Better Than Ice Cream

Yesterday was a difficult day, and I felt the call of Dairy Queen on the way home. I decided it would make me feel worse instead of better, so I went to the Garden Center instead.

I was just going to get some good vibes from the flowers. I wasn't really shopping for plants.

...So, anyway, want to meet the new guys?

Origanum rotundifolium, 'Kent Beauty' oregano (my cell phone photo)

This plant is new to me, and it's stunning. It's an ornamental oregano, and besides having very nice, small, striped leaves, the blossoms are gorgeous. It's supposed to be a groundcover, so I planted it in the east bed to try to fill out an area while I wait (impatiently) for other things to get to be a decent size.

Geranium sanguineum 'Album' '(photo credit)

As much as I dislike annual geraniums, I love perennial ones. To me, they don't look like geraniums at all. I also planted this in my east bed where another plant died. I'm hopeful it will fill out like the one in the above photo.

The last purchase isn't a surprise.

Helleborus 'Ivory Prince' (photo credit)

I've planted at least three of these, and every one has died. I bought one from Burpee, one from the Garden Center, and tried to split one at work. Failure every time. I told the garden center person this, and she was confused. It's an easy plant. It's drought tolerant. She was trying very hard to be understanding and said, "Well, we've had two very difficult summers, and you're buying this one early enough that it should have no problem getting established by fall..." Right! It will be different this time! When I planted it last night, I lovingly gave it some organic dry fertilizer and said nice words to it. I tried to not discuss my previous failures in front of it. This time will be different.

Don't judge me. It's better than a Blizzard.

Foiled

I finished the last surprise gift. Click here if you'd like to see and your name isn't Rachel. I promptly cast on for another gift. It uses double knitting, which I've never done. The first row was pretty fiddly, and it took some work to figure out how to hold both strands of yarn, but after a frog or two I was trucking along.

When I'd done a few rows, I noticed something unexpected.

Double knitting is supposed to give you two thicknesses of fabric. Each side looks like stockinette, and one side is the reverse (in terms of color) of the other. Cool, right?

This doesn't look like stockinette. It looks like reverse stockinette. In non-knitter speak, it's bumpy instead of flat.

Huh.

To the Internet I went, where I saw a video of someone doing double knitting.

It was dramatically unlike what I was doing. The knitter in the video was moving both strands of yarn to the front or back of the work EVERY TIME she made a stitch, even though she was only using one strand at a time. Who would have thought?

I admit to losing my cool at that point. I frogged it, but then it kept getting tangled as I tried to rewrap it around the ball of yarn. I also admit to yelling, "For fuck's sake!" and throwing it across the room. It was at this point that Andrew looked at me with an eyebrow raised and said, "Maybe you should go change the laundry while I rewind this."

Yes, that's an excellent idea.

In related news, I'm knitting Andrew a pair of socks.

3-1 Ribbed Socks knit in Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball Starke 6, colorway 1289 1701

A Shelf and a Rain Barrel

We have a closet in our entryway. It's home to electronics that I'm confident should be recycled since we haven't looked at them in years, too many coats (How many coats do two people need? The answer, apparently, is A LOT.), and winter accessories. 

This winter, Andrew and I found that we only wore hats, scarves and mittens from the top of the pile. That's the only part we could easily get to without causing a wool avalanche.

This is dumb. I knit a lot of awesome knitwear, and it all deserves to be worn.

Friday I bought two $10 plastic boxes from Ikea. Andrew's winter stuff is in one, and mine is in the other. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference.




We had a rain barrel put in last summer. Andrew didn't like that it was balanced on a couple cement blocks, so he put it on some pavers. When he did, he asked me if I wanted it raised.

I said no, which was a mistake. I could only use a tiny watering can with it because everything else was too tall to fit under the spigot. I put off asking Andrew to change it because he had asked me, and I said no, and now I wanted him to redo something he'd already done...

Andrew redid it this weekend. See that green watering can? That's what I can fit under the spigot now. I may be a hippie tree hugger, but I am basically a lazy hippie tree hugger. There is no way I would water from the rain barrel in July if I had to use the tiny blue watering can.

Even though Andrew and I have been married nearly twelve years and have been together for over fifteen, I still sometimes am surprised by how wonderful he is. If I had asked my dad to redo something he'd already done for me after he'd asked me how I wanted it done... well, I wouldn't do that. Andrew didn't think it was a big deal at all. Each one of those six pavers is a 20" square, and they weight a gajillion pounds apiece. I couldn't even help put them in the cart or carry them from the car to the back of the garage. Andrew did it all with no complaints.

It's amazing the amount of happiness these two things have given me:

• an organized shelf
• a raised rain barrel

I suspect it isn't the physical things that make me happy. I'm lucky to be able to share a disorganized shelf and a yard with Andrew, and I'm even luckier that we can improve them together.

I hope you have this kind of happiness in your life as well.

Just Start

When doing something new, it is almost always helpful to do some research before you begin. But there is such a thing as too much research.

That's where I find myself with reference to quilting. I've had a home ec. class and maybe some sewing in mini 4-H, but that's about it. It's enough that I can thread the sewing machine in the required Rube Goldberg way  if I look at the manual for reassurance. It's enough that I understand the importance of backstitching at the beginning and end of each row. It's not enough to understand how to read a pattern. It's certainly not enough to understand what all the buttons on the machine do.

I reasoned that since I bought fabric I really loved and I was going to put all this time into a quilt, I'd better know what I was doing. So I checked out library books.

This was perhaps a mistake.

Partway through The Quilter's Bible I began to freak out. There is so much I don't know. I don't know that I'm going to be quilting enough to justify buying this book, but there's no way that I'll be ready for the binding instructions before it's due back at the library. I began worrying that I had made a mistake, that I was not prepared for this sort of gigantic project, that I should give up and stick to knitting.

I stopped reading and went back to knitting. After about 15 minutes, a voice in my head said, "Do you see what you're doing with your hands?" I looked. I was doing stranded knitting--knitting with two colors, one held in each hand. It's impressive. (If you disagree because you find stranded knitting super easy, please don't tell me.) "When you started knitting six years ago, did you think you'd be able to make something this complicated?"

Well, no.

What's the difference? The difference is that I started with a beginning knitting book. I started with Stitch 'n' Bitch, a book that has cartoon drawings of the knit stitch and holds your hand through a plethora of new skills. I started small, making washcloths with holes in them and dropped stitches. When I made a washcloth that came out somewhat square, I went on to something else.

I put down The Quilter's Bible and went on to another library book, Quilting 101. When I became overwhelmed with that, I closed the book and walked away.

I have learned enough for now.

• I need to wash, dry, and iron my fabric before cutting.
• I need to make all the seams .25". 
• I probably want a polyester/cotton blend for the batting.

I'll start with that.

It's not a big leap to apply this idea to the rest of my life. I need to learn what I can, but I also need to be willing to move forward even though I don't know all the answers. I have to just start. Sometimes I don't know anything more than how to do the first step of something, and that's okay. Just start. Figure out the rest as you come to it, one piece at a time.

Just start.

So say we all.

Paint Chip Art

I recently came across an artist on etsy whose work I love. I especially love her flowers, like this one. Then I saw someone who made art out of paint chips.

This weekend I made my own paint chip art. Here's how to do it in case you want to make your own.

1. Get paint chip samples in colors you love. Buy inexpensive frame. Borrow various circle hole punches. My mother-in-law is into rubber stamping in a big way, and she let me borrow SEVEN different circle hole punches. I had them all the way up to 1.75".

2. Organize your paint chips by color.*

3. Cut long strips of yellow and green paint chips from strips that have several shades in the same family. These will be used as stems and rays from the sun.

Made for my sister

4. Cut circles of different sizes and colors to use as the flowers. I used three different sized circles layered on top of one another for each flower.

5. Punch various-sized circles of yellows and whites to use as sun and cloud. Stick everything to the paper with double-sided tape.

Made for me

6. Put paper back in frame.

7. Look at often and tell yourself how awesome you are.

*Why? Because that's how God intended things to be, that's why.

Blackrose Socks

The Blackrose socks are completed, and I'm much happier with the yarn in this pattern than I was with Inlay.

Blackrose socks (mine ravelled here) knit in Berocco Comfort 

They were really simple. The lace chart was 8 rows and 4 of them were plain, and you only worked the lace on 17 stitches in each round and the rest is just knit knit knit knit. I love that the left and right are mirror images of one another. I think it's a detail that makes all the difference.

Don't worry, though. Inlay will have its day in the sun fluorescent office light. I'm planning to knit in once I figure out the proper yarn. I think the key is a ROUND yarn, so I'm thinking Blue Moon's Socks that Rock.

Just to give you fair warning, I'm doing gift knitting right now, so I can't post about it. It's pretty, and hopefully I'll remember to chat about it once I give it away... in September. If you want to see it and you're on Ravelry, click here.

You Don't Always Get What You Want

I'm hopeful that the quilt I'm going to make will feel like it is full of things I love. I think I've picked fabrics that will make me happy every time I see them.

I received some of my fabric yesterday. Instead of the city fabric I had ordered, I was sent this:

Timeless Treasures Mini-C7710 (pink)

Very funny, universe. Very funny.

Note: Yes, the seller is sending me the correct fabric. For the record, I don't hate this fabric. I might even use it in the quilt. It's just that the universe is yanking my chain by sending me fabric that shows the crafty tools I've had to work to accept as a good part of my life. "Oh, you're trying to be okay with being a crafty, sewing and knitting person in the same camp as the goose clothiers? Why don't we see how serious you are about this. Are you comfortable with fabric sporting sewing machines?"