Archive for July, 2006
July 30th, 2006
We’ve got some duplicate stitched dots:
A collar and button band:
And some buttonholes:
One sleeve is on, and I am working on the second. I love how blocking makes everything snap into place, I wish I had discovered it sooner. I still have to seam up the body and sleeves and that’s it! It will be easy to do the mattress stitch, since the two-row alternating stripes line up perfectly. It was a piece of cake inserting the sleeve for the same reason.
I am not sure how I feel about the collar. I think it should have gone on after the button band. What do you think? I’m not going to take it out, but I would have done it differently if I had thought about it first.
The buttonholes are strange – there are 5 on each side of the loops, and then opposite one side’s loops are holes in the band, I am guessing to pass the other side’s loops through when buttoning. Now I really need to find some buttons. I should have the other sleeve on in a few days, so maybe I can find some buttons on line and have them by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, I have been working on a sock as my passenger in the carpool knitting. It’s Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and I love the color. It’s the same yarn I used for my Clapotis, and I bought 2 skeins so I can make a pair of gloves this summer, to take on my Vermont vacation in October. To go with the Clapotis that I am sure I will need in Vermont in October. Since we are only going to see the leaves change (and hope that they will after the crazy weather they are having) we are just going to be driving around. We will be stopping in Harrisville and Green Mountain Spinnery, along the routes we’ll take.
July 4th, 2006
Start with one backyard that has been baking under black plastic for 11 weeks.
Add 1 big truck that may or may not fit in your driveway after moving your own cars and your neighbors deciding they should move their cars too.
Add 1 cu yd of seed cover, still steaming!
Add 7 cu yd of soil/compost mix.
I said SEVEN.
Boggle at how you and one other person are going to move that huge frakkin’ pile o’ dirt onto your lawn. Get out the shovels. Discover just how bad it is to be so sedentary. Trade off shovelling with husband who is shovelling and dumping the wheelbarrow.
Enjoy the drink of the day, plenty of water with some cranberry juice to give it some flavor. Oh yeah, it’s only 9 am, and it’s 97F degrees in the shade. Drink more water.
Decide you can’t shovel anymore and start moving bags of bark mulch to their intended positions around the perimeter. Get bark mulch crumbs all over you, including in your bra! Stop working at noon, because you both are completely exhausted and it’s over 100F.
Get up at 7 am the next day and open up those bags of bark mulch. Finish the pile, which is even harder now because you burned all your muscles yesterday lifting shovels-full of heavy dirt. Stop at 10 am when the temp is in the high 90Fs.
Look at what you still have ahead of you, and decide to wait until the backyard is in shade before breaking down the wheelbarrow piles. Work until 10 pm, in the dark to keep the bugs from being attracted to the light. Spread out all the piles and try to make a flat lawn. Decide to be McGuyver and lay several cinder blocks on a tarp and drag them all around to compress the soil. Give up and collapse exhausted into bed and set the alarm for 6am, when Home Depot opens.
Arrive at 7 am at Home Depot to rent one of those thingies that you fill with water and roll over the soil to compact it. Attempt to install borders around the bark mulch edging, give up in frustration at the soil you started with which is like concrete. Spread fertilizer and seed. Cover with seed cover, using your expensive Tupperware Mix n’ Stor and 1 gal Pitcher to scoop out the steaming pile and shake it onto the ground. Get dizzy and stop sweating even though you feel like your face is on fire, while your husband continues to cover the seed and then rolls over it with the Home Depot thingy. Go inside and sit down and drink, drink, drink more water to see if you can get your body to sweat or pee or something. Forget to take pictures on the third day until it’s all over. Finally start sweating again, just as your husband is finishing up and is ready to collapse himself. Admire the hard work you have done, and hope that some grass will actually sprout instead of dying in the heat. Turn on the sprinkler.
July 4th, 2006
We now have a collar, and some shoulder seams. Not much for a few weeks work, but I was ignoring it for a bit.
I’ve been super busy at work with lots of later than usual days, conference calls to Japan, and general silliness. Plus I’ve been accepted into a program at work to get a certification as a Business Analyst. I am an analyst already, but only by figuring things out myself. This program gives you methodologies to use in your analysis, hopefully getting everyone in the program using the same methods and getting us out of our usual “this is how to solve it” mode that we usually jump into. I’ve already used some of the skills I’ve learned in class back in the real world with a new project that was sprung upon my group. The course lasts for 6 months, so I hope to learn plenty during that time.
Back to the jacket… I expect to put the button bands on this week and then comes the search for buttons. Most of my LYS are supplied with gaudy plastic buttons or juvenile buttons. I like smaller, Celtic styled silver buttons, so will probably be on that search for a while. Maybe the girls at my stitch n’ bitch will have some suggestions. There is talk of a field trip to WildFiber in Santa Monica on Wednesday, but I can’t imagine driving all the way home and then heading back north to go to a sale. I may be able to be convinced though if anyone knows what kind of buttons they have at Wildfiber.
