Wednesday WIPs: Travel Knitting

 

As I mentioned yesterday, we are on babysitting duty again this week but this time we are commuting instead of spending the night. It's an almost 2 hour ride up to Daughter's so I needed to make sure I had plenty of car knitting ready to go. On Sunday, I wound up the Miss Bab's. Look at this photo. I'm winding yarn in front of my quilt with an oven in the background that's baking the week's bread. How Little House on the Prairie of me. 

I prefer to work with two socks on one needle when I'm in the car. Less to lose so I cast them on that way and gave myself a head start.

I finished my first pair of the new Arne and Carlos socks. The other pair are on the toes and they will also be car knitting.

Not much else will be getting worked on this week. I did finish the 4th row of the 1st section on the Hue Shift. When things calm down I'll start the next row and then this section will be done-minus all those ends to weave in.

 

TNT: Deja Vu

 

You may have seen this post before. I tried to blog ahead because we are off babysitting for the next two days and I didn't think I'd have time to post. Of course silly me didn't look at the date and time. Anyway, the Garden got some new doo dads around the trees. It's slow tedious work and I'm not a fan but I will power through.

Patchwork Automne got a branch and an upside down squirrel. I might be putting this away until fall. I'm losing interest. 

I finished that block on the Patchwork quilt. Time to move the hoop when we are done with the kid sitting.

Spiral Chicken doesn't count as a tiny needle project but I did get another corner of her finished this week. I'm pretty close to having all of the inside area done.  I've still got the big outer border to do so it's not time to celebrate just yet. 

Starting Over-Again

 

If you've been wondering what ever happened to that warp I had on the loom, here it is. Yep. I murdered it just like I murdered the one that came before it. 

I've become a serial warp murderer. This time, as before, there were just too many mistakes to overcome. First, the color order of the plaid was off. There's a way to make it symmetrical and I forgot all about that. I could have overcome that problem but up popped another. I had one heddle that was loose. It didn't get threaded on right when I counted them out. I tied it on and it seemed to work. 

I could have gotten over that but the final straw was that I had mis-thread one of them making a very ugly place right in the middle of the towel. In the past, I would have toughed it out by re-doing it thread by thread to fix it but my back wasn't going to let me do all that up and down stuff so I cut it all loose. 

I've got a huge stash of weaving cotton so why fuss about a handful when I can just start over. 

As my penance, I'm going to make the ugliest towel you could ever imagine by just using up my scraps in no particular order. This is a test to see if I can go from start to finish without making any stupid mistakes. I'm betting not.

I've gone from making things like this to not even being able to get a simple twill going. Cognitive decline or just hubris? To be determined. 

Goodies Galore

 

Every week there's been more to buy at the Farmer's Market. I came home with a dinner's worth yesterday.

In the mailbox was a very fragrant order from Penzy's. The spice shelf in the kitchen needed refreshing so I put in a big order. There's a lot more in the box than what you can see here. A lot more.

Also waiting in the mailbox was this box of sock yarn. Knit Picks was having a 30% off sale at the same time Daughter sent me a gift certificate for Mother's Day. One day I'm going to count how many balls/skeins I have of sock yarn and that amount is most likely going to be pretty scary. I have a recurring fantasy of just sitting on the floor surrounded by needles and project bags and casting every single one of them on just for the heck of it. 

Edited to say: I did count my sock yarn when I put these newest additions away and I now have 92(!) balls/skeins. If I knit about 12 pairs a year it would take me around 8 years to knit it all IF (and that's a big IF) I do NOT add to the stash. I'm starting to suspect this can't be done.

A Correction

 

I owe Mom's bucket of hosta's a big apology when I posted about them earlier in the week. I used a picture of my grandmother's giant hostas by mistake. I'm not sure how I did that. My grandmother's plants look like something you'd find in the Jurassic Era. My mom's are small, a darker sage green and always very neatly arranged in her pot. 

I'm still planting stuff even though common sense tells me not to. Yesterday we went off to the nursery section of a local hardware store and I came home with some things.

Putting the things in the ground is like throwing money away here but we have noticed a change in the sun pattern on the back deck now that the big trees are gone. I've got a lot of empty pots from the trees we bought so I thought I'd give the deck another try.

I bought two tomatoes and my usual assortment of herbs. Until the deer learn to climb up stairs, they'll be safe, I hope. The nasty things are already eating their way through the backyard hostas. Nothing lasts very long around here. The wildlife cafeteria is open for business.

Friday Fluff: Fig Garden

 

How it started.

How it ended. The superwash Merino/Tencel blend is spun. I'm not sure I did justice to the braid. I wanted a 2 ply so I'd get more yardage and doing that means the colors don't stay together as nicely as they would if I had chain plied it but it is what it is now and I'm thinking Croc Sox. In the future. 

In other fluff news, the Pi Shawl is nearing its end. It's very possible that it might be done by next Friday. Won't that be nice. 

A Tale of Two Loaves

 

Being out of commission because of my back for the past few weeks left poor Betty in limbo in the fridge for a long time. When I took her out a few days ago she really struggled to get back to her old self. While I was nursing her along I tried a new technique. I made a stiff starter out of her. Instead of the usual feeding ratios I made a playdough like ball and left it overnight. I was shocked at how much it rose and how bubbly it was compared to poor weak original Betty.

The directions said to keep feeding this ball for three days or until the bottom of the jar is covered in bubbles. 

By then Betty had perked back up so I made two loaves using the different starters.

There didn't seem to be much difference in them at all to be honest. The stiff starter folks swear it makes a better tasting bread with a fluffier interior but I didn't get it.  What I did get was one heck of a terrible clean up job. That stiff starter needs sand blasting out of the jar. I would NEVER do this again unless I used a disposable paper cup.

I also did an experiment with my ovens. I made discard crackers in both my toaster oven and in my now functioning regular oven. The regular oven won hands down. I could get them evenly crisp without having to burn them. That's a big improvement and was a healthier choice for my late night viewing of SNL than my usual potato chips.