It's Official

 

Autumn must be here because look what came down my driveway yesterday. The USPS brought a special delivery from Sandflies. If anything could get me out of my bed and back on my feet, it would be a cup of pumpkin spice coffee. Thank goodness, I'm finally on the mend so I might just hobble out to the kitchen and make a pot. Thanks Sandflies! And a happy Autumn to you too!

The Lost Weekend

 

I could have been here yesterday but instead....

...I was doing this. Whatever I did to my back was 100% worse on Saturday. I could barely get out of bed to go eat something so I could take another handful of OTC pain killers. The Mister went to the end of the year beach celebration without me and I stayed home in misery. I'm not very good at doing nothing but there wasn't a choice. There was no way I was going to work through this level of pain. My old body was making that pretty darn clear. 

On the Ball

 

Friday the 13th didn't play nice. I knew it wouldn't. It never does. It seems I did something to my back when I was painting on Thursday and I woke up feeling like someone had wrapped an iron girdle around my waist and then poured hot lava down my spinal column. I'm an old hand at back issues so as soon as I could move I got out my big ball and did some stretching. 

At least I had the good sense of upgrading the pump recently. I bought The Mister an air mattress for those nights when we have to sleep downstairs because of the trees. That electric pump is a game changer. The last thing you want to do when your back is hurting is stamp on a floor pump for an eternity.

Freaky Friday

 

I'm not superstitious as a rule but Friday the 13th always gives me pause. Thursday the 12th was a good day. We started out at a new little town park down the street watching the sun come up over the bay. We got an early start because we had a lot of work to do back home. 

All those new bi-fold doors and trim we put up had to be painted and it all was. Two coats. I'm hoping that the 13th turns out to be a lucky day and I won't have to put on a third coat. Fingers crossed. Painting those primed doors was no fun. That cheap wood product was very thirsty. 

Stolen Minutes

Watching the sun come up over my fire was the high point of my day. 

The rest of the day was filled with tedious jobs that should be easy but never are. We got the new hall light up.

It took a lot of bad language to get the closet door in my craft room hung. It came packaged with the wrong size top track so it was a good thing we had kept the old one. Today I'll be painting all the new doors.

While The Mister was doing his pre-job fussing and fuming I sat down and worked on Spiral Chicken for a few minutes. She's living downstairs now which makes sense because that's where all the wool is. 

She's sharing a table with my card crafting things. I had made these gnomes the other day and while The Mister fretted over the door measurements, I went about trying to come up with an arrangement I liked. I didn't. It usually takes me a few tries before I get a card I like well enough to mass produce. In the meantime, I'll just make a pile of gnomes. 

 

Wednesday WIPs

 

I'm so mad at myself I could spit. I am just about to finish these two and when I started thinking about what comes next I realized in horror that I have no idea how I am going to make the next ones match. I usually write down the measurements that I use for the long tail cast on but it seems I didn't. If I did I can't find it anywhere and I am furious at myself for being so stupid. These match each other but getting them to match their mates is going to be a challenge. I did think to save the yarn I cut off from the solid ribbing at the top. Pairfects always have more than my liking but that's as far as I got with using my brain. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, I also discovered I used the wrong needle for the orange pair. I thought they felt a little tight.  I had the needles in the wrong sleeve so I've got the green one being knit with a 2.50 and the orange one with a 2.25. 

All those stupid mistakes make me worry about the fate of the other gray blob. I've got to learn a new technique for making buttonholes in double knit and I'm starting to doubt I have the brain power.

It would help if I could get my sleep schedule back on track. At 4 am I am outside looking at the stars. I've wanted more wood so I could do my star gazing with a fire and now I have more than enough. Those early morning hours have become my favorite part of the day. When The Mister gets up, the work starts and I'm so tired of it. Happily, we are close to having the downstairs finished. One more new door and a hall light to hang tomorrow-but then that emergency bathroom repair starts. Good times. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

One more season down, two to go. Patchwork Printemps by Jardin Prive is finally done. I'll be back to working on fall this week hopefully for another big finish. 

Back in the sewing room, Peter Rabbit saw no love this week. Music Amongst the Trees didn't either. I had high hopes for this one this summer but nothing came of it. 

It was the floss that did me in. This is a very old project from back when I was a real newbie and I thought this was the best way to organize floss for a project. It is most certainly NOT. I do use the little cards but only for a few strands at a time so you can pull them off without a tangled mess. It's been put in time out until next spring when I'll be more motivated to straighten this mess out. 

In its place I pulled out Matter's Choice. It's stitched in all black. After fighting all those colors all summer I am more than happy about that. 

I didn't get a finish on a Dear Jane block this week. D3, which is called Jason's Jacks, is another applique job and I forgot I needed to put the lattice on first so I can pull out the big center paper piece. 

And....we've been having wonderfully cool mornings here. Chilly, in fact, so I thought some hot cereal might be a good idea. I usually use a saucepan for Cream of Wheat but thought I would give the microwave a try. Won't be doing that again. 

The Sound of Silence

 

All summer long the TV has been keeping us company while we worked away on the downstairs. First it was the Tour, then it was the Olympics and finally it was the 

La Vuelta a Espana. Yesterday was the end of the Tour of Spain so it's going to be a weirdly quiet morning.

 I didn't get much done during these three weeks of racing but I did finish plying the merino that I spun on a drop spindle. It's a lot. I'm going to have make something big out of it. 

I spun three of the little one ounce merino nests I blended on the carder. I need one more ounce before I'll get around to plying it. 

I only had one wind off in three weeks with the Polwarth/silk but I admit I wasn't terribly motivated. Trying to keep up with the housework and the work on the downstairs has been a challenge-with no end in sight.

And I guess I hit a nerve with my Canadian blog buddies with this yarn post yesterday. I had to laugh at the amount of cringe I inflicted. Sorry.

Pantoufles

 

Years ago, when the internet was new and blogs were not a thing, I had an email pen pal. Her name was Pauline and she lived in Monteral. She wrote in french and I wrote in english so we could improve our language skills. She was a knitter at a time when I was not knitting anymore. 

One Christmas she sent me a pair of slippers she had made out of the weirdest yarn I had ever seen. It was Phentex. It is made of something called olefin and is related to plastic. I loved those slippers and wanted to make a pair for everyone I knew but that yarn was not a thing here in the USA. When I finally found a source, I bought an awful lot of it as you can see from the first photo. 

I did make one pair of those slippers for myself and wore them to death but I never did make another pair. I found that giant stash of Phentex when I was cleaning out the craft room on Friday. I do recall that those slippers are not as easy to make as it would seem but I just may have to give it another try. What else am I going to do with that big bin of plastic yarn?

No Place Like Gnome

 

I've got some more desk shelves and a paper storage unit on their way here but I did make some headway yesterday working with what I have. We got the shades up-no fun there and my storage rack up on the wall. We also got the doors back on. It's all starting to make more sense to me-work wise but it leaves a lot to be desired in appearance. I'll just have to learn to live with the jumble. After all, it is my jumble. 

After a morning of work, The Mister wanted to go to the dump and then cut grass so I took a quiet minute to dig out the new stamp sets I bought a while back for this year's Christmas cards. As you can see, I have a theme going. 

All summer long I've been obsessed with watching the videos of Crawly the green wizard gnome when I can't sleep at night-which seems to be every night anymore so I thought this year we would do green gnomes for our cards. Hopefully, I'll have the room put back in working order by then.

Reality Bites

 

The whole time we were working on updating my craft room I had visions of a pristine space with everything neatly tucked away or artfully displayed. You know what I'm talking about. We've all seen rooms like that and thought they were possible. What I got was this.  Mismatched furniture and piles of junk. Too much stuff in too little of a room. This isn't even the soap side which is even worse. I worked all day emptying boxes with no place to put anything. Back to the drawing board. I see a trip to Ikea in my future. 

Purple Haze

 

On one of our many trips to the local hardware store, we were given a purple bag with a purple light bulb inside it. There was also an invitation to the Glow Vigil that was to be held at the beach on the 31st of August. 

We've made good use of our purple light but we didn't make it to the vigil and the unveiling of some new things at the koi pond. There now is a permanent memorial to those loved ones lost from an overdose. Behind it is a big stainless steel sculpture called The Big Hug that honors those still struggling with addiction issues. 

While I was wandering around taking photos I noticed I was being watched from above. An eagle was keeping an eye on the place or maybe, more likely, keeping an eye on the koi fish. There aren't as many as there used to be. 

We went back last night to see the place lit up. 

The newly installed lighting had the place all aglow in a melancholy haze. 

I thought of all the names on the memorial and what it must have felt like for the families to walk through here the night of the vigil. Then I thanked my lucky stars I wasn't one of them. 

Wednesday WIPs

 

All the knitting is done on this gray blob. What you see here is how much yarn I have leftover. I have no idea how I managed to buy so much more than I needed but I'm kind of glad I did. The gray blob doesn't look like much when it's laying about but when I try it on, I love it. I want one and I think I've got enough to make myself one too. 

That's a far in the future project because I've still go the other gray blob to finish AND Bon Amie and Chestnut waiting patiently in their project bags. 

Since the downstairs projects leave me sitting around a lot and watching The Mister fuss and fume, I got a bit done on the socks this week. I'm almost at the toe on both of them.

And...if you are keeping score of the downstairs disasters, here's yet another one. Yesterday was door day on the laundry nook and did the doors fit? Of course not. After installing all the tracks we had to uninstall them. Then we had to re-frame the doorway to get that half inch more we needed. That meant another trip to the hardware store for more trim since the trim we just put up was too short once we raised it all up. Now I've got to get out the paint and paint it all again. Argh....it's always something. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

With all the drama around here this week I barely managed to get anything done but I did finish the next to the last border box for the autumn patchwork.  I'm going back to spring this week so I can save this last bit until it feels more like fall around here. It's been nice out-nice for summer, that is. 

I only did one more grid square on Peter Rabbit. He doesn't have a face yet but he has the carrot he's munching on. I also finished the top of the carrot he's holding.

As for Dear Jane, I managed to cover the pieces that will be sewn together but that's all. Until that big hole in the ceiling is dealt with, finding time to do anything but getting that downstairs finished is going to be impossible. 

Jumping the Gun

 

The Mister and I have been enjoying puzzle time on our newly cleared off table however....

...when I went looking for some flat boxes to spread those puzzle pieces out in I found this on a top shelf.

How could I have forgotten the February quilt top that still needed work? I cleared off my big table a bit too early it seems.

Quilting it in the sewing room would be a tight squeeze but I may have to clean this mess up and give it a try because....

....those two puzzles in progress aren't going anywhere soon AND I just so happened to buy this new release. A Halloween puzzle? Yes, please.