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!