Better & Better

We were driving past the garage sale in the village late this afternoon, so we stopped to see if they had put out any more yarn. They had and there was now a sign that said that the yarn was cheaper than I'd paid this morning. I grabbed everything (except two skeins of Diana which I knew from prior experience looked like a rag after washing even by hand). When I got to the person collecting money, I mentioned that they'd lowered the price and I'd paid $1 a skein this morning. At that point, she told me to just take what I had and the earlier $10 would cover everything!

So here we have one 3.5 oz skein of Red Heart Soft Spun pompadour, two 3 oz skeins of Columbia Minerva Windspun, three 1.25 oz skeins of Roly Sport and six 2.5 oz skeins of Caron Wintuck plus whatever is already on the needles. It wasn't a bad haul with the first batch, but this makes it even better!

Garage Sale Goodies

A new garage sale started in the village today - actually an estate sale - and it had lots of goodies as the deceased had been a crafter.


Here's a photo of my loot -- I came home with two 5.6 oz skeins of Baby Coordinates in white, two 5 oz skeins of Wool Ease Sport in off white, & six skeins of 3.5 oz Vision by Schachenmayr in brown heather - all for $10!! Not bad as I know that the Coordinates goes for around $4 and the Wool Ease for the same or a bit more. The Vision is a discontinued yarn so I can't find it on line to see just how good a deal I got, but there's enough there for a sweater. I passed up a lot of other crafts like embroidery & stuffed animals as I know I wouldn't find the time to make them. Somewhere around here, I have two kits for making stuffed fabric chickens that never got put together so I've learned my lesson.


Then we headed south of town and stopped at the Dollar Store. They've started carrying a limited stock of Fun Fur & Fancy Fur for $1 a skein rather than the $4 or so that most stores charge. I picked up two skeins of each. I think that the Fancy Fur will go into hats for my grand-daughter and I'll mix the solid color Fun Fur with variegateds to make hats like the one in Gloria's pattern book. That should keep me busy for a while {g}..

On the kitchen front, we had chicken and homemade noodles last night. A couple weeks ago, DH found an electric pasta maker that mixes the ingredients into dough and then extrudes it through any of 9 dies to make all sorts of shapes. I've made homemade noodles for years using a recipe from my daughters' Great-grandmother, but this is the easiest it's ever been! It was cool enough yesterday and again today to make what's usually a winter dish. I just finished separating the chicken from the bones for today's batch and DH put the bones and skin back in the pressure cooker to continue making the broth. Given how we like pasta, I can see this machine getting a lot of use! Time to look for a sale on flour..

A Well Turned Heel & Other Goodies

I did it!! I turned the sock heel!! After almost a year of hemming and hawing, I got up my nerve and did it in less than an hour!


So I finally have a sock on the foot photo like so many other bloggers.. Doesn't it fit nicely? If you remember way back, the first attempt was too wide and I frogged back and reworked the toe to a narrower size with a more gradual increase rate. It seems to have worked. There are only 52 stitches around the foot - this is with Sassy Stripes and size 3 needles. I'm working the leg in a K2,P1 rib. I'm not sure if sock knitting will ever be something I love to do - the small needles are hard on my hands - but it feels good to finally accomplish something.


It's a little difficult to get a good photo at this angle but you can see that the heel fits and there is only one tiny loose stitch at the spot where I joined the heel stitches to the instep stitches - and there are NO HOLES where the short rows terminate. I'm so proud of myself {g}...

On to other goodies, it was a good week for garage sales & finding yarn..


This bag with a new 8 oz. skein of worsted weight, an almost new (after I frogged the original project) 6 oz. skein of variegated and a skein of fluffy yarn that I probably won't use came with all the tools you see here - 2 CroHooks, a set of size 8 DP needles, a size G crochet hook and a tool for measuring gauge & sizing needles - all for $1.


I still need to frog the afghan, but I think I'll have at least 3 and maybe 4 skeins of variegated when I do - for 75¢..


And for 50¢, I found 2½ skeins of Sugar & Cream cotton yarn to use for Cloths For Crisis. Doesn't that pattern look a lot like the Ball-Band one in Mason-Dixon Knits?

There are 4 other skeins that I didn't photograph - two different variegateds in worsted weight and two skeins of bright red sport yarn for 25¢ each. A very GOOD week!!

Thursday Already??

Yup! It sure is.. so it's time for the book question of the week:

Paper or Plastic:
Do you read e-Books?
If so, how? On your computer, or a PDA?
Or are you a paper purist? Why?

This one is a toss up. Reading for pleasure? That definitely paper, normally hard-bound books from the library. Reading for information? That type of reading is often on the computer as I Google my way though various sites and take advantage of the on-line access to Heritage Quest's genealogy library. I'd be interested in finding out more about e-books because the library is supposed to have a selection that's downloadable from home, but to date I haven't looked into it very seriously.

It's been a busy week. The garden is planted as of Tuesday - all 36 tomato plants (ok, I got a bit carried away at the green house and didn't really realize that I had that many until DH was digging holes for them with the post hole digger and I had to keep asking for more - more holes, I say!) Basil wasn't available this year in the 4-packs like last, so I bought three 2½" pots instead with about 6 plants in each clump. I'm hoping that they do well enough that we can double our production of pesto this summer. The stash in the freezer from last summer is almost gone but it's been an occasional welcome reminder of summer in the depths of this last winter.

Tuesday was also the day that my Amazon order showed up - Barbara Walker's First Knitting Treasury, Knitting In The Old Way, & Folk Vests. I was a little disappointed in the Treasury as I hadn't seen it before and from the cover I was hoping for all lace patterns. The lace section is nice but only a small part of the book with textured stitches, color work, cables, and other types making up the majority of the pages. I did discover that over the last few weeks of working lace designs into the K4 shawls I made a break-through on reading charts so that the all text directions in the Treasury seemed strange. Knitting In The Old Way has been updated from the book I borrowed years ago from the library - lots more information on how to design sweaters in various ethnic styles. The Folk Vests book is a standard knitting pattern book with some very nice designs - I'm especially interested in making the Chinese vest.

Yesterday, DH tried to add a sound card to this computer. Ok, I know I'm probably one of the very few people in the world with a dead silent computer, but when I bought this one it was strictly for doing a little moonlighting in printed circuit design here at home and a sound card seemed like something that I wouldn't need. Fast forward seven years.. I'm retired and the computer is used mainly for blogging, web wandering & working on my genealogy page - none of which require the concentration that the design work did - so having some music playing or being able to follow some of the on line pod-casts would be nice. Suffice it to say, that with the sound card in place the computer wouldn't boot because of some sort of conflict. Take the card out and it still wouldn't boot - "cannot find operating system".. AARRGGGG.. After a few tries, it did magically resuscitate itself but the tech with the sound card company ventured that the problem might be that the hard drive is going. Double AARRGGGG.. DH hooked up a CD-ROM burner we found a couple weeks ago at a garage sale and I've backed up most of the drives - at least the important stuff. Everything seems to be running smoothly if still dead silent, but it was a slightly nerve wracking day.

Today was garage sales - two huge subdivisions full of open garages.. Lots of walking, looking and bargaining. I found a few books for the grandchildren, but that was about it. It was awfully hot out with only a trace of a breeze. High 80s day after day this time of year are a bit unusual.

We got home about noon which gave me time to cool off and relax a bit before heading for the weekly K4 meeting. We had an almost full group today. Four of my knitting students were there and making great progress. Frances hasn't been there for a few weeks but she brought in five crocheted afghans! Gloria is starting a darling child's hat. Sharon is working on a crocheted afghan that is turning some variegated yarn that the rest of us avoided into something beautiful. And Jean is knitting a vest in a pale pink. It's so much fun to watch these friends enjoy knitting & crocheting. No photos today as I only completed one K4 shawl and the yarn ends still need to be run in before taking a photo. I have two other shawls started - I'm almost to the point on one where I have to decide which lace pattern to put in before the border so I started the second one at the meeting today - something easy that I could put down without losing my place when someone needed help. I have another rag-tag afghan about half done but with Boomer looking for more lap time in the evening while I'm watching TV, I haven't been working on it as steadily as usual.

Garage Sale Fever

Whew! I am totally worn out after going to two subdivision garage sales which really means about 25-30 individual sales, but it was worth it. At one of the last ones, about the time I was ready to wait in the car while DH browsed, I ran across 22 - that's right, twenty-two - Piecework magazines for FREE!! Here are most of them spread out on the desk along with a short stack of others that wouldn't fit. The stack of books at the back are new ones to send to the grandkids as soon as I find a suitable box.



I also found some other goodies - like a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in my size for $1 that look like new {g}..

Yesterday was our K4 meeting and I turned in a small rag-tag afghan in shades of blue and a willow green shawl with lace.






Once again, the willow green yarn doesn't show up well in the photo - it's really a very pretty shade of green. The lace design was borrowed from The Lacy Prairie Shawl in the Folk Shawls book. I'm now working on a turquoise shawl and another rag-tag.

I need to update my sidebar, both the projects and the reading list section. Right now I'm reading The Mephisto Club by Tess Gerritsen. She has other books out and I'm going to check for them the next library run. I also found The Golden Compass - the book behind the Daemon quiz from last week - in the young adult section. It's surprising how many good books - like Eragon & the Redwall series - are in Young Adult, so if I can't find anything to my tastes in the adult stacks, I wander across the lobby and see what the teens are trying to keep all to themselves {g}.

A Red Vest For The Knit Red KAL

I've been working today on the vest for the Knit Red KAL and have 8 repeats of the lace pattern completed. I think I'll need three or four more before I divide for the armholes. The pattern is Feather & Fan - very much like the lace I used for the fancy baby blanket, but that one has every other row purled.



Working with the flash, it's difficult to see the stitch pattern so I played around in IrfanView and tried to make the stitches show up a little better. I wouldn't mind having yarn this color!



In other news, we went to the first garage sale of the season in the midst of a snow storm. Yup, another couple inches came down last night and this morning as a long narrow band of snow went right over top of us again. It's quit for now, but later tonight there is more on the way with the possibility of sleet & freezing rain. Spring is supposed to be right around the corner, but you sure couldn't prove it by looking out a window here. Anyway, the garage sale had lots of antiques - even a large spinning wheel like the one we found in the attic out at the farm. Only this one had the spindle parts that Mom's is missing. The wheel comes up to a little above my shoulder - I'd estimate a little under 5' from the floor to the top of the wheel. They also had an old rather primitive yarn skeiner - all too expensive for my pocketbook, but fun to see. I was keeping an eye out for wool sweaters that could be dis-assembled for knitting slippers or felted bags, but nothing like that was offered. It won't be too long though before there's more than one garage sale per week and I can do some serious hunting for yarn on the hoof.