Easter Weekend

Happy, happy Easter weekend.  We've been blessed by beautiful spring weather...way better than we usually get for Easter, especially when it's early in the year.  So today we spent outdoors:  gardening, riding bikes, visiting neighbors, decorating our eggs.  So much fun.  I worked in my perennial bed, trying to get it under control.  I'm working in sections, and it's looking so much better.  Then I cleaned my garden shed.  Perfect for working now!

Oh happy weekend!  I love it when our little family gets to be outside so much!  Even though we were a little low energy after a week with some sickness and rough nights, we  still had such a nice day.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

My native honeysuckle, budding!

Happy Bulbs!

We did a little excavating in the garden!

Rhubarb!  Transplanted!

Beautiful cutwork from my grandmother.

Eggs!

Knit eggs!

Creativity Abounds...

Valentine's Day Banner

The sun is shining, the air is cold, the ground is dry, the wind is howling.  We have been inventing ways to keep ourselves busy indoors.  One of the coolest activities we've done is to dye play silks with Kool-Aid and vinegar.  Depending on what flavors you use, this can make your house smell very fruity, but is a great way to use a non-toxic dye for kids' toys.  It takes about six packets of Kool-Aid to dye a large silk square and three packets to do a smaller one.  Some of the colors are pretty potent though, and will stain your hands and clothes if you aren't careful.  

My husband spent yesterday in the garage putting together a soccer goal out of PVC pipe.  I couldn't figure out how he was going to make the net and imagined myself trying to weave something.  But he was very resourceful and used the cargo netting from our car top rack.  It's perfect!

Finally, today was puppet theater day, apparently.  So we made puppets out of tube socks, Styrofoam balls, lemonade cans, and dowels.  Oh yeah, and paint.  Lots of paint!

All the "silkies" drying!

New soccer goal!  The net is from our cargo rack!

Puppets!

Winter Knitting

It's winter, and I'm on vacation, so I've been knitting non-stop!  I've been planning projects and going through my stash and generally having withdrawal symptoms if I'm away from my needles for too long.  I bought a new book with the LYS gift certificates I received for Christmas...Coastal Knits.  I am in love...I want to make so many of the patterns.  I also bought yarn for a new sweater for me, Plain and Simple Pullover.  I'm going to knit it in a beautiful grey yarn from Palouse Yarn Company.  But for now, I'm focusing on finishing Christmas presents (yes, still!) and knitting for the plethora of babies expected in 2013!

Preschooler Sweater #1

Preschooler Sweater #2 (Matches Mama's!)

Inca Hat (From Itty-Bitty Knits)

The cloche I knit for myself on the way home from Bend!

 

Winter Solstice

 

To keep back the long winter's night, we had a solstice party with the neighbors.  We made sun cookies, and bright colored play dough.  Then, we turned off all the lights, and turned on the sun!

Getting Ready for Fall

Even though fall has been decidedly here for several weeks, we spent some time this weekend "getting ready for fall."  We went around the neighborhood and found pretty leaves and dipped them in paraffin wax to make a garland.  We dug up the carrots and planted the garlic.  And of course, we went to cyclocross races.  Fall.  We're ready!

Leaf garland...unfortunately it matches the brick colors almost perfectly!

Getting ready to work in the garden

Who says red and green and yellow don't go together?

The willows, looking pretty.

A rainy day for cycling...

 

Knitting Update

Unlike most years, my knitting did not taper off this summer.  I'm on my fourth sweater for myself, plus I've finished two sweaters for friends' babies, and have started one for my son.  

So first, the sweaters for me...

I made two short-sleeved sweaters this year.  Haven't done any short-sleeved sweaters before, but they knit up super quick and I think I'm in love.

I knit this sweater (Mud Season) in Cascade 220.  It's perfect for those fall and spring days when it's still actually pretty chilly around here! My only complaint is that I wish I had shaped a little more around the waist.  

Ok, this sweater (Rusted Root) has to be about my absolute favorite ever. I did shape at the waist, I love the yarn (Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool) and the leaf pattern is awesome!  Perhaps this would have been better knitted in green but I had just done a green sweater and wanted some purple!!

This sweater (Dimple V-Neck) took me over a year to finish because I didn't like the original neckline (with no border).  The neckline just hung open a little too much without some support, so I added the border.  I wish I had knitted in cotton, as it's not really a summer sweater, (my original intention), knitted in wool as it is.  I also think the sleeves are too wide, but I'm just going to take them in with an additional seam.  Wide sleeves are a chronic problem for me!   

For the babies, I knit the Tiddlywinks Baby Set.  One baby, a girl, got the t-shirt, while a little boy got the hoodie.  Which was no longer a hoodie after I got through with it, mainly because I was tired of knitting a sweater on size 2 needles.  Whose idea was that anyway? 

But I do love, love, love the pattern, and the sweaters both turned out great!  I added a zipper instead of hooks and eyes for the cardi because who wants to fuss with hooks and eyes on a wee babe?

 And now it's fall, so the knitting can really ramp up!!  Yeah!!

August Days

What fun we've been having around here!  My husband is getting excited about the cyclocross season starting soon, my garden is producing a ton of food, and my son is enjoying playing with all his new friends, especially our new neighbors next door.  After a busy start, we are enjoying a few calmer days as we watch the wheat harvest come in.  For some reason, I love the smell of ripe wheat in the fields, even though it makes me sad in some respects because I know the summer is almost over.

We've been biking to the farmer's market almost every Saturday.  It really is the place to see and be seen around Moscow, and oh yeah, there's produce and food and crafts and flowers too.  I think this weekend we definitely need another outing to the flower farm and the pool.  What other summer things can we think of to do???

I love tea roses, especially ones that don't require pampering!

Stawberries, tomatoes, and peppers, oh my!

Purple potatoes!

I "inherited" a lot more linen this summer.  My mother brought me wonderful cutwork from my grandmother's house.  This piece was one of my favorites; I love the colors so much!  It makes me happy to use these pieces in my kitchen, just as it makes me happy to sleep under an old, loved, hand pieced quilt at night.  I like to think about the hands that made each piece, and wonder what the maker was thinking as she cut and sewed and seamed.  But then I wonder, would I want someone knowing what I was thinking one day when they look at something I've made?   Sometimes I stitch when I'm angry, or frustrated, or sad.  I often stitch when I am very happy and content.  A lot of time I stitch to pass time when traveling in a car, chatting away with the driver or occasionally interrupted to take a picture, restart a video, or pass a snack to someone.  And sometimes, I only think of really, really boring things when I stitch, such as "crap, is this row 8 or row 9" or "should I get up and fold laundry, or just sit here"?

Lots of life happens when stitching, gardening, and otherwise passing time in the summer!  Oh, for a few more weeks yet of warm days and pleasantly cool evenings!!

Old Things

We have a hard and fast rule in our house:  no clutter.  If items are to be retained, they are to be used.  We have a low tolerance for knick-knacks (a.k.a. "dust catchers") and we almost constantly have a brown paper grocery bag behind our bedroom door to catch donations to Goodwill.  Of course that tactic is not without side effects, as a Goodwill "drop off" almost always results in a Goodwill "pop-in," but generally we are big proponents of weeding out the unnecessary things of life.

Now, I fully admit, I was not born having an abhorrence to clutter.  In fact, pretty much the opposite.  I have learned everything I know about the art of decluttering from my husband, whom (as I mentioned earlier), would rather be living off the grid in a yurt.  While that is probably unlikely, at least on a full-time basis, the ideal of that lifestyle does tend to lead one to be a minimalist.  

Learning to declutter has not been easy.  At times, I have rather painfully learned to let things go.  I have made difficult decisions.  But I have also learned that if I am going to keep something, I'd better find a way to use it.  Thus, we play with our post-war Lionel trains and use antique quilts on our bed and sometimes our nice linens get wine stains on them that have to be carefully removed.

So when my cousin sent a cutwork tablecloth to me that had been shut in her cedar chest for years, I knew I had to find a use for it.  As we still have a preschooler at the dinner table, I'm not quite ready to use it for its intended purpose, but I did find a way to repurpose it instead.  It now adorns the outside of my cedar chest, and lightens up our tiny bedroom in new ways.  

We aren't quite sure who made the tablecloth.  It may have been my cousin's grandmother-in-law, from whom she received it.  Or it may have been someone else.  At any rate, decades later, it is being used again!

 

May Gardens...

...are my favorite.  Of course I still don't have produce from the vegetable gardens (the lettuce is close) but my flowers are blooming and we've had a cool spell and I am happy.

I am also exhausted.  We have done so much work on the yard and gardens this year.  When I say I've yard work, what I really mean is landscaping.  When I say exhausted, I mean of the type that when your husband gets home, he takes one look at you and says "I'll do dinner tonight."  Generally I enjoyed every minute, but there were a couple of low spots.  I can't decided if the worst of it was accidentally eviscerating a muskrat while dredging the creek or transplanting a well-established Oregon grape.  The muskrat was grosser, but the Oregon grape left me covered in tiny puncture wounds that resembled a rash from a tropical disease on my arms.  My husband meanwhile has completely redone the patio, which involved hauling tons of dirt and trying to find places around the yard to stash it!

My Mother's Day garden--the north bed redone!

The infamous Oregon grape in the corner.

We are still not done. This is the pile of debris from the creek, as well as the wind storm last night that wrecked havoc on the willows.  I have a suspicion that I need to dredge out at least one to two more tarp fulls of creek detritis before the creek is completely free flowing again.

Meanwhile my husband still has to tackle this little project to finish off the new patio (a.k.a. my Tuscan plaza!).

But I also found some time to be crafty.  I have a tiny little obsession with succulents and I made this little planter in a cassarole dish that was given to us a wedding present but was cracked in shipping.  It's the perfect size for a table centerpiece!

I've also been trying to weed and thin the south perennial beds, but have not made as much progress as I would like.  It hasn't stopped the flowers from blooming wonderfully though!

One of the last of the tulips

And the first of the iris!

And then there is my little potager.  I am still somewhat in shock that almost everything (except the squash and beans) is planted.  This could be my best year ever!

Tomato growing in the wall o' water!

The workhorse of the garden.

Salmon swimming upstream through the garlic!

I finished up today by cleaning my "woman cave."  My potting table isn't quite as pretty as the ones I have on my Pinterest board, but it's functional and was made with love by my husband (Ok, it was actually his work bench until he wanted a new one and gave me this one, but he did make it and it is great)!

My succulent centerpiece that I made last summer.