Friday Fluff

 

Usually I don't want to even think about fiber after the Tour but this year I've got plying to do. The Cormo/Silk blend is behaving nicely and the colors are starting to make more sense to me now. 

That wonky cotton is being as difficult as I thought it would be. You've got to keep an eye on it every minute. It's not for knitting. It's for weaving so all the lumps and bumps that usually drive me crazy aren't bothering me at all.

There's not too much to that cotton. It will be finished up soon and the wheel will be free again. When I was cleaning up my craft room and putting away all the quilting stuff that I don't need anymore, I realized I had uncovered my little fiber nook by the window and a project was born.

After dusting it all off I got out my bin of merino and used my carder to blend some colors. 

The last time I did that I made this puny little 3 ounce skein so I thought I'd make a companion skein in case I want to do something with it someday. I'm not sure what. It's wonkiness is off the charts.

This time around I weighed my little nests. They come in just under an ounce each so I suppose 5 more of them would do the trick. No problem there. They really are fun to make. 

The Home Stretch

 

That quilt I need to hand off to my sister next week is almost finished. I'm taking advantage of The Mister being gone for the afternoon to get it done. 

That'll be one less in the binding pile. I've got the baby quilt ready to go and poor Charming Stars is still waiting patiently for its turn to be finished.

We took a walk out yesterday morning before the rains came and watched the crab boats come in. I haven't heard if this has been a good year for them or not but it looked like they had a quite a few bushels ready to  be unloaded. I'm going to need another bushel in the near future for another family thing so I hope whatever luck they are having keeps on.

Wednesday WIPs

 

The Gray Blobs are progressing nicely. Light gray blob is getting an icord bind off being done to its front bands and dark gray blob is still having its double knit front band worked on. 

I actually cast on socks this week. Two pair of Pairfects in the same design but different colorways. I needed some travel knitting. I was just about to cast them on when The Mister got ants in the pants so I packed everything up and got it done in the car while I was waiting for him to come out of the hardware store. 

I've got yarn to wind up....

...so I can make this for the new addition due to arrive in the fall. It's the Sheepish Little Sweater by Melissa Kemmerer. I'm not in a big rush because I'm making a toddler size. Newborn sized things are not very practical so I'm resisting the urge to knit a tiny little thing as much fun as that would be. 

And....on the home front it was painting trim day. 

While The Mister was busy putting nails in things I also painted the inside of the heat pump closet. I am ashamed to say that in the 30 plus years I have lived in this house I NEVER thought to either paint it or clean it although I did give it a vacuuming once in a while. What a disgusting mess it was. 

TNT: I've got a Secret

 

For the past several weeks I've been keeping a secret. I know family members read my posts and I had a BIG secret to keep. I was doing the bare minimum on my other stitching projects so no one would get suspicious because I was really putting all my effort into this. It doesn't look like much because...

....it's been a real challenge. I'm no fan of fill stitching and this is all fill. I've got to use the grid to know what the heck I'm doing. One day it will be Peter Rabbit because that's how Daughter is decorating the nursery for the new addition WHO IS DUE IN NOVEMBER. Daughter kept it all a secret from everyone including me for a very long time and now I've got to play catch up with this birth sampler AND the new little guy's tummy time quilt AND of course a sweater. This will make SIX grandsons. My three kids will each have two boys now. What are the odds of that?  

All my other stitching projects are on the back burner except the seasons. I'm trying to find a few minutes here and there to get them done. I finished the top edging on Spring last week and will be switching back to Summer this week. 

Dear Jane has also been suffering from lack of attention. I did lattice up C5 and started to work on D3. D3 is a nightmare. I've got to applique those triangles down and there's even more crazy doo dads that go in the corner.  It's one of those blocks that make you think Jane was off her rocker which I am now convinced she surely was.

And.....we did get all the new tile grouted yesterday. I always like doing this. Today we should be putting the trim down in the hall section so we can move the furniture back so that we can get to laying the laminate in the big room. Every day we get closer to being finished. I can't wait. I've got baby things to make.

The End of the Road

 

The Tour isn't just a spinning event for me, it's a sporting event. For three weeks I've gotten up at dawn to listen to Phil Liggett and Bob Roll call the race. I love seeing the beautiful French countryside fly by.  I only spin while it's on and this year I didn't get much time in front of the TV, I'm afraid. This is the sum total of my work minus the red bobbin.

I've been collecting those singles since 2021 but this year I finished them. That last toilet paper bobbin is this year's total. 

I'm very proud of these singles. They are as close to frog's hair as I can get. That's spinning talk for lace weight. I've got to finish transferring them all onto my Ladybug's bobbins so I can ply them but first I have to ply the Cormo that's on my only other bobbin. 

All that was done on Saturday so yesterday while I watched that miserably boring time trial they decided to finish up with, I played with the support spindles. Next year my effort will go into finishing up what's on the big Russian spindle. I'll never finish all that fiber but I should have enough to ply if I put my mind to it and I don't keep getting interrupted. Mister, I'm looking at you. 

What! No Zucchini?

 

The Mister has a friend who has a big garden. Every year he goes away on vacation for a week and tells The Mister to help himself to whatever's ready to be picked. We got these beautiful eggplants, peppers and.....

....tomatoes but NO zucchini. I never heard of such a thing. Everyone always has way too much of it, right? I usually make a giant pot of ratatouille with all of this goodness.

Lucky for me, the Farmer's Market had one little basket of mixed squash left when I got there at 9 am yesterday morning.

On Saturday night I finally got my giant pot of ratatouille....and it was definitely worth waiting for.  

Ribbit, Ribbit

 

When knitting goes wrong we take it to the frog pond. Same with floors. All that work we did in the hallway had to be taken apart.

Why you may ask? Because of this stupid dark spot.

In the first photo of the work we did in the hall you can see two of those dark spots lined up with each other. That looks bad.  Neither The Mister nor I noticed it until we had finished the entire hallway. 

Lucky for us that this laminate is easier to take apart than it is to put together. In less than an hour we had it all back together again. Whew. Big lesson learned. 

And......the setting of the ledge tile went pretty well considering the walls aren't straight. I wasn't too fussy about it because it's just going to be a landing spot for detergent bottles once we get the laundry area back together. I remember all too well the horrors we had putting tile in one of the bathrooms and the kitchen. We pretty much had to tear the walls out and re-frame them. Our 70 year old selves are not up to that, I'm afraid. Too bad. I've got two more bathrooms I would LOVE to tackle.