Vacation!!

Sunrise over the Lake on the Cape

Am getting ready to go on vacation with my sister-in-law, Pam.  She and I used to take our kids camping every summer as soon as school was out.  First it was locally, then we went to a wonderful place in Maine.  But eventually all the children grew up.  So the first year with no kids we went bed and breakfasting in Maine.  That was lots of fun.  We actually haven't been off together for a couple of years--the last time we were at her cousin's place on Cape Cod.  It is an "on a lake" place, not an "on the ocean" place.  Still, the ocean is not far from anywhere on the Cape.

The cottage

This time we are going to her family cottage on Scituate Harbor.  I haven't been there since 2007, so I am looking forward to it.  It is still a very rustic cottage, with very few amenities.   A bathroom with a wonderful old claw foot tub and a makeshift shower.   Narrow stairs, bunk beds, one open room downstairs.  It is still very much a summer cottage, unlike most of the places around it.  Those have all been winterized, enlarged, reworked and generally made into showplaces.  I think I like the old place, better.
We always find lots of things to do when we are out and about.  I am looking forward to lots of knitting time, as she will be driving.  That and eating good things.  We like to visit bakeries and candy shops!  The smell of the ocean, looking at birds, sleeping in til 6:30, drinks on the porch at night.....Oh ya, I'm ready!

View from the porch

All Ready

Back of shawlette

I feel like I am just about all ready for East Poultney Day now.   I finished my little shawlette.   It came out just as I wanted it, being lightweight warmth for the shoulders.  Sometimes a person only wants to keep the draft from a fan or air conditioner off them, not really needing a sweater or heavy shawl.  Or perhaps just a touch of color, as this has the pretty ribbon in it.  I also got my scarf off the loom, but that was much harder as the warp keep breaking.  Most of my time was spent fixing instead of happily weaving.  It was the fault of my spinning the fleece too softly.  The warp really needs to have a firm twist to it.  The overall scarf is fine, it was the weaving experience itself that suffered.   Now the rest of the morning is going to be spent making sure I have everything labeled, the inventory list is accurate, etc and so forth.
It is a gorgeous day today, much like yesterday.  Sunny, cool--only in the 70's--with a little breeze going on.  My perfect kind of summer weather.  Not sure if the sudden change from "sweating a bucket a minute"  to "ahh, almost need a sweater" has the girls flummoxed or what, but there was not one egg to be seen yesterday.  Nary a broken shell or, what I call, soft egg. (Those are the ones that fall out before the shell hardens, for various reasons).  Maybe it was a chicken holiday.  Hope they make up for it today.

Brisco, Daisy Mae and Roscoe

We read a letter in one of our magazines which told how the author tames her unruly roosters by picking them up every day and cuddling them.  She claimed that it was a foolproof way to keep them from getting mean.  So every night I have been trying that with the three Littles.  Brisco hardly struggles, but Daisy Mae and Roscoe fight like mad.  They are going to take a lot of taming.  The two boys spend part of every day sparring.  I think that Roscoe is getting to be the top guy.  Maybe he will have to go into the pot when they are no longer cockerels, as we can only have one rooster.  The gentle one! 

More musings

Fun to knit, not my design

I think that what I really want to do, in my little fiber world, is only produce original designs.  I have been thinking about the whole idea of using other people's work after I have gone through the entire processing of the fleece, and it doesn't seem right.  It  is not too difficult to design something, once the yarn is in the hand.  By the time I reach that point, I have worked with it enough to know what it is going to be suited for.  To then tamely knit it up into a pattern someone else has thought of seems to be the wrong ending to all my work.  The last few things I have knit are all my own, and it was such a good feeling to look at them and know it was all out of my head and hands.  The weaving has always been mine, as weaving is a different ending than a knit piece.  There is such joy in deciphering and knitting a pattern that someone has designed.  I won't stop doing it.  It is just that I will save those patterns for gifts, or my own wearing and using.  They won't be in my shop.

All my own

Performance Day

El Conejito props

This morning the dynamic duo that calls themselves Taradiddle will be performing at the Fair Haven Library.  OK, so it is just Daphne and me, telling stories and singing songs, but we are a bona fide program, really we are.  The theme this year for the summer reading programs is "One World, Many Stories" which gave us such freedom to pick stuff that it almost undid us.  We just have too many stories we would love to tell!  We finally narrowed them down and put together one program we call "Up the Mountain" and another we call "Amigos".  At this point we have only done the Mountain one, which we are constantly revising.  El Conejito is one of the stories we will do today, using the masks I made.  I really like them.  Daphne came up with a brilliant way to tell "The Three Billy Goats Gruff"--she is doing it in Norwegian using her fingers as props and her lap as a stage. Granted, it is pared down to only the essentials as she could only master the main points.  It is absolutely wonderful.  But.  One never knows how it will go down before a crowd.  Today we will find out.  It may turn out that "De Tre Bukkene Bruse" is only fun for us!

Fresh off the needles, unblocked

In other news, last night was one of Those Nights where sleep was elusive.  After an hour of twitching in bed, I finally got up and went downstairs to sit in the rocker and knit.  I finished my second lacy hat.  I had enough yarn left that it inspired me to start a pair of fingerless gloves in the same lacy pattern.  I think they will make a pretty set.  Finally, at midnight, I was able to go back to bed and sleep.  But it seemed like 5:15 came awfully quickly.  Ah well, I only have to look and act my best for an hour this morning.  How hard can that be??

Did we mention hot?

Lacy hat

After having been scolded by my daughter for complaining about the heat  (she pointed out that it is summertime in the Northeast, and it is supposed to be hot and humid), I am not the least bit cooler or resigned to it.  I can only be thankful I don't live in the southern part of the country where there has been an ongoing drought, plus the heat. 

Cool alpaca to spin

Meanwhile, I finished the hat.  It came out the way I wanted it to, but I think I want to knit another with a variation on the lace pattern.  The pattern was so easy to memorize and I want to do it so that it is much more open.  To that end, I blended some dyed alpaca with some white on the carder until I got a very pale green--a yellowy green--to spin up.  No glittery metallic in it, just pure alpaca.  The color will be very cooling to spin.  I already am thinking that I might card some more natural colors and spin for a woven scarf as it will be some time 'til I get the yarn spun for my shawl.  Don't want to leave the loom undressed for long--it looks so naked!

Hot Daze

This means "hot"

Hat in progress

 Well, it is a hot day to be sure.  And the one before it was hot and the one after it seems likely to be, also.  Heat, humidity and I Do Not go hand in hand very well.  I tend to go into some sort of hibernating mode, with not much inertia to do anything but sit by the fan and knit.  The fiber in my work room was calling to me, so I carded up some lovely fleece, blending some greeny/blue dyed alpaca with pure white.   After many passes through the carder, I came up with a very pretty aqua or teal color.  I tossed in some silver colored metallic threads so that it would sparkle a bit in the sunlight.   Once spun  up, it seemed like a great yarn for a lacy hat---very light to wear.   So I have been working on that--designing the hat from the top down, which I have never done.  I like it.  Very intriguing!

Red sun at night

Meanwhile the heat has spawned thunder storms, per usual.  After the one last night, which had some terrific booms and flashes, the sun set as a brilliant red orb.  "Red sun at night, sailor's delight" but I think the sailors would not like the heat any better than we do.  Funny thing is, the chickens don't let it bother them a bit, and I was under the impression that they were susceptible to heat.  For which I am glad, as I don't want them sitting around their little table with the umbrella, drinking cool drinks and neglecting their egg laying duties!

Fiber immersion

Looking like nothing

I am getting back into all my lapsed projects.  The little shawlette is giving me a run for the money as it is not shaping up the way I want it to.  So I am tweaking the design by adding another stitch at each side, after the yarn over, hoping to make the length across the shoulders increase at a greater rate than the length of the back.  I think it is working, but need to knit a bit more to be sure.  I am excited about the ribbon lacing part as it will change the whole look of the shawl.  Right now it is at the "don't look like much" stage.  I also got out my lace knitting as it has languished for so long that I was afraid I wouldn't remember how to do it.  But it all came back to me.  I really do like knitting from charts.  It is very hard to go back to reading patterns line by line.  In fact, I haven't done it in forever.
It being another rainy day, I am going to do some carding and get back to spinning.  I am still working on the dark brown which I hope to finish so that I can start on the next color.  I want to be sure and have enough yarn for both warp and weft as it is so annoying to be caught out and have to stop everything to spin some more.  Happy day, playing with fiber!

Fleece right off the animal

Bit o' lace

P1150513, a photo by jtrknit on Flickr.

Lace shawl in progress, early on.

New listings

Well, I finally took the time to get two more listings into my Etsy shop.  It is such a challenge to get good photos, to begin with, and then the description writing sometimes does me in!  It must be good for the brain to be stretched like that.  I still have  three more things to list, but they will have to wait as I have ton of things to do here at the house before going off tomorrow.  Including, among other things, packing! 

A new scarf

The chickens are still doing well.  We saw Mama Fox the other day, across the field with 3 kits.  So for a day I kept them in the pen.  Last night there was a fox barking very close by--in the road, I guess.  However, I let the flock out today as it is so nice and I need them to eat bugs.  It is the chance we free rangers have to take.  And it is a chance, as the guy right down the road lost some of his to foxes the other day.  I like to think MacTavish's doggy scent keeps them away.

They survived!

All is well

Mama scratches up treats

Well, after two weeks of having every storm that headed this way deciding to veer off at the last moment, we finally got ours yesterday.  Actually, the rain part was a good thing as we were getting pretty dry and crispy, which was very ironic considering that just an hour north of us they are dealing with the aftermath of severe flooding and heavy rains all month.  The nerve wracking part of the storm was that I was Elsewhere when the Furies descended,  leaving the entire flock to fend for themselves.  I had to fret all the way home, imagining drowned chicks and hail-concussed bodies all over the lawn.  Happily, all were present and accounted for, carrying on as if having wind blown lawn furniture, downed trees, branches, and  panels from the greenhouse all scattered on the grass, was all part of a regular day.  Fortunately we did not have any real damage, losing only two tomato plants.  And that could have been from anything.

Look at the tiny tail feathers!

Franklin, the Boss with Cleo

Started knitting on a little shawlette.  I am calling it that as I envision it to be just a nice, small triangle of soft knitting on one's shoulders,  accented in the yarn overs with some pretty multicolored ribbon.  It is from a very finely spun alpaca that I had blended with a merino/silk roving.  Grey, mostly, with some subtle lighter colors of pink and light grey showing through.  I have to get enough knit to decide if I like the design element or not.  That's what I like about doing my own pattern--freedom to go my own way.

This, I like

June 2, 2011

The weather turned over the course of the night and now it is a most bearable sort of warm.  The humidity dropped, there is a nice breeze, and the temperature is in the 70's, not 80's.  I love this sort of day--Thanks, God!

Jen's rescue rose

The garden is just bursting with color right now.  It really is my best time of year for it.  If I was a conscientious sort of gardener, the place would be spectacular.  As it is, I am a haphazard sort who gardens in fits and starts.  What has worked to my advantage is that I know this, and when I plant I try to pick things that will work well with neglect.  Delphiniums do not work well with neglect, nor Russian sage.  Two plants I have tried to grow many times, but it just doesn't happen.  Roses, now, roses I can do for some reason.  Once Annie and Jesse brought me home 5 bushes they had picked up at the end of the season for ten bucks, and I still have 2 of them left.  And one time my niece Jennifer gave me a poor black spotted rose bush that was being thrown out from the nursery she was working at (so she rescued it), and until this last winter it has been spectacular.  This spring it had a lot of die back, but it looks better now.

A nice gift for someone

In preparation for the weekend Town Wide Yard Sale,  I worked all day yesterday on getting my things uniformly labeled and priced.  Also got my inventory list finished.  I really don't expect to sell anything as the Yard Sale mentality is for bargains, but exposure is a good thing.  One never knows who might be looking for a gift for someone.  

Keeping cool

Mama shows the way

Wait for us!

This is yummy, look here!

Suddenly, or so it always seems, it is Summer.  The days are hot and humid, the gardens are being planted, the flowers are bursting forth in a hurry, only to fade away in a moment with the sultry weather.  There are babies everywhere in the yard--mostly of the bird type.  We had a pair of geese walk through the yard with, I think, six goslings in a row.  They were going from the beaver pond across the road to the cow pasture behind the house.  I missed them going up in the morning, but got to see them coming home in the evening.  What a treat.  There are baby house sparrows in the box on the barn, baby tree swallows in the house in the chicken pen, and also baby robins in a nest in the wood shed, which got enclosed into the  chicken pen, too.  Probably that fact saved the baby robins, as they are in a really poor location. And of course, we have our own little babies, now running around the pen with Mama Hen, and they aren't even a week old yet!!  It is amazing the difference between raising them oneself or letting Mama do it.  I vote for Mama.

Soft and lovely

I am busy getting ready for the Town Wide Yard Sale.  I've got the lovely skein of blue and green turning into a very pleasing scarf.  I picked a lace pattern that is fairly easy, but looks very nice done up.  The other thing I am working on is getting everything labeled, sorted, the inventory written up, etc.   It is all stuff I need to have done, and once it is finished, I just have to update sales or new items.  But it is pleasant work to do, inside, when it is scorching out, with a nice iced coffee, the fan murmuring out a breeze and some classical music on the radio.

Tentative excitement!

Little Red Hen # 2

It now seems as if I have a broody hen!  My Rhode Island Red, renamed Little Red Hen the 2nd,  has all the signs of one.  A broody hen is one that has gone all maternal and is setting on eggs with an eye to raising chicks.  She spent all day on the nest yesterday, and this morning, when I felt under her wing to see if there was an egg (there was), she growled at me.  Then I slipped another egg that had been laid very early this morning in under her.  So she has at least 2 to experiment with.  If there are any more eggs laid today from the other hens, I will slip those in, also.  I am cautiously excited, as there are so many variables to this situation.  Firstly, will Little Red actually stay on the nest for the 21 days, or will she tire of it before then? Abandonment is not uncommon.  Secondly, if any actually hatch, will she be able to raise them to bigger than a puffball before they succumb to any one of a number of dooryard hazards?  I will have to make a special place for the little family to live in while they get big enough to mix with the rest of the flock. 

When she was a chick

People who raise chickens for eggs don't want a broody hen as she stops laying eggs while she is setting.  I want to do it as a way to increase the flock without having to be the mama myself, as I was for her.  Theoretically, all I will have to do is provide the housing and food, she will take care of the rest.
So, we shall see!

Meanwhile, in the land of fiber,  I am determined to get my socks finished.  It shouldn't be much longer as I am on the leg now, so I will just knit until they are the height I want, or the yarn is used up, whichever comes first.  Am also spinning the lovely roving from the fiber mill, which is white, with an eye towards some more hand painting.  That is always tons of fun!

Your Knitting and Crochet Time 2KCBWDAY7

 
When is it that I knit?  Knitting time is almost always in the evening while Jeff watches TV. Sometimes it happens in the day if there is a project that needs wide awake attention.  And also, when there is a ride in the car.  I tend to sit at the spinning wheel during the day.  The loom is a daytime event.  Mostly I like to listen to audio books while spinning or weaving.  Once in a while I will watch a movie while I spin, but mostly I don't.  If I haven't a book to listen to I will have music on.  Classical, folk, Celtic, or sometimes soothing music from Soundings of the Planet.  In the summer, when the weather is fine, I like to spin outside.
And there we have it, folks!  A whole week's worth of a blog challenge.  It was fun.  Now I will have to get back to telling you what I have been doing in the meantime. Til then....enjoy the day!

And Now For Something Completely Different-2KCBWDAY5

 

The Process

 

Where are they now? 2KCBWDAY4

Finished afghan

Whatever happened to the Block a Month challenge afghan I knit? This was another example of stepping outside of the comfort zone. Our local Yarn Store, Stitchy Women  has a Thursday night social knit. It was decided that we would all pick a block out of this book (200 Knitted Blocks by Jan Eaton) with the idea that every month we would all be knitting the same pattern for our own afghans. There were nine patterns chosen, and each of us were to knit six blocks of each pattern, so that at the end we would have 54 blocks to put together as an afghan. The theory being, that we would all be knitting, at one time or another, a technique we were unfamiliar with. The month we did the blocks with beading, that was my challenge. For others, it was the block with cables. At any rate, only a few of us persevered to the end. And the majority of us ended up with lots less than 54 blocks.

Well used by all

I had knit mine in a machine washable Encore, from Plymouth yarn, in shades of blues and greens. These colors, I thought, would be welcome to whoever I gave the afghan to. The machine washablity being an important part of gift giving. However, the whole process took me a year, as it was never the priority project. After I had worked on this thing for a year, suddenly I could not give it to anyone but myself. So I did. I love it! I never had such a comfy, snuggly, happy thing to cozy up in. Every night while I am ensconced in my chair, knitting or reading, I have my happy throw on my lap. Who knew blankies weren't just for kids any more?

Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, in her prime

And now the latest news from the home front--Buffy, the Vampire slayer, did move on to the happy chicken coop in the sky.  She was a weird old bird who used to spend half her time wandering around with her head in the clouds while the rest of the flock were some where else entirely.  I'll miss her shifty little eyes but her egg production ceased a year ago February, so there won't be a drop in egg numbers.

Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches 2KCBWDAY3

Corner of "guest" room

The blog challenge for today--"How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised" is a real killer! How does one keep such a thing as yarn (and fleece) in an organized manner? Well, as I have been using my blog to inspire me to get moving and actually do the things I write about, then I guess maybe today I will actually take a stab at making things orderly around here.

Assorted projects

Without a studio, and only a small room that has to double as a guest room at times, it sure is tricky! Here is the state of things right now: Loom and books in the guest room,
fleece under the eaves in another little room, yarn and needles in baskets all over, the scale, skein and ball winders on the dining room table.

The dining room table

Well! That is the state of things at the moment. At least my needles are orderly. Sort of. The fixed circular hang in a pretty holder that a friend made for me, the KnitPicks  interchangeable Zephyr Options have their own case and the straights are in one of two fabric needle cases. Hmm. I tried to get the yarn corralled into a three drawer plastic chest, but that didn't work because I couldn't see it. I need to see my stash so I know what I have to work with.

A bunch of yarn

So now that I look at the wreck I have made of the house, what will I do about it?   I seriously have to get this under control.  Especially since Easter is coming!  The short term solution to the dining room is to sweep everything into the dry sink.   But can I come up with a Real Solution?  Today I will spend reading as many blogs as I can, to see how other people cope. Wish me luck!