Friday Fluff

 

Remember this? I made five of them.

They look like this now. They are not my best work, that's for sure, but they just might be interesting knit up into something. I'm also a little disappointed with the size of this skein. It's pretty small considering how much merino went into it. 

I admit that I rushed that project off the wheel because I was obsessed with getting this sock finished. I tinked it back to where the green started and I really wanted to see the end of it. It has not been fun. 

When I'm not too tired from floor laying I work on the fiber that I hope will get that sock finished. It won't be a perfect match but it has to be better than it was. 

Speaking of the floor, we have this much to finish today and one room will be done. You know how tired we must be to have stopped with just this much to go but we both hit a wall and started making stupid mistakes so it was quitting time for the day. 

And.....I need to thank Lucy in KY for this surprise package. She sent me some lovely things from the Kentucky Sheep and Wool Festival. Isn't that an adorable project bag? You know I'm itching to find some sock yarn to match it. Thanks Lucy, it was most generous!

Still Floored

 

We made a little more headway on the flooring yesterday. We stopped when we got to the tricky cuts. Tired old brains don't work well so we'll tackle that fresh this morning. 

In case you're wondering what on earth I have on, it's the white sweatpants I wore when I played the first jellyfish on the right in our rink's Octopus's Garden production number. The split up the leg is so I could get them over my skates. Now they make great work pants when the work is dirty. There's nothing I can do to them that could make them worse than they already are. 

As for the rest of my day, I've started inching my way up the front of the worsted Gray Blob picking up the stitches for the front bands. I'm terrible at this so I have to take my time. 

And....I got the underarms Kitchnered on Riddari. That went off without a hitch which never happens so I'm chalking it up as a win on a day when I really needed one.

Floored

 

I had high hopes when I took this photo at 9 am yesterday. I thought we'd have that little room done in no time. 

This time around we had bought one of those guillotine things that made cutting easy as pie but that wasn't the problem.

These six rows took us six hours. The @*#&$*# planks wouldn't snap together. We fought and fought but they would come apart the minute we tried to connect the row with the row before it. We read directions. We watched videos. Nothing helped. I even resorted to duct taping the joins together as we lifted the row to snap it in place. We had the same problem with the upstairs with the first few rows but once we got the technique it all came together just fine. I'm not sure what's going on now but I hope today we have a breakthrough. If not, it's going to be one long summer. 

Before we started with the downstairs, I did get a few minutes to myself while The Mister ran to the store. I had tied the willy nilly sock yarn scarf on over the weekend and I finally got to do some weaving. My session began here and.....

...ended here. It's about 12 inches long now. For the first few inches I thought the whole thing was going to be a big mistake but then it started to come together. It's the most fun I've had with sock yarn in a long while. I think I love it. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

My one motif a day really paid off. I easily finished the bottom and am ready to turn another corner on the Village Quaker this week.

I didn't start Snort Stack but I did get the floss. Look at all that floss. I wanted a lot of blues to choose from because I did't like the DMC conversion colors and somehow I ordered two of each.

I know it's still technically spring but I had to go dig out Patchwork Ete. The spring version wasn't doing it for me. Like Patchwork Printemps, I've got four borders to put on this season but I doubt I'll do it. After one I always lose interest. 

And....before the storms rolled in, we took an early morning walk down to the war memorial. We've never walked behind it and we discovered a beautiful view. I can see packing up some knitting and spending some time watching the ships go by. 

The Human Comedy

 

Our town takes Memorial Day pretty seriously. Our former governor was here to deliver a few words on Saturday at the war memorial down the street. There was even a parade and a community picnic. 

My dad's six brothers fought in WW2 and we didn't lose any of them though I did hear some hair raising tales from a few of them. This is my dad's draft card. See the big red line. He was caught lying about his age so he could join up with them but he was too young. Busted.

We had quite a few civil war deserters in the family but the only war death I could confirm through Ancestry was this guy's. This is the death certificate of a great uncle who was killed at 19 in a terrible train collision in Philadelphia on his way back to barracks in NY after a family visit here in DC during WW2. That counts, right? If it hadn't been for Adolph Hitler this kid would have been doing teen age things instead of marching off to war. 

Whenever I hear folks today complaining about how bad things are I think that they just don't watch enough old movies. I dare anyone to sit through this and not have to reach for a tissue. Spoiler: It is NOT a comedy. Sending our kids off to war is never funny. 

Up in Smoke

 

The Mister has few vices but one of his non-negotiable ones is his cigars. He usually buys them online and has them mailed here but he can't do that in Maryland anymore because they are flavored-chocolate and strawberry. You wouldn't believe the panic in the house all week until he could figure out how to replenish his dwindling stash. What it took was a long drive out of state so that's what we did yesterday. It included a lovely 2 and 1/2 hours of sitting in Memorial Day traffic on the Washington DC Beltway. Good times.

In a Knot

 

So I was winding my new ball of Felicini into two balls so I could knit two socks at a time and have them match when.....

.....this happened. People, there should be a law. I was NOT happy.

I don't know what the fate of that #&$*#$ Felicini will be but I know it won't be socks now. I did go stash diving and found a reasonable replacement to go in my new bag. Dare I give Knit Picks another try with some Static? We'll see but not today. I'm over the whole thing at the moment. 

Friday Fluff

 

I got to dye stuff the other day. That's some Corridale I had laying around. 

It seems the handspun that I thought was going to work on the sock didn't. There was too much green in the new yarn.

I took what I had left of the original and tried to match the colors with the dye I had.

Oh, dear. It's not really a match but it is pretty. I'm going to spin it and see what happens. 

I've got to get this crazy stuff off the wheel first. It's ready for plying. 

Since those socks are now going into time out for a long while, I thought I would cast on another pair with the new Felicini. I bought it because it matches my new bag. I said I was going to find a yarn that went with it for its very first project and I sure did. 

The Saturation Point

 

I hit the wall yesterday with the re-do mess. Now that our only clear space is filled with acclimating flooring you can't move an inch without falling over something. The clutter is really starting to get to me and we've got a long way to go. 

I'm still painting all morning before it gets too hot. I'm working my way down the hall trim getting ahead of myself but.......

.....it was still better than helping The Mister change out all the electric outlets. I hate doing that. I stand around for hours just to hand him a screwdriver. No fun there.

I have to keep reminding myself I lived like this for 3 years during the pandemic when we ripped out the kitchen right before lockdown. I suppose I'll survive this too. In the afternoons I have been able to do some knitting. Riddari should be finished but I decided to double up the neck so I could fold it and sew it down. The pattern just has it roll with some plain stockinette but I'm not a fan. 

The worsted Gray Blob has both sleeves now. I had to knit the second cuff three times to get it to match. I have no idea what needles I used on the first one so I ended up having to buy a new pair of dblpts just to get the right gauge on the second cuff. 

And.....I've been taking Audun to bed with me in order to get that 8th row finally finished. It's too big to sit in my lap in this heat but a few minutes with it a night under the ceiling fan seems to be working. Two more rows to go. 

Visiting Angels

 

Off we went yesterday morning to Annapolis to pick up our flooring. I knit on one of the Gray Blob's sleeves on the way up. The way back was a little too crowded for knitting. I ended up with Pup on my lap so we could fit everything in.

While they loaded the flooring up in the back of our Escape, the sky overhead was literally exploding. 

It seems that we were in the flight path of the Blue Angels. They were continually circling over our heads practicing for the air show today. It was deafening but pretty cool to see. 

The Mister wanted some coffee for the ride home so we stopped at a 7 11 that was right outside this little airport. I think this is a very familiar place for Betsy as it might be the airport her SIL flew out of. When she reads this post I'm sure she'll let me know. Pup and I sat on a picnic table and watched more of the Blue Angels amazing maneuvers while The Mister made his coffee. It was a beautiful day. 

When I got home I had this box waiting for me. It's my Mother's Day present from Daughter. She always sends me a Knit Picks gift certificate and I always put it to good use. Those two balls of Chroma are for a kit.

This kit. It's the Glennis Bandana Cowl and I thought it would be a fun mid-winter project for when I need a little color in my life. You know I couldn't resist any colorway called Clown Wig. 

 

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

Things are still crazy here with the downstairs redo. Yesterday we put up another new ceiling fan and then went out and hauled all of the old deck furniture to the metal bin at the dump. I did manage to get more of my little houses finished this week. I keep telling myself if I only did one a day I could knock them out. Now that all the appliqueing is done for the paper pieced quilts, that just might happen.

I do have a finish. Sheep Heap is done. I plopped down on the couch on Sunday and just kept on going until it was finished. 

My woolly friends now join the rest of the critters in the series. Only the turkeys have yet to be finished. I'll do that in the fall.

Next up, for my summer project, are my piggy friends. I didn't have all the colors I needed to get them started so I'll have to wait until they get here. In the meantime I have plenty of little houses to keep me busy when I can spare a minute. We are going to pick up the flooring today so a new phase of the adventure will soon begin. 

Questions and Answers

 

I never know what to do when you guys ask me questions in the comments. If I answer in the comments I wonder if anyone ever goes back and looks so I thought I'd just do a catch up post with some questions that have come up lately. First, it's about the weaving on the loom. Yep, that's the sock yarn for the scarf that is getting threaded.

Even though I showed off the new pattern and the new cotton for it, I have yet to begin winding it on the warping board.

This is why. I have an 18 inch loom and almost all patterns are written for at least a 22 inch loom so I have to do a lot of figuring to get it to fit. It's not as simple as just cutting off some of it. If I want it to look like the original I have to cut things back all across the whole thing. It hurts my head but I think I've finally got it so I should be able to begin the new warp this week.

That giant towel went through a wash and dry and now it's only 36 inches long. It's also not nearly as wide. I imagine it will shrink even more with each washing for a while so it turned out to be a perfect size to hang on my stove door handle. 

As for that chalkboard experiment, that paint worked really well. I only needed one coat. Chalk wipes right off. 

I bought this stencil kit so I could put some fancy lettering on it-when I figure out what I want to say.