No Pics Today

I can't believe how busy I've been. This is a good thing, I think. First of all, we're still in the process of "Mission Organization." If any of you are not familiar with the show on HGTV, a professional organizer comes in and "does" a particularly chaotic/messy/unusable room. Well, to be honest, if feels like my whole house is a collection of chaotic/messy/unusable rooms. Or should I put that in the past-tense.

Friday night, Tim and I spent 3 hours in the basement, moving things around, throwing stuff out and transferring things from cardboard boxes to clear, plastic storage bins. Now, I'm probably more green conscious than most folks, and hate using a lot of plastics, but sometimes...ya just have to bite the bullet. Or, at least I did. Sorting, organizing and labeling is going to make my life much easier down the road, and I'm all for that.

Riding on the wave of accomplishment from the basement work on Friday, we tackled the kitchen and hall closet on Saturday. This was really enlightening. We realized that when we moved into this place we never intended to stay this long. In fact, we only intended to stay one year, and it's already been two, and we've decided to stay for a third. But because of that intention, we never really unpacked. We, sort of, set up camp; unpacking only essentials, but leaving many things packed away.

This has been good and bad. There are things I've missed (like my mother's fruit bowl, which has been found and upacked) and things I haven't. A HUGE bag of stuff went to Goodwill. Another bag of stuff is in Tim's car, going to Goodwill.

I discovered many plastic containers that had no lids, as well as many lids that had no containers. They do not match. I do not know how this happened. It has been fixed.

The other issue was canning jars. We do a lot of canning, and use stuff up throughout the year. Unfortunately our current kitchen doesn't have a lot of storage, and clean canning jars tend not to have a place. We now have a "canning jar depot" (read plastic bin) in the hall closet that can hold clean canning jars before a load of them can get downstairs sorted and stored.


It's all been pretty amazing. I know all of this attention to home means something, but I'm not sure what.


The other big issue is the neighbor's dog. Don't get me wrong. I like dogs...to a point. Really, I'm a cat person, but I'm okay with dogs. In fact, I'm pretty sure my problem is with the neighbor, not the dog...because these people insist on letting their dog pee in my garden. Fortunately not on the veggies, but in the front on the impatiens. Impatiens do not like dog urine. I have big holes of rotted impatien stems.

So, this morning, I went out and purchased replacement impatiens. I also purchased one of those hose attachments that you can use for plant food. I filled this with a small amount of peppermint soap, as the basic nature of soap should dilute some of the acid in the urine. Next, I'm going to sprinkle a mixture of cayenne pepper and flour. The next time someone comes sniffing around, he will get a snootful of cayenne. That should solve the problem without doing harm to the dog...annoying yes...harmful, no.

There are 8 lbs of cucumbers and 4 lbs of onions being salted in the kitchen in preparation for bread and butter pickles, which will get up up tonight. Canning season is definitely underway!!! Next come the peaches, then tomatoes. I adore this time of year. Unfortunately all this canning and organization doesn't leave that much time for fiber, but, well, such is life.

Well, I think that's all the news that's fit to print. Off to poke at the cucumbers.

It's finally blog-time

The paradox with blogging is that if I'm going to have anything to write about, I have to go out and do things. If I'm out doing things, I have no time to blog about it. What is a good blogger to do?

Anyway, I wrote about J coming up. Well, as promised, we went blueberry picking.

While none of us should be giving up our day jobs in order to become migrant farm workers, we did okay, hauling in about 12 lbs of blueberries.



OMG, they were delicious. We made blueberry jam




We had blueberry cobbler, and blueberries on cereal in the morning. It was freakin' blueberry heaven. I like blueberries.

Blueberries always make me think of my mother, who loved them. Not surprising that she sould be on my mind, it was this time three years ago, that we found out that she had terminal cancer. Where ever you are, ma, this blueberry's for you!


Kali took a bath:


Morgan watched the birds:


After the blueberry extravaganza, Tim and I took off for camping. We went with the same group we always go with, The Clan That Says AEHH!!, but we chose a different venue. For reason I won't go into on the blog, it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I'm still processing. (no, there aren't any pictures).

However, while on vacation I spun a lot, and taught my friend Maria to spin. It was so much fun watching her working at it, then suddenly getting the hang of drafting. Now, she wants a spinning wheel too!! Another convert! My work there is done. ::smug smile::

On to the most important stuff, the fiber:

One half of the Traveling Vine shawl is DONE and has been moved to a stitch holder.
It is being knit from raw silk that was purchased 2 years ago at Clermont, and hand-dyed by Tina and myself. (really, Tina did all the work, I just watched and bought the chicken wings).

The stitch pattern is from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls, by Martha Waterman. This is unblocked (and really a bad photo, but hopefully you can see what it looks like)



The other half has been cast-on.



Over halfway done. This would have been done if not for the Tour De Fleece, of which I did not make my goal; and my sojourn into Farmer's Market Bags.

Speaking of Tour de Fleece, I've been spinning and spinning and spinning my legs off. This is some of it, washed and drying. There is more on the bobbins, waiting to be plied, and more in the bag, waiting to be spun. Oy....that's a lot of fiber to spin this fine. I'm getting tired of looking at blue and green, though.


I'm so excited about this. It's super-soft M-m-m-erino (as Jessalu says).


And I'm really proud of the even-ness of the yarn. When I plied it, unwashed, it hung completely straight and balanced.




Tim has been spinning! Here's his first handspun, super-chunky weight. I'm so excited.


It's so much fun to share something I love to do with someone I love. We spent part of the afternoon spinning together. Me on Asherah, and he on Phaedre.

This is the view of what I came downstairs to see this morning. Ignore the mess, I was focusing on the two spinning wheels and the knitting projects.



And yes, that is another market bag in the lower left corner. It's in shades of blue, and I swear, it's the last one for a while, because I've fallen in love with the Seascape Shawl


and can't wait to get started on it. It's going to be in one of the two hand dyed laceweight yarns that I bought from Tina.

That's the news that's fit to print. Will try to update on Friday (or Monday....you know how it goes.)