Category: Great Big Fun

Great Big Fun

Baycation!

I’m home on vacation this week. John’s sister Ena is supposed to be here this week, but the pandemic had other plans. I’ve had the vacation time blocked out for quite a while, and can’t turn it back in, so drat, I have to stay home. John and I find ourselves saying about every other day that this isn’t a bad place to be quarantined.

So that’s my plan up there. Reading, knitting, maybe a little spinning, and definitely some deck time. We’ve had a really cool and windy summer so far, but this week is supposed to be in the 80’s, so that works for me. If Ena was here she’d likely freeze to death. She lives in Georgia, and it has been getting down into the low 50’s here in the evening.

John’s son (who is a graphic designer) made a “flat Ena” so she could enjoy the vacation virtually. Here are a couple of photos.

She’s already had loads of fun!

That’s the sock in progress. I’m hoping to get more done on that today.

Last but not least, a friend gifted us with a big bowl of Gravenstein apples, so I am making this.

It is still in the oven, but it is starting to smell awfully good. We might just have that for supper tonight! And there will be plenty, since Ena doesn’t eat much!

Pine Needle Socks

I finally finished these this morning. I should get hazard pay for these. I had an eye doctor’s appointment this morning, so finished these with dilated eyes. John did casually ask if this was a good idea or not, but I ignored him. And there they are.

The yarn is Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters. This makes nice winter weight socks. It is listed as worsted weight, but this knits up on size 2.75 mm sock needles at 7.5 stitches/inch. This particular wool is not superwash, so if you are thinking about buying, be aware of that. The company does have specific sock yarn that won’t felt in the washer as well.

These were started with 60 stitches, I used my usual generic white bread sock pattern.

And now I can knit some socks for me!

The Church of Bluegrass

And just like that, it is Sunday, and the last day of the festival. The theme this year was Bluegrass Beyond Borders, and we heard some wonderful bands from Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, Sweden, and Italy, among others. My vote for best of the festival goes to the band from Brazil, Trio Brasileiro. Look them up on your favorite music source, or try to hear them live. They do educational workshops in Port Townsend, so they do play regionally from time to time.

And I finished a sock. Here is the first of the pair.

And the second sock ready for the day’s festivities.

I might have accidentally managed to start the second sock at exactly the same place in the stripe sequence.

I’m off to hear the banjos!

Alrighty then

I finished another couple of rows on the Endless Winter Solstice shawl. My remaining little ball of yarn is starting to look, well, little.

Out comes the trusty drug dealers scale.

After the previous row, I weighed it as well.

17 rows left, 33.4 g of yarn left

Now I have 16 rows left, and 32.3 g of yarn. So a little more than a gram of yarn per row. But remember, the rows get longer. I add another 28 stitches before the end.

I didn’t do the algebra, though it likely wouldn’t be difficult. 28 stitches isn’t going to weigh much compared to the 665 I already have on the needles.

I should be OK. But it wouldn’t be Chez Knitting Doctor without a bit of drama, would it?

And no, that isn’t salt in that shaker. I buy unscented talcum powder in bulk for my hands to use if things get sticky while knitting. This isn’t uncommon when knitting with lace weight, especially when it has silk in it. The big jar is unwieldy, so I put it in a mini salt shaker. It fits nicely in my knitting bag.

Aftermath

Vacation is loads of fun. We just got off an 11 day cruise in the Eastern Caribbean. We went on Viking, which was our first (but not last) trip with them. I mostly posted on FB while we were gone. Although our shipboard wifi was included, it tended to be slow, especially once everyone was on board and using their devices, so I didn’t even try to do a blog post. The trip out and back was uneventful, and we had a great time, and a much needed sun break.

Despite the fun and sun, it’s really nice to be home. I got to sleep in my own bed last night, and had a cup of tea in my own kitchen this morning. The pets were all very happy to see us. We are fortunate to have found a lovely housesitter who takes good care of them and our home, but they missed us and we missed them.

We didn’t buy much on the trip. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a single yarn shop to be found. Most of the shops at the ports are wearyingly the same, generally overpriced junk. I did find some nice handmade silk screened place mats on St. Lucia.

Those will be lovely on our patio table in the summer.

And we had to buy a bottle of banana ketchup, and some hot sauce. The locals swear that the banana ketchup is wonderful.

And a little collection of photos from the trip.

On to that mountain of laundry.

Linen somethings

And sort of a blog fail. I finally finished all the Euroflax linen gift somethings yesterday. I had this grand idea to knit a bunch of them, finished four.

Now that they’re (mostly) gifted, I can tell what they are. Don’t be too excited, I spent all of December knitting garter stitch linen face cloths.

I know, right? Those shouldn’t be too hard. They are just big garter stitch squares. And I forgot to take photos of the first three (the green, pink, and lavender ones) before I mailed them off. These are for my sisters, I packaged them with some nice bath soap. Linda just got one, the yellow one was finished yesterday so I’ll get it in the mail when we figure that the crush at the post office is over.

I’m not doing a whole finished project thing for those. It’s Euroflax linen, sport weight. I used this pattern. It starts with 3 stitches, increases every row until it’s wide enough, then decreases back to 3 stitches. “Wide enough” for me was 89 stitches.

You would think that with as few things that I finish around here, that I’d remember to take pictures. Oh well.

I organized all my knitting projects today and got them out of the jumble that they’d turned into.

That is 4 lace shawls, 2 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, a Hitchhiker, and another linen washcloth. And Ripley. My plan is to finish one of the sock pairs, one of the sweaters, and one of the lace shawls next. We’ll see how that goes. Ripley said she’d help.

It is risen

I haven’t made bread from a sourdough starter in quite a while. When we went to Poland in September, I forgot to take care of the starter before I left, and by the time we got home and remembered it, it was well past resurrecting.

I decided to buy a small starter from Breadtopia last week. It took a few days to build it up to a usable quantity. Here’s what it looked like this morning.

That looks like a fine healthy starter to me. I have bread dough in the works for a nice sourdough Pain de Campagne.

Arlo

We had a little excitement with Arlo on Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people, some that stayed overnight, and with one big friendly extra dog. Arlo disappeared, which isn’t unusual, but I couldn’t find him the next day still. I was beginning to think he had escaped and gotten outside, but he eventually came sauntering out of some hiding place.

He is starting to be a little more cuddly than when we got him earlier this year. He is now sleeping on our bed, and today for the first time he jumped up on my lap while I was knitting.

Speaking of knitting, that missing yarn finally showed up a couple days later, delivered to one of our neighbors. Fortunately Larry doesn’t knit, so he was happy to turn it over to me.

That’s all the colors that I now have of this*. Aren’t those pretty? It brings just a bit of springtime, which is quite welcome in these dark, rainy days of December. I only have one skein of each color, but I’m thinking a summer top out of that pale aqua would be lovely. Or the purple. Or maybe one of each.

*Euroflax sport weight linen.

Lots of lace

I posted a couple of months ago about the leftover yarn from my Evenstar shawl.

I didn’t weigh the yarn on the cone before I started using it, so I decided to wind it off so I could get an accurate yardage measurement for how much is left.

75 grams left, or 1150 yards. I was surprised by how much is left. That’s enough for a nice sized shawl. It’s a lovely cashmere silk blend, so back into the stash it goes to await its own special project.

Here’s to a nice Labor Day weekend for us all! We’re doing our big annual fried chicken dinner for some friends and neighbors tomorrow. I’ll post some photos.

TGIF

Wednesday is really my “Friday” since I started working part time. I do still enjoy Fridays though. I can sleep in, I’ve gotten most of the to-do things off my list on Thursday, and best of all, I have my weekly Friday knitting group.

I realized as I started writing today that I’ve not posted about many things that have happened over the past few months. My life is sort of an open book on Facebook, so if you follow me there, this will mostly be old news.

First off, we lost our kitty Zoe earlier this spring. She just disappeared one day and never came back. I suspect one of the eagles got her, or perhaps the occasional coyote that is seen around here.

Ripley started getting mopey and clingy after Zoe was gone, so we ended up adopting this little boy.

His name is Arlo, and he’s probably about 8-9 months old. After a few days of hissing the two cats are getting along just fine.

They both are going to be indoor cats, if I have anything to say about it. There is less decimation of the bird and bunny population that way, and the cats have a better life span. Our departed kitty Will announced his intent to be an outside cat early on, and tore holes in all our screen doors to prove it, and Zoe just followed in his footsteps. Ripley has been out, so knows the way to get back in if she escapes, but doesn’t really show any interest in being outside except on our enclosed decks. So far Arlo hasn’t made any escape attempts.

The other big event of the past several months is that I joined the Episcopal Church (and left the Catholic Church). There were a lot of reasons behind this decision, but I’ve really found my spiritual home. I was received into the church at Pentecost, along with several other adults, and a baby and older child who were baptized at the service.

I found some knitters among the congregation, and we started a Friday knitting group!

We celebrated July 4th holiday with family and friends.

No, it wasn’t all that cold. My California relatives just aren’t used to 70 degree temps in July.

I got a great sticky note from one of my clinic nurses last week. I didn’t think I’d done anything all that awesome, but she evidently thought so. It made me smile, and I saved it on my bulletin board.

On the knitting front, John’s sock (first of the pair) is almost done.

Last but not least, I started yet another knitting project, because, why not? It’s a Patty Lyons summer sweater KAL, and I love the pattern. The first clue just dropped this week, so it’s not too late to join.

I just got my yarn in the mail yesterday, so haven’t cast on yet. I haven’t washed that swatch yet, but the prewash measurement matches the pattern gauge perfectly.

I have a few more of those to-dos to get off my list today, then I get to knit with friends and go out for pizza with the neighbors this evening. Happy Friday to all of you!

493

That’s how many stitches I have on the needles for this shawl right now. I have about 100 rows left. Every other row increases this by 4 more stitches. The ending stitch count is 693 stitches to bind off.

Here’s the stitch pattern for the current chart.

This is going to be gorgeous once it is done, and don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying every stitch of it, but OMG this is taking forever.

And yes, I’m almost out of the first hank of yarn, I do have the second hank wound and at the ready.