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. 

A Family Affair

 

Since early spring, the black vultures that live in the shed next door have been showing all the signs that they had babies in there but it wasn't until yesterday that they brought them out. The baby is on the left. You can see all its white down feathers still stuck to its neck and back. Mama is on the right. I had thrown them out some chicken I had in the freezer that I had thawed overnight. It was too old for human consumption but it was a feast for the birds.

A face only a mother could love. 

I only saw one baby at first but it wasn't long until a second one showed up. Mom and Dad have no trouble coming up to door and knocking when they want something to eat or fresh water in their bowl and a while later all four of them were peering in. I wish I could have gotten a photo of that but as soon as they saw me they skedaddled. Mom and Dad are pretty cool with our presence but not when the babies are around. They don't want to teach those babies that humans are okay because as experience has shown...generally speaking, we are not. 

My poor babies were out there in all that smoke that's been blowing through the past few days. It was downright creepy on Friday. Between the heat and the smoke, cabin fever has become a thing. Fall can't come soon enough. 

The smoke gives me a sore throat so I didn't even go to the Farmer's Market yesterday morning. The Mister went alone. He brought back corn and tomatoes. 

There's not much I like about the summer but I do like fried green tomato season. The corn was good too. I'll make some corn chowder with the leftovers to go with the loaf of bread I'll be baking tomorrow. Betty White has made a comeback. 

TdF: Week Two

 

Yesterday's TdF started out with a catastrophe. Like the actual Tour, I've got a DNS (did not start) on my hands. I lost a critical piece of my Spindolyn. The Mister and I spent a whole morning searching everywhere for a tiny 1/2 inch cylinder that makes the whole thing spin. It had been falling out of the bottom recently and I had taped it in but it must have escaped the day before when I wasn't paying attention. No more cotton spinning until I figure out a work around. 

Mercifully, the other spindles are behaving. That is my second bobbin of the red. The support spindle is looking a bit full but I'm going to try to keep it going for the final week just to see how much I can wind on it. 

I'm working on the yellow braid of the rainbow mini skeins. 

And now for a love story. My wonky handspun Thermal Mitt has been a joy to pick up every morning mainly because of the needles. I had bought those Prym Arne and Carlos edition needle set on a whim a few years ago but never actually used them. I'm using them now and I am madly in love with them. 

I hate increasing so when I came to the thumb gusset I grit my teeth and started in only to discover those M1L and M1R were so much easier because of how the ends of these needles are shaped. I also love the smooth joins. There's no bump where the needle meets the cable so your stitches just slide right over. Since I avoid patterns with increases like the plague this opens up a whole new world for me. Another attempt at a Musselburgh? Maybe in the fall.