It's been a while!

When I said I was retiring, I didn't mean I was retiring from blogging but apparently....

Life suddenly got busy and the I'll do it tomorrow's started flying past and suddenly, here I am, over a month later.  Oops.  I'm only working two days a week now so hopefully I'll have time to blog on a more regular basis.  Or, if I'm being honest, hopefully I'll have the motivation to blog more frequently.  My retirement plans include spending much more time on my Etsy shop and doing in-person markets in the fall.  Those plans should help the motivation.

Anyway...

What have I been up to over the last month?

A close friend of ours passed away in late April and he was involved in the DAV (Disabled American Veterans.)  I got a little emotional at his memorial and told his commander I would knit and donate 75 hats by mid November to be given to the disabled vets for Christmas.   Like I said, I got a little emotional.  Have you ever been to a military funeral?  I think I'm still dehydrated from all the tears.  

Anyway.... I've since bought myself a Sentro knitting machine which is helping tremendously with the hat situation.  Fifteen down, sixty more to go.

Oh, and while I've been cranking out hats, I'm also trying to get the shop restocked and items made in preparation for the fall market season.  Oh, and let's not forget the personal projects.  The Insanity blanket is growing but at a much slower pace now.  Currently, I have knit 102 blocks.  Only 184 more to go.

I'm also crocheting a Frozen blanket for Hayden.  I think I've previously mentioned how obsessed she is with Frozen.  The blanket is just a giant granny square, well, granny rectangle, knit with Ice Cream Big Scoop yarn from Lion Brand.  I chose this yarn simply because it was blue & white, has 1117 yards per skein, and it was relatively inexpensive.

And yes, it was the yarn that broke my No Yarn Purchases For A Year streak.  I didn't make it a year, but I did make it to seven months and a few days without buying yarn.  Oh well, the purchase was for a good cause.  I only wish that was the only yarn I'd purchased.  Once that streak was broken, I went a little crazy.  It didn't help that Hobby Lobby was in the middle of one of their yarn sales at the time.  But hey, I do need yarn for those 75 DAV hats so...

Let's see, what else have I been working on?

I pulled the Christmas sock out of the UFO pile and knit on it a little bit. I just can't get excited about these socks for some reason. Although... I'll admit, every December I kick myself for not having finished them. 

Speaking of socks, I've beaded eleven pairs since my last blog post.  They are a popular item in my shop and it's hard to maintain the current inventory while creating new color choices.  Well, of course it wouldn't be so difficult if it wasn't for all the other knitting projects, but you know what I mean.

Oooh! And see that basket in the above photo?  I absolutely LOVE my Bolga basket.  I'd ordered it from Amazon and wondered why in the world I was spending my hard earned money on it but I am SO glad I did.  I absolutely love it!  I'm actually thinking of buying another.

I started another Musselburgh hat.  I'm not focusing on it much right now.  It's the 'I'm knitting outside, I've already made the day's quota of beaded socks and it's too hot to work on the Frozen blanket' project.  In other words, it doesn't see much action.  The  yarn is Maditosh Hand Dyed in Sycamore.  It's been in my stash for ages.  Sarah had chosen it for a scarf years ago but the color was Awful with her skin tone.  And yes, that's a capital A for awful.  For someone who can wear yellow, it will be a beautiful hat.  It's just not for Sarah.

I've also been knitting pumpkins and chickens for the shop/fall markets but I don't have any photos. Have you seen the Emotional Support Chickens?  They are adorable!  I'm not following that pattern, but it's where I got the idea and I still think my chickens are cute.

I've been doing lots of gardening.  Well, okay, some gardening.  I'm not exactly skilled so it takes me forever to accomplish anything in the yard.  It's also been really hot.   

Sadly, my hydrangea is already close to death.  Apparently when Google tells you hydrangeas like daily watering, they mean it.  Oops.  I'm trying to be better.  But hey!  Most of my tomato plants have tomatoes and some are even turing red!  Oh, and my pepper plants are getting teeny tiny peppers and the other 1,000 plants I bought are still alive.  

It's official!  We are now the most redneck household in the county.  My husband bought this old, abandoned and broken down race truck and plans to fix it up and sell it.  He's buddies with the guy he got it from so he knows it's history.  My daughter tells me that under all the dirt, the flag paint job is actually very pretty and has a metalic shimmer.  Not sure if that helps or hurts the redneck factor but hey... My husband bought a broken down race truck.  I have nothing to feel guilty about over spending a fortune on yarn and plants that will probably not survive the summer.

Oh, and speaking of spending a fortune, we Finally closed on the house.  What a friggin process that was!  It took a full year from application to closing.  Good grief!  But the brick pile is officially ours now.  You'll probably be hearing me moan about all the things that go wrong with a 100+ year old house while celebrating the little improvements we plan to make.

And, no photos but, Hayden has graduated from Headstart and has qualified for some kind of advanced preschool for next school year.  I honestly don't know much about it but I'm very proud of her. 

On another note about Hayden, she's officially over pretending to knit.  She wants to learn to actually knit (or crochet) so if anyone has suggestions for a no patience having grandma who doesn't like to teach that needs to teach a four year old how to knit, please send those suggestions my way.  I'm hoping there's a magical Youtube video out there that she can watch over and over while I sit nearby in case she needs hands on assistance.  Got any suggestions???

Well, I think that's about it so, until next time,

Happy knitting!

Northern Lights

I probably should have titled this post Everything But Knitting.  Oh well.

I spent most of my time off from work this past week doing yard work.  Last summer we thought we were moving and so we didn't exactly keep the flower beds in tip top shape. But since we've decided to stay  here (Have I mentioned that?  Yes, we decided to buy out my brother-in-law's half of my MIL's house and stay put.  I'm very happy not to have to move.)... Anyway... Since we've decided to stay and take ownership, Sarah and I are doing our best to take back control of the yard.  It's going to take us 100 years I fear.

The point of that story was, I haven't gotten much knitting done.  I haven't even touched the Winterfest sweater but the first Northern Lights Patons Kroy Sock sock is almost finished.  I've knit a little more than pictured and have started the toe decreases.  I'm 99.99999% sure I will run out of  yarn before the toe is long enough but I have some coordinating yarn and it will just have to have a weird looking toe.  I'm okay with weird toes.

Yesterday was GORGEOUS and a perfect day to spend parked on the deck with my knititng and a book.  Books actually.  I'm also reading Stephen King's Fairytail but that one's on my Kindle and I read until the battery died.  The day was so beautiful my bee friend stopped by for a visit.  I was surprised how interested in my non-sweetened black coffee he was.

I can't wait until the danger of frost has past.  I bought this weeping pussy willow tree from the grocery store and expected to kill it the first week I owned it, but it's producing leaves like crazy.  I think it just might survive.  I'm pretty excited about this little tree.  It's supposed to grow to seven feet tall and eight feet in diameter.  I've always loved weeping willows and my mom loved pussy willows so...  And since we live on the edge of a swamp, it shouldn't be a problem that this plant's roots search out water sources.  It should be very happy here.

The poor dog has taken up a bit of time this week too.  He hurt his paw and he's been having some tummy problems so he's stuck wearing the cone of shame and he's enjoying a diet of nothing but chicken and rice.  The problem comes in that he struggles to eat with the cone on and gets rice EVERYWHERE!  He's one of those dogs who likes to take their food  out of the bowl, put it on the floor, then eat it.  Except now, the cone knocks the rice every which way and if we take the cone off, he eats his foot instead of his food.  We are now having to sweep the entire downstairs about 8 times a day.  

And most exciting, Hayden turned three recently.  My husband and I weren't able to attend her actual birthday party so we threw her a simple dinner and cake party.  She was pretty excited about the cake.

And now, I'm off to finish that sock before I have to go to work this afternoon.

Happy Knitting!

Busy, busy, busy

It's been a busy week!  I cleaned out and rearranged the pantry.  Doesn't sound like that big of a deal but...  You should have seen the pantry before I started!

After cleaning out the pantry, I spent a few hours Googling recipes that use huge quantities of potatoes, bread flour and powdered sugar.  Yes, amoung many other excessively purchased things, I found four 2 lb bags of powdered sugar, a 5 lb and three 10 lb bags of potatoes, and four 5 lb bags of bread flour.  

The pantry looked so clean and organized, I decided to rearrange and reorganize my room and craft supplies the next day.  My room proved to be a little bit more challenging than the pantry.  And took quite a bit longer.

I watched the daffodils bloom - and practically blow away in the wind.  That whole "March comes in like a lion" thing has certainly been true, wind-wise at least.  I couldn't even get a half way decent photo because the wind was moving them around so much.

I listed several new items in my Etsy shop.

I watched gas prices rise almost 75 cents over a four day period.

I went to the store to buy trash bags.  The next day I went to get a trash bag and couldn't remember where I'd put them so I had to go buy another package.  And when I got home and went to put them away in the cleaned out pantry...  Yep, you guessed it.  There was the original box, sitting just where they were supposed to be.  Aack!

I went to a local craft show, bought a few things and talked to the lady in charge of organizing the event.

And I immediately went home and applied to be a vendor at the April craft show.  I also signed up for the Hanover Strawberry and Wine festival in May.  That one is a much larger, two day event.  And because wool hats and scarves probably won't sell well at either event, I've been frantically crafting non-winter things.

That's only a few of the things I've finished so far.  I've made four potholders, seven pairs of beaded socks, three sunflower gnomes, two sets of crocheted coasters, four chapstick holders that attach to your keyring, four garden soap bags, four knitted market bags and I've tie dyed the fabric for twelve more fabric market bags.  Later today I plan to sew those market bags.  And maybe take a nap.

How about you?  What have you been up to?

Three on Thursday - Gardening

I think my previous posts have proved I'm not a gardener.  However, there are a few plants I haven't killed yet.

My mom always called these "out house lilies" because they'll grow anywhere, under any condition.  They'll even grow in my yard!

I think that's viburnum, but I'm really not sure.  What ever it is, it doesn't mind driveway gravel and occasionally being backed into or hit with a car door.

And of course, the wild strawberries.  They are everywhere this year!

Joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday.

Three on Thursday - A garden update

The weeds are growing.

The lavender, not so much.

The garden shop guy said I should plant lavender to deter the mosquitoes.  Apparently planting it isn't enough.  Apparently, it needs to grow and thrive in order to deter the mosquitoes.

Apparently half dead, not thriving at all lavender will attract carpenter bees.  Or perhaps it's our wooden porch posts they like.

Joinging Carole and friends for Three on Thursday.

Three on Thursday - Growing Things Part 2

What kind of southern woman am I?  I rarely bake and I definitely don't garden.

My tomato plants either have leaves,

Or one tomato.  Of the seven plants, none have both.

The grapevine leaves have taken over and blocked all the teeny tiny grapes from getting any sun.

But the mint is still alive.  It's even spread a teeny tiny bit!  A Very teeny tiny bit.

Joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday.

TBT - Mom's garden

It's TBT and spring is here and the outdoors is starting to turn green again and I'm reminded of my mom.

Sunflowers growing in concrete

Mom could grow anything, anywhere.  Including sunflowers in concrete.

Growing up, we lived in the city & had a very small backyard.  But in that backyard, mom grew hundreds of beautiful flowers as well as most of the vegetables that we ate.  Sadly, I did not inherit the green thumb.

Grumpy Girl

I woke up grumpy today and I have no idea why.  The sun is not exactly 'out', but yesterday's torrential rains have stopped.  The birds are singing.  (Well, that may be part of the problem. The birds were singing while I was trying to sleep.  Have I mentioned before how loudly our birds sing?  They are freakishly loud.)  My car passed inspection yesterday without needing a dime's worth of repairs.  Our taxes were done a few weeks ago.  I haven't dropped a bunch of stitches or totally screwed up a piece of lace knitting.  And I've discovered the wonderful world of eye shadow primer.  (Are you aware how much difference eye shadow primer makes?  OMG!  It's like I've been introduced to a whole new world!)

Anyway.... There's no reason for me to be feeling like such a grumpy girl.  But I am.  And there's nothing worse than a blogger who does nothing but bitch & moan.  And it seems like I've been doing a lot of bitching & moaning lately.  Oops.  Sorry about that.  Oh, and by the way, the cold/pneumonia/bronchittis/total and complete lung rot disease I had is gone.  The other  night, I went to bed still unable to catch my breath between coughing attacks & woke up the next day magically cured.  Another reason I should not be feeling like such a grumpy girl.

#todayonmyneedles 

I'm so grumpy, I don't even feel much like knitting.  Even though my current project is fun and colorful.

But spring is in the air & it's hard to be grumpy when the outdoors is turning green.  Or in my case, yellow.

Dandylion yellow.  Our yard is a field of dandylions.

The bumblebees are enjoying the explosion of dandylions.

The flowering bush that I planted last year is still alive.  I just wish I could remember what kind of flowering bush it is.  All I remember is that it's supposed to be extremely hardy, hardy enough to withstand me being it's caregiver, and that it's supposed to get really big.

Have I mentioned I'm not much of a gardner?

The grapevines will at least have leaves, if not grapes, this year.

Over the years, I've planted hundreds of bulbs.  Each year, exactly one blooms.  But this year, the annual daffodil produced two blooms.  It's a miracle!

And an even bigger gardening miracle... a second patch of daffodils came up out in the woods.  The sad thing about this is the realization that the squirrels and voles are better gardeners than I am.

It's no wonder I'm a grumpy girl!

Celebrate Pasta!

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Happy World Pasta Day!  

I'm a lousy cook & as the saying goes, I could burn water.  Except I don't have the patience to burn anything.  My meals tend to be more on the raw side.  But raw pasta is "al dente" so the family can't complain about another meal gone awry.  A great reason to love pasta!

Another reason to love pasta is it gives you an excuse to drink a bottle of Chianti.

And yet another reason to love pasta - it still tastes good a day or two later.  And that's a good thing because...  shh..... don't tell, but I actually celebrated World Pasta Day a few days ago.  Sadly, I'm at work today, not drinking wine with my left over pasta.  But the fact that it still tastes good, even without the Chianti, is a great example why we should celebrate.

In case you are wondering, no, I didn't forget to add the sauce.  Rather than the standard tomato sauce, I used garlic flavored olive oil.  (I'm hoping the garlic will keep the zombie clowns away from me while I'm at work.  Garlic does work on zombies as well as vampires, right??)  

Anyway... my olive oil "sauce" is so simple to make.  Just chop up a few garlic cloves (I use anywhere from 2 to 5 depending on size, what I have on hand & my energy level at the time) and add them to about a quarter cup of hot olive oil.  Cook & stir frequently & turn off the heat before the garlic browns.  If I can remember to save it, I add a few tablespoons of pasta water to the olive oil & stir that around.  If the spouse is home, I run the olive oil mixture through a sieve to remove the garlic chunks.  If he's not home, I leave the chunks in it.  Add the sauce to the pasta, salt heavily (pasta ALWAYS needs more salt) and stir.  Voila!  Dinner in under ten minutes.  Just another reason to love pasta!

Besides World Pasta Day, there's been all kinds of other exciting news in my world.  First, I finally got around to blocking my Allegro sweater.  

Granted, it may be next fall before it dries completely.  I obviously did not do a very good job squeezing the water out of it before blocking.  Honestly, I'm starting to worry that it may mold before it dries.  Good grief!  But hey, at least it's one less item on my very lengthy to-do list, and that folks, is pretty dang exciting!  

The next exciting bit of news is....

My plant is still alive!  It's survived a whole week!  It's a miracle!  Every year when we go pick our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, I buy a bush.  Every year, that bush dies a few days or weeks later.  Obviously, my gardening skills are even worse than my cooking skills.  I know, I know.  What kind of southern woman can't cook or garden?  Me, apparently.

I have high hopes for this bush though.  And look, it has the prettiest purple berries.

Well, that's about it for the news.  I know, I lead a pretty exciting life, right?  

Hope you're having a happy World Pasta Day.  Wish me luck battling the zombie clowns at work.  Good grief, those things give me the willies!

Drama

It's been a very dramatic day today.  After pouring coffee, I headed outside for my morning ritual of garden checking followed by porch knitting.  The garden is looking pretty good.

Okay, don't laugh.  For me, that's an Excellent garden!  For a southern girl, I can't grow diddly squat outdoors.   But this year.... I've got tomatoes, more tomatoes than I've ever grown in my entire life combined!  I've got green pepper plants and I've got squash plants.  They are all doing fantastic!  I'm super excited about the whole thing and feeling a bit like Martha Stewart.

Want to know my trick to my new found ability to garden?  Lay a bag of dirt down where you want to plant something.  Cut what's now the top of the bag off, leaving a few inches on all four sides.  Take a pitchfork (an ice pick will do in a pinch) and take your frustrations out on the bag.  Go psycho on it and just stab, stab, stab the bag.  This creates holes on the underside so that water can drain out and the plant roots can grow through the bag into the ground.  Then plant your plant in the dirt.  Presto-magic - you're farming!

But, the drama started when I discovered that the squash plants are covered in these bugs:

Honestly, I'm not sure how terrible those bugs are because I kind of forgot about them when I discovered

My morning coffee drinking chair has failed me.  It's been dying a slow death since late March.  Every morning, I notice that a few more .... what ever you call those plastic fake wicker tubes things  have broken.  I've known the end was coming, but I didn't think it would be so soon.  What you can't see in the picture is that the seat is no longer attached to the front of the chair at all.  It's come completely separated.  The seat still holds me, but it's sort of like sitting on the couch without a cushion.  You feel like your butt is going to hit ground at any moment.

Well, I guess if my chair had to die, it picked a good time to do it.  For the next four days, we are supposed to be hitting temperatures between 101 & 105F.  Doubt I'll be doing much porch sitting this weekend!  Hey - maybe I could knit a new seat.  I've got four days to try!

The next bit of drama was over dog food & laundry detergent.  We've got two dogs, Minnie and Max.  Max NEVER misses a meal and will in fact start barking at me if I'm as much as five minutes late feeding him.  Minnie on the other hand likes to savor her meals occasionally.  Sometimes she waits several hours before she eats her breakfast.  The problem is, on those days, she gets mad when Max goes into the kitchen.  She'll hear him on the move and will come Running from upstairs or even outside and cut him off at the pass then she starts growling and barking at him.  So, today, she happened to be laying in the kitchen guarding her bowl, but not eating from it.  I was pouring laundry detergent with my back to Minnie.   Max entered, Minnie went wild & it startled me and I dropped the open bottle of laundry detergent.  The brand new, first time it's been used, economy size bottle of liquid laundry detergent.  From now on, if Minnie doesn't eat before the coffee pot finishes filling, I'm taking away her bowl.

Next, it was shower time.  I reached in & turned on the shower, stripped naked, took off my glasses and stepped under the stream of water.  I looked down and Holy Moses!  A bug!  A big, gigantic bug! A bug big enough to look gigantic when I don't even have my eyeglasses on!  I immediately grabbed the shampoo bottle (Mike's of course.  I certainly wasn't going to get bug guts on mine!) & started smashing it.

After that, it was time to check the email.  My email won't open.  I have two addresses and neither will open.  They start to open.  The bar goes almost all the way across, then it just stops.  Uh-oh.  And it dawns on me.  Last night, after shutting the computer down, I accidently knocked it off the desk.  Did I break it?  It's had worse falls before and been fine.  Was last night's fall the proverbial straw?   I went over to Hubby's desktop and was able to get into my email just fine.  Back to my laptop.  Shut it back down, turn it back on, go to my email, and the bar starts going across, then stops just shy of being done.  For both email addresses.  I won't repeat here what I said then.

Finally, our IT guy wakes up (our teenaged son) and I holler for him to come help me.  He messes with the computer and decides there's something wrong with Safari.  For some reason, even after resetting it, Safari won't access my email.  I'm going to have to use Google Chrome.

I can not count the number of times I have accidently pushed the Safari button today.  And the worst thing is, the Safari screen & the Chrome screen look exactly alike, until that blue bar gets stuck & refuses to finish going across.

Oh, and we are out of chocolate and Cheetos.

It's been a very dramatic day.

Oh, I almost forgot.  One good thing - I finished the first baby sock.

Sorry - the picture was taken with my phone.  The phone I dropped and no longer has working sound 100% of the time.  Okay, so technically, it isn't finished.  I still need to Kitchener the toe but I always wait until I have knit the second sock before I Kitchener.  It's just easier to compare measurements, I think.  Actually, I generally wait until I have 50 or 60 socks to Kitchener.  Kitchenering (boy, that's hard to say!) ranks up their with weaving in ends.