Monday, September 23, 2013

Unknitting: It's the Journey, Not the Destination!



Knitting.  It can be very satisfying and very frustrating, both at the same time.

I had too many projects in various stages, so I pledged to finish up everything before I started any more.  I had one sleeve left on the Dahlia cardigan an aboslutely beautiful cardigan with a really intriguing construction, started in the middle of the lace on the back, afterthought sleeves, a real challenge.

Top picture, it is done!  I tried it on and hated it.  I looked terrible in this!  When will I realize I am not a slinky 20 something and will not look like the model in the pattern picture-ever.  So I didn't even hesitate and took it apart immediately.  I knew I would never wear it and the longer I waited, the harder it would be to take apart. I think this color was totally wrong for the project.  It really was too busy.

I then took out the Tempest sweater (middle picture).  All pieces were done, just had to put this together.  It had sat in the bag like this for over a year, all blocked and really pretty.  I again took a good look at it and realized it would never fit.  Way too small.  Again, not a skinny 20 year old.  I do have plenty of yarn and I still think that the sweater would look good on me so I will make it larger.

You would thing the last project, a pair of socks, would be a breeze after all the sweater trauma.  No, no. The second sock had sat all summer needing just its heel and foot.  But I had forgotten the pattern and the little tweeks I had made to it.  It was a very sloooow process at the heel of knitting and ripping, trying to get the stripes to match.  I think I knitted as much as a pair of socks, with all the knitting and ripping I did to get this pair to match.

I have two other projects waiting and I am almost afraid to look at them too closely, a sweater (which I will tackle next and the Frost Flower Shawl, which is going to be a slow process.  I will try to do one row every day or so, just to keep the pattern fresh in my head.

My main goal right now is to finish Afterlight and that means I will try to be a monogamous knitter.  I have the back done and am almost to the armhole on the front.  Love to have the sleeves going by Thursday's knitting group, but I'm not going to push it.
One of the things I discovered is I really am a process knitter.  It didn't cause me much of a pang to rip out all that work.  After all it's just knitting and now I get to knit something completely different!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Time For New Books

With the cooler weather, kids back in school and publishers getting out their newest books, it's reading time once again.  My plans for summer always include lots of reading, but the reality never comes up to my imagination.
While waiting for the latest Nora Roberts's In Death to come out next week (hurry up Sept 17th) and Louise Penny's latest Inspector Gamache to be available from the library (where I am next in line, yeah!), I picked up some titles that were recommended on the Barnes & Noble blog by Ms Penny.  I started with the first book in the new (to me) Rev. Clare Furgusson series "In a Bleak Midwinter" and am loving it.  This is another series set in upstate New York like the Troy Chance series I happened on this summer.  Wow, two new authors with strong female main characters.  I also picked up "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and the first of one of  Rhys Browns' series "Her Royal Spyness".  I'm really hoping I like this author as she has two other series that sound just like the cozy mysteries that make me very happy!

In the TV, movie viewing we happened upon the "Longmire" series on Netflix (have I mentioned how I could do without cable but never Netflix on demand?)  We plowed through the first season (I think its called binge viewing) and thought we could get the second season on line, but other than the last few episodes or buying them on iTunes we are just going to have to wait.  This is very tough, as we both really enjoyed it.
But the new season is starting this month, so I'm sure there will be plenty to watch.  More than we actually have time for probably, as we only  watch about 2 hours per day.  Shows have to be mighty good for us to spend our TV watching time on them.  I guess that is why I like Netflix,  we are able to find shows that we missed on the network, not have to watch commercials so spend only about 20 or 40 minutes watching.
When complaining about the lack of vegetables in our garden this year, I forgot to mention the raspberries which are plentiful and delish!  We do have to try and beat the bees to them, but this is a potion of what my DH picked yesterday. Enough to eat and freeze.  That's after enough last week for raspberry pie and breakfast eating.
Not a great picture, but here"s Frankie sunning herself on the lounge chair.  Silly dog!

Friday, September 6, 2013

Happy Place


 I love this time of the year.  So full of possibilities.  Even though the summer flew by and we didn't have as much swimming time toward the end of August as I would have liked and we didn't seem to get to do as much as we thought we would, it is good to have that crisp air in the early mornings and the bright yellow school buses taking the kids back to school.

The garden, as you can see in the pictures, is still full of color.  I planted, I think,  almost 100 gladiola bulbs.  I did stagger the planting in order to have color a bit longer.  Not sure how many have come up, as I have been picking them for a few weeks and still have quite a few still growing.  The mix of sunflowers is adding lots of sunny, happy to the back garden.  The Autumn Joy sedum finally got replanted in the right spot and is full and changing into its purple fall color.

The vegetable garden was not too good this year.  Eggplant need hot weather and so do the tomatoes.  the winter squash is doing just fine and I think we will be harvesting enough to take us through the fall and early winter.

We have plans to rework the right side of the back garden.  These were the only beds that didn't get redone this spring.  Plans are for more of a butterfly garden in one of the three 8x8 beds.  We have our eye on some milkweed in a field and I want to get some of the seeds, I also have a few pots of bee balm that I grew from seeds to replant, once we have all the debris cleaned out.  I would like to have a raised bed in one of the other spots for herbs and greens.  It needs to be built up so that the family of rabbits that have lived under our shed for the past 20 years can't get to the veggies.

Fall is the perfect time to do the heavy lifting that these projects need.  Hopefully we will get it done.