Off of my feet and knitting

I had foot surgery earlier in the week for a Morton's neuroma. It's a painful growth of nerve tissue that often occurs between the 3rd and 4th toes. I tried wider shoes, then orthotics, but it was not going to go away on its own and my options were cortisone shots, which wear off, or surgery.

Since I had to sit with my foot up, it was a perfect opportunity to knit. Yay for knitting! Last month in my knitting guild group I learned how to do the Norwegian purl, which is a continental style of purl stitch, and I really liked it. When I learned to knit I learned left-handed English style but I've been wanting to change to left-handed continental style. Now seemed like a perfect time to do it. I decided the perfect project for this was some ribbed hats for my "Hats for the Homeless" project.

 Last year I asked some knitting friends to help me make some simple hats that I could send to the Southwest Chicago PADS organization, which my in-laws are involved with. I chose the Pro Bono hat  by Angelina Fagan (instructions are here) because it's a simple 2x2 rib and it uses thick yarn so it knits up quickly. Last year I made and collected about 15 or so hats and this year I hope to make and collect more.

This week I knitted up two hats and am almost finished with a third. The pattern turned out to be a perfect project for learning a new way of knitting because I was able to practice both knit and purl in continental. I used some worsted weight yarn (doubled) that my in-laws sent me. I'm not sure where they got it but it was probably from an estate sale, thrift shop or was destined for the trash. I suspect it was someone's old fair isle project since there were numerous hanks of wool in 5-6 different colors. Judging from the tags on some of the skeins, I think the yarn was from the 70's. No bugs on it, but I had to wash some of it and some had to be discarded due to staining that wouldn't wash out. But I'm glad I was able to salvage it and repurpose it for these hats.

Now we landscape

Now that the inside is finished (I know, I promised pictures), we can move to fixing up the outside. Our landscape "plan" was evolutionary over the 12 1/2 years we've lived in this house. Some things worked, some did not. Many of the things that worked became overgrown. I learned the hard way to NEVER use Roundup on the dandelions in your yard - it looked like a dog visited and peed in selective spots. Then during the bathroom renovations the tile guys set up shop on the front lawn and it just went downhill from there. Oh yeah, one last blow...Mr. Gopher came to visit. But thanks to a hardworking landscaping crew, our yard will be transformed and our neighbor two doors down will no longer feel compelled to share "helpful" gardening hints when he's out walking his dog (he paid big bucks to have his front lawn redone).

Anyway, here are some pictures of the work in progress:

Big yard waste pickup next week.

The landscapers were really good. They removed all the weeds but left the good plants that were buried beneath them. These are Gerbera daisies (my favorite flower).

More evidence of the thorough weeding. They left all the good plants, even reducing the overgrown Agapanthus to a more normal size.

Some transplanted Agapanthus in a new location. This is some of the new irrigation line. In the past we used the black drip line most DIYers use because that's what they sell in the big box DIY stores. But it didn't work all that well and we killed a lot of plants as a result. Plus every year we had to fix "geysers" when the pieces broke due to being trampled on or becoming brittle due to the exposure to the sun. Hopefully we'll be able to keep things alive with this system, which is a simple soaker line.

Here's how it will work around the trees. This section of the yard will be mulched.

The backyard is getting some improvement as well. We laid this brick patio years ago but the edge bricks were not secured in concrete and they soon began to tilt. I'm happy we're getting this fixed because I always felt like I was going to tumble into the pond.

Back from NZ

I went to New Zealand last month for about 10 days. It was a fun trip despite it being winter there right now, which meant cold, rain, wind, and a late sunrise and early sunset. It wasn't the first time I've visited there and hopefully it won't be the last. Fortunately the nasty weather let up and we had some beautiful days.

We started the trip in Wellington, where my husband had been working for a month. This was the view out the hotel room.

We rented a car in Wellington and drove north to Napier, on the eastern shore of the north island. Napier was demolished in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in 1931 and the town was rebuilt in the art deco style.

Earthquakes and volcanoes tend to go together and New Zealand has both. From Napier we drove inland to the town of Taupo, which is on a huge lake created from one of the world's most violent volcanic eruptions. Fortunately for humans, it happened about 26,500 years ago. Just north of Taupo are some geothermal areas. Credit for this photo goes to my husband.

We ended our journey in Auckland. We took advantage of a beautiful, sunny day to take the ferry over to Devonport, which is where this photo of the Auckland skyline was captured.







New Zealand is of course known for sheep. According to this website there are 12 sheep for every person in New Zealand. So of course I shopped for yarn. I even prepared a list of all the stores to stop at along our route. But just because they have sheep doesn't mean it's a knitter's paradise. Wool production is big business so most of the wool is exported, but there are some NZ made yarns. The real attraction of these NZ yarns is that many are blended with possum. These possum are not the bald possums we have in the US. NZ possums have soft fur, which is used for clothing and accessories because they are non-natural pests that don't belong and kill native birds.

So I helped the New Zealand economy and helped alleviate them of some possum...although not directly off of a roadkill or trapped possum. The clerk in one knitting store described to us in detail how she baits and traps possum in her yard and often gets up in the middle of the night to get the fur once the animal is caught because she said you only have about 4 hours to do so. Nice. I would have loved to have acquired some possum fur for spinning (it must be mixed with other fiber though) but I never came across any for sale. I couldn't even find any wool roving except for a store display, which prompted a pet of course. I did find plenty of merino/possum blend yarn though, which was much easier to get through customs anyway.

I also did a bit of fabric shopping while I was there as well. Within a few hours of arriving, (and after a nice shower and change of clothes) I found myself in Arthur Toye Fabrics in downtown Wellington. I didn't even have this fabric store on my list and literally stumbled across it. Lucky me, they were having a 50% off sale in anticipation of a short move across town. I found two must-have additions to my stash: a beautifully textured cotton/wool plaid and a luscious high end polyester. I hugged my package of fabric tight as I struggled through the horizontal rain and gale-force winds. Welcome to Wellington in winter! Later I picked up a nice piece of cotton/nylon fabric at Fabryx in Taupo. Also in Taupo I bought a selection of fat quarters at Clever Hands, all with a New Zealand theme. Here's the entire haul:

Here I am in Devonport. Note what is behind my right shoulder and part of the reason I'm smiling. The other part is of course that I'm looking at my wonderful husband who was so patient and accommodating of my mission to seek out the yarn and fabric stores on our vacation...and buy more yarn and fabric for my stash.

There definitely are knitters in Devonport. We spied these two works of knitting graffiti:

I'll try to post more pictures and maybe a video or two, mostly of sheep out the window of the car as we drove.

Magazine overload

I have to do something difficult. No, I'm not getting rid of these Threads magazines (yet), but I am going to let my renewal pass by. It's not that I don't enjoy the magazine because I do. I just don't have room to keep collecting them, and frankly, I don't have time to thoroughly read them either. When the magazine arrives I flip through it and I see the helpful articles on sewing techniques, but I don't read them. I expect that I will someday go back to these magazines when I need sewing help and on a few occasions I have. But I'm also just as likely to reach for one of the many sewing books I own. Tauton Press put out a Threads DVD archive, which I bought, and perhaps they'll continue to make DVDs on a yearly or multi-year basis. With e-books and iPads and the like, maybe we're heading toward paperless books and magazines as the norm. Could be interesting. I'm not ready to find a new home for all of my old Threads issues or toss them in the recycle bin so in the meantime they take up room. And that's mainly the reason why I need to stop the flow of magazines coming into the house. It's not just Threads that I collect. All these magazines are starting to overwhelm me.

These are some of the knitting magazines, which I no longer subscribe to. If there's a magazine for sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, machine embroidery...I probably have at least one copy. Often I just buy the single copies but I've had subscriptions to many of them. Then there are the foreign magazines and don't even get me started on the pattern magazines. My bookshelf is stuffed with ten years of Burda plus a smattering of Diana Couture, Elena Couture, La Mia Boutique, Patrones, Knipmode...

I also have a large collection of Martha Stewart Living magazines, which is boxed up because I don't have the bookshelf space. That's another magazine I stopped subscribing to.

So my magazine subscription is now down to only two: Burda and Elle. I might stop Elle in favor of a different fashion magazine. I like to mix it up and try different ones. At least I don't hold on to the fashion mags - I tear out pictures that interest me and put them into a inspiration book...when I get around to it.

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We have four cats in our house but only one of them seems to make the blog on a regular basis: Felix. Today he took advantage of an open pantry and foraged for his own food. Apparently it's much more fun and interesting to tear into the bag instead of just eating the very same food out of his bowl. He works hard for that food too - meowing, rubbing, reaching up to the counter...but I guess it's better straight out of the bag.

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And finally...

The deck is about  95% done - just a few steps left and some sealing and then it'll be ready to enjoy.

Shower cat

Felix decided to take a bath in the shower.

He likes to roll around and show off his white belly. Action shot!

Taking a break during his manic "wash-fest"

And in other news...the deck is coming along:

Fabric delivery

It's been 3 years since my last fabric.com purchase.

You can read that statement as if I were in a fabric-aholic meeting (if there was such a thing!) or as a confession, even though I'm not Catholic. Between 1999 and 2003 I had what I would consider to be an addiction to online fabric buying. Boxes from fabric.com arrived almost monthly, sometimes more often. Fabric.com has a record of my orders and apparently October 2002 was a good month for them as I placed 6 orders. Oh my. I started buying from them when they were Phoenix Textiles and I was enticed by their super cheap fabrics to practice my sewing. They were $1.99 or maybe even $.99. If I remember correctly, nothing was over $4/yard (and it was actually 39 inches) in those early years. According to my account at fabric.com, my first order was in September 1999 but it's so old they don't list what I bought. The order number then was only 4 digits - they're up to 7 digits now. I do remember that the fabric I received was nice, too nice I thought, for practice sewing. I bought more. And more. And more. I have sewn some of it and some of it has left the house in one way or another through trades with sewing friends or gifted to my sister. Most of it is stored away in plastic bins along with fabric from EmmaOneSock, Denver Fabrics, Textile Fabrics, Gorgeous Fabrics, Fabric Club, and a few more. Not to mention fabric bought in "brick and mortar" stores. And then there's the travel fabric. Oh my.

I love fabric. I love the texture, the color, even the smell. I enjoy imagining what I would do with the fabric. The problem is that lately I've only done the dreaming part. Knowing that I possess more fabric than I can possibly sew, I have curtailed my fabric shopping to almost nothing over the last few years. I allowed myself to buy fabric on vacations as a sort of souvenir, and of course I couldn't pass up fabric shopping in New York City. Lately I've been making home dec fabric purchases since we need curtains and pillows and such for the rooms that we've redone. And one of those rooms, my sewing room #2, as I call it, is close to finished. All that remains is to finish moving stuff back in, organize...and make some window treatments, pillows, and bedding with the fabric I bought.

I guess buying the home dec fabric was like an alcoholic taking a sip after years of sobriety. I fell off the wagon. The cat is out of the bag. I stopped ignoring the emails from fabric.com.

So 11 years after my first fabric.com purchase, I've again experienced the little flutter of happiness upon receiving a big box of fabric.

Well, not much fabric actually. The pillows required the box to be large. The chenille and cording is for a pillow. The rocket fabric is for me, for a kitchy shirt to wear when I work on satellite launches.

But it is a slippery slope. After making that online purchase I have "sinned" again. I happened to be at Joann's to buy a curtain rod and I couldn't resist two pieces of sale fabric. And I've been looking at other online fabric sites and dreaming about the fabric and what I can make with it. Hopefully I will find the restraint because I already have a lot of wonderful fabric that should be used and not packed away in plastic bins.

But I really did enjoy the thrill of new fabric!

Tour de Fleece

Some of my spinning friends have joined a challenge to spin during the Tour de France. I thought I'd give it a go for a little bit; however, I can't spin and watch the race, so I don't think I'll be doing to much tour de fleece. But here's a look at what I'm working on:

Here's a look at some of the plied result: