Soap Tales

 

So what did I do on my big day off after vacuuming, scrubbing all the floors and doing four loads of laundry? I organized my soap shelves. I had a lot of soap left over from the last giveaway. I usually have around 30 people participating and this time I only had 12. My soap shelves were full so I had to get it all down, wrap it and then label it so The Mister can go hand it out in town on his daily meander. 

Then I went down to the soap room and made some more. I've been reading the last of the books in the Practical Magic series and they keep talking about the black soap they make. They talk about this soap in all of the books and I've always meant to make some. Since I now had empty shelves and a lot of leftover ingredients from the last soap making session, I decided to make up my own version. I'll see how it cuts tomorrow but I'll have to wait 4-6 weeks to see if it's actually usable. You never know.

Making soap is an awful lot like making sourdough. The two share a lot of the same equipment so I had to run up and down the stairs all morning to gather what I needed. I guess I need to buy another scale, temperature gauge and bottle of honey. I also had to use my kitchen bottle of olive oil since I had used up the last of the big bottle I keep for soap. I am happy to report that Betty survived another few days in the fridge. I hope to be making bread this weekend so to see her rising and full of bubbles so soon tells me she will be ready when I am. 

FO: Mountains and Fjords

This week's sitting is done and my reward is that The Mister is playing in a golf tournament and won't be back until tomorrow. I've got a day to rest and recuperate from all the baby yoga.....

...city building...

....and book organizing. The little one is fascinated with books. Not reading them. Shelving them. He takes them down, puts them in a basket and then puts them back. Over and over. Librarian in training I think. 

While the little one is napping, Big Grand helps me knit after we do some arts and crafts. He was a big help closing those toes and weaving in the ends of the latest pair off the needles. He also served as my foot model.

In return, he requested a new pair of "snow socks" so I guess sometime this summer I'll be casting on another bitty pair from my ginormous stash. 

 

Wednesday WIPs: Travel Knitting

 

As I mentioned yesterday, we are on babysitting duty again this week but this time we are commuting instead of spending the night. It's an almost 2 hour ride up to Daughter's so I needed to make sure I had plenty of car knitting ready to go. On Sunday, I wound up the Miss Bab's. Look at this photo. I'm winding yarn in front of my quilt with an oven in the background that's baking the week's bread. How Little House on the Prairie of me. 

I prefer to work with two socks on one needle when I'm in the car. Less to lose so I cast them on that way and gave myself a head start.

I finished my first pair of the new Arne and Carlos socks. The other pair are on the toes and they will also be car knitting.

Not much else will be getting worked on this week. I did finish the 4th row of the 1st section on the Hue Shift. When things calm down I'll start the next row and then this section will be done-minus all those ends to weave in.

 

TNT: Deja Vu

 

You may have seen this post before. I tried to blog ahead because we are off babysitting for the next two days and I didn't think I'd have time to post. Of course silly me didn't look at the date and time. Anyway, the Garden got some new doo dads around the trees. It's slow tedious work and I'm not a fan but I will power through.

Patchwork Automne got a branch and an upside down squirrel. I might be putting this away until fall. I'm losing interest. 

I finished that block on the Patchwork quilt. Time to move the hoop when we are done with the kid sitting.

Spiral Chicken doesn't count as a tiny needle project but I did get another corner of her finished this week. I'm pretty close to having all of the inside area done.  I've still got the big outer border to do so it's not time to celebrate just yet. 

Starting Over-Again

 

If you've been wondering what ever happened to that warp I had on the loom, here it is. Yep. I murdered it just like I murdered the one that came before it. 

I've become a serial warp murderer. This time, as before, there were just too many mistakes to overcome. First, the color order of the plaid was off. There's a way to make it symmetrical and I forgot all about that. I could have overcome that problem but up popped another. I had one heddle that was loose. It didn't get threaded on right when I counted them out. I tied it on and it seemed to work. 

I could have gotten over that but the final straw was that I had mis-thread one of them making a very ugly place right in the middle of the towel. In the past, I would have toughed it out by re-doing it thread by thread to fix it but my back wasn't going to let me do all that up and down stuff so I cut it all loose. 

I've got a huge stash of weaving cotton so why fuss about a handful when I can just start over. 

As my penance, I'm going to make the ugliest towel you could ever imagine by just using up my scraps in no particular order. This is a test to see if I can go from start to finish without making any stupid mistakes. I'm betting not.

I've gone from making things like this to not even being able to get a simple twill going. Cognitive decline or just hubris? To be determined. 

Goodies Galore

 

Every week there's been more to buy at the Farmer's Market. I came home with a dinner's worth yesterday.

In the mailbox was a very fragrant order from Penzy's. The spice shelf in the kitchen needed refreshing so I put in a big order. There's a lot more in the box than what you can see here. A lot more.

Also waiting in the mailbox was this box of sock yarn. Knit Picks was having a 30% off sale at the same time Daughter sent me a gift certificate for Mother's Day. One day I'm going to count how many balls/skeins I have of sock yarn and that amount is most likely going to be pretty scary. I have a recurring fantasy of just sitting on the floor surrounded by needles and project bags and casting every single one of them on just for the heck of it. 

Edited to say: I did count my sock yarn when I put these newest additions away and I now have 92(!) balls/skeins. If I knit about 12 pairs a year it would take me around 8 years to knit it all IF (and that's a big IF) I do NOT add to the stash. I'm starting to suspect this can't be done.

A Correction

 

I owe Mom's bucket of hosta's a big apology when I posted about them earlier in the week. I used a picture of my grandmother's giant hostas by mistake. I'm not sure how I did that. My grandmother's plants look like something you'd find in the Jurassic Era. My mom's are small, a darker sage green and always very neatly arranged in her pot. 

I'm still planting stuff even though common sense tells me not to. Yesterday we went off to the nursery section of a local hardware store and I came home with some things.

Putting the things in the ground is like throwing money away here but we have noticed a change in the sun pattern on the back deck now that the big trees are gone. I've got a lot of empty pots from the trees we bought so I thought I'd give the deck another try.

I bought two tomatoes and my usual assortment of herbs. Until the deer learn to climb up stairs, they'll be safe, I hope. The nasty things are already eating their way through the backyard hostas. Nothing lasts very long around here. The wildlife cafeteria is open for business.

Friday Fluff: Fig Garden

 

How it started.

How it ended. The superwash Merino/Tencel blend is spun. I'm not sure I did justice to the braid. I wanted a 2 ply so I'd get more yardage and doing that means the colors don't stay together as nicely as they would if I had chain plied it but it is what it is now and I'm thinking Croc Sox. In the future. 

In other fluff news, the Pi Shawl is nearing its end. It's very possible that it might be done by next Friday. Won't that be nice. 

A Tale of Two Loaves

 

Being out of commission because of my back for the past few weeks left poor Betty in limbo in the fridge for a long time. When I took her out a few days ago she really struggled to get back to her old self. While I was nursing her along I tried a new technique. I made a stiff starter out of her. Instead of the usual feeding ratios I made a playdough like ball and left it overnight. I was shocked at how much it rose and how bubbly it was compared to poor weak original Betty.

The directions said to keep feeding this ball for three days or until the bottom of the jar is covered in bubbles. 

By then Betty had perked back up so I made two loaves using the different starters.

There didn't seem to be much difference in them at all to be honest. The stiff starter folks swear it makes a better tasting bread with a fluffier interior but I didn't get it.  What I did get was one heck of a terrible clean up job. That stiff starter needs sand blasting out of the jar. I would NEVER do this again unless I used a disposable paper cup.

I also did an experiment with my ovens. I made discard crackers in both my toaster oven and in my now functioning regular oven. The regular oven won hands down. I could get them evenly crisp without having to burn them. That's a big improvement and was a healthier choice for my late night viewing of SNL than my usual potato chips. 

Wednesday WIPs: Something Old, Something New

 

Since I couldn't do much of anything else last week I did end up doing a lot of knitting. I can do that in a comfortable position. In spite of all the time I put in, nothing looks very different except Old Chestnut. Here I've laid it on top of Bon Ami to see how much further I need to go. I did finish one more pattern repeat and am halfway through another. It looks like I still have about 8 inches to go before I can connect the shoulders though. 

The something new is the sock yarn from Miss Bab's that came in the mail yesterday. I think this skein is prettier than any of the ones I had in my hand at the MDSW so I'm glad I did the online thing instead of fighting the crowd. Now I've got to get the socks I already have on the needles off the needles so I can cast this beauty on. 

TNT: Nothing to See Here

 

There was no way that I was going to be able to sit and hunch over my stitching this week. It took me until Saturday not to be in tears just sitting. What I did do was buy something. I said I was looking for another vintage needlepoint kit and I found one I liked on eBay. 

When I first started Funky Flowers I hated that old, scratchy wool yarn but now I like working with it. It's wonky so I don't have to fret about being too perfect with my stitches because they are anything but perfect. 

I did accomplish one important thing this week. I had to de-hair my work stands. One holds my cross stitch projects and one holds my knitting. For some reason the cats use them to rub against so they are usually covered in hair. This week I cleaned them and then rubbed them down with my non-greasy Vick's back rub hoping the strong smell will keep the kitties away. I did see one of the darlings go up and take a sniff, make a face and walk away. I'm taking that as a good sign. 

My Woo Woo Garden

 

I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day. I spent mine planting more trees. These four little Thuja Green Giant Arborvitaes showed up on Saturday afternoon. They don't officially count as part of the city mandated trees. We wanted these as a screen to block the mess the downed trees made in the woods behind us. They are supposed to grow fast and bushy and there was a BOGO sale going on so I jumped on it. 

As for my Woo Woo Garden, I was fascinated by a thread I saw on social media where someone was explaining that she saw a video with "someone's witchy grandma" who explained that if you take something from a family member's garden and plant it in yours it acts as a conduit to guide their spirit to you after they pass. I was very touched by all the comments from folks sharing their memories of departed loved ones and the things they have from them in their gardens. I started thinking about my own yard and realized I have a massive Woo Woo garden going on out there. I've got Mom's little hostas still in her bucket. They come up faithfully every year. 

The giant hostas that have taken over the whole yard came from my Grandmother's yard. I moved some to my old house and then here. We're talking 40 plus years since they left their original home in a grocery bag. 

My Mom's Siberian Iris are just starting to bloom. I brought home one little clump and they've spread out quite a bit but still have remained respectful of the other things in the bed. I like plants that do that.

One day she brought over a small Rose of Sharon she didn't want anymore and stuck it in the ground. It's huge now.  That pile of wood debris behind it is what we're trying to hide with the Thujas. 

Her daylilies were spectacular so I brought home a few clumps but without enough sun they never bloomed. It didn't stop them from spreading like crazy through the woods though. If they ever did bloom it would look like the woods were on fire. 

Finally, there is Dad's pot of Black Eyed Susans. I've tried putting them in the ground but they were never happy there. I put them back in the original pot that he had put them in and they come back happy and healthy every year. 

Although I do look very much like someone's witchy grandma, I don't know too much about the Woo Woo thing. I do like the thought of there being the spirits of loved ones out there dancing in the garden among all the green things. Someone has to keep all the garden fairies company, right?