Friday Felines: The Gangs All Here

 

I wish I could say the birds were waiting patiently for their breakfast of leftover cat food but they really weren't. The babies are like.....well, think puppies with wings. When they've had enough of the waiting they'll start tossing all the things in the recycling bin at the door until I come out with a couple of paper plates and a couple of cans of cat food. I'm starting to worry that these particular babies are never going to leave. They've got it too good. 

Loose Ends

 

That very ugly but very colorful warp that I had started getting on the loom has had a few hiccups. 

Not the kind where you rip it all off and then sit in the corner and cry. It was the kind where I had thought I was ready for the next step but in the process of moving on I found an error that had to be pulled out and re-done. 

The threading error was about in the middle so I have had to re-thread the heddles while also pulling them through the reed which is finicky work. It's probably for the best because it slows me down and makes me re-check my counting several times before I move on. 

In the meantime, I've been putting the rolls of scrap cotton to use by tying up the skeins I was finishing during the TdF. They came in very handy but I'm really looking forward to using them for what they were intended for. 

Wednesday WIPs: It's All About the Color

 

I loved those little pastels minis so much that when I noticed that the darker shades were on sale I had to buy them.

This is what I had in mind for them all. That gradient rainbow Pi shawl might be happening after all.

The Stroll pi shawl looks like this now. It's a lovely lump of mindless knitting in lots of soothing blues and greens.

The Uneek socks have just morphed into the most gorgeous red-violet color. It looks purple in this photo but it's not. 

And I am very happy to say that the Hue Shift has moved away from that dark blue and onto a lighter blue. It's much easier on the eyes. 

TNT: Needled

 

Whatever I did to my back last week wasn't going to let me hunch over my stitching or quilting frames so there's not much to see here. I did have to buy new needles for the needlepoint project because it seems that I lost the only one I had. I'm on a real roll for losing things at the moment. It's making me crazy. 

Once the new needles arrived I discovered that I could balance the needlepoint frame on my knees in such a way as to not put any pressure on my healing back muscles so I did get the second block finished. Every day it gets better so I'm hoping soon I'll be back in the stitching business. 

Aux Champs Elysee...

 

I made it to Paris with the riders yesterday but I don't have much to show for it this year. 

My little pile consists of 4 finished skeins of the pastel Polworth.

I still have half the blue and the purple to go. 

I finished four drop spindles of the BFL from Fiber Optics. I'll put them all on a bobbin and then finish spinning it on the wheel. I did not enjoy working with this fiber. It was very compact and hard to draft. 

I'm ready for a big wind off on the support spindle. I've been working on a big bag of Puckerbrush Farm's Merino pencil roving for years. I don't think I'll ever see the end of it but it's such a lovely fiber to work with that I'm not complaining. 

Sadly, I never found the missing piece to my Spindolyn so for now my cotton spinning adventure is at an end. I'll keep looking on eBay to see if anyone ever sells one. The vendor who sold them originally doesn't appear to be in business anymore. 

It certainly wasn't a big podium finish for me this year but I'm not done. The TdF Femmes starts on Saturday and the Vuelta de Espana starts on the 22nd of next month so there's still a lot of opportunities to spend some extra time in my little spinning corner.  

Baking Day

 

The weather was so cool and crisp yesterday morning that I put Pup in her stroller and went off to the Farmer's Market with The Mister. Oddly, there was no line at the coffee truck so he stopped for one while I admired the scone selection.

This little coffee truck will soon have a permanent location just a few blocks from our house. They've been painting murals on the walls of an old storefront for a few weeks now. 

I didn't buy any scones but I was inspired to come home and bake. Betty has been very productive again this week so she became a tray of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies. 

They are not the prettiest cookies but they are crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle. After a bit of fermenting in the fridge, they puff up like little sourdough boules when they hit the oven. I don't need to have a tin of cookies tempting me in my current inactive state so the good news is Betty doesn't make a lot on any given day and...I can always count on The Mister to eat most of them. 

On the Town

 

We were gifted two decent summer days so we took advantage of the second one and went down to the boardwalk. The Mister used up the first one by going sailing with a friend while I enjoyed a day in bed with my library book and a couple of guilty pleasures I'm streaming. My back thanked me for it.  Out in the water we could see that the ospreys are still nest sitting. It won't be long before they're gone.

A mama duck was keeping close eyes on her babies on the shore while paying no mind at all to all the people on the beach.

The gulls were all lined up and making a big racket. They must have a lot to talk about.

Across the street the koi pond was in full bloom. I don't think I've ever seen the crepe myrtles look so beautiful. I would love to line my driveway with them but I'm pretty sure the Amazon folks would run them over. 

The pond itself was almost completely covered over with water lilies. I wonder how the fish feel about that. 

Not to be outdone, my own Black-Eyed Susans have gone insane. That little bit of rogue greenery exploded into color. It's the first time anything flowering has managed to upstage the giant hostas so I'm very impressed. I hope they do it again next year.

Friday Fluff: Running Out of Road

 

This is the last Friday Fluff post of the Tour. I'll do a final post on Monday when it's all over. Those three weeks go by so fast. I did finish one of my Wonderfully Wonky mitts. I've got another one cast one but I'm not sure I have enough plied yarn to finish it. 

Luckily I still have some singles from that spin on the Ashford left over from last year's Tour that I can ply to finish it up if I need to.

I might have defeated myself with this year's plan to knit a handspun polwarth pi shawl from the pastel skeins I bought but after digging in my stash I realized I had already made that yarn. In 2015.

I was so bored right after the Tour that year that I took a big braid of white polwarth and dyed it in the microwave.

I'm not sure how I managed to do such a better job of it in 2015 than I did this time around but I certainly did. This is just what I was hoping for so Pi shawl number two is now on the needles. 

Rain, Rain Go Away

 

I usually like rainy days but these past three stormy days have brought on one of those headaches, the kind that won't go away. I've also done something bad to my back again so I'm one Grumpy Gus. Before it all hit the fan around here I did get a few more rows on the Zig Zag. In only three short days my little sewing room has become a catch-all for things I don't have the ability to deal with at the moment. Getting back in there in a meaningful way may take a while. 

Wednesday WIPs: Pretty Babies

 

My mini skeins collection of sock yarn has arrived. It came from Twice Sheared Sheep which is a new to me online yarn shop and one that I need to stay away from. They've got an advent box that is to die for. 

I bought those pretty little babies hoping they would work for the pi shawl I had started from some leftover Stroll minis but I don't think they will. 

Instead I bought a large skein of Stroll in the blues that I think I'm going to stick with. The original dark blue in the collection was the Pacific colorway and of course it was discontinued so I had to make do with Pluto. 

I even went stash diving in my box of leftover sock yarn hoping I would find some in there. Nope but I think that blue will be fine. I wanted a hodge podge of colors. What I need is a bigger box. I can just see the cats getting in here and having a ball.

Since I was obsessed with the pi shawl the only other things that got worked on this week were socks. The Grands "big boy" snow socks are at the heel as are the Uneek socks. I have to say that the Uneek sock's yarn feels a bit weird but the colors are gorgeous. I might even be tempted to buy more when these are done. 

TNT: Sticking With It

 

I finished the sewing machine this week. It was a lot of white fill which is never any fun. My backstitching always leaves me in a tizzy because I'm terrible at it. I think I need to change needles because my regular stitching needle can't seem to get through the jumble of stitches and nothing is lining up as it should. 

The needlepoint project still has my attention. I have one more color of background blue to stitch and then this block is done. 

Dear Jane looks like this. I had to sort out another bag of pieces for blocks E 7-13. That's never any fun but I think I've got it figured out. I always did like puzzles. 

I've started another block on the Patchwork quilt. This one holds a special place in my memory because it was the first block I paper pieced back in October of 2024. I remember that day so clearly because Pup had just had surgery and I started working on this to keep myself busy while living on the floor with her for several weeks to keep her from tearing out the stitches from a biopsy (negative) that she had on her shoulder. It's not at all like me to finish things that I start on a whim like this but somehow this one took. Eight more blocks to quilt and then a bunch of little doo dads and this will be a FO. I can hardly believe it. 

Busy Betty White

 

Earlier in the week I had made a loaf of bread using Brown Betty's morning discard and it was too sour. I know some people really like the sour aspect of sourdough but I'm not one of them. I did some research on how to un-sour Brown Betty and the first thing they said was use white flour. It took me three days to turn some of Brown Betty back into Betty White but when I did I put her right to work. 

First I made pancakes for dinner with her discard. I usually have to put a pile of leftovers in the freezer but we ate them all. 

Then it was pizza. This was the easiest dough I've ever rolled out. It didn't fight back one bit. 

I could get it nice and thin. What I didn't do was have the oven hot enough to really crisp up that crust. I like a crispy crust but The Mister doesn't so he was happy with it. 

The whole time it was baking I was terrified that it would stick. I oiled the pan but I still worried. It didn't stick. I was doing a happy dance when that spatula slid right under it. I could have lifted the whole thing up and tossed it like a Frisbee. It was so good we ate the whole thing.

Finally, the real test. Would this be the kind of bread that I can eat with just a bit of butter and not have to pucker up?

It was. It wasn't as full of bubble holes as Brown Betty usually is but it had a much milder flavor. Whew. Betty White and I had quite the workout this week and I didn't even mention the pile of waffles or the jar of crackers we made. Yesterday I mixed her back in with Brown Betty so I didn't have to keep up the care and feeding of two jars but it's nice to know I can resurrect her when she's needed.