Kindness and Compassion

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  ~Dalai Lama

Today I’ve been catching up and reading various blogs, and it came to my attention that once again there is a knitter, one of us, in need.  It has never ceases to amaze me that the power of this community to come through and make not only a difference, but a huge, enormous difference.

I know some of you read Annie the Knitting Heretic and maybe you’ve even knit some of her beautiful and ingenius patterns. Well now, she needs our help.  If you have the opportunity to do so.  You too can own this Annie Modesitt pattern for a donation which would really help her and her family.  There is also a new blog set up We Love Annie that is raffling off all kinds of stuff and the money is going to help Annie.

I’m sure we will all be sending the entire Modesitt family lots of healing and love energy.

Speaking of Karma.  Did you check out Rachel’s site? Can you believe the cat made it home?!  I sure hope he recovers quickly, so send lot of healing love his way too.

So today is the day to send out lots of love and healing.  The world could sure use more of it.

Margaritas on a steamy summer night

The weather has turned beastly hot and humid.  So if any knitting or spinning is to be done, it’s either in my air conditioned bedroom, or in the 3 season (back) room with all the windows open and ceiling fan whirling.

Grace decided on Monday to go down for the week to Grandma’s for some TLC, after being summarily dissed by Uncle A–h—.  Besides Grandma also has central air conditioning and I haven’t raised a fool.

Meanwhile - work is dog slow, so I’m cranked on jumbo iced coffees all day and fortunately my office is air conditioned, all though it gets kind of warm on the top floor where I am.  As you know heat rises.

Last night to celebrate my freedom from motherhood, my friend A came over for cocktails and munchies.  On steamy hot nights, munchies of hummus and tabouli with pita chips, chunks of watermelon and grapes make a perfect dinner.  Add to that some margaritas made in the slushie machine (aka Mr. Margie) perfect for hot summer nights.

This is the ultimate frozen marguarita maker. I just wish it was battery operated so we could take it camping…. on second thought I think I know how we can power this on our camping trip this August. 

After she left I retired to the coolness of the air conditioned bedroom, with the cats who had been up there since I had turned it on.  I did manage a few rows of straight knitting in the round (socks) but soon dropped off to sleep. 

This morning my brain was a bit fuzzy and it was hard getting out of the cool shower, but I made it to work and I’m feeling much better after the jumbo Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee with a couple of Excedrin.

There were three in the bed…

and the little one said, “roll over, roll over”, so they all rolled over and Grace and I fell out. 

Let’s just say the weekend at the Cape did not go as planned.  We had a lovely day Saturday and left that evening instead of staying over and getting to spend another day with Jeffrey and my brother.  Why? because my inconsiderate brother-in-law decided to show up Saturday evening with HIS relatives, when they were not expected until Sunday.

 This is why I will never, ever, never, ever, ever remarry.   Inevitably there is a failure to communicate, for various reasons that are impossible for outsiders to comprehend.  But lets just say my sister bitched about hubby all the way down to the Cape Saturday morning and I believe they had some issues to deal with and Grace and I got caught in the crossfire.  For some reason hubby has decided he’s not ‘comfortable’ with my family around.    So not wishing to stay where we were not welcome and not wishing to spend the night on a lumpy, smelly old sofa, we left.

But before that, we had a blast on the beach, we played miniature golf and we ate the most delicious lobster rolls for dinner with fries and beers.  So all was not wasted.

It would have been nice to have stayed another day, but let’s just say, we won’t be going down again anytime soon, at least not when a**h*** B-I-L is around. 

I did very little knitting, as I seem to have misplaced my knitting pouch with all my sock needles, measuring tape, scissors, stitch markers, etc.  I know it has to be around somewhere, but damn this is the SECOND one I’ve lost.

The area around the front of the house got weeded and mulched.  My neighbor’s brothers were moving their mom in and doing yard work too, so they took down some branches that were hanging low over the driveway.  It really opens the front of the house.  The elderly Ms. K has finally moved in next door.  Now I just need to keep DD from her loud hissy fits and mouth like a trucker outbursts.  Did I mention I hate teen-aged girls?

Please let this week improve over this past weekend!

Note to self:  No more hand knit socks for brother-in-law.

Surprises

Wednesday night my brother and nephew flew in from New Mexico to surprise us.  My sister and I knew ahead of time, so it really was to surprise Mom and Dad.  My brother is back to take his electrician 15 hour class to maintain his license here.  This means my sister and I get our nephew for the weekend!  We decided to take all the cousins to the Cape!  Yay!

I have been busy spinning and knitting - most of the photos I took however disappeared when my DD ‘borrowed’ my camera.  Apparently MY photos are of no importance, but the bazillion ones of her making faces are.

Here is a close up of the 2-ply grey shetland I finally finished and skeined up.  It’s a beautiful soft dark grey shetland.  I resisted spinning shetland thinking it would be scratchy and coarse, but I’ll tell you there is some nice soft shetland out there.

I decided to knit the Fan and Feather Shawl from the Folk Shawls book from the shetland, so of course that meant I needed to acquire some additional roving to spin.  I found some white and black at the Copper Moose, that should be arriving shortly.  So I am thinking of starting at the top with the white, then graduating to light grey, dark grey and ending with the black.  At least that is the plan for now.

I’ve also knit some socks, not pairs, just singles… what’s up with that?   I think it’s all the lovely sock yarn that’s been coming my way and apparently I have ADHD when it comes to sock yarn and my attention is easily swayed from one to another.   Of course it doesn’t help when I get my STR Sock Club yarn in a stunningly beautiful color - Firebird!  No spoilers from me, but I may need to knit these up for my friend Paula (aka Phoenix)  - they are so her!  I just need to finish off some mates first.

I’m also about 1/3 of the way through my Red Scarf project.  I really need to get going on this since rumor has it they’ve bumped up the submission date due to an overwhelming response and they want to get them delivered before winter starts.  Although I like the sentiment of presenting them on Valentine’s Day and the reason the scarves are all some shade of red, I can see their point.

Other secret surprise knitting is almost completed - no more can be revealed at this time.

Oh and another surprise news!  A Wednesday knitter announced she is expecting in November which can only mean BABY KNITTING ahead!  Yay!  I keep seeing all these adorable baby items on the various blogs.  Now I just have to decide what to knit.

Then there is the Mystery Stole 3 that I’ve joined.  I swatched the black laceweight Skacel Merino I had in my stash.  It also calls for beads.  Which I have avoided in knitting but I think this will be my nudge into beaded knitting.  So I was thinking of a colored bead to pop on the black.  What do you think of Chartreuse beads on black?

With all this going on, I don’t know when I’ll get to my holiday gift knitting.  Maybe I’ll just give hanks of my handspun with knitting needles and a pattern this year.  Hmmmm, that may not be a bad idea.   The year of enabling?  LOL

Tis almost fairy time…

 

Happy Summer Solstice

Girls just wanna have fun!

True Colors Tour(aka Gaystock) was a blast.

The Gossip opened with a kick butt set.  Followed by our home grown Dresden Dolls.  We love Amanda. 

 

Rufus Wainwright was awesome and a bit mellow.  Then Debby Harrywas up.  I wish she had done at least a couple of Blonde hits, but she looks great.  Man I wish I had her legs!  Then Erasure blew the roof off, Andy Bell really put on a show and got the crowd on it’s feet.  Margaret Cho emceed the show and was hilarious.  The last but not least Cyndi Lauper.  I cannot believe all the energy she has.  What a show.

 

These are my friend Libbie’s pics, DD brought a disposible and we are waiting for those pics to come back.

Here’s Libbie and Mike

Good and Plenty - Felted Keyhole Bag

 

Good and Plenty - Felted Keyhole Bag

© June 2007 by Lynne Chantler

I’ve seen quite a few felted keyhole bags, but couldn’t find a pattern that I liked when I was looking to make this, so this is from my head, keeping things very simple.  It’s worked from the top (handles) down.

Yarn: 2 skeins of Blackforest Naturwolle Yarn or approx. 220 yards of 100% Bulky weight wool

Needle size US 13 (no need to measure gauge)

Cast on 42 stitches.

Rows 1-6 knit garter stitch

Row 7  Knit 14, cast off 14, K14

Row8:  Knit 14, cast on 14, K14

Continue knitting garter stitch until you are almost finished with 1 skein (save enough to sew the sides together and to crochet a chain stitch around the inside edge of the keyhole handle for stability. 

Bind off.

Make the other side exactly the same with the second skein.

Single crochet around the inside edges of the handles.

Check both sides to see which ones you like best and place those sides facing each other.  Sew up the side and bottom seams.  Weave in ends.

Felt by hand or by machine, checking every 10 minutes or so, until it’s felted to your liking.

Lay on flat surface, lining up the handle holes and straightening out the seams to make the edges even and the purse smooth on both sides, let dry throughly.  Final size after felting and drying - 10″ wide by 11.5″ tall.

It never rains, it pours…

So all the big plans to get yard work done were foiled by a huge thunderstorm that turned into a rainy Saturday.  I did manage to get the turf/weed stuff on the lawn on Sunday but not much else.  I didn’t even make it to Sunday Knitting at Borders.  Sorry

Since Saturday was so nasty, I did the indoor things that needed to get done, except for the kitchen floor - it was just too damp and would have taken forever to dry.  I did clean the backroom and I did felt my purse.  It’s still drying, but I love the way it came out.  I did spin and start plying the luscious Shetland. 

The other ‘big thing’ I did the weekend was to color my hair.  I had been letting it grow out and getting the ends cut to get to a natural state of grey/white, but after being threatened by my hair stylist and one of my good friends with a hair coloring intervention, I bit the bullet and went back to my “natural” color, L’Oreal 8RB.  I love being a strawberry blonde.

Sunday night I  did watch the Soprano’s on Sunday night.  Note this will contain spoilers so don’t read if you haven’t watched the last episode yet.

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 I bet I’m not the only one who screamed WTF!? When the screen went blank.  I thought the cable had gone out.  But after mulling it over and sleeping on , I’ve decided that the guy at the counter who went to the men’s room came out and when Tony looked up to see Meadow coming in the door, he whacked Tony… thus the blank screen. 

Since the entire series was from Tony’s perspective, it makes sense that the screen would go blank when Tony was killed off.

And what about Leotardo’s head getting squished under the car!  Ew the sound affects were amazingly realistic.

And then there is the cat that kept staring at Chris’ picture.  That was hilariously weird.

But ultimately I have decided it was a good ending to the series.  I’ll definitely miss the Soprano’s.  I also watched John from Cincinnati afterwards and I’m not so sure this will measure up to the Soprano’s.  I’m not sure anything could.

I actually did get some knitting done during the show and I only had to tink back twice due to the fact I was not paying attention at all to my knitting.  I was working on a secret project that cannot be discussed in the blog right now.

BTW, Tomorrow night is Spinning in Westford night.

Two Steps Back

Sometimes we all need to just stop and take two steps back.

I was planning to drive up to Fiber Frolic this weekend but after looking around at my messy house, unfinished yard work, and the pile-o-stash in the back room that I haven’t put away into the stash closet yet, I decided that it was probably a better idea to stay home this weekend and get some chores done.  It’s so hard to be responsible sometimes.

So here is my to-do list for this weekend.

1) finish trimming the shrubbery (I did get a new extension cord thank you very much)

2) spread the lawn stuff on the lawn - this is for weeds and bugs… although doing this may also destroy any green that is out there., but then again that means no mowing too

3) power wash the back deck

4) clean the kitchen floor - hmmm I wonder if I can use the power washer indoors… probably not.

5) wash alpaca fleece(s) - do not use power washer for this project.

6) sort through and put away recent fiber purchases that aren’t going to used in the immediate future.  Will she or won’t she be able to stuff fit this into the fiber closet.

7) clean the backroom

spin some more of that luscious dark grey Shetland.

9) felt that purse.

10) start swatching for Mystery Stole #3 - I know I have a skein of Skacel Merino Laceweight in Black that will be perfect for this mystery project, unfortunately that requires that I do numbers 6 and 7 on the list first.  I know it’s somewhere in that pile.  Maybe I’ll do before and after pics of this.

11) watch Marie Antoinette DVD from Netflicks that has been sitting on my kitchen table for two weeks.

12) The Soprano’s - I cannot miss the very last episode of the Soprano’s.  I’m not sure what the final episode will bring us.  There are four possibilities, Tony gets whacked is the most likely one, but also the one they seem to be leading us into thinking.  Then there is the possibility that Tony goes to jail.  Or perhaps Tony goes into the witness protection program, or last but not least Tony wakes up and realizes he’s that salesman that sold the bum equipment to the nuns (remember him from when he had his heart attack?).  I suspect he’s going to get whacked and it’s probably going to look like something out of Scarface.

So with all this on my plate this weekend - Fiber Frolic will just have to go on without me this year.  Sigh.

Wait until DD sees her to-do list this weekend

Dis and Dat

This is the Blackforest Naturwolle Yarn that jumped off the shelf into my hands and then Jennifer insisted that I had to have it.  I found it at the NorthamptonWools Yarn Store.  I made up a pattern to do a simple keyhole felted bag.  I have finished knitting and sewing it up, now I just need to take the plunge and felt it.  I hope think it will look really nice.  I’m going to look for some chartreuse green fabric to line it with.

I’ve also been busy knitting socks for a friend so I cannot comment on those yet, I have having knitting projects that I cannot blog about, especially when they are taking up most of my knitting time.

I’ve been spinning away on the Dark Grey Shetland, and I started on the second bobbin.  I’m hoping to finish it this weekend.

I’m really wanting to go to Fiber Frolic this weekend,  I’ll probably bring DD with me, and we will look for a place to stay on our way back maybe a little place by the sea would be nice to hang out on Sunday.  Especially if it’s going to be a nice weekend. 

I’m excited that I finally got our Hermit Island camp site reserved for a full week in August.  It’s a beautiful site on the harbor side right on the water.  I think we are going to like it.

One more week of school and summer officially begins!