Easily entertained

I guess I am easily entertained. There is a story in the Oshkosh Northwestern today about the pavement heaving because of the extreme heat. (Read about it here) Usually not a funny situation.

One of the paragraphs struck me as really funny:

"Heaving was reported on U.S. 10 in Winnebago and Waupaca counties, on U.S. 41 south of Neenah in Winnebago County and on U.S. 151 near Beaver Dam. No major crashes were reported because of the heaves, however."

Makes one think about the value of reading one's writing before submitting it.

Hot stuff

You know it's going to be a hot day outside when it's already 86 degrees at 10:45AM. If you spend too much time outside today, you'll be sweating like my water bottle:




I was outside on my break knitting when I took this. Only because it is so freakin' cold in the buildings on campus all summer--a constant 68 degrees all year. Which is really cold when you're wearing clothing suitable for the 90 degree weather outside. Don't get me wrong, I like the air conditioning. It's running at home right now, with all the blinds closed. It's pretty cave-like in there when it's hot out. At least Churchill is staying cool that way.

Speaking of the knitting, my summer lace sweater is coming along nicely:



The pattern is Sonata crest of the wave tank top by Michelle Ciccariello from the elann.com website. The yarn I am using is Sublime SoyaCotton DK. It's nice, soft yarn--a little splitty, but okay. The pattern leaves a little to be desired. It has been a real challenge at times to figure out what the pattern designer wants you to do.

I have an adventure to accomplish on my lunch hour to do list. I am going to the hardware store to find new hinges for the kitchen cabinets. One broke on the weekend, and it's proving to be a challenge to find any that work with the existing hinges. Paulette tried Fleet Farm and Menards with no success. Replacing all of them isn't really what I want to do right now, so my search continues. I will be visiting Kitz and Pfeil, the True Value hardware store soon.

On the Churchill front, I took him outside without a leash Saturday morning. I set him in the front yard. Maybe he feels safer there, because his main focus was not being scared--it was eating the long grass, a really normal cat thing to do. He must have had a good time, because when I brought him in and set him in the front porch, he howled to be let back out. There's hope for him yet. I decided I am going to make him a new collar, since all the manufactured ones are either too small or what I think would be really uncomfortable if I were a cat.

Retrospective on the week

Is it Friday already? Well, it has been a long week. I guess Friday just sort of snuck up on me.

Let's see, what have I been up to? Oh yes, there has been knitting:

I finished this last night, blocked it on my lunch hour. Now I started a lace tank top. I've only got 4 rows done, so there's not much to show pictorially.

Paulette got me an early birthday present:

We're going to the early opening of the movie, "Public Enemies" on June 30. It nicely coincides with my birthday on June 29. I am taking vacation both days. On my birthday I want to go to Washington Island in Door County. I've been to Door County lots of times, but have never made the trip all the way to the tip of the peninsula. Should be fun!

We went to the art fair in South Park in Oshkosh this past Sunday. There was lots of stuff, but I only bought these resin buttons to work into my knitting somehow:

I haven't mentioned Churchill in a while. He's happy the windows are open. He's not so happy about the humidity. I suppose I wouldn't be if I were wearing a fur coat all year 'round like he is.

The yard is busy producing flowers.

William Baffin is happily blooming by the back door:

My Sarah Bernhardt peony is finally blooming:

And here's a photo of our first ever clematis flower:

We have had a lot of trouble growing clematis because the bunnies always eat them to the ground. Maybe they have found tastier stuff somewhere else.

Have a good weekend!

Randomness

On Friday and Saturday Paulette and I attended the Wisconsin Democratic Party conference in Green Bay. It was okay. We were out of there by 1PM on Saturday, which worked out well. We could get the yard work done. Anyhow, Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day. We have pictures:

Not the best picture of me, but whatever. I am still tired from driving back and forth to Green Bay. We did that from Thursday-Saturday. Enough already.

Nothing much else to report. It's freezing inside at work these days. I think it's really sick when I am so cold at the end of a workday that I am happy to sit in my hot car with the windows closed for a while.

I leave you with this picture of a seemingly contradictory message on this hair salon's window--are they open or closed?

Welcome Mr. President

Paulette and I got tickets to the health care forum with President Obama in Green Bay. It was awesome and really well organized for an event like this. In fact, I've never seen a political event run smoother. Anyhow, here are pictures:

The lines outside. We waited for about and hour and a half. At least it was a nice day outside!

Look, a sign from my high school on the gym wall! Sheboygan South rules!

Mr. President

Paulette, our friend Cindy Schultz and 1500 others

The President writes a note to excuse Kennedy, age 10, from school. I bet her teacher never sees the note!

The press.

Me, Paulette and Cindy

Ah, what political event would be complete without protesters? One of the protesters was saying that Barack Obama had a Nazi health plan. I thought that was a pretty tasteless remark considering the event that happened at the Holocaust Museum yesterday.

It was pretty boring until the President showed up at the event. No sharp objects were allowed--which meant no knitting. I survived-barely.

Number six

I have started shawl number 6 in my series of shawls. I can't get enough lace!

This one is the Leaf lace shawl from the book "Knitted Lace Triangles" by Evelyn Clark.

I have 3.5 repeats of 10 done so far. It's pretty easy.

Here's the Angel lace shawl all done:

This shawl was the first that I used my new blocking wires on. They are fabulous! It sure speeds up the time to block it, instead of pinning out every individual point on the lace. It's the best $20 I have spent so far on tools for knitting.

The weather here has been most helpful in getting a lot of knitting done. It has been raining for days now. The temperature right now is 54 degrees. On June 9.

The gardens are liking the weather. I hope the seeds I planted in front of the picket fence didn't wash away.

Vintage!

Last night at knit night, Patty brought a bunch of old patterns to give to the group. After folks took what they wanted, I took the rest home. Here are a couple of gems I found in my pile:




This is a Spinnerin pattern from 1958. Love the look on her face. What is she looking at? Space aliens, perhaps? Maybe she needs to cut down on the caffeine a little bit.





Here we have a couple from the middle to late 1960s. Love the purple onesie! The pattern is called "Happy time". If you look at the pattern, you get the garment on and off via a 16 inch zipper in the neck area. It doesn't sound to me like that would be a happy time if you needed to use the restroom in that thing. The red sweater is called, "Date time". Love that girl's big hair. Do you think she's wearing one of those "Bump It" things that they are selling on TV now in her hair, so that she can have "big, happy hair"? These patterns are from the Spinnerin booklet with the title of "More fun time: with giant Jiffy needles and introducing Jiffy crochet".

If you have a hankering to reproduce these items, let me know. I'll email the patterns to you.

Knit night was huge last night. There must have been 20 people there. Fabulous!

A rumble in the basement

There is a rumble in our basement this morning. It's a good sound. It means the new water heater is working correctly. This doesn't come without it's share of drama.

As you all read yesterday, I took vacation all day to wait for Phil to come and fix the water heater. He was supposed to come later in the afternoon, so I volunteered (oh, twist my arm on such a nice weather day) to stay home and wait for him. He didn't come until 5:30PM, so I could have gone to work. Oh well, I had a nice afternoon of knitting in the sun. Phil determined that we needed a new water heater. He couldn't get parts for the one that was down there, the one he called a 'tweener. Apparently that model was only produced for a few months last year and parts are hard to come by. So, Phil got it all installed by 7PM. We could eat and go to the grocery store then. But........it wasn't fixed all the way. We were keeping an eye on the new one. When Paulette and I checked the water heater at 9PM, there was a growing puddle by the new water heater. Sigh. I went down to see what the problem was. Phil had not fully soldered the hot water connection to the kitchen and the join was leaking. So, we ended up calling the plumbers--again. A new guy named Keith or some other name that begins with the letter "K" came over at 10:10PM. He was there until 11:15PM. He said that Phil would hear about it today. He had no sympathy for Phil, since the new guy said he had spent most of the day in a crawl space (yuck).

The good news is, that $110 we spent on a 10 year parts and labor warranty came in very handy, since this cost us $0 for all three calls yesterday. It's the best money we ever spent on something house-related!

Waiting for Phil

Our water heater has decided to take a little vacation today. Phil was here this morning to see what it's problem was. At least we could take showers after that visit. :) Unfortunately, it's still not working. Phil has to come back. The good news is that last year when we had to get this one because of the flooding, we bought a 10 year warranty. We'll soon see how good the warranty is.

While I'm home on vacation waiting for him, my camera has been busy:

I bought this yarn on Saturday to make a shawl to go with the summer sweater I'm going to knit soon. It's nice that $16 can buy you a week or two of fun time.

We got a lot done in the yard yesterday, including planting my windowbox. It's so pretty. I love the internet for giving me this pattern for the box. And I did it all without power tools (well, except for the drill). It was my first experience using a coping saw. Those blades are NOT fun to load in the saw.

The irises are blooming in the yard now:

The peony in the front of the house is starting to open:

I bought these cute solar lights at Fleet Farm:

I have 1 repeat to knit on my shawl and then the border and it's done!

Oh yeah, we also got Churchill to be outside boy for about 15 minutes on Friday evening. He was okay until he got scared of something he smelled outside and started to get growly. It's a start!