Easter Mumblings

 


First up: 50 Snuggles made by our K4 group. I took them to the Oakland County Pet Adoption Center yesterday. Hopefully, they'll be used up soon as one goes home with each adopted cat and I'd love to see all the ones we saw yesterday find their forever homes. (Not sure why Blogger wants to shove the photo to the far left, but the HTML doesn't seem to like to be edited.)

Another lap-robe for the Ann Arbor Veterans' Hospital. One of our members is going to take the tote & a half of the ones we've completed to the hospital this week.  I'll take this one in tomorrow so it can make the trip too.

I found an unfinished hat from the marathon hat knitting session of  last summer & finished it. It will be the first of the 2013 "collection" as I switch from lap-robes to smaller projects for summer. Right now, I'm working on a new toddler sweater with a neat rust, brown & turquoise variegated for the body. I have a skein of matching brown I could use for the sleeves & yoke, but may dig around in the yarn bins to see if I have a skein of turquoise.

About 20 years ago, I found an antique quilt in a shop in Royal Oak. Because it was pretty tattered, I was able to get it for $10. There were about 5 blocks, including the one above, that weren't torn so if I folded it just right, it looked nice on the top of my refurbished antique trunk. I love the Carpenter's Square pattern & the colors, so I've been thinking right along of recreating the quilt if I could find the right fabrics.

Last week, Hancock of Paducha had free shipping, so I started browsing. Trying to find exact matches for old fabrics is difficult, so I usually go with something that's similar & looks old. I'm happy with the stripe on the left even if it isn't predominately rust like the original & love the acid green on the right. I'm not positive about the other two. While they're nice reproduction prints, I'm not sure that they'll work.  I still need to find the little pink stripe that was used for background in the blocks, so it may be a while before I can start - that will give me time to decide. And yes, I'm thinking seriously about getting back to quilting after about 6 or 7 years of only doing crafts for the K4 group's charity projects.

On the other hand, I found these two prints. I've been looking for ages for fabrics that are reminiscent of the pink roses on a brown background that I see so frequently in antique quilts from the late 1800's. Hancock had these two and they'll make great additions to my stash.

Spring Is Supposed To Be Here

Yes, it's supposed to be SPRING as of this last Wednesday, but.....  That's right - snow & way below average temperatures for this time of year. It's a balmy 20° outside at 8 a.m., forecast high of only 35°. All I can say is "BRRRRRRR".. We should be in the mid-40s. It's not snowing right now and a good part of the snow cover in the photo has disappeared, but there's more snow forecast for today & tomorrow.

I've been working on more lap robes for the Veterans' Hospital. One of our members took the last batch down in January and was elated by the response that she received from a staff member. He told her that the veterans loved these amall afghans.

 We usually make them wheel chair size at 30x36" - but she was told that they could use some larger ones up to 40x48". It's surprising how much longer it takes to make one that size.  This is my first one of the larger size - as you can see Max & Quinn thought that a lap-robe on the floor meant time to pose..

And to start a bit of a dust up.. One of the reasons that these photo sessions are few & far between. All three of these lap-robes are crocheted using the Box or Brick or Brain-dead stitch. Personally, I like the last name as after the starting row, it's one of the easiest patterns other than straight double crochet.

A New Year And A New Start

It's been a while again, hasn't it? It's come to the point where the vast majority of updates on the blog are additions to my Books Read list in the sidebar - 137 during 2012 thanks to the Orion Township Library's link to the Midwest Collaborative For Library Services and all the e-books available there for my Nook. In the entire year, I only borrowed two hardbounds from the Library itself and Max chewed the corner off a page of the second one. The Nook is much safer - at least he hasn't tried to eat it yet.

The big news of the summer was that my eldest daughter, grandson & grand-daughter came for a visit. Before that, I cleaned out what I've been calling the Yarn Room - where I hide out to watch tv, knit, crochet & store yarn - both mine & what I'm working on for our K4 group. Believe me - it didn't look this neat previously! Picture wall to wall bags & totes of yarn and you'll get a pretty good idea. Anyway, while daughter & grandson proceeded to Chicago for Godzilla-Con, grand-daughter stayed with us. A trip to the DIA and a couple library runs for books in a series she's been reading kept her semi-occupied. Lordy, I wish I had that much ENERGY!!!!

I spent a lot of time using up yarn scraps during the summer crocheting Snuggles for the animal shelters. Here is the stack of ones that I made plus ones that other members made that I took to the Oakland County Pet Adoption Center in July. Since then, there has been a delivery to MARL and a second one to OCPAC. Most of the ones I made were crocheted with two strands of yarn and a size P hook.

After the weather cooled down a bit, I started in on making toddler sweaters for the United Methodist Church's annual trip to the Redbird Mission in KY. This first one is difficult to see as the top & sleeves are knit is a blue tweed that almost matches the carpeting.

Max found a nest in another stack of Snuggles before they were delivered. Looks comfy doesn't he.

That clears out most of the photos I took in the summer & fall. Finally located the gadget I needed to pull them off the camera's card and onto the computer. In other news, the garden on the deck turned out so-so. The bags required watering every day & sometimes twice a day. Will have to rethink the concept. The IQ has almost 1000 miles on it - mostly driving to the Sr. Center & back. The cats are healthy - and BIG, when they were weighted at the vet's in November, the combined weight of the three came in at 50#s. Will try to be a better blogger in 2013, but can't promise because retirement is a tad bit dull. Oh, and my genealogy site - Dunham - Wilcox - Trott - Kirk - received an award from Family Tree Magazine as one of the best 75 sites on line!

June 2012 - Gardening

To start off, I'm going to pitch a b*tch. Google Blogger has quit supporting my Opera browser & it's putting all sorts of odd code into this post - much of it stuff I don't recognize although I've been writing in HTML here and on the genealogy site for years now. I guess I'll have to decide whether to continue here or to go elsewhere for future blogging. I have absolutely no desire to use either Internet Explorer or Google Chrome! But on to happier topics..

Not much knitting in this post though I've been steadily knitting more hats, crocheting Snuggles to use up odds and ends of yarn and have started making toddler sweaters like last year's.

First up, I'll bore you with a couple more photos of Quinn who is fairly photogenic. The second one is what we call "Quinn belly" or his usual pose when he flops down in front of us for a belly rub.

The roses are blooming again this month.

DH found these for me at a garage sale earlier this month & he's been finding quite a bit of yarn for our K4 group..

I decided to take the easy route to gardening this year after skipping it all together last year. I bought four 1 cubic foot bags of Miracle Grow garden soil & planted the tomatoes & basil directly into the bags after putting them on the deck. The large tomato in the corner is a Mortgage Lifter, then there are four Goliath & four Juliet Grape tomatoes.

Another shot of the tomatoes when I put them in the first week of this month.

They seem to like the bags - you'll notice that the Goliaths are almost as big as the Mortgage Lifter which hasn't grown all that much. We had a heavy downpour last week (think horizontal rain) that bent it over so we had to tie it up afterwards. I'll put in stakes to tie the ones on the outside fairly soon and will probably let the inside ones sort of sprawl across the deck.

Another shot of the Juliets in the end bag.. All the plants are blooming now though they haven't started to set fruit.

I'll try to include more knit & crochet stuff next time. The old Senior Center is now closed and we've had to relocate to the new Community Center out on Joslyn Road about a 20 minute drive. I'm getting used to the IQ - I pull into a parking spot until my driver's door is even with the back door of a 4 door sedan & the 10' long IQ is parked with room on either end. It has a sharp turning radius - it will pull out of one parking spot and into the second one down - kind of fun!!

Long Time No See (aka I've Been Lazy)

Maybe not so lazy about projects, but very lazy about posting. I think I just doubled my old record of four months between posts. Part of the reason is that I just keep making the same things over & over and it's got to be boring on your end to look at lap robes & hats when the only differences are the colors. Anyway, I started out the cooler days of fall crocheting more lap robes for the Veterans' Hospital.

This last one is knit. Our K4 group was given a number of lightweight coned yarns & I knit this one from five strands on size 13 needles. I has royal blue, navy, purple & two strands of black. Still the purple & blue seem to stand out most. Working with 5 strands of lace weight yarn wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done, so I was very glad to bind it off.

We had a request from one of our members for baby afghans for an organization serving families of Down's Syndrome babies in Michigan's Upper Pennisula. We were able to send a dozen including these two which were made from donated granny squares. Carol sewed the squares together & I worked a different color border on each. I only have photos of these two but we had five of them total.

Then my world changed thanks to this little gadget..

My DH bought me a B&W Nook for a belated birthday/early Xmas present around December 1st! With it, I can download books via our library from the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services and I've really been reading a lot - over 50 books since I got the Nook set up & figured out the download process. It's really great because when I finish a book, I can immediately return it for the next person on the waiting list. I've had a wide variety of books to read and it's much easier to balance the Nook on my knees while I'm knitting or crocheting than my old method of keeping a book open on my lap with a clothes pin. Only problem is that if I brush the screen with either my project or just the yarn, I can wind up on a different page so I switched to hats, scarfs & dishcloths - smaller projects that I can normally keep away from the screen. I didn't bother to take a photo of the 50+ dishcloths I finished because they looked so much like the last batch.

This first hat was worked in bulky WoolEase. The band is seed stitch & is worked sideways with the crown picked up and finished.

A hat & scarf set in a bulky boucle. The hat is knit in Quaker stitch & the scarf is simple garter stitch.

This crocheted scarf was made pre-nook. You start with a long chain & then work increasing numbers of triple crochet in each row. I used a narrow ribbon yarn in white. It went on our sale case & was gone the first day.

Another scarf worked in garter stitch, but this time I placed a marker three stitches in from one edge & knit the 4th stitch through the back to twist it. When I bound off, I let the three stitches unravel creating a fringe.

A couple more bulky hats knit in the round with wide seed or moss stitch bands switching to ribbing at the top.

And here again is my "go-to" hat pattern in various colors - I'm trying to work my way through the stash of K4 yarn left over from other projects that has accumulated.

You may have noticed that large orange & white kitty in one of the shots. Remember last October when I told about adopting Quinn and that he was one of the youngest & smallest cats to join our family. Well, he didn't realize that he was supposed to have already reached full size and has expanded like a cactus after a rainstorm. He's now around 20#s, up from 13#s & has grown in height & length as well as width..

And then there's my new "baby". They went & moved the Senior Center from here in the village to out on Joslyn Road about 8 miles away. I haven't had a car of my own since my 1988 Colt kicked the bucket at age 18. I wanted something small, so I've been waiting for the last year while Toyota's Scion IQ made its way from showrooms on the west coast to the south, to New England & finally here to Michigan. I think it was worth the wait. It's 10' long, two doors & a hatch with ample storage room when the back seats are folded down. Four star safety rating with 11 airbags & it's supposed to get 37mpg. The color is Hot Lava!!