, improve our house, send my daughter to the college of her choice, let my husband retire early, buy a mountain home or farmhouse with room for alpacas or llamas, travel to places I love, ...

5) Places I have lived: Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia

6) Jobs I have had: Babysitter, newspaper route worker, swimming pool snack shop worker, library aide, kitchen worker/carhop at drive-in restaurant, greeter in dormitory, mail sorter in dormitory, chem lab assistant, paper mill intern, paper mill lab worker, paper mill process engineer, teacher.

7) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:  If you are reading this and haven't yet participated, please do!

Things I'm learning...

Hi everyone!  We were gone for ten days, visiting our families in Ohio.  While we were gone, we had a lot of quality time with the relatives, too much food, some reading and knitting ... we had a very relaxing time.  Now that we're back, I've been learning a few things:

-  Rain barrels need overflows.  If they don't have overflows, they will find a way to empty out where you don't want them to empty out ... like down the foundation and into your basement.  Again.  And again.  And again.  Now I am not complaining about the rain we're getting these days here in drought-ravaged Georgia.  I just wish we had had the foresight to put in an overflow before we inadvertently started a lake in our basement.  Today S bought the supplies for the overflow so as soon as we get some dry weather, we can fix the situation.

- A messy basement is a pain in the neck.  My husband has been after me to clean up the basement.  I started a garage sale pile about a month ago and it's still sitting there.  I'm considering buying sandbags to protect the pile from the new lake.  If only I had listened...

-  Windows XP updates can be bad, bad, bad.  Unlike me, S doesn't usually procrastinate.  So on Wednesday, his last day of vacation, he installed the new Windows XP update like a good computer owner.  Uh oh...  First the Internet stopped working because of an incompatibility with Zone Alarm.  He had that temporarily fixed when we noticed our new printer stopped working.  After several hours on the phone with Canon (the printer does work but it won't communicate with the computer) and Dell, it's been determined that we need to reinstall Windows XP this weekend.  Good times.

-  A messy computer is also a pain in the neck.  In addition to doing laundry and shop-vacing water from the basement floor, I also cleaned out old computer files today.  (There is no reason to backup unused files before we reinstall XP, so I'm finally cleaning out my files.)  I'm down to my last folder, but it's a biggie.  It's my school folder and it contains 20+ sub folders and 50-100 extra files.  Oh, this is going to be fun!  Then it's on to my favorite places.  I'm just glad those can be backed up, too.

Well, my break is over.  Time to check the lake before I get back to my file cleanup.  I just wanted to let you all know why I haven't been around.  Hopefully there will be some crafty content in my next post!  :)  Hope you all are well.

Farmers market goodies

There have been some farmers markets springing up around here lately.  Since my own garden isn't yet producing much and since Carole is really inspiring with her CSA posts, I decided to try out one of the markets.  It was a really fun experience that I hope to repeat soon!

            

Local honey, soap containing Dead Sea mud, peaches, zucchini (different from the variety I'm used to), arugula, cucumbers, squash, and beets.  It's all been delicious!  Here's what we tried first...

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I don't remember ever making rolled biscuits before.  When I do occasionally make biscuits, they're always drop biscuits because I get lazy.  Making these biscuits really was a pretty easy process.  They were tasty, but I doubt I'd win any prizes for them! 

Yes, there has been knitting

                  

In my last post I mentioned that I had been knitting some dishcloths.  These are most of the cloths I've knit recently.  Some are already in use and weren't clean for the photo shoot.  All but the white ones will be gifts.  Details are on Ravelry.

Here is one of my favorites:

             

This is the Playful Plaid Clothand it's a lot of fun to knit.  The long slipped stitches you see were made by wrapping the needle twice.  When I knit it the next time, I'll probably wrap the needle three times because the cloth was kind of puckery before I blocked it.

Right now I'm knitting a round dishcloth, which I haven't done before.  It's a quick knit and I could have had it mostly done already, but I couldn't figure out where I was off and I reknitted a section at least three times.  There are some really pretty cloths on Ravelry.

Have lap, will sit

You know it's been a long time since you've posted when Typepad has changed the layout of the posting page!  I guess I've been in a bit of a blogging, knitting, emailing funk lately.  I've only been able to muster up enough knitting energy to knit dishcloths...lots of dishcloths.  Pictures of those to come...

Most of my energy lately has gone into adopting our dog.  I didn't realize how much of an emotional toll the process would take.  I have a greater appreciate for people who have been/are involved in the adoption process for children!  (I'm not saying that adopting a pet is anything like adopting a child.  But this experience has given me a glimpse into the waiting/hoping/disappointment/joy...)

And now, without further ado, I present Trump!

               

                                               "Go ahead, make my day."

Trump really is the sweetest boy, he's just tired in this picture.  :)  His favorite thing to do is to crawl up into my lap if I'm sitting.  I'm not kidding - I'm getting nothing done around here!  But that's okay.  He has some issues with fearfulness and if he feels comfortable on my lap, then I'm happy about it.  I was afraid he wouldn't come to any of us, but he's doing fine.

The only issue we're having is that he refuses to go to the bathroom.  He's not used to being on a leash, so we bought an exercise pen to put outside.  He walks around it inside once then lies down.  We got him on Saturday morning and he finally went (...on the dining room rug!!!  He's a quick one apparently, because we were watching him like a hawk.) sometime on Sunday afternoon.  And he hasn't gone since.  Do you have any tips? 

ETA:  I think we've made some progress.  It never dawned on me that Trump's harness could also be causing him some stress.  He wanted out of his crate tonight after he went to bed and he was roaming around without his harness - totally different dog.  I took him back out to his pen (with no harness) and he peed a river.  I should have left him out there longer because he decided to poop on the rug while we were playing with his toy.  Progress is good! 

Friday's Flowers - Lilies

                                    

Kim mentioned that she'll be starting Friday's Flowers again and it dawned on me that I've been very lax in my flower photography.  Today's flowers are lilies.  These particular lilies come with a little story.

Yesterday I was running errands and stopped in at Trader Joe's for granola bars.  They had just opened the doors and it didn't take me long to do my shopping, so I was the first customer.  The checkout clerk rang the bell and yelled "First customer of the day!"  Then they gave me flowers.  How cool was that?  I was surprised enough to have the bell clanging, but getting flowers was really special.

Here's a tip for you that my neighbor taught me...  Lily pollen stains fabric easily.  When the blooms open up, use a napkin to remove the anthers.  Then you can enjoy the flowers without worrying about your tablecloth or heirloom doily.

Nothing...and everything

It seems that lately I can't gather my thoughts enough to write a coherent post.  But "post on my blog" is on my list of things to do for today, so I need to put something together.  Maybe taking things in chunks will help...

Life

Life is busy right now and May seems to be the new December.  I seriously think December was less hectic.  Activities wind down for the school year, but they also go out with a bang.  The end of school brought the awards ceremony and now graduation.  The end of guitar lessons brought the recital.  And so on...  These are all good and enjoyable things, but they can make life feel rushed.

At the same time things are winding down, other things are gearing up.  The swim team season starts soon.  Vacation Bible School is right around the corner.  (That one is my own fault and warrants a separate post.)  And travel plans are being formulated.  Nothing feels settled and all I really want to do is sit down with my knitting or a good book.  But I'm involved with too many things and there's little time to rest.

This all came into focus for me yesterday while I was at the library.  Our local branch is being renovated and the power had accidentally been cut off.  As a result, it wasn't very crowded and I asked a librarian for some book recommendations.  It was so nice to take a few moments to talk about what she had read and enjoyed.  I soon realized that I had been missing that lately.  People are designed to be social and to interact with each other.  Lately, my interacting has been focused on what needs to be done.

Self

I recently had my eyes checked and was told to order progressive lenses.  I was a little surprised that my distance vision needed correction, too.  The optometrist did say that I could just get reading glasses again, but it's easier to adjust to progressive lenses when one is younger.  So, that's what I have.  There have been good days and bad days with them, but mostly bad.  They just don't seem right to me.  I think the frames are too big or at least not adjusted correctly, so I need to get that looked at.  Then I'll give them another week.  If I can't adjust to the lenses, I'll have to return them.  (Thank goodness for the 30 day trial period!)  Any tips on adjusting to progressive lenses?  [Note:  For some reason, when the picture is enlarged, it looks like I'm starting a unibrow.  I assure you that I don't look like this in real life.  I even sprinted to the mirror to be sure.  ETA:  I'm now obsessed and had to look again.  I had no idea my brows looked this bad.  I assure you that there will be some clean up tomorrow!]

Dog

We decided to get another Pug and applied to two rescue organizations.  We've been accepted by both and are in the process of finding a good fit for a Pug and for us.  We've met some dedicated volunteers and their dogs.  It's been fun playing with furry friends again.

Knitting

                                                    

I've been spending some time on Ravelry lately, mostly with one of the Pug groups and with a dishcloth group (Ravelry links).  Dishcloth knitting seems to fit in well with my attention span these days.

I'm still way behind on my blog reading.  The Bloglines list was close to being caught up after the robotics tournament, but now I'm back to 100+ posts to read.  I'm sorry I've been out of touch!

Asparagus

Michelle and Katie asked for pictures of an asparagus plant.  Here's what my plants look like now:

 

*Please excuse the weeds!

In the first picture, you see an asparagus spear just popping up from the ground.  This is what the plant first looks like in spring.  You have to wait until the third year before you can harvest a lot of asparagus.  The second picture shows what the asparagus spears look like when they are left to grow.  (Click the picture for a clearer view.)  The tips of the spears branch out and start to turn into leaves, as shown in the third picture.  In the summer, the plants are very pretty and grow red berries.