Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

The chart for the sentiment did not work for some weird reason. The letters were too big for the space to stitch them in. 

I had to rip out all those letters three times before I found an alphabet that would fit. Then I had to chart out the little poem and do a lot of counting.

It's a good thing I had this book stashed away. Without it I would still be trying to figure it all out. Even so I didn't get very far before I gave up from boredom. I really don't mind stitching letters but when it takes a few hours and you don't get anywhere-I'm over it. 

Down Time

 

After all the drama of the past few days (weeks, months, years) I needed a day off. The tears have not stopped flowing over the loss of my Mini so yesterday I did nothing but what I wanted to do. The hands and the mind needed to stay busy. Kitesurfing is becoming a pair of Undines. 

My lastest Lofotens are growing. 

I've got six new Audun squares to show for the terrible week that was. 

And Number 8 is soon to be a done deal. Lots of yarn, takeout pizza and a bit of chocolate while binge watching Stranger Things was the cure for what ailed me. In the big picture, with every else going wrong in the world, the loss of an old car is nothing, even silly but when it's the one thing you can call your own it really hurt. Today I have to make arrangements to deal with what's left of her. I did go out and look and ..........it was as bad as The Mister said. My poor baby didn't deserve to end up this way. I guess I should be glad I wan't sitting inside at the time. No one could have survived that.  

Cleaning Up

 

The chainsaws and grinders started going off at 7 am yesterday. It seems we weren't the only ones with tree damage. There were tree crews all over the place. Our neighbor told us that the fire department had been there the day of the storm to remove trees that were blocking the main roads. 

$3000 later we had poor Mini uncovered. The Mister told me not to go out and look. It gave him the willies to see her smashed. I haven't yet. I'm not ready. 

The tree crew worked until late in the afternoon. While The Mister was out supervising I worked on moving stuff back into the dining room. 

We had put down the last of the molding last week and I was very anxious to get Pup cleared and get this house put back together this weekend but that's not happening although I did get some stuff moved around. 

When I did as much as I could do to stay busy upstairs, Pup and I went downstairs and organized the craft room I haven't been in since the big mite adventure. I had to stay busy to keep from jumping out of my skin from all the noise. Pup wasn't too thrilled with all the racket either. 

It was good to see Rainbow Kitty again although I was hesitant to work on him. The last thing we did together was give him a bath after I caught one of the inside/outside kitties taking a nap on him long before we had even heard of mites. He's been bagged for 11 weeks so he's most likely safe but I just can't get comfortable with projects like this yet. I'm sticking with little stuff-the kind of stuff I don't have to touch too much and stuff that doesn't have to touch me. 

Gone With the Wind

 

Well, in spite of all your well wishes, Pup never got to the vet's yesterday. Around noon we had a monster thunderstorm that lasted all of 60 seconds but it left us in a world of hurt. A giant tree came down across the driveway so we couldn't get out. 

It narrowly missed The Mister's Ranger but.......

....it killed my beloved Mini. I've never loved a car like I loved this one. I had to special order her from Germany way back before they were popular. I waited almost a year for her to arrive at the dealer in Annapolis. She would have been 20 in October and I was going to get historic tags on her and get her back on the road. Not now. I am heartbroken. People, I swear.....I don't know what I've done but the cosmic karma thing is out to get me. I need an exorcism-or something.

Mite Liberation Day

 

This afternoon Pup has her vet appointment to check for mites. Hopefully it won't just be Liberation Day for her but for me. See that face? That's what I've had to deal with for 10 weeks now. I share her quarantine space from the cats in the blocked off living room and whenever I pick up a project I get the face and the whine. 

I'm afraid I've created a monster from all the attention I've given her. I haven't been able to touch her but I've been keeping her entertained and very well fed. Before the mites she wouldn't give me the time of day. She was attached at the hip to The Mister but now I've taught her that I'm an easy touch for treats. She's going to have a rude awakening if she gets the all clear today. 

The one habit I'd like to continue is her having her own comfy bed. I bought her a huge dog bed with her own linens and pillow and she loves it. I'd really like to keep her out of the human beds if at all possible when all this is over. I've understandably gotten freaky about bugs and we still have ticks to worry about. I've never seen so many articles about the dangers of ticks as I've seen lately and I sure don't need that on top of all of this. No sirree. 

All Wound Up

 

I have no socks on the needles and it was making me twitchy yesterday so I got out these beauties in hopes of getting something started. I couldn't sleep the night before after watching the tragedy unfold in Texas and needed to keep my hands and mind busy. 

It was very early morning and I had the house to myself so I got out the swift and wound away in silence in my garbage bag covered living room. 

While winding I had lots of time to think about what I should do with the yarn and I decided the orange can't be socks-it's too soft and the blue will have to be fancy socks-it's too plain for vanilla socks. That put a kink in all my plans because I am not ready to cast on either of them now. I need time to think and right now as a retired elementary school teacher I can't think straight about anything except all those children.

So....I pulled out another ball of the Lofoten sock yarn but I didn't get that cast on either because I have an obsession about making my socks match and that's not easy to make happen with yarn like this. I have to re-roll it and weigh it and then match up the colors first and I wasn't up for it.  Oh, well...some days you have the yarn and some days the yarn has you. Yesterday it got me.

Week Ten

 

As if the war against the mites we've been fighting inside the house wasn't enough, it was time to knock down the outside, heated kitty huts for the summer. We had to suit up to do it. I bought two hazmat suits from Amazon that covered us from head to toe. The two outside kitties have had three mite treatments but we weren't taking any chances touching their stuff.

We had 2 huts out in the yard and 3 on the deck to unstuff, unhook and dismantle for cleaning. 

The suits were hot but thankfully it was a cool day and it didn't take that long. All the bedding stuff is bagged up and will sit for a week or so to kill any mites before we take it to the dump.  Mange mites die in 3-5 days once their food source is removed but even so the kitties will get all new stuff next winter. The huts will also sit for a while out in the sunshine and then they will get a good scrubbing and be stored away. It was such a big relief to get this chore done. Every time I looked out on the deck and saw them out there they gave me the willies. I just knew they were a hotbed of mite activity. Not anymore. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday and Even More Mail

 

Thanks to a weekend of inactivity, the bottom border is now done. 

What I should now be doing is going back to the top and stitching the sentiment around the couple but.....

...what I did instead was add two hearts to my bookmark.

I was inspired to work on the bookmark after I received this box of books in the mail from Son in Michigan. He loved these books and wanted me to read them so he had them sent from a local bookshop in Detroit. 

Since son is the connoisseur of cool I decided to take a look at the online presence of the shop and I wan't disappointed. Detroit is having quite the renaissance so this is exactly what I expected.

It's the 27th Letter Books shop and it looks like a good place to lose an afternoon. I miss having a good bookshop nearby. I used to spend hours and lots of money in Borders when it existed. 

Speaking of books, today at 2:00 we are going to the groundbreaking of the new library which when it is done will look like this. It is going to be right on the boardwalk next to the ice cream shop. I have no idea how they are going to squeeze all that in that little space but it promises to be interesting to watch. 

You've Got Mail

 

Look what I've learned to do! I discovered that I can finally do online orders at Ikea. Believe me, I've tried in the past and they would never deliver to my zipcode but now they seem more than happy to take my money. This is the first of three giant boxes I am expecting this week. I've got a lot of replacing to do-sheets, pillows, towels etc. What I couldn't get them to do is send me the new couch that I really need. Not yet anyway.  Of course, I'm not opening anything until we get the okay from the vet on Friday. We're not taking ANY chances of ever having to go through this nightmare again. 

Sweet Surrender

 

Yesterday was awful. Not only was my back still out, my whole body felt like I had been hit by a truck. I even thought about taking a Covid test just to make sure but I was in too much pain to get up and do it. In spite of the misery I got the Lofotens finished after taking a Tylenol and a morning and an afternoon nap.

While I was feeling halfway human I also started an assembly line for the Audun squares. I do better when I do a whole lot of one row. If I don't, I make a lot of mistakes. This crochet thing doesn't come naturally to my brain-not that much does anymore. 

On Friday I managed to get this far on the Advent sleeves. Doing them two at a time is the way to go. Like the Audun squares, it helps to repeat things a few times. That second sleeve just flies by as I have the pattern already in my head. I have no idea what today will bring but I hope it will be better than yesterday. Yesterday was pretty darn terrible. From head to toe, this old body has just about given up. It was the first day in nine weeks that I could't fight the mites and I am hoping they got the message a while ago and have vacated the premises. We'll see. 

Ouch

 

It seems I lifted one big bucket of wet laundry too much yesterday and now my back is out of whack. That's my great grandfather's cane I have by my side. When you see that out of the closet, it's never good. I can't get up out of the chair without it right now. My aching back makes the pain in my fingers seem like nothing so at least I can get some knitting done in my downtime. I'm finally at the toe on both the Lofoten socks.

Saving Face Time

 

I've had quite the technological adventure this past week. Son gifted me an iPad for Mother's Day and in the process of setting it up I locked myself out of it. I spent days trying to figure out what I did and how to fix it. It was either take it to the Apple store (which isn't happening) or buy a laptop that would run iTunes. I only have a little Chromebook and Chrome and Apple don't mix so I bought a cheap refurbished Dell laptop from Amazon and finally managed to restore the darn thing after 6 tries. The iPad kicks you out of restore after 15 minutes so you have to do it over and over again to get the full download. Jeesh. All's well that ends well though because I got to Face Time with the Big Grands which was a whole lot of fun and I can now use the Dell to print since our printers stopped listening to the Chromebook months ago. 

Speaking of Mother's Day gifts, Daughter sent me a Knit Picks gift certificate and last night when I couldn't sleep at 2 am I used it to buy the kit for these slippers and........

....the Hue Shifting Afghan. I've always admired all your miter square blankets but I just can't do the fiddly sock yarn thing. I am going to give this sport weight one a try and see if it takes. If not I'll have a whole lot of sport weight yarn to do something else with. 

Kitesurfing

 

No, not this kitesurfing.....

...the kind that comes wrapped up in pretty paper from Miss Babs.

Every year she comes up with a MDSW colorway that represents something about Maryland and I suppose kitesurfing is a thing in Ocean City. I had to look it up since I've never heard of it or seen it here on the bay.  She also sent me a little pigtail of another yarn she carries to swatch but it's just too cute for that. 

I need to get my knitting fingers moving again. This one is going to be calling my name no matter how far away I stash it. And just think...I didn't have to risk Covid to get it. Daughter has an adult student that attended the MDSW and after two years of being careful, four days later she came down with........well, you know. 

Week Nine

 

Much to Pup's dismay she's got almost another two weeks in quarantine. I called the vet on Monday and she doesn't want to see her until the 27th which is a week after she gets her third dose on Friday. I'm hopeful we'll get a good report. I'm so tired of living in this plastic wrapped house.  

I've bought new pillows and mattress covers for when we get the okay to be normal again. I bought new sheets a while back. 

A sign that progress is being made is the sight of an empty bathtub. It's still be used to boil all our laundry in the mornings but I actually took a bath in it on Sunday night. I had only been taking showers-several a day to fight the itch. Right now I am only in need of two. One in the morning and one at night. The serious itch is a distant and terrible memory at this point. We've got some small itchies and weird little prickles but they are manageable with just some spot treatment. Taking my first bath in two months was wonderful. I didn't feel like I was sitting in mite soup at all, although I did rinse myself very well afterwards and used a big dose of Epsom salt and vinegar in the water. Baby steps I know but headed in the right direction. I really feel the worst is behind us. Finally.

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

Well look at that. I finally finished that awful lawn section. It only took me a three years but to be honest I'm surprised I got it finished this quickly. It was such a painful slog. I still have a bit of border to do at the bottom and then the sentiment at the top before I can declare a complete victory but I'm still doing a happy dance today. Whew.....

Beans on Toast

 

The most exciting thing I did yesterday was make beans on toast for dinner. That's the kind of ho hum day I had. Some days I have energy to spare after the big morning clean up and laundry marathon and some days I don't. Yesterday I didn't. I napped my way through the afternoon. I did get a lot of question on Saturday so it gives me something to post about today. 

First I was asked about the needles I am using for the advent sweaters. These were gifted to me by Ellen of The Ellen Report and I have to say I love them. I love them so much I just bought another set. I don't find the join an issue, at least not on these two pair. They are size 1.25 which is another question I got asked. That's the size I am using for the sweaters with the fingering weight Palette yarn.

I also got asked if the Audun squares are like granny squares and they are a bit. That cluster stitch that makes the flower "petals" is different-for me at least. As you can see I am a very sloppy crocheter. I really have no idea what I am doing but that never stops me from giving anything a go. It's all about the process and learning along the way for me. 

Some of said you are having trouble leaving comments. I'm having trouble leaving comments on some blogs too. The format on some blogs has changed and it's taken me a while to figure those out. I am not sure what is going on and I am sorry if there is a problem. I have looked at my settings and they haven't changed. I allow anyone to leave comments and I post them after I've read them. 

 

 And.......I am big Eurovision fan and fell in love with this year's winner which was the Ukranian band Kalush Orchestra. In case you missed it, here is the haunting video they just put out for their winning song which pays tribute to the women fighting the war.  I promise you it's not all rap. It just starts out that way. 

Slava Ukraini!