So Much to Share

I just realized that I've been slacking off posting this week. I have a lot to show you, not all from this week but most of it. The oldest thing I have to show is all of 10 days old. My friend Skully wanted a fanny pack so I gave her one I made a while back. The first time she tried to use it the zipper broke. D'oh. So I made her a new one AND I increased the width and the depth so it would hold more. I hadn't sewed in a long time but evidently it's like riding a bike, you remember how. I think it's freaking beautiful.















Sunday night after knitting on it all afternoon at the World Wide Knit in Public Day event in a downtown park, I finished the Carnival Ankle Sock. See how the pink pools on the one side? I decided to put a few (6) rows of k1, p1 ribbing in the instep to shift the color arrangement. All it did was move the pink from one side to the other. I don't really mind it, I just wanted my little fudge to work better.






Skully lent me her copy of One Yard Wonders last week and I copied a couple of the patterns. They're very clever and I've been more and more interested in making clever things with fabric. I bought some designer remnants of drapery and upholstery fabrics and I've acquired a stash of fat quarters so I've got the raw materials for many of the patterns. Yesterday at work I cut out one for a trash bag to hang in the car (working around the pressure of my one customer of the day) and sewed it last night. I'm very pleased with it.







Mom sewed an outfit for an American Girl doll for a raffle and it's so darling, you have to see it. She's so talented, a much better seamstress than I'll ever be, and she has such patience for getting things just right. Look at that little hat! She made it from scratch, can you believe it? I think she's a doll clothes making genius.

















The lettuces are happy with the cool weather we've been having and the biggest patch of poppies (poppies!!!) is a-bloom in the garden. I'd have a whole yard of poppies if I could, but I wish they'd bloom all summer.






I keep thinking that I have more pictures to show you but for the life of me I can't remember what. This is enough for now anyway. I'll add more later if my brain shifts back into gear.

Squares

It's been quiet at the dive shop the last couple days so I got lots of knitting done. I bought a skein of Lion Brand Organic Cotton yarn a couple Sunday's ago just because I liked the color (and I had a coupon). I searched for a pattern for a dishcloth I liked and finally found one called Oh, So Soft Baby Washcloth. It's a crochet pattern and I have to go buy a contrasting color for the edging, but I like it. It was fun to make and an easy pattern to memorize.





Bandwagon Block #5 is coming along. I finished the miters last night while watching an Auction Hunters marathon. Tomorrow I'll pick up stitches for the first log cabin edge. These blocks are fun to knit and really go fast. I decided to make 12 instead of 10 and 4 half blocks of the background color so I'm nearly half done. Amazing.




Durwood's raspberries are growing fast. Soon he'll be out there patrolling for the first ripe berry, and to repel any berry thieves. He means business when it comes to his raspberries!











I was happy to see this little gold daylily bloom, and the honeysuckle too. You know what that means, don't you?













It means that the hummingbirds come back! And I managed to take one's picture tonight! Can you believe it? I'm so thrilled. It was just dumb luck.

Party!

Last night DS hosted a cookout for DIL1, the first party in their new house's yard. There were grilled sausages (I lovelovelove weenies on the grill!), homemade shaum tortes for dessert, badminton on the lawn, and lots of enjoyable company.

DIL1 and her best friend from high school built a chicken coop that we all got to admire. The chicken-y gifts were well-received and she plans to use the Fleet Farm gift card for chicken feed and accessories.

In sock news, I'm moving right along on what I've decided to call the Carnival Ankle Sock.

I Just Have To Show You These

Yesterday when I mowed the lawn I was surprised to see a bunch of flowers blooming on the west side of the house..

new Irises, Bearded



and Dutch,

















Pasque Flower (which usually blooms in late April, that's how screwy our weather has been),







and Poppies (I hear you, I'm channeling the Wicked Witch of the West in my head too).





In the corner of the garden garden are more poppies getting ready to bloom. I really like the looks of the buds, all fuzzy and green, and maroon where the fuzzy is clumped up.







So you don't feel cheated since this IS supposed to be a knitting blog,

one reason I like to knit ankle socks is that you go directly from the cuff to the heel flap. I cast this on after Friday Night Knitting the other night and finished the heel flap last night before bed. Today I turned the heel and picked up gusset stitches. Now I'm decreasing down to the correct number of stitches to zoom down the foot. I'm thinking that if I concentrate, maybe I can have a new sock by next weekend. Whaddaya think? I've got a crapload of single skeins of Fixation yarn downstairs so I can make a pile of ankle socks this summer.




I was whining (whining and complaining are my life!) to my beautician during my haircut this morning about how achy my knees have been this week. She suggested that trying to walk heel to toe, instead of like a duck, as my chiropractor suggested to ease the strain on my knees might be easier if I got some of those toning shoes that are all the rage these days. I went out to Rogan's and found some. In fact they're so comfy I had them order me another pair because it's their "buy 1, get 1 half off" sale and getting two pairs of Avias for under $100 is not to be missed. I like the lime green accents on them too.

Z-z-z-zoom!

Look at how far I got on Bandwagon Block #5 last night at Friday Night Knitting. Z-Z-Z-Z-Zoom! I do love this pattern and the cleverness of joining the miters to each other. I love how the colors show up and stack up on each other making blocks made from the same skein look different.




Not being able to resist casting on new projects, I dug up the pattern for ankle socks made out of Cascade Fixation and got the ribbing started before bed last night since it's really more cotton ankle sock weather than wool sock weather. See the cool, beaded lanyard my friend Skully made for my row counter? I love it.

Mmm, Sweet

The lilies of the valley are blooming out the patio door next to the patio. I may just spend the day out there "huffing your flowers" as DIL1 said yesterday. They smell so good, and they remind me of being at my Grandma Stephan's house in spring where the lilies of the valley grew under a big spruce tree in their front yard. I'd crawl back by the trunk and sit and read in the cool, dim, fragrant space. Lovely.
















When I picked some to bring in, one of the stems was a little short and for some reason I looked into the bell of those flowers. Did you know that there are little pink scallops in there? Me neither. I tried to take a picture but I don't think you can see it very well.





Oh, here're the tiny lettuce sprouts. You can see that my careful, even soil has been dug into by impetuous squirrels so I've had to erect a chicken wire tower around the pot and up into the sky to deter the little marauders.






I cast on Bandwagon Block #5 last night. The mitered crosses part goes very quickly, then the log cabin parts pretty much zoom along too. If a person really focused she could crank these out like, well, like knitting popcorn. Of course, this person has a problem with focus so she dawdles through them, spending time with the Lava Shawl, or scrolling through Ravelry looking for a pattern to make with the single skein of Lion Brand Nature's Choice Organic Cotton in Curacao colorway she bought last weekend when she had lots of Joann's coupons. Ah well, I wouldn't be as interesting if I didn't have that little touch of ADD, would I?

I had to include my new/used iPod Touch with the cover of A Dirty Job on the screen in the picture. I didn't have any customers yesterday, none all day, so I was able to listen to Fisher Stevens read to me until the battery charge nearly ran out on the drive home. I have a wall charger (thanks for the tip, Skully!) so it was all ready to go this morning. I figured out (with Skully's and Cookie's help) how to download books from the library to the iPod and I'm thrilled with it--and myself. I could (almost) forgo the games, music, and apps just to have the capacity of books I can load on it. I put 4 whole novels on there this week and barely made a dent. Thanks for selling it to me, Skully.

600th Post!

That seems like a pretty big number, doesn't it? I'm quite proud that I've managed to find pictures to show you and stuff to say for 600 posts and I still haven't had another cigarette. Yay, me! Quitting smoking was the motivation for digging out my crochet hooks way back in June of 2007 and it didn't take long for me to stop into Patti's Yarn Shop for a knitting lesson, and I haven't looked back. I have waaaaay too much yarn and more needles and pattern books than you can shake a stick at, but I've acquired many good and adventurous friends in the fiber world that I can't imagine not having in my life.

I finished Bandwagon Block #4 last night and I'm quite pleased with the blending of main color and background. This is the final "new" color, for the next block I go back to the main color of Block #1 but use the Oatmeal background instead of the Natural.

We got the garden planted over the weekend. I need to get another bale of chopped hay to use for mulch and want to find some pine bark mulch to keep the blueberries happy. You'd be amazed at how difficult that mulch is to find. Everybody's got cedar mulch but that's not the right stuff according to the blueberry husbandry sites. I was thrilled to see that the lettuces seeds popped right open sending little green dots of leaves out into the sunshine. I have to go check on the green onion seeds after work, see if they're up yet, and see how the shallots like growing in the soil instead of a brown paper bag on the kitchen shelf. They were sprouting every which way in the bags but I'm guessing they've straightened right up.

I got brave and took the Lava Shawl to work with me yesterday. After I redrew the pattern pieces for a fanny pack bigger (did you know they've got pattern cloth/paper you can buy by the yard?) so it'll hold a bottle of water, keys, and a phone for trail walks (stuffing all that in my pockets tugs my pants or shorts down when I walk and I don't like that), I pulled out the shawl and got to work. I am finally smart enough to lay it down when the phone rings or a customer comes in and pick up where I left off. I'm foolishly amazed at the little "lace" boxes I'm making and, even better, the pattern suddenly made sense to me so now I can see if I'm going wrong right away without having to tink back most of a row. You non-knitters will just have to trust me, this is a goood thing.