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Blue!
August 5th, 2009
Oh, I have so much to tell you about, but first things first. My sweater won a blue ribbon at the Fair!
For the past month, anticipating our renovation, we haven’t had much furniture in the house. In fact, the only thing you could see from the street was my spinning wheel. One day while walking with the kids, one of the neighbors flung open her window and called, “Are you a spinner?”
Why yes. Yes I am. And so I met Betsy, my two-doors-down neighbor, who is also a spinner, weaver, seamstress, etc. Of course one fiber artist can not meet another without also meeting their stash of fiber. Or their tools. As it was, Betsy was cleaning house, and somehow (I’m still not sure how it happened) she offered me a floor loom. And I, dumbfounded, but not being one to let such an opportunity pass, called my brother, and together we carried it home. (And yes, if you must ask, it was awkward and heavy as hell, but it wouldn’t fit into my truck with the camper shell on.)
Please meet my new-to-me handmade 8-shaft floor loom, soon to be my Mama’s new loom. For years my mom had wanted to learn to weave, and so when she and her partner, Don, went to New Zealand for a semester this year, she finally was able to take a weaving class. She is very excited about her new loom, as she should be, and she is going to come visit me soon so she can take it home with her. (So a note to all of you who can’t get your mother to visit–go right out and find her a floor loom, and hand knit her a sweater to seal the deal.)
But back to Betsy–she is also the superintedant of the fiber arts division at our local Fair, and she asked me to demonstrate spinning for a few hours in the display hall, so I brought my new wheel (the wheel that my mom and her partner bought in New Zealand and shipped to me!) down to the fairground and had a lovely time sitting and spinning and chatting with all the folks who stopped to watch. Of course that gave me plenty of time to gloat over admire the blue ribbon on my sweater, which I am still holding for ransom. I think the loom ups the ante on that.
Happily, my mom has decided to pay up with a visit in a couple weeks, and she is also bringing me two light fixtures for my fireplace wall, which I was unable to procure locally, so I think it will be a good trade.
After five years, I finished this sweater
July 7th, 2009
If you have been reading my blog for a very long time, then you might remember when I started this sweater a really long time ago.
Yes, over three years ago I started knitting this sweater for my mother. (I had the yarn for two years before that, but you know stash must be aged prior to use… right?) It required so much concentration and counting, that I only worked on it for fits and spurts and insanely long car rides when the kids were asleep.
There was a time when I thought child-rearing and knitting intricate patterns might be mutually exclusive, but I kept at it, and did most of my knitting at night, when nobody would bother me. And I’ll admit, there were times when I just put it away for months at a time, when it was just too much work to try to figure out where I had left off.
But as the kids got bigger I found more time to knit, and I even got them trained to not try to rip my needles out of my hands or out of my knitting when my back was turned.
Last week I met one of my neighbors who is a spinner, seamstress, knitter, and weaver (and probably more than that) and also happens to be the superintendent of the fiber arts division at our County Fair. She encouraged me to enter something in the Fair, but I didn’t think I had anything ready. Then I remembered the sweater.
I had finished the actually knitting of the sweater a couple months ago, but the daunting task of blocking, weaving in yarn ends, and seaming still lay ahead. (For you non-knitters, weaving in yarn ends is like fingernails on a chalkboard). It took three days to dry the sweater after wet blocking, and I finally resorted to turning on the baseboard heater near the knitting to speed things up.
And then there were yarn ends. O M G. It took me five hours just to weave in yarn ends, and I am not kidding. Seaming everything up was the real test, and thank goodness my knitting gauge stayed consistent over the years, because everything fit together the way it was supposed to. I did have to run to our local fabric store (thank goodness we have one!) to find buttons for the sweater. I found lovely pewter buttons for all of $4. Score!
I finished everything today by noon and walked it over to the fairgrounds. So here it is, Mama. The Swedish Thora that was five years in the making is finished, and it has turned out every bit as lovely as I had hoped.
P.S. I’m holding it for ransom until you come visit me.
June Saturday
June 27th, 2009
Olga and I picked as many ripe strawberries as we could find today. You can see the plants in the bed against the garage behind her head. They don’t get a whole lot of sunlight, but it stays nice and warm next to the wall, and I think they like that.
Of course, greedy as we are, we gobbled them up while Gavin was napping. (Sorry, Gav.)
Upon waking from his nap, Gavin did his Harry Potter impersonation all over the yard with an old broom.
This rose bush has behaved very badly all season, and finally it is starting to bloom properly. It was making these massive buds that would swell and start to bloom, then suddenly get so heavy that the stem would bend over and the entire mass of petals would drop right off onto the patio in a globe of pink, then rot. Now it looks like it’s going to explode into a bouquet right on the bush, and the stems seem to be supporting the blooms. Anyone have any idea what is going on with this bush?
I want to remember this day forever.
A day of rest
June 15th, 2009
After ripping out the carpets and associated hardware, my back begged for a bit of recovery. So I went outside and pulled weeds in our berry patch. And lo, we discovered berries.
And my goodness, they are perhaps the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted (and I grew up amidst miles and miles of strawberry fields, mind you). They are tiny and strangely shaped, but sweet and juicy.
After gorging ourselves on as many ripe berries as we could find (I think we got two each… I might have sneaked a third and not told anyone about it…) the kids took a nap at the same time. (By the way, that is Olga’s new rug from Ikea, a trip of which I shall tell in detail later, as it deserves its own post.)
Carpets are gone
June 14th, 2009
I come from a long line of wall-to-wall carpet-haters. Last weekend I put my newly-graduated-from-highschool brother, Jacob, to work helping me rip all the carpet out of my house. It took us two days to get the carpet out, the tack strips pried up, and all the staples pulled out (of which there were thousands). It was absolutely backbreaking work, but it didn’t even compare to how hard it was to scrub the original linoleum tile floor underneath. Getting rid of the carpets has also gotten rid of that stale, closed-up old house smell. Our allergies are a lot better now, too.
I’m going to put in a brand new, totally rockin’ bamboo floor this summer.
A quick "before" tour
June 12th, 2009
I really should be editing furiously, then packing for my trip to Wisconsin, but I’ve gotten so many requests for photos of our new house (okay, Mom, you can stop, now!) that I’ve put together a little tour. We are wasting no time with the renovations, so these photos are from a couple weeks ago. I’ll show you some progress photos soon.
Back to work
May 26th, 2009
Erik left yesterday to go back to Camp Lejeune, and I headed back to work today as well, after taking all of last week off. The weather cooperated beautifully, and we were able to get mostly moved into our new house (yes, we signed–it’s ours!). We love the house. It completely feels like home. The kids have their own rooms now, and they both like it. I was worried that Gavin would be lonely without Olga close by, but he seems quite happy.
I have to say, despite all logic to the contrary, I got really used to having Erik home. Gavin, who was still pretty little before Erik went to Iraq, really got to know his daddy well this trip, and now he’s wondering where his big buddy went. Olga understands the situation a little better, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Luckily, we’re expecting much more frequent visits from him during the next year.
Together again
May 9th, 2009
On Thursday, Erik flew home to us. It’s like someone pushed the “resume” button, or like I’ve been holding my breath for the past eight months, and now…
…now we’re all finally home.
