Almost March

Here's a picture I took the day after the Big Blizzard of '11, early this month:

I'm not quite sure how the wind was blowing to cause this formation, but I suspect it was coming from the south, under the fence, and scooped all the snow up into that nice crisp ridge. If the wind came from the north, it would have hit the fence, curled down, and scooped the snow. In either case, it was cool while it lasted.

Knitting News
I finally finished the Socks That Would Not End. My Ravelry projects page tells me I started these in September. Here they are, hot off the needles, unwashed, unblocked, un-anything.



Yarn: Universal Yarns, Ditto. Now discontinued.
Knit on US #1 needles.
68 stitches, ribbed cuff and instep

Earlier this month, in the deep cold that followed the blizzard, I decided that my 3201 wool hats were not doing a good enough job keeping me warm and I probably should make myself an alpaca one. Fortunately I found some yarn in my stash that seemed perfect.



This is just a basic watchcap, k2, p2 ribbing throughout.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Melange
Knit on US #2 needles
120 stitches.

In Other News
The dissatisfaction with our governor has grown steadily since Feb 11. If he thought this would all settle down and go away, he really underestimated the people of Wisconsin. The Teabaggers he recruited from out of state to counter-demonstrate put in a pretty pitiful showing in comparison. There were very few of them and they were back on their motor-coaches, on their way home, within 24 hours. I try to keep my politics off the blog, but recent events go way beyond politics-as-usual around here. It should get more interesting before it's all done.

Pictures This Time, But Not Knitting

First year of these yellow irises our neighbor gave us in the fall. We planted them in the place where the big silver maple had been in the front yard.


While I was out taking pictures of the irises and peonies, I noticed one of the strawberries is just about ready! We're going to have a bumper crop. We'll have to make jam before we move.


A big opulent white peony with magenta trim on the petals, only in black and white.






Lambs ear


I love these siberian irises even more than the big showy ones. I hope we'll be able to find a happy spot for some in our new yard.

Spring Updates

I finished these socks last night, though I still need to darn in ends and give them a little wash. It's a simple twisted rib stitch on the leg and top of foot. I think there are patterns out there for the same thing, though I didn't use one. The yarn is Turtle Feet by Turtle Cove Farm. I really enjoyed working with it. Nice saturated color and a pleasingly dense fabric on US #1 needles.


This morning I cast on for this thing. No, it's not a boomerang. I think I'll be giving it away when I finish it, as I know a person who it will suit perfectly. Stay tuned.

Out in the yard, lots of stuff is in bloom!



I want to know why "pansy" was an old-time insult for a man who was considered weak. These pansies apparently overwintered in Wisconsin! These are tough flowers! They might be the toughest annuals around. Don't be messin' with pansies.


All we can think of is that we had an early and thick snow cover that stayed there all winter, thus protecting them from a deep freeze. Our soil seems to have warmed up much earlier this year than it has in many previous years, so I think it never froze as deep or hard as it would in a typical winter, even though our temperatures were fairly typical.



Mr. SABLE is off in Phoenix this week. The boys and I are doing ok so far, but it's only been one day.

Some Autumn Entrelac?

This is the beginning of a scarf from some yarn I spun maybe a year and a half ago. It's softer to the touch than it looks. Blue-faced Leicester. I can't decide if I like this enough to go forward with it. But I don't dislike enough to stop and frog. Oh me, oh my.


This is an experiment: making one oversized entrelac motif down a scarf. It's Rowan Tapestry, which I recycled from a sideways-knit scarf that really never made me happy. I'm not sure this is working for me, either.

I've got to get out of my cave more. Look what's right out my back door:


And this is out front:

Weekend Update

In addition to the Great Pumpkin on the front step, there are a few more nice big pumpkins out back. And then there's these strange things.



These are snake gourds. Owen planted them. I think he and Scott were expecting some small decorative gourds we could put in the middle of the table or in a bowl, or something, you know, decorative. I think they look a little menacing. Like maybe they could have been used as props in Dr Who circa 1966? One vine climbed right up the apple tree and grew its gourd there, hanging. Seriously, it's as big as a baseball bat.

I've been puttering away on knitting that I can't show you yet. So, you get phallic snake gourds, instead.

Today, Jaala hosted the Knitcircus Hat Event. It was a great success! We had a bunch of volunteers come to cut and sew and cranked out about 35 hats and 20 no-sew scarves in 2 hours. We had a hat that a knitter in California mailed to us, too.

The past couple weeks have been a bit busy, some good and some bad. We've had the little guy to Urgent Care twice. We've had sick days. Car appointments. School events. Other volunteer events. Last Saturday Knitting and Friday Late Night knitting. Between all this, I've got about 85% of the next Knitcircus pasted in and formatted. I think tomorrow I'll get to sit and breathe for a while. Oh, yeah, and catch up on laundry and go grocery shopping.

Some Spinning, Some Garden Pics, and a Broken Appliance

First off, this brown yarn hanging out to dry on the clothesline is part of a very long term project to make myself a sweater from my own handspun.

This is three-ply, probably something like sport weight, and I think (would have to dig in my archives to verify), from a merino/romney cross fleece. This fiber came to me in a tremendous Craigslist deal a couple years ago. (Was it actually that long?) I'm sure this will be a very favorite sweater when I eventually finish it. But it's a lot of plain brown spinning.

This is a 7 gram mini skein of two ply yarn from Sarah's yearling lamb Spooky.

I bought this fleece from Sarah's recent sale. I have a bit to learn about processing a raw fleece for spinning, but I'm excited about this. It is next-to-the-skin soft! I'll probably make a nice three-ply yarn out of it eventually.

Next up, a bunch of nice flower images, taken over the last couple of weeks.










And finally, a broken appliance:

This is what a washing machine looks like without the big rectangular shell. Last week mine started making an ominous noise and yesterday I realized that it was no longer spinning out the water. It pumped out the water that sank to the bottom, but it was hard work moving all that sodden laundry out. I decided to hang it on the line, rather than stress my dryer because I think the dryer is next to go. Mr SABLE, being the handy guy he is, ordered the necessary part online last night, and should get it working by Wednesday or Thursday of the coming week. There might be one laundromat run in my near future.

Garden Goodness!

The strawberries are ripening! I think in a few days, we'll have a whole bunch at once. This was the first one:

I ate it two nights ago. It was so good!

For some reason, we have this one solitary great big dark purple iris:



It's not a Siberian Iris: it's a way more substantial flower.

I was strolling around my neighborhood the other evening and I was quite impressed with all the big stands of irises in bloom. There must have been some great bargains on iris corms last fall, because I don't remember seeing so many around in previous springs. They sure do look nice, though. I think I might need to buy a dozen for Mr. SABLE this fall and see what he does with them...

Some Garden Pictures

Blossoms on the Mother's Day Apple Tree. We might even get more than one apple this year!


The dried oatgrass from last season. New stuff hasn't come up yet.


Some tulips getting ready to do their thing.


Bleeding hearts. These are looking so happy, we might need to divide them and spread the love around.

This year for Mothers Day, my guys brought me a couple of pink spireas, after I dropped a few totally-not-subtle hints that I would like them for a particular space near our porch. This morning, while the air was cool and crisp and sunny, Mr. SABLE and I dug and loosened up the intended weedy patch. We removed a big garbage barrel full of dandelions and such and got the spireas planted. I need to go get some magenta petunias to go around, but at least there's a lovely bed all ready for them. It was nice out digging around with the Mister. By myself, I get kind of overwhelmed, plus, I'm never really sure where he might have something special that I shouldn't destroy. The little guy was playing with the neighbors and Owen was chatting with strangers online or something.

All in all a satisfactory day, though some muscles I'd forgotten I had are talking to me now.

An Orchid

Mr SABLE got this plant from his old work place back in September. Whatever he's doing, that plant really seems to approve.

Autumn

Little This, Little That

Here's a brief review of activities Chez SABLE.

On Monday we got our car back from the repair shop. It appears that they have really, finally, definitively fixed that problem. Of course, if we had known two months ago just how deeply we would be in to resolve it, we might have chosen to donate it to a charity and cut our losses. Even after all the credits we got from them for work that didn't fix the problem, we still spent $3000 keeping that car running. Just for giggles, I looked at some other 1997 Windstars on Craigslist. Now, most have twice as many miles on them as ours, but they also were asking less than $2K for those cars. Hmm. So, all my readers with stalling cars, check the blue book on the car before you go to the garage! I have a sense of guarded optimism about this car now. I kind of hope it might go another 60,000 miles without too much ongoing expense.

In other news, Mr. SABLE has been settling into his self-employed lifestyle. He prefers that term to unemployed. He has a few prospects that might lead to a job offer, but not much to do about them in the short run.


Over the weekend, Mr. SABLE and I made hot dilly beans. My SIL makes these every year and we've been given an occasional jar or two here and there, but not nearly enough to keep me happy. I love these things! It finally dawned on me that there was no reason we couldn't just make our own. The supermarket had pitiful unappealing beans for several trips while I was getting excited about this plan. Then they had no beans! Finally, I went in on Saturday and they had restocked with fresh, plump, wonderful looking beans, so I bought a big bag. We made 8 pints, though a few were on the scant side. Haven't tasted them yet, because we're supposed to let them sit at least 2 weeks. Another 10 days! Can I wait that long?


Today I replaced a zipper in a lightweight jacket of the Little Emperor's. I bought this in the spring at a big-box store and when the zipper broke, debated about whether or not I should bother fixing it. He does really love it and it's not that old. The replacement zipper was under $4, so not an expensive repair. I decided on the quick'n'dirty method outlined in the Tightwad Gazette books. Rather than actually ripping out the stitches that held in the old zipper and fitting the new one in between the lining and the shell, I just cut the teeth off the old one, then sewed the replacement to the back of the opening. It's not elegant, but it does the trick. The jacket is no longer reversible, but he only wore it nylon-side-out anyway. My guess is that he will outgrow it by spring.

Now that I've done this one, I'm eyeballing the collection of winter parkas with broken zippers that Owen left in his wake.


Also today, I cast on and started a pair of slipper clogs for Mr. SABLE. He gets very cold feet sitting around in the winter. He doesn't like to wear shoes inside because his feet are already REALLY big: size 13.5. I have some very thick leather I plan to use to make soles for these. Stay tuned.


And finally, here are some milkweed pods.