hi again ;)
about a year ago, i started this shawl – the mystic waters shawl – but it’s been in this same state for about six months now, wow. i’m determined to complete it as soon as possible though because… she’s pregnant! this will be her first (!) and we’re all so excited for the new little one. the baby’s due sometime at the end of march so there’s time to finish this, but considering how big a shawl it is and that i’m knitting it on size 2 needles to boot, there’s no time to waste. plus i would like her to enjoy it in the winter months too, pre-baby and all, of course.
here are some other knitting projects i’ve been eying lately.. though considering how many i have waiting for me to finish, i must not (must not!) start any new ones until i get a few off my plate:
~ rose leaf curtains
~ paletot point de broderie cardigan aka very pretty cardigan
~ still by k. hargreave
~ deep in the forest mittens *
~ rambling rose *
~ little birds *
~ jacket in garter stitch *
~ fresco wrap vest
~ & lastly, either an elephant, bunny or hedgehog for my future niece/nephew – what do you think?
*already have the yarn. just saying, that’s all. some of it even handspun. gulp.
so, those are the premios – prizes – that i can look forward to after completing a few current knitting works-in-progress – but first priority is the shawl. it’s the most complicated lace knitting i’ve done so far just because the pattern changes so often i really have to read every lace line very carefully, and it’s not something i can memorize in chunks or anything. a lot of work. only for a sister, sheesh. ;)
happy november! ~
happy halloween!
i’ve been quiet on this site, but lots and lots going on behind the scenes ;) with even more to come, as it always seems to be. plans as always, i’m a planner, ha, but good plans and exciting ones. also, as you can see, happy times carving pumpkins, yay ~
comment [1]
{ posted 27 days ago, under busybee & the-outdoors }
toh-may-toe
i’m a fixer, a troubleshooter, i can figure things out and find the answers. that’s my job as a librarian, as a code tinkerer on this website and others, as the curious girl i was then and am now. lately though, big and little things have fallen apart. things put off for too long are coming to haunt me and worse. things that as a 20 year old i could excuse on ignorance perhaps are no longer tolerable.
i have to fix them, figure them out. there’s no other choice. why the drama? because it’s easy to think it’s too late, full of should-haves and could-haves that end up feeling like nevers. step by step though, i will fix them. and it’s never too late. not really.
proof? my tomato plants. i sowed them in march but didn’t get them in the ground until after the fourth of july – they were unhappy leggy seedlings by then and i doubted anything would come of them much less fruit. and now? if my computer hadn’t fried to bits this past weekend, i would show you some beautiful pics. it’s amazing. tomatos as big as my fist, tons of little cherry romas all green and sweet-looking, happy stretching plants reaching behind the limits of the fence, trying to touch the sun. looking at them in july anyone would have said, no, too late, this won’t work.
i’m running out the door right now, but those tomatos, that’s the image stuck in my mind.
happy september to you all ~ pictures once i get my computer up and purring again.
happiness = green things growing
nyagous tomatos fruiting, hooray. and blondkopfchen tomato flowers getting ready to burst into bloom – that’s quite a lot of tomatos-to-be! all the tomato plants were grown from seed by me, so i’m very proud of them. ;)
two california wonder pepper plants – the green pepper i’ll wait for, but the purple pepper was picked (say that three times fast!) wow, these pepper plants have really shot up – thank goodness i staked them.
then, two bugs in the garden – one is the hornworm (covered with wasp eggs that will eat it when hatched :Z !) and the other..? any ideas?
happy pepperoncini peppers – see all the red? and then a long view of my pepper and tomato plants – considering i only got them in the ground a little over a month ago, they’re doing reallllly well.
this cabbage is part of a little experimenting with fall gardening, so far so good, though i think the horses might have nibbled a little on one of the other cabbages. possible? and then a little slug is chilling out on some rhubarb leaves – the rhubarb is a originally from my grandmother’s garden on her farm, how cool is that.
some sweet mugwort grown from seeds planted near the stream – they look so small here, but i’m hoping they’ll shoot up in the month or so. lastly, my little harvest from today (plus some tomatos from volunteer tomato plants in the first raised beds from last year!)
happy august! i’m enjoying the summer but looking very forward to september ~ ~
p.s. two technology bits to add: i dropped bloglines and am using firefox’s add-on brief for rss feeds, so far so great. and secondly, i’m really liking google’s picasa – i love addings tags to my photos, plus it’s a lot more powerful than iphoto, for one. one problem is that it really takes up a lot of cpu, but it’s worth it for now.
comment [3]
{ posted 107 days ago, under the-outdoors & techno-babble }
regular horse-ly chore
i came across these pics on my mom’s computer last night, they must have been from five years ago or so.. i came home from l.a. for a visit and during that time i helped my dad fill the horse barn with feed and we took a bunch of pics, my mom was there too. anyhow, filling up the barn is something that needs doing every couple of months or so – depending on how many bags of feed we get of course. the two horses eat a 50 lb. bag of feed in two days at least, so it’s always the more bags the better. with the new little truck we have, with the small bed, i can only fit about twenty bags of feed, but with the old one, shown here, my dad would pack in 40, 50 bags. anyhow, here’s how it’s done, courtesy of my dad.
first, you back the truck up to the barn. oh, and see? bianca never missed an opportunity to jump in the truck. happy happy dog! in the third pic, that’s the ladder going up to the loft where we store the food. this is a later pic – my dad kept the tack room much cleaner.
here he’s opened the barn window and it setting out the lift. if he were doing it by himself – which he did for many years and which i’m doing, for the most part, now by myself too – then there’s no riding the lift down. in fact, i totally forgot he did this – i’ve wondered before if a person could ride it down, but i thought maybe that was dangerous. i’ll have to try it next time i have some help. ;) anyhow, if alone, you just have to run back and forth, filling up the lift from bags in the truck, and then running up to the loft and hitting the lift buttons, unloading the lift, lower the lift, and then run downstairs to fill it up again. it’s a lot more fun with two people.
finally, all bags are up and now it’s time to empty 8 or so bags into this chute that drops right onto the horses’ troughs. the rest get stored up here until they’re needed. also, come september, the loft also gets filled with about 50 bales of hay to last the horses until mid-march or so when the grass starts growing again. poppy was very happy to have help that day – instead of taking an hour by himself, we did it in probably 20 minutes. and yeah we see all kinds of animals and insects up there – we definitely have mouse families, a black snake said hello to me there a month ago when it was raining so hard, and lots of spiders all over the places too. !
and lastly, some horse hugs and sweetness. i whistle to them, when i walk down to feed them, as closely as i can remember his whistle being, but his was a lot louder. he could whistle through his fingers, you know what i mean? anyhow, they call back, and i love that, but i see these pic and it just makes me want to cry. we all miss him.
ok, so that’s one of my various animal chores around the year, and i love it. it’s so very satisfying to sit back and see a snug barn filled with feed and two happy chomping-away horses.
happy tuesday ~ ~
comment [3]
{ posted 121 days ago, under poppy & the-outdoors }