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This was our sixth week taking over for MIL who is the usual kid sitter. She happened to be on a cruise ship in a Hawaiian harbor on the night this happened. It was a tense few hours for SIL waiting to get the all's good from mom. She's flying home on Monday and taking a week to recuperate so next week our sitting adventure comes to an end.
It's been a lot of work but memories have been made. This week there was banana bread baking....
...and card games played.
Big Grand got to eat lunch with Barbie. The Mister found her on a clearance aisle for $4 when he ran into the grocery store to get me another watermelon on our way up. I am happy to report this watermelon came home with me.
Baby Grand was all about cars this week.
He's also decided sleeping is not for him. A few minutes of shut eye with his Mr. Sloth toy is all he needs for hours and hours of play. All the grownups were exhausted after playing pass the baby around the clock. Daughter leaves for work at 4:30 am so it's a looong day.
When the bedtime battle was won and that hard earned, tiny window of down time appeared, SIL made us a smokey version of an old fashioned. That glass decanter is filled with smoke made from that little doohickey in the photo. Somehow it's infused into the whiskey and it was good.
And....shy kitty has been warming up to us a little more each week. I wouldn't go in for a scritchin' just yet but at least there are no more hisses.
I made sure when I packed this week to go up to Daughter's that my projects were in good order to be worked on. My Friday Fluff handspun projects never go with me but I did pile them all up on Sunday to take a photo for my Tour de France 2025 Ravelry project page. I make one every year so I can go back and remember what I worked on from year to year. Like my spinning projects, I didn't manage to finish anything but everything got worked on daily. The Garter Squish lap blanket just needs to be cast off. EZ's Pi Shawl just needs a edging. I'm heading down the foot on the handspun sock and I'm having too much fun with the Granny Squares to think about quitting. Unlike my spinning projects, I hope to have all these finished in the next few months or so. I've got all those skeins left from this year's Tour to turn into something useful.
The last of the flowers have been stitched. I still have to fill in all the white around them. That will be this week's job.
Dear Jane's foundation has been finished and the applique pieces made. When I get back from this week's Grand sitting adventure I'll tackle sewing them down in the weird way Jane has planned. We're on our way up there again this morning.
I'm closing in on finishing all the big paper pieces I need for the Patchwork quilt top but have a long way to go for the small crosses and the squares.
I had a bad moment with the needlepoint project when I took out the pattern to start the center background. I realized the white ring on the flower was supposed to be yellow. I'm not sure how that happened. I hope I have enough white left to finish the thing. I also had to take a permanent marker and outline those spots in the background. Either they have faded over time or they were never printed dark enough in the first place because I couldn't see them. I can still barely see them even with the marker so I guess I'm going to be free forming a lot of circles.
I might not deserve any awards for finishing anything this year but I did manage to spin every day and considering the big Grand sitting adventure that was a miracle.
I'm far from being done but the Women's Tour started Saturday so I'll be watching that in the morning while I ply these babies.
The Vuelta a Espana starts on August 23 so I'll have three more weeks of watching men's cycling and working on these again. Even with all that to look forward to, I'll be sad all day. Jumping out of bed at 6:30 and making an iced coffee to the sounds of Phil Liggett and Bob Roll setting up the day's stage becomes a habit after 3 weeks. One that's hard to break.
The Tour has really messed with our dog walking routine. By the time it's over every morning it's HOT out. Pup got another haircut on Friday. She doesn't like the heat so her shorter do is making her happy.
When we do go out, we make a beeline for the shady spots near the water. There's usually a nice breeze which makes a huge difference. At the end of the Catholic Church's parking lot is a group of trees with lots of shade that has a nice water view. We spend a lot of time there under the trees watching the boats.
The sidewalk at the koi pond gets very hot but there are some shady spots here and there. The sound of the little waterfalls is very nice on a hot day if you can find one of the shady benches open.
The wetlands park has a shady wildflower garden and....
....a pavilion that overlooks the water. The only problem here is the smell when the tide is out. Think the dumpster behind a fish factory.
The beach and the boardwalk are off limits in the hot sun. I really don't know how people lay out on that hot sand and the boardwalk is like walking on fire. The workers say it's 15 degrees hotter than the asphalt bike path that runs beside it which is too hot for dog feet.
We spend our time out running from shady spot to shady spot telling ourselves that better weather will be coming soon. Not next week. It'll be hotter than blazes here again next week. July is going out with a bang.
Puzzles. That's the secret. Usually at this time during the Tour I am lamenting the fact that I never managed to get anything done. As soon as The Mister gets up it's go time around here so sitting in front of the TV for a good chunk of time rarely happens. This year, however, I had the good sense to keep a puzzle in progress on the dining room table. He'll sit there for hours in the morning giving me time to do whatever it is I want which is....
...not only spinning but getting out all the fiber and having the time to prepare it properly.
I love dragging out the bags of fiber but it does make me miss my dearly departed middle man. Dad could take a bag of the worst fiber you've ever seen, tease it and then comb it into something you could work with. He loved to sit on his porch with it and explain it to all the neighbors that walked by.
One summer we processed enough raw fleece to make all these socks. I can only imagine how much more we could have accomplished if he had only wanted to learn to knit.
Since the Tour will be over on Sunday, I'll wait and do my fluff post on Monday. Instead, I'd rather whine about the projects that I packed for our trip this week. I get four hours of gloriously uninterrupted knitting time on the way up and back but this week I pretty much sat in a big huff because of my poor planning. Exhibit A: My two on one needle socks are ready for their gussets but I can't do that on one needle. Too fiddly so I always separate them until that part is done. Did I bring an extra needle to do this? Nope.
Exhibit B: The socks I'm knitting separately are in the same place as the twofers but I discovered that I had a split stitch in one of them in the black area. Rather than pull the whole heel flap out I thought that I could fix it with a small crochet hook but did I have one in my bag? Nope.
Exhibit C: I couldn't even spin because silly me had packed an empty spindle and the last bit of that purple fiber. That was dumb because I already had a spindle started with that fiber on it and why do another splice with so small an amount. I should have packed the already in progress spindle. I was kicking myself for two days.
And...Exhibit D: Adding insult to injury, I had thought I was being clever to buy a watermelon at a grocery store that was down the street from Daughter's house. They were half the price that they are here. Did I remember to bring it home with me? Nope.
I pack a lot of projects when I go away for my two sitting days with the Grands. I've done a good job making sure I had plenty to do on the 2 hour ride up and back until this week. It seemed that almost everything needed something I didn't have so I didn't get much done.
The card games and the yo yo turned out to be not much fun either. We bought the pack of cards because we thought we could play War with the big Grand but the stupid cards did not have the kind of graphics that you could count. Just one big dumb animal and a number. I've ordered a pack of regular playing cards for next week and we'll try it again. The yo yo was only a big hit with The Mister who, after all these years, could still make it work. I couldn't. Neither could SIL
There was a lot of painting going on. I had stamped some waterproof color wheels to do some color mixing.
The bird house finally got finished and Big Grand used the extra paint to do some canvas work.
Baby Grand decided that this was the week he wanted to learn to read. He was turning pages like a pro.
And....when it was time to clean up I laughed myself silly when Big Grand went for his noise cancelling headphones so he could vacuum with the Dyson. It seems he sees his daddy do this when he mows so now it's his thing too whenever there's a loud noise.
There are no dramatic changes going on with my knitting this week so instead I'm showing off some things that are happening in the fiber corner. I made another blended Merino batt. The one The Mister made went fast. They look big but they really are only about an ounce worth of fiber.
Next I got out a bag of fiber that needed combing before I could card it.
It's the wool from this pretty lady. Her name is Trinidad and she's a California Red. I brought her fleece home from the MDSW in 2019 and I don't think I'll ever see the end of it.
I've got several skeins of it in the bins and I still have this much on a bobbin from last year's Tour. Now that the carder is fixed I can finish this up.
It was a fight to the finish but I got a nice sized batt out of the dregs of the fiber left in the bag. I also got sore shoulders and arms from all the teasing and combing. I've forgotten how much work it is to go from sheep to skein.
I started the final row of the Garden this week.
I've added to my pile of paper pieces for the Patchwork quilt border. Dear Jane is another applique block so all that's going on there is putting together the foundation. It's almost done.
The big funky flower is done. I have some green to do on the stem and then I'll start the background.We're off this morning for another two day sitting adventure. This week, for entertainment, we're packing several types of card games and a yo yo. This should be interesting.
I either don't have the time or the inclination to pick up all of my projects on a regular basis these days. I could blame the heat or old age but it's more than likely a combination of the two. Spiral Chicken has been in hiatus because I still can't get the background gray right. The left hand bottom corner is a bit too dark.
I tried dyeing my own wool but it was too light in spite of several dunks so I ordered more grays. I'll cut these up and see if they work when I get the urge.
I've been spending a very few minutes daily with the loom. I'm working my way across one bundle of ends at a time with little enthusiasm for the project. Those colors aren't doing a thing for me.
The punch needle projects are also languishing. I don't even have the energy to get stabby right now. A cold drink, a tomato sandwich and a good nap are all I'm interested in.
We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get permission to cut down a few of our trees but when it was all finished we still couldn't do anything about it because of these guys. These are the two babies that were just balls of white fluff a few months ago. Now they are hopping about on my roof making all kinds of noise waiting for mommy to come feed them.
You can recognize the babies by the white tufts they still have on their heads.
This is mommy. She walks right up to the door and taps on it to get her daily can of cat food and all the leftovers my persnickety cats leave in their dishes. Between the foxes and the heat, I have no idea how she kept those two babies alive out in the abandoned shed on the edge of our woods but she did. Soon she'll fly them off and dump them somewhere so they can start their own families. As for our trees, we think we are going to wait until the leaves come down. There's just too much mess to consider this time of year. It's a jungle out there.
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