The randomness of Wednesday

Wild kingdom regins supreme in our backyard.


Here's a shot of a squirrel thinking he hit the jackpot in the newly installed cardinal feeder:






Here's a shot of one of the many bumblebees in our yard:




Churchill is a lucky boy. Mommy couldn't find him a suitably large cat harness at the store. Dog harnesses don't fit him right. So, I crocheted him one on Sunday.



He hasn't tried it out yet.

Perpetual Saturday

I was on vacation Thursday through yesterday. We never did get to Door County, but that's okay since I was just there in June.

My vacation was like a perpetual Saturday. On Thursday Paulette, my niece Beth and I went up to Iris Fine Yarns and also to Yarns by Design. I bought this at Iris:

Such a pretty color. I am going to make a sweater with it.

I bought more shawl patterns at Yarns by Design.

Beth won out on the deal--I bought her sock yarn and size 2 DPNs. She wants to make lace socks next. Here she is with her nearly finished socks (they are done now!):

Her first socks!

On Friday, Paulette and I went to Fond du Lac to The Knitting Room and also to Woolgatherers. Both are on Main Street, nearly across the street from one another. I bought some black sock yarn at The Knitting Room to make rainbow socks with. I am going to use it with my Noro sock yarn. I bought fiber dye at Woolgatherers.

We also went to Patty's alpaca farm so that I could get some alpaca fiber. I bought some of Diamond Rio's baby alpaca fiber. He is a very dirty little alpaca. I picked about 100 grams (about 3.5 oz) of the fiber clean on Sunday afternoon. I washed it and it is now drying on a screen in our porch. Here are pictures:

Into the bath!

Nearly dry now

On Sunday we had an adventure that I would rather not repeat. We needed to get a new kitchen faucet. The old, probably cheapo one wouldn't shut off. And of course, that water appliance was the only one in the house with no shut off valves near the sink. It was running so much that we ended up having to turn the water supply to the house off overnight. When Paulette went to see if she could change the faucet herself, lo and behold, someone had soldered the faucet directly into the water lines. Sigh. We ended up calling our friend Kyle who came over and changed it for us. We now have a lovely Price Pfister faucet in the Savannah model from Menards.

It sure makes the whole kitchen look better. I hated the old faucet. It was ugly. It's exciting to have a sprayer that actually works! We also have shutoff valve for that faucet now. And, the best part is the faucet was on sale for $73 with a $20 merchandise rebate. $53 for this faucet wasn't bad!

Yesterday we just hung around the house. It was nice. Churchill liked it. I got lots of knitting done on my shawl--after I started it over because I didn't like how it was coming out on the size 3 needles I was using. It's now being knit on 2's. Much better.

Beginnings

Here I am at the beginning of another shawl for the year--I think that makes 6 so far.

Speaking of beginnings, I am off on vacation for a couple of days starting tomorrow. Don't know what I'll be doing. Door County may be in the plans.

Embracing my inner librarian

I bought new reading glasses over the weekend. Yeah, geekiness abounds here.



Shhhh-it's a library!

The retro look is in! These remind me of the blue glasses I had in grade school. Except mine in grade school didn't have the rhinestones, which I would have really liked then.

Here are pictures of me at work:

A little light reading.

Love the Library of Congress Subject Headings!


Paulette and I also went to the summer sale at Iris Fine Yarns on Saturday. I was looking for yarn for a summer sweater. Iris didn't dissapoint me.

I got 9 skeins of this Sublime Organic Cotton DK to make this sweater, the Surplice Lace top, by Gale Bunn. Probably won't be done this year any more. I am now knitting another shawl--the Norwegian Woods shawl and scarf, by Sivia Harding with Misti Alpaca Lace yarn in pale blue. It's going to have silver crystal beads along the edge. I feel the need to knit in color, since the last two things I knit were all cream color!

Well, time to go now. Love your local library!

Finally...

Friday. Finally.

I finished my sweater last week:



The sweater is pretty. I am not. This picture affirms that I need to start walking again and go back on a strict diet. Sigh.

Of course, others like to sabotage one's diet plans all the time. It's irritating and folks seem to take it personally that you want to watch what you eat. Why is that?

Well, that's all I've got. It's been a slow week.

Ghosts of the sewing past

While looking in the basement for crocheting patterns (yes, I am also a "hooker"), I came across some sewing patterns I had forgotten about. They also are flood survivors--they want to live!




This one is a pattern from 1994. I wonder why I never made this. It's a lovely pattern.



This one is from 1993.

The one thing that bothers me about sewing patterns is that the sizing never seems true to my size. If I bought clothing in the same size that I have to buy sewing patterns in at Younkers or Macys, the manufactured clothing would be enormous on me.

Another thing that has kept me from sewing is the lack of fabric stores in Oshkosh. Also, fabric is really expensive to buy. It is much cheaper to buy clothing on sale. Sigh. But then we all look alike.

Busy, busy, busy!

First, before I start, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to my sister Donna! Hope you're having a good day!

It has been a really busy week. I have had to go to something every evening after work this week. Ugh. I am excited that I get to stay home this evening! Billy will be extra excited. He gets lonely by himself, poor little guy.

Monday it was setting up the county fair booth for our Labor Council:

Pictured from left to right: Paulette (treasurer), me (secretary), Joan Kaeding (vice president), Larry Lautenschlager (president).

Tuesday evening it was the Worship Committee meeting at church.

Wednesday evening it was a United Way Board of Directors meeting and then Knit Night.

Picture from last week's Knit Night of Mandi Isaacson with the bunny baby blanket she made for a gift.

Thursday it was a Labor Picnic at the state Governor's Mansion:

Here's Paulette in front of the Mansion.

Here's me standing under the "Forward" garden arch.

View of the side.

View of the back (taken from the gardens), where the picnic was being held.

Aren't they pretty?

Public dining room.

Formal sitting room.

Sunporch.

View of the State Capitol from the shoreline.

The Governor's fire pit. Okay, there's a story here. As we were walking up the driveway to the house, I wondered out loud if the Governor had a fire pit like a lot of us do in our backyard. Paulette wondered that if he did, would it be a metal tire rim like in the state parks. Well, this wasn't visible until I went down a stairway to the shoreline. I started laughing because I didn't expect that I would see this. Some of my friends wanted to put a match in it, since the wood is already laid out for a fire.

The Mansion's grounds were smaller than what I thought they would be. I don't know what I was expecting. The gardens are off to the left when you come up the driveway, which is an ellipse like the White House.

I leave you with something totally unrelated to all of the above. Ever in search of new laundry aids, I found this in the grocery store:

I had seen it in a magazine ad. This works really great, better than OxyClean! The drawback is that there are only 10 little pillows per package.

Have a good weekend, and happy stain removal!