Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Wicked storms

The news is good regarding the Capall Dubh cardigan. After blocking, the button bands seem fine, so I will be weaving in the few ends that remain, buying buttons and sewing them on. Yippee! I can soon be wearing this sweater at work!

We had a tornado warning tonight! We don't get those often. The storms got closer and more intense but we were lucky here and just had high winds and heavy rain, no hail or significant damage. The umbrella over the barbecue blew inside out and the covers over the chairs blew off so the cushions got wet but that was all.

I knitted on my Forest Park Cowl tonight and did my best to resist the urge to buy the Shleeves pattern that I want very much to buy. I made a commitment to avoid fiber related purchases and if I buy the pattern I will cast on which will side track me from knitting on my current projects. I really want to get this pattern and cast on. I even have 2 choices for yarn from my stash. Sigh. We'll see how long I can last.

We are getting ready to foam in the gas tank on the boat. This is just about the last step before attaching the hoses and closing the hatch so it's very exciting! We did a test run with the foam tonight. You measure 2 liquids, mix them together and within a minute the stuff starts to bubble and grow. It gets hot, then sets and holds whatever is in its clutches pretty firmly. We are going to use it at the corners of the gas tank to hold it in place. Foam day is Thursday morning before work.

Try to stay cool and enjoy your day.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Updates

i am sure that most of you have given up on me updating the blog. I plan to try to be better about that starting now.

I finished 2 projects last night. That is, I finished the knitting part of those 2 projects. I completed the knitting part of Capall Dubh, my green cardigan that started out as a KAL project. I bound off the last button band last night, but I might have to go back and re-knit the button bands. Maybe I made the sweater longer than specified on the pattern. I am not sure, but the number of stitches that I picked up, per pattern, looks right but the button bands don't seem to be long enough. I plan to block the sweater and see how things look. I will rip both out if I need to and add more stitches if they don't look right. I will need to select buttons and sew them on also before I can wear the sweater.

I finished the scarf I was knitting with the Malabrgio Rasta. It's so super chunky that I didn't know what else to do with it, other than a scarf, and I love it now that it's finished. It's soft and lofty and will be nice to snuggle into next winter. The color is wonderful, too. Teal feather.

My plan for current knitting projects now is to work on Driftwood, cast on the second Pamplemousse sock, keep on working on the Tour de Sock pattern and to pick up Call Me Cordelia. I have been feeling the urge to knit lace.  That shawl is pretty and I would like to finish and wear it. I also have my take along sock project.

On the spinning front - I haven't been doing any but plan on changing that with the Tour de Fleece starting shortly. I have a few spindle spinning projects I would like to finish up as well as doing some wheel spinning. I think I'll spend part of my evenings flicking some of my Shetland fleece so that I'm ready to spin that fiber. I also want to spin some of the smaller amounts of fibers I have into fingering weight yarn, planning to use them in some sort of color work project to be decided. I purchased a special fiber for this tour, Ile de France fiber dyed in one of 4 color ways that were specific to the tour. The one I selected is call Le Harve and I bought 8 oz. instead of the 4 I had intended. I just don't get enough yardage from 4 oz. to do much of anything. I have to read up about this breed but if it will work I would like to make some socks with it. If that's not a good idea then I'll go with something else, depending on yardage.

On the job front, I like my job and my coworkers, the commute is wonderful and over all I am happy there. This is a good thing.

Home stuff - we (read mostly Bob here) have been working on replacing the gas tank in the boat (and lots of rotted wood along with it) so we haven't been out on the boat yet. I have been trying to keep up with yard work but find I don't tolerate the heat and humidity well at all. My energy level and endurance is not good either. I'm working on changing the endurance part and we'll see what else gets better with that.

We have the house to ourselves for the first time in a lot of years. Eldest son's stuff is still downstairs (some of it, at least) but as he gets more moved out I plan a major cleaning job to get rid of the stink of cigarette smoke. Once that is finished, though, we don't have plans for the space. We don't need the space really, so I'm not sure what we will do down there. Sigh.

Mom was here for a visit recently and I think it went well. I was able to take off a few days while she was here. We head up to NY in a few weeks to have a beach memorial for Steven. He loved sitting on the beach, watching the world go by and making some awesome sand castles more than anything else, I think, so that what we will do on a day near his birthday.

That's it for today. I hope to get more pictures on this blog by using DH's iPad to take and post the pictures. We'll see if that works.

Have a great weekend if you can in between raindrops.