Blockhead

I spent a pleasant afternoon putting the final touches on the 2 finished lace projects. Below is the swallowtail shawl before it is "blocked".
using the stainless steel welding rod for blocking wires, this is how it looks pinned out, this blocking step is necessary for getting the points to really show on the bottom edge of the shawl.

the whole thing pinned out on the guest bed, it was so hot today it only took about 15 minutes to dry.

finally, the finished shawl, lovely!because the shawl dried so fast, I also had a chance to block the Branching Out scarf. The shawl is made of wool so it was pretty stretchy and did get bigger after blocking, whereas the scarf is silk and didn't get much bigger pinned out, but it should lie flatter and show the pattern better now. Before, notice how it's kind of rumply.
now, pinned out the pattern is flat.

While I was in the house enjoying the new bedroom fan and AC, Craig and a contractor friend of ours was outside sweating over the new pergola.

getting everything nice and level, under strict supervision

about 75% done and looking good!

Rocking on

DH has been making good use of his spring break from teaching. The man has probably moved several tons of rock by himself in the last week alone!

He called me from the rockyard to ask what kind of rocks I wanted;

me: "the brown ones"

DH: "they're all brown, honey, they're rocks!"

me: "just don't get the gray ones, get the brownest ones."

DH: long sigh "OK, what size?"

me: thinking out loud "oven size is probably too big, toaster size is too small, how about several the size of the microwave?"

DH: "yes, dear"

God, how I love this man!!

The dogs are checking out the placement of the "microwave size" pee mail boxes. And Max, fancy boy, you just gotta love a dog who stays on the path IN HIS OWN BACKYARD!

with all the big rocks in and several days of spring break left, DH proceeded to move a couple more tons of rocks into the backyard. These are much smaller, but no less heavy in mass quantities. All the smaller areas are filled in now, only the large main area remains.

and now for the shocking conclusion to the weekend activities...........

The neighbors painted their house BRIGHT PURPLE! Of course, I am perturbed by this glowing color, it's so bright it actually hurts. So, I'm outside working with DH when the neighbor pokes his head over the fence to ask me how I like the color, well, what the heck am I supposed to say. First of all, I really don't know this guy at all, they have lived there for well over a year and this is the first time I've every talked to him. So our first exchange of pleasantries is me trying to be diplomatic and saying things like, "Wow, that's really a bold choice" and "to each his own", which anyone who's not a complete dumb bunny can interpret as "I hate the color and what the hell were you thinking, buddy". I'm not sure he will ever speak to me again, hee hee.

rock & roll in the backyard

this weekend we completed the PVC piping, the stub ups are now ready for the drip irrigation hose which we will lay in after the landscaping fabric goes down.

Craig picked up the big rocks I requested to add a little contour interest to what would otherwise be a pretty flat rectangular area.

and here he is sweating to get them into the exact right position, carefully supervised by Tex.
and I am very happy to report that the desert willow tree we planted is in fact, alive!

news from the knitting front

Oh, how I love t0 get fun packages in the mail, recently I got a yarn winder from Knit Picks and a super cool swift from a custom woodworker on an Etsy website, Hornshaw. This swift is really beautiful just by itself, that it actually has a function and performs that function well is a bonus.

I have 3 projects on the needles at the moment.

Swallowtail shawl

Still working on the shawl, I'm having a really hard time with the final pattern of peaked edging. I keep messing up the stitch count and every row is more than 200 stitches long now, so tinking back is excruciating. I have to start putting in stitch markers for the pattern repeats and lifelines every other row.

Kazak Star Bag

the next project is really an exercise in learning continental style knitting (where you hold the working yarn in your left hand). A while ago I purchased a kit, Kazak Star, from the local yarn store for making a small, felted bag. The wool has a good thickness and feel, the overall bag will be felted so variations in tension will be erased in the felting process and finally there is a small amount of fair isle pattern in this bag, which calls for 2 colors of yarn. The fair isle part will be good for practicing holding one color in the right hand and the other color in the left hand (this looks like the best method if I can actually manage it). So far I'm only working on the back of the bag which is just stockinette for 62 rows. Good for practice.

Branching Out Scarf

and finally my friend, M, encouraged me to do a knit along (KAL) lace project with her, so we are making the Branching Out pattern scarf, which has most of the common lace stitches and is still pretty good for relative beginners. I must say 25 stitch rows really are much easier to follow, fix and "see" the pattern than that darn swallowtail. I'm having fun with this project and I simply love, love, love this yarn, it's a deep, rich ruby colored silk with integrated beads. The picture doesn't do it justice as the color is richer than shown and it's got that beautiful silk sheen to it..

Guest Bathroom demo completed

The demolition part of the bathroom makeover is complete. We removed the giant mirror as I want something with a little more style and we removed the basic, boring medicine cabinet just because demo is fun and there is really no need for a medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom, it only encourages guests to be nosy : )
Then a trip to the local hardware store where I asked the usually very helpful clerk for a "yellow handled tile breaker chisel, like they use on TV", he gave me a blank stare and said "um, we don't have anything like that here, ma'am", as I was walking away I swear I could here them laughing. So, off we went to the big box store, where, of course, they had exactly what I wanted (you can see it in the background). Onward to taking the sink out using my fun new tool. I must say it looks much easier on TV, my poor little forearms were really aching after this relatively small job. I may have to get in shape at the gym just to keep up with the house projects.taking the tile back splash out really messed up the drywall.

so we had to replace some patches, once again I am reminded that this is why most people hire professionals for these kind of jobs. This was a frustrating pain in the patootie, as on our first try the wall board wasn't properly braced and actually moved when I poked it. This necessitated a couple of hours of careful measuring, sawing and adding some support pieces behind the wall. The biggest pain was getting the support pieces in by myself while working in a really tight space and making sure not to mess up the electrical wiring running through these studs. Done and done!!
my home improvement reference book says to do the mudding in 3 stages;

1. mud and tape, let dry
2. mud a little more to even everything out, let dry
3. mud a final time to feather the patch out to match existing, dry and sand smooth

this is all well and good, except when your patch is grossly uneven with the wall, I did step 2 about 4 time before I felt OK about it. Also, we had to patch over all the tears where the big mirror glue tore holes in the drywall paper. I'm kind of nervous about the next step of using the spray for the the final "knock down" texture, after all this mudding and sanding it will be such a shame if the texture looks weird and just doesn't match the original.

Mercer Caverns

We had a fabulous "Girls trip" last weekend to Calaveras County, home of the Calaveras Jumping Frog contest. We did not see a single actual live frog, however the area is liberally festooned with colorful images of frogs on the signs, streets, statuary and even the screen doors!
Our first stop was to the Chocoholics Divine Desserts factory, which we just happened to spot on our way through Lockerby. The actual factory tour was nowhere near as exciting as the high speed traffic violations required to get into the parking lot, in fact Mary was a bit overwrought by the amount of "interesting facts" Diane wanted to share with us.

I don't know why, but we always seem to end up at a rock shop on these weekend trips, so here we are again at the Stories in Stone rock shop in Murphys. Where they have some truly amazing geodes, up to 7' tall.

After staring at big rocks at the rock shop for awhile we headed off to the Mercer cavern to check out some really, really big rocks in their natural habitat.

This is what's known as a "vertical cavern", which for us meant a 16 story descent into the bowels of the earth with one of the worst tour guides we've ever encountered. It seemed as if she was in training to be an auctioneer and had to practice rattling off words at lightening speed. In spite of her annoying delivery style we did learn some fascinating facts about this cavern. It was discovered in the 1800's and has some really interesting crystal formations, like the "organ" below which the discoverer, Mr. Mercer, used to play for his guests. The formations being pure crystal, this must have sounded quite lovely, especially in near total darkness with only candles to light the way.

this cavern also boasts some of the rarest natural crystal formations known as Argonite, shown below.

finally we huffed and puffed our way back up the 16 flights of stairs to the sky side again (for those of us a little claustrophobic this was a blessed relief). There is a placard outside the cavern entrance which states that Mr. Mercer ascended into the cavern?!? I'm still a little baffled by this terminology, but if you care to read on you will see this was definitely the trip of strange and baffling signage.

Mary had a little trouble getting the map folded correctly, which distressed Diane as correct map "foldery" is so critically important to the map's actual owner.

map squared away we went exploring in Big Trees State Park.

There was some patchy areas of snow on the ground, but the weather was fine and sunny and a perfect day for tree climbing on, over and through.

another very strange sign hidden off the main path celebrating the Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo

Diane remarked that this fallen tree limb reminded her of something from a George Lucas film, to which I wittily replied "yeah, Star Woods", I do crack myself up : )

yet another baffling sign (actually, one of many on the twisting road up to Twisted Oak Winery). This is a winery with a distinct sense of humor and some pretty good wine to boot.

Our last stop was the RanchoNC alpaca farm. An idyllic place with about 50 alpacas, quietly browsing in green pastures with several really cute babies bouncing around exploring their surroundings. The owner was very relaxed and spent quite a while with us answering questions and grabbing up some of the little ones to show us how to tell what the actual yarn color will be off the animal, like this little brown guy who looks like caramel on the surface, but is really a charcoal color underneath

these critters are pretty shy, being prey by nature, but if you stand still long enough they eventually approach to check you out from curiosity, like this youngster below who actually came nose to nose with me and I have to admit it was a special moment for me.

Backyard in progress - lucky break

We had a very lucky break with the irrigation. When we started to excavate

to run the lines under the concrete walkways we discovered, quite by accident that some clever person ALREADY ran 3/4" PVC pipes underneath, YEAH!

This find probably saved us several hours of muddy mess. The new valves are now installed and ready to be wired to the automatic controller (wires already run through the attic 4 years ago : )