Plymouth or Plimoth?

Well, you saw the Freedom Trail pictures from last Thursday--on Friday we went to Plymouth and visited "the rock" (which is only part of the original rock), and then went to Plimoth Plantation.
Here is the rock:














Here is Dave listening to the nice Park Ranger:


















See how Dave was facing her? Very attentive. Then here is my darling husband "listening" to the park ranger.














Hmm, he's not even looking in her direction, and he's standing about 15 feet away. Erin and Dave are better tourists than we are.

On Sunday we went to the Cape. We got to use our handy beach umbrella from my parents, complete with the original sand auger. (it's quite an amazing thing!) Dave and J got it in the ground, and then J and I posed for a picture for my parents.

loads of fun

So, Erin and Dave left this morning. :( We had lots of fun while they were here, though. See?
Erin reading the Freedom Trail brochure to us:


Dave's first cannoli! (At Mike's Pastry)


Erin at the Make Way for Ducklings statue:


It was HOT while they were here. We went to the Cape on Sunday and loved the sea breeze that cooled things off.
We're sad that they're gone. sigh.

Backfired

Any of you who have been to our house in the last few months have witnessed the "creative" places I was using to store my circular knitting needles...doorknobs and the stair railing, to name a few. So when I said to J, "I think I'll make a circular needle holder" he said, "Great Idea!"

Seriously, he was that emphatic...I guess that the needles rattling on the bedroom doorknob were annoying when he was trying to sleep or something.

So here it is:

I used the pattern from Stitch and Bitch, but altered it near the end to make it easier (it was almost midnight). Those alterations include making one large foldover flap instead of the two flaps (which make it so it could go on a hanger that doesn't have the bar). I also got to use the cool iron-on tape I found on clearance at Wal-Mart for our (I mean mine, J would never admit to having one) Dymo label maker. See, it's useful after all!

It will not hang in the hallway like it is pictured here...I was trying to get as much light as possible for the picture. It is hanging in the guest bedroom closet, near the yarn, so they can talk and become friends before they come together to fulfill their fiber destiny. :)

The one drawback? When I showed J (and it was loaded with the needles), he said, "I didn't know you had so many needles!" Oops. Plan backfired.

Hoorah for Summer!

So, session two of Woodworking ended today, so I AM FREE AS A BIRD UNTIL THE END OF AUGUST. Of course I have an eye doctor appointment and all of those annoying things, but still, that's a lot of time on my hands. I'm not sure what to do with myself without a deck to build or windows to install or a bathroom to renovate. I'm sure I'll find something.

Erin and Dave arrive next week for their first visit to Boston. We want to show them a good time so they will want to come back. Hopefully there will be good pictures to post about our adventures.

J started his graduate school class this week and boy am I glad that I didn't do graduate work in English...the amount of reading he's already had to do is quite amazing.

Secret Pal Extraordinaire!

My secret pal emailed me last week saying she was going to send me (a relatively new knitter) some of her "extra" needles along with my skein this month....I was very excited, to say the least. The package arrived today and HOLY SAMOLIANS!!! I am a lucky girl...Addi Turbos, Fiddlesticks, HiyaHiya, and Susan Bates. And check out that awesome alpaca yarn from Misti Alpaca! The color is 2050, called LIPSTICK (tee hee hee). I can't wait to make something from it, maybe this scarf or this cable hat. Which one do you think? My pal said that she bought herself some and she keeps petting it...I keep petting mine. :) I agree with her that this is much easier and more cost-effective than having a cat or rabbit to pet.

Remember that awesome feeling in college when you got a package slip in your mailbox and you got to go and get it at the pickup window because it was too big to fit in your box? This was just as exciting! I was on the phone with Krissy and kept exclaiming about what was inside.

Sweater Action Shot

Janine, Glen and Amelia are in Boston for a visit, so I got to see Amelia's sweater in action! This is the first time I've seen one of my bigger knitted projects on the recipient, so it's very cool. Isn't she adorable?

Outdoor photos

I mentioned yesterday that we've done some work outside. Here are some photos:
The new deck benches were made completely out of materials we had left over from building the deck last year (well, except for the cushions, but that's it, really!):




We also expanded (by about 4x) the size of our planting bed in the back:
(The first is a far-off shot, the second and third are two close-ups)

Outside Adventures

We've been doing a lot of work outside at our house, and I'm pleased to announce (on J's behalf) that we have our best lawn ever! Now, I'm not talking 100% grass or anything (let's not be silly, people), but we're definitely at about 85% grass, 15% random junk that floats in and decides to grow. Compared to 40% grass when we moved in two years ago (and I am being generous with that 40%), it's a TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENT! I can actually walk barefoot without it hurting! To add to that, we were recently gifted a Toro lawn mower very similar to my dad's. It is 20 years old, but in working condition. It was sitting in our neighbor's father's shed and he no longer uses it, so now it's ours.

Besides that, we expanded our back planting bed and built two benches for our deck. More details (and photos) on those two things later. Until tomorrow (when I can photograph said things), here are a couple of photos of the things we've got blooming around our house right now:

Yes, I've been knitting

It's just that I keep giving the stuff away before I can take a picture. These are all projects from Mason-Dixon Knitting, my latest favorite knitting book. The washcloths and baby bibs make great little gifts and they're perfect mindless car-ride (and summer school snack break) knitting. Believe it or not, it's quite fun to clean your kitchen when you've made the washcloth yourself.

First Batch of Birdhouses

Not only do they look adorable holding the birdhouses like that, it protects their identities...are we clever photographers, or what?

We have a total of 30 students in the 3 one-hour sections, so don't be thinking, "of course they can build birdhouses if they only have 5 kids all morning." :)

Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

Well, even though the PawSox lost, we still had a lot of fun at the game. I even made J pose for a cheesy picture since it was a birthday present. I did take that picture early, before most people were there.

It's a great stadium...not too big, but very modern. The first lowest two sections of seats are assigned seats (that's what we had...third row, almost behind the plate...you can tell our vantage point from the photo, because he just walked down in front of where we were sitting), then the rest are general admission--including a cool grassy area in left field where people bring blankets, etc.

It was a very fun night. And besides the tickets being much more affordable than the Red Sox, we got there in less than 45 minutes, had free parking, and didn't deal with traffic on the way out, either. Gotta love it.

Woodworking

Well, the school year is over, which means one thing--it's time for the Summer Program and our (in)famous WOODWORKING class!

Yes, that's right, J and I are once again teaching woodworking to impressionable young students grades 3-8. Yesterday we gave our safety talk and then one of them had the nerve to swing his 30 inch board at someone like he was going to hit them. I gave my best stern teacher look and he looked appropriately ashamed. I've got my eye on him now.

If you're lucky, I'll post pictures of the bird houses. I know that you're very excited to see them.

Quote of the day: "Aww, this is too much math for summer!"

Thursday is the PawSox (Red Sox Triple-A team) game--I got J tickets for his birthday. Then I lost them. (skip over the long story of searching). Then I called and they re-issued them without any questions at all. All that searching and worrying for nothing. Alas. Hopefully it will be as fun as people tell me it is.

Summer of Stash

Hmm. Well, I missed the official sign-up, but I'm committing myself to the Summer of Stash. Don't worry, that is neither dirty, nor drug-related. That means that I will not buy any yarn this summer, but will use only things from my yarn stash. What's a yarn stash? If you have to ask, you probably won't understand. But once you start knitting there's something that comes over you and you buy yarn for future projects and it just doesn't stop. Now, I'm not as bad as a lot of people out there (I'm not hiding yarn in the piano, or in the sleeves of coats hanging in closets), but I do think that I should commit to completing the projects I have already purchased yarn for.

I am announcing this on here because then I will have to be better about actually doing it. And then J will know about it.

The official SOS program allows you to pre-set some exceptions. My exception will be if I need to purchase yarn to complete my project for my One Skein Secret Pal. And that's it. This is tough love.

Wish me luck!

THE SOCKS ARE DONE!!

The socks are done, hoorah! It's self-striping yarn, so don't be too impressed. I did manage to get the stripes to line up pretty well on the two socks, so that's pretty good.

Here they are:

One Skein Secret Pal Delivery

Look what came in the mail from my One Skein secret pal!! After expressing my interest in socks (and especially in knitting them on two circular needles), my secret pal sent me this gorgeous skein of Lisa Souza sock yarn and Cat Bordhi's "Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles" book to help me learn. It was especially thoughtful of you to wind it into two separate balls so I can see if I'm brave enough to try doing them two at a time! And thanks for the websites you sent in email too....I've been inspired to finish my green striped socks so I can work on these. Now I have to decide whether to try it out on not-so-beautiful yarn first, so I can learn before using this nice stuff.

I love the colors of the yarn...subtle variegation so there's some variety, but not too much. Great choice....Thank you so much! Sorry that the bottom picture is so blurry, but I thought it was the best picture of the color of the yarn.

UFO update

If you remember, I listed some projects I needed to finish:

Here's what I've got started right now:

1. Baby blanket to wrap shower gift (that one has been ripped out 3 times to get the right dimensions) Done!
2. Green Striped socks. My first pair of adult-sized socks! I have one done and the second is on the needles. Progress is being made, really.
3. Eyelet wrap for Graceful Stitches. This is a volunteer project and I hate how it's turning out...I need to bring it in to see if I should continue with this pattern or not. Going back to Graceful Stitches because it's not worth continuing
4. Crochet Scarf Finished, then ripped out. It wasn't what I wanted.

So that means that only one of those projects remains! That's pretty good, if you ask me. (Of course I think that's good). I also made that felted bag, and a couple of washcloths from Mason-Dixon Knitting. And I used my first washcloth already! I will post a picture later (when I'm not feeling too lazy to walk downstairs to get the camera).

It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

I've got that song from an elementary Sunday school musical in my head, "It's going to rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain....(repeat 3x), one hundred percent chance of rain!" Of course, they were singing about Noah, and we're not at the Ark-building stage here, but man has it been pounding down all day. We even lost power at school for an hour or so (which always makes teaching SOOOO easy).

And it hasn't been hot enough to run our new Air Conditioner. I know I shouldn't complain because that's good for our finances, but since it's brand new, it would be nice to use it.

That's about all for now.

Hooray for AC (oh, and heat too)

I was reprimanded for not posting the update on the AC/duct work front....the AC and new furnace are installed along with some new duct work (free of charge)! It was finished on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday was hot and sticky and we tested it out. It was awesome. :) Now it's been nice and cool since then (I'm not complaining, just stating it) so we haven't used it again.

I won't go so far as to post a picture....that would be going to far, right?

Felted Tote

I just finished this Felted Tote from my favorite book, One Skein.

(No one is allowed to say anything about the fact that this was not on my UFO list...I started and finished it while effectively ignoring my other projects. Now the baby shower is only a week away, though, so the blanket NEEDS to be finished).

Since it's felted, that means you knit it bigger than normal and then shrink it (intentionally).

So, it started out like this:

It's laying on our ottoman, which means that it started off about 23 inches tall. It shrinks a lot. You can especially tell in the stripe pattern.
Here it is once it's shrunk, on the same ottoman it used to cover:

And here it is standing up, except the handles look dippy in the picture. Alas. I am not an exceptionally skilled knitting photographer.

Pretty cool, hmm?

Compost Bin

We've been composting for the past year or so, but we didn't have a proper receptacle for the composting. And now that we have wonderful stuff from last year that we can use in our gardens this year, we needed two compartments for new compost and ready-to-use compost. So, after the AC guy left at 8:00 a.m. yesterday, we got to work. It's amazing what you can accomplish by noon when you get started at 8:00!

We also cleared out another bit of space (on the left) for additional vegetables in our garden:

Did we mention that the rest of the tree got taken down? A man we refer to as "the crazy guy with the chainsaw scar on his cheek" climbed up that thing and then proceeded to take it down BY HIMSELF.
We helped our neighbors construct the replacement swingset this afternoon...the boys were very happy swinging away tonight.

AC Tease

Our appointment to have the new furnace and central air installed was for this morning. Yesterday morning the installer called and said that the units hadn't arrived yet and we'd have to cancel. I told him to call if they arrived, because we wouldn't be making any other plans. So lo and behold, around 6:00 last night he called to say it had arrived, and to expect them between 7:00-8:00 this morning. That meant that we got our sorry selves out of bed BEFORE 7:00 A.M. on a SATURDAY. They arrived at 7:30, but had bad news once they looked around...our current duct system is too small for the 2 ton unit. However, the Sears guy who sold us the system should have known that, so we're hoping that Sears will pay for it (the installer hinted that they should, and have paid for others in the past). KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!

The sun is out!

Hoorah! Here is a combined garden/knitting picture:



Our gardens are perking up with today's sunshine...some of the plants looked abused after the torrential rains.

If only the poison ivy would get abused and die!

UFOs

That stands for UnFinished Objects in the knitting world, and I've crossed the line from OneProjectAtATime land into the land of UFOs.

Here's what I've got started right now:

1. Baby blanket to wrap shower gift (that one has been ripped out 3 times to get the right dimensions)
2. Green Striped socks. My first pair of adult-sized socks! I have one done and the second is on the needles, but I have been distracted by my Happy Hooker book.
3. Eyelet wrap for Graceful Stitches. This is a volunteer project and I hate how it's turning out...I need to bring it in to see if I should continue with this pattern or not.
4. Crochet Scarf

I think there's more, but memory is being selective....I have so many things I want to start, but I should really finish those things, hmm?

dry

I don't want to jinx anything by saying that we've been dry during all of this flooding, but so far so good....it's pretty crazy how many schools have had flooding and that they're closing school for floods. We feel very fortunate that we're ok, but worried about our neighbors to the north.

P.S. 8 days straight of rain makes small children CRAZY AT SCHOOL.

over-punctuating

I just looked at the list of previous posts and realized that I have a tendency toward over-punctuating, specifically over-exclamation-pointing.

Then again, if it isn't exciting and worthy of an exclamation point, why even blog about it?

I just got a new book called The Happy Hooker. He He He. It's a crochet book...get it? Hooker? It's by my favorite Stitch and B*tch knitting lady. I've been playing with different crochet stitches. Nothing worthy of a photo, though. Hopefully soon.

I also just finished My Life in France by Julia Child. I loved it! I didn't have much (any) knowledge about Julia Child besides her funny voice, but I loved the description of France, the food, and her very interesting life. Also notable are the photographs her very artistic husband took while they were there...they're interspersed among the text and add a lot of insight into France after the War. I'm pretty impressed that I got it within a month of release through my LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY. (yes, I love libraries)

Now I'm reading Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her. I'll let you know what I think about that one....

If half a tree falls...

If only the top half of a tree falls in a back yard, does it still do damage? Well, of course it does! And we were even here to see and hear it.
Never a dull moment around here, that's for sure.

Thankfully, the tree did not hit the house...the deck (on the other people's half), though, and the swing set (the tree fell onto the other people's "half," but it's technically joint property). The falling tree gods were on our side, though, because the mom and 5-year-old who were out in the back yard were not hurt, and it fell four hours before the birthday party for their 11-year-old took place in that same backyard. So if it was going down, it went down in the best way it could.


Can you believe that's only part of the tree? You can see here that it was just one portion of the top half of the tree that broke off. We're thinking from looking at it that it had been traumatized at some point (maybe lightning?) and that weakened it.

It's windy again today and I find myself looking at the remaining trees with a wary eye.

I saw the yarn harlot!

Isn't that a funny name? She's very funny and she writes knitting books. She's on a book tour right now.

If you look closely, you can see me in a picture on her blog. I'm in the fourth picture down, standing behind the girl with the bright green sweater and purple scarf. I'm wearing a blue sweater.

New house color!

Look! Our house is a new color! (See earlier post for a reminder of how ugly it used to be) This is not its best angle, but it keeps drizzling at the time of day when it's best to photograph.
Here's a photo of the back with our new (matching) umbrella, courtesy of my parents. Oh, and notice the deck, of course.

It looks SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better!

Visit Extraordinaire!

My parents came for a visit! We had a lot of fun during their stay.

We went to a botanical garden:

We loved this flower, but it was the only unmarked flower in the whole place! Anyone know what it is?We went to the driving range:
We went to the Boston Marathon:

We played bocce and cribbage and ate ice cream and Easter dinner. All was very fun. We miss them already!

New Front Door!

We're very excited because we're getting our house painted over April vacation. We had thought we'd do it ourselves, but we got a really reasonable bid (and we only pay half because it's a duplex) so we're hiring someone. That will be an interesting experience...to have someone else doing work on our house, that is.

Just in case people haven't seen just how ugly the color of our house currently is, here's a photo: (no offense to anyone else with this house color, but on a place as devoid of architectural detail as ours, it looks atrocious)

Because we're getting the house painted, it made sense for us to replace our front door before the painters arrived. We'd already been planning to replace it, because once we replaced the windows last summer, it became very clear that the door was leaking some major cold air into the house. When we took the door out, this is the insulation we found:

That's right...it's about 1/2 inch thick, and 1 inch deep. What a surprise that it was leaking air (insert sarcastic tone).

I was laughing when I read on a webpage that you need to be ready when you take the door out, because it's very disconcerting to have a hole in your house that you can't close. Here is our hole:That hole is gone, of course, and is filled by this lovely door:It won't stay white for long!

Knit Along with us!

I've joined the One Skein Knit-Along. I love this new knitting book! It's called One Skein and all of the projects are completed with just One Skein of yarn. Novel theory (and an apt title), hmm? Anyway, I've posted some of the projects I completed on the Knit Along site. It's very fun to share with other people who are working on the same projects.

Such knitting fun!

Go BC! And Go School Libraries!

It's BC fever around here as they play in the sweet 16 tonight. They've started off strong...hopefully they can keep it going!

Crazy week this week, including lobbying at the State House on Wednesday in support of School Libraries. You can read about the event here:
MSLMA Legislative Day

It's pretty cool to go around the State House and go into the Senators' and Representatives' offices to talk to them. Hopefully we've made some progress!

Odyssey

So I just finished my class last Wednesday that was called "That's Just Classic!" Among many other things, we read The Odyssey. We read Robert Fagles's version (yes, that "s" belongs at the end according to a couple of different style guides, which was also discussed in class), which I highly recommend. I also highly recommend the recording of Ian McKellan reading it--we listened to some of it in class. Justin was kind enough to read some of it aloud to me because he's such a great husband!

There's also a great article in this month's Smithsonian.

Happy Reading!

Weekend mania

Well, we had fun last weekend at the Celtics game with people from my staff...the Celtics lost, but that means the Milwaukee Bucks won...so I'm not too disappointed. However, I know that growing up, the Bucks weren't that great...so is this a case of the lesser of two evils? :)

This weekend Eric is coming for a visit! And we just heard from our friend Liz that she's going to be in town too. So much fun in one weekend!

This is not too exciting of a post, but I didn't want to go tooooo long between postings.

New Armchair

This weekend we bought, of all things, an ARMCHAIR!!


















Isn't it pretty? We were at Filene's in Natick because they're closing that store (it was in the same mall as a Macy's and Macy's bought them out), thinking we would buy a knife set, or maybe an espresso machine. We struck out on both of those two things, but they had just marked the furniture down to 60% off, so we walked through. I thought we had struck out until we saw this one. We both went "Ahhh" when we sat in it. It's up in our bedroom right now until we get our new couch this summer (we hope!). It swivels! Now we just need a reading lamp to go with it!

P.S. the photo on the wall is from our honeymoon in St. John. :)

One good picture

Here's that Florida picture you've been waiting for...














It was a lovely sunset...my dad's comment about him missing it was because someone (a Massachusetts driver, of all things!) was busy running into his van in the parking lot. Thankfully no one was hurt and the van wasn't totaled or anything, but it certainly wasn't the relaxing evening we were hoping for.

That's also why we're greatful that neither of us learned to drive in Massachusetts! :)