He's Home

For those just catching up, The Husband's contract was canceled and he is home for the foreseeable future. Now, not that I don't love the man and am glad to have him home, but dude! I'm practicing the piano and he's sitting right behind me tearing out coupons. I need to sneeze and I run for the tissue box and he's moved it! And the trash can. While he was gone I spent a lot of time sitting in the quiet and reading. All day long he plays music and all night long, he snores. I'm amazed by how much I miss the silence. I guess we both have some re-adjusting to do.
Otherwise, I spent the morning doing some gardening. No matter what you have read, digging your nails into a bar of soap does not keep the dirt from under your nails. The only thing that has worked for me is a double layer of gloves. Thin plastic ones under heavy leather garden gloves. As I have lately started getting professional manicures (these are not cheap), I want to preserve my nails as long as I can.
On the knitting front, I am still working on the ribbon vest. I got one whole side knitted and the shoulders didn't line up. As long as I was ripping, I figured that I should make a swatch (yes, I made one before I started for gauge) to test the button holes and the decreases. The instructions have you K2Tog for every decrease and I wondered if SSK would look better and make paired decreases. Good I tested the button holes. If I had followed the instructions I would have to use 1/8 inch buttons. Rather that knit through the back loop on the second row of 2-row button holes I just knit plain and I can use a 3/4 inch button. Much more in keeping with the look of the vest (and more likely to stay buttoned!).
Happy Fourth!

It's Hot!!!!

I used to love summer. All that time to read, knit and swim. But that was in the great north (as we call the town where we used to live, which was often the cold spot in the continental US) and summer temperatures rarely went higher than 80 degrees (27 Celsius). Now that we have moved south (not that far) and with global warming a normal summer temperature is 85 (29 Celsius) with a heat wave every two weeks and the heat wave is easily 90-95 degrees (32-35 Celsius). Yuk! And we don't have air conditioning in any room but the sewing room.....

In gardening news, I started to mulch the roses right outside my kitchen door, but somehow I hurt my knee. It was either Pre-school (man, those kids are short!) or kneeling on cement for four hours while I cleaned out the lavender beds. At any event, there hasn't been a lot of gardening. Last year YSS and I bought a beautiful blue planter that I wanted to make into a water feature on the back patio (this is really too grand a word for the paved area behind the house, but it gives the flavor of my plans). Yesterday I finally got a water lilly and some fish for it. One of the fish was floating this morning. Maybe I should have waited for the silt from the water lilly to settle before adding fish?

On the knitting front I am headed for my brother's house next weekend and Youngest Niece wants to learn to knit. I gave her lots of info and some yarn for the Winter Excess Holidays and now I'll have a chance to sit down with her and knit in person. I have nearly finished the Turquoise Splendor shawl. The goal for today is to finish the edging and block. Whee!

As for Quilting, well I have good intentions. Eldest Niece's quilt is out and all the plans are suitably enlarged, I even cut out 150 grapes. And that is where the quilt stopped. Crud, I just remembered that one of my goals was to have her quilt ready to applique when I go south (lots of air conditioning) with The Husband. Due to some schedule changes of his, that will be in 11 days! I have to finish Little Guy's quilt (finish? Ha! Start!) so I can take it to him next weekend. It's a good thing this is the last week of school.

Where the heck is Stalag 16?

For those of you who haven't seen The Great Escape, just bear with me. Before it got so awfully hot here I was going great guns on the garden. For many years I have looked at the mess in from of the garage and thought I should do something with it. Just as in knitting, there are no easy patterns. You can always make things more complicated. This was the start:

Lots of weeds, no flowers. Whenever The Husband is in a lawn mood he just weed-whacks everything off at soil level. Now, a normal person would pull the weeds and plant something pretty. Ha! I decided that if I was going to all the work of putting something in, I should do it "right". That meant pulling up all the weeds, digging down 8-10", sifting all the soil (you would not believe how much broken glass I got, not to mention the hypodermic needles I found, and yes, I was wearing heavy leather gloves), amending the soil, returning the soil to the trench and then planting pretties. Here is the trench:

It's 16.5 feet (just about 5 meters) long and about two feet (or 50 centimeters) deep. The longer I dug the deeper it got. After I got it all sifted (which took about three days or 20 hours of digging) I added two big bales of peat moss and filled everything back in.

The Husband made lots of jokes about whether I had gotten the tunnel finished, or if I had any room for a yellow fever victim. He didn't do any of the digging for his usual reason, "You seemed to know what you were doing and I didn't want to bother you." At any rate he added some decorations of his own. The Baby had asked if his girlfriend could come and visit for a couple of weeks and as a hostess gift, she brought me a beautiful white rose. Now we have a rose garden.

With any luck next spring I will have something better than weeds to look at when I look out of the kitchen window.

Knitting Content:

After a day at the dig (and I thought anthropology sounded fun) I went in and knit a few little things. For Baby's girlfriend (and do I need to say I love this girl?) Fetching mitts. I put a few rows of ribbing at the finger end rather than the picot bind-off because that seems more practical.

Specs:

Yarn: Some inexpensive cashmere from AC Moore's

Needles: Size 5 DPNs

Pattern: Fetching from Knitty

Changes: 3 rows K1P1 ribbing instead of picot bind-off

It took me two evenings to knit (after ditch digging) and The Girlfriend was suitably impressed. She is spending her Junior year abroad and I hope she will remember us fondly.

I also knit a pair of Red Hat socks for myself. I kind of liked the spiral of color on the first sock, but it wasn't as attractive on the second (and Amy, I found Sensational Socks on the library table buried under The Husband's mail). At any rate they are colorful and comfy to wear.

Tomorrow I am going off with The Husband to keep him company while he travels for work. The boys will be on their own (19 and 22, will the house survive? Stay tuned). I was getting my list made for packing and of course the knitting came first. A pair of Madder Ribbed socks for The Husband, Embossed leaf socks for me (from the same yarn, I didn't realize I had ordered 4 skeins for socks for him) and a shawlette (scroll down it's the first one) for while he is at work and I can really concentrate. Just in case there is a pair of grey tweed basic socks in the car so I will always have something at hand. There's even a pool at the apartment where his company is putting him up. I can sleep late (well, later than he. He gets up a 3am!!), breakfast, go for a swim, and be ready to go sight-seeing or shopping when he gets home. The company he works for even gives him money for food every day! Vacation time ahead!