It wasn't horse shoes

I came close, but not close enough, to finishing spinning the Giant Batt goal and winning a yellow shirt. Using my nifty index card progress system, I got to 43/16ths. The goal was 48/16ths, so I "won" a red shirt. Kind of like winning green ribbons in 4-H. LOL!

Currently on the bobbin is 1 ounce of plied Sunset spun from the fold. Currently in the Kate are 3 ounces ditto. I found out in the wee hours of this morning that it takes a LOT longer to ply fine singles! And look at the striping on the singles turning into Trek-like yarn!


And previously un-posted, the finished 3rd quarter:


Sport weight (on average!) Sunset spun long draw with the many colors blending as they came into the drafting triangle. Very soft and squishy. There's 292 yards of beeyoutiful yarn showing off in my Russian Sage. I understand now why spinners talk about keeping some yarns nearby for cuddling.

I didn't kill it after all

The cantaloupe seedlings have survived the inadvertent drought. You can see them in the foreground here. Please ignore my misspelling!


Note also the yellow zucchini blossom! There are many more that should turn soon if you look closely.

Neighbor Louise gave me some extra plants she started from seed: a tomato, a couple little cucumbers, and a half dozen more zucchinis. I need to drag out the planters and get busy. After I eat some more raspberries and strawberries from her garden that she gifted me yesterday!

Wooly Garden and Triangular Dolly

Sometimes I get a kick out of being weird. Well, most of the time. LOL For example, my vegetable garden started out on wheels. Now it's on the old pickanick (remember Yogi?) table where it will be easy to find those baby zucchini before they become monster-sized.


After planting a zucchini, several lemon cucumbers, and a cantaloupe (which I hope will recover from my letting it dry up too much) in potting soil and compost, I covered the dirt with wool.

What! you say? Wasting wool on gardening? Not really. That wool wasn't going to do anyone any good for crafting anything nice. The batt was dyed with something that bleeds profusely even after a dozen washes. It was also felted, probably accidentally judging by the various thicknesses and holes in it. As mulch, it will hopefully be keeping the soil moist and the roots warm. Water flows right through. It was easy to install.


See those buds? Baby courgette will hopefully follow.

I mentioned wheels. Because I did nearly everything bass ackwards, I had the washtub planted before I moved the table to the best location. So the washtub was on wheels for a while so I could move it around easily. The wheels? An invention of my own:


Three salvaged swivel casters pinning three sticks into a triangle. The sticks are about 20 x 1 x .7 inches with holes in both ends. The holes are barely big enough for the caster stems, and the slight angling caused by the over/under layering of the sticks puts just enough pressure on that it stays together. I hope. I did play it safe and wedged a small nail alongside each stem. Have you noticed how it looks kind of like a recycle symbol? LOL This simple little project definitely qualifies as Reduce (back strain) and Reuse (sticks, casters).

Now that the wash tub is on the picnic table (thanks to Louise and Mattie who went for a walk and passed just in time to help lift it onto the table), my triangular dolly is under a stack of tires. It is so much easier to move stuff around with wheels!

Poison Oak!

My neighbor, an nice young man who bought the little house next door, got into some poison oak that lurks quietly in the line of lilacs and other vegetation on the boundary between our properties. It was bad enough he missed some work. So he dug it up.

The other day he revealed it's BAAAACK and showed it to me.



See it being sneaky and hiding near the hawthorne sprouts? What's funny|weird|unsurprising is that in 22 years I've never had trouble with the poison oak. What does that say about my yard maintenacne habits? LOL

MS3 Swatch #6 aka Too Much Time on My Hands

Is that a pun?

I knit another MS3 swatch last night, this time on size 4 US vintage plastic Boye needles with scooped tips. Although technically not a pair as one is blue and the other white, they were nice: light, smooth, and sticky enough they didn't fall out every other stitch. Here's the swatch complete with imperfections caused by PBS viewing:


The lower section is knit with two strands and the upper with one. Both are pretty fluid. I was worried about breaking the single strand as I knit, but that didn't happen. Damn. I suspect I'm going to have to knit the stole on one strand of the gray mystery wool. I never would have thunk it. I can blame Jan, a knitter/weaver/seamstress I met yesterday who was knitting a shawl of what looked a lot like my gray mystery wool (only a very pretty autumn-colored variegated yarn/thread). Shoot. If she can do that, so can I. LOL What do YOU think?

The sunlight streaming through my kitchen window as I immortalized the new swatch was hitting my window sill garden. Look, African violet bloom!


And my 2007 primrose, currently on its 4th and 5th (see the bud in the center?) round of blooms.

Every spring I splurge 79 cents on a primrose for my kitchen window. Some years they even survive to bloom again 12 months later. Such a deal!