rain – Susan is Knitting….

2019 Temperature Table Runner

I pulled this out on Sunday and managed to add four days worth of stripes. That brought me up to February 24th. Yes, it’s a little bit behind in progress but, we can’t finish these until after December 31st anyway. No worries. It will be done in a timely manner, promise.

Other actions going on around here are varied. I’m working on my vegetable garden and am thinking of expanding the size for next year. When I mentioned that to my husband he said “go for it”.

We finally found someone to work on our house so yesterday the porch on the east side was almost done with the ceiling painting. After the tongue & groove is done then the beams are next. All of us failed to put the work request/quote together properly to include the porch on the west side which is identical to the porch on the east side. No worries. It’s just more time and money and we’ll get it done. After the porches are done then it’s time to move to the trim boards up on the second floor dormer windows. All eight of them rotted where they come in contact with the roof. The house is 14 years old now so some things need to be done.

I’m knitting. The baby shower was Sunday so all those baby things have now moved to my daughter’s house. There are more in progress for colder weather wear that they will get after the boys are born and going forward as they grow. I’m updating all the photos of the finished sweaters on my Flickr and in Ravelry.

Right now I’m working on Same But Different by Anketstrick (Fallmasche) which is a variation of Walnus (spelling?) It’s a top-down project which requires more concentration if you ask me. If you miss something it makes a really big difference. I’m below the armholes now so there’s shaping and design elements going on at the same time. The yarn that I’m using is a recycled 100% alpaca that I purchased from a seller on eBay that buys sweaters and unravels them. This yarn is so soft and would have cost me a whole lot more than the $20 something that I paid for it.

I’ve also got a Shakerag top in progress for those times when I don’t want to concentrate so much. I’m using two cones of laceweight yarns that I’ve had for close to 30 years. One is silk and the other is linen – both in the same shade of sage green. They were purchased from Robin & Russ Handweavers for probably around $5 each. The yardage is non-stop.

We’ve got rain coming again and could be here any time now. They say by 7:44 it’s going to be in the town that southwest of here. Since I didn’t go buy the stain for the porch beams I’m hoping for a day of reprieve between the paint and stain.

Have a great Wednesday!

It’s A Rainy Day Again

It did actually stop for a while but started up again as soon as I got my hiking boots, camo pants, coat, hat and gloves on and reached for the door handle to go out. We still walked partway down the driveway towards the mailbox where yesterday’s mail is still waiting.

Normally our creek is about 6″ deep. This morning it’s just about 5′ deep. Our culvert is 4′ tall which I know for sure since I can walk through it while bending. I’m 5’1″. I’ve been in there recently to clear out sticks and uck that was blocking it up.

Speaking of blocking the creek. Look way at the end of the water beyond the two trees that fell across the creek. There’s a man made dam there that’s the reason behind all of this flooding. I was home from work the day they brought in all the equipment and put in a pile of gravel and a 1′ culvert. With all of the culverts north of there being 48″ and they put in a teeny tiny one, we’re all experiencing floods. It’s annoying and our woods is always wet, muddy, and full of mosquitoes in the summer.

What else is going on today?

Not a whole lot. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. and don’t think I ever fell back to sleep. You know how all those silly thoughts pop into your head when you’re trying to fall asleep or go back to sleep? One that I need to just take care of is to get the dining table moved back to where it belongs. Yes, that was one thought in my head. It was moved back in August so that a pre-made kitchen pantry cabinet could be brought into the house and it hasn’t been moved back so it’s not in the right spot and one of the chairs has been relocated to the wrong spot over next to the peninsula. We all know that dining chairs do not work at a counter top bar unless you stack up a whole lot of phone books or use a booster seat.

After that thought popped in then the cats started pushing the pizza box around on the porch. You know that a dog never misses the sound of something moving around outside the house in the middle of the night. After the pizza box shoving stopped the cat fighting started in the woods just to the north of the house. I gave up around 6:00 a.m.

Antler by Ankestrick

Just to let you know that I do actually have some knitting going on around here the link right there above this sentence is to the sweater pattern that I’m just about finished with. I need to knit one more row of stockinette stitch on the second sleeve then on to my 8 rows of garter, bind off, weave in ends then off to some washing and blocking.

Oh, what to knit next?

A pair of legwarmers was one thought along with a pair of gloves with all the fingers and a matching hat using the rest of the black and white yarn that I’m using for my Antler. I’ll share photos here or you can just check out my project page on Ravelry. I’ll help you get there.

My Antler

One Day on Facebook

Yesterday I shared the link to a song that was played during Chicago Fire this week at the part where Kelly Severide’s (not sure if that’s how it’s spelled) dad passed away from a stroke before he could have further conversation with him and was still having bitter feelings towards him and feelings that he had let him down all his life. The song is “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics. You may know it from the late 1980s – 1988 and 1989 in particular. The single was released right around the same time that my youngest daughter Karen was born in October of 1988. My father had passed away on September 12 which was the day we were going to have my oldest daughter’s 2nd birthday party. Dad was supposed to come home from Harper Hospital that day to spend the rest of his time in hospice at home. Laura’s birthday is September 8th. When she was born in 1986 Dad was already starting to feel like something was wrong but he was still working and going about life as if it will all go away if he ignored it.

That wasn’t working. Mom insisted it was time for a physical. We all know that dads tend to avoid physicals. Two of his older brothers had passed away from the Big C and one was just that same year. Uncle Bill committed suicide when the C entered his brain. He had endured enough for one lifetime so he went into the garden shed after sending Aunt Betty shopping.

It took weeks for the doctors to figure out what Dad was dealing with. When the Big C diagnosis came about we realized we were all fighting with him. The tumor couldn’t be found at first since it wasn’t in a lung but hanging around outside of it right behind the breast bone. During the fight it went away, came back, went away, came back then refused to relinquish to all the chemicals and radiation.

During this fight I was pregnant with Karen after thoughts that an additional grandchild on the way might be encouragement for Dad to overcome and, at the same time, hard for him to accept since he was always telling me he’d be there for her birth but that he wouldn’t be there so I needed to take care of the child that was on the way.

Karen was two weeks late. When she was born on one of those miserably hot and humid days in October of 1988 we all saw what Dad meant and why Karen was late. She was waiting to meet Grandpa. When she was born she was not all wrinkly like a newborn. She was all happy and looked just like bald Grandpa and, to this day, 30 years later, has his easy-going spirit in life.

Laura

If I had thought that my first experience was an omen, Karen wouldn’t have been born. During my pregnancy with Laura we lost another Grandpa. Laura’s dad’s father, Walter had told me the previous week to take care of the baby on the way since he wouldn’t be around in September. I told him he was talking crazy. A week later we found out that he wasn’t talking crazy. A massive coronary took him. Walter missed out on meeting both Laura, Karen and Amy and Nick who were born to Michael’s (my first husband) sisters.

Laura is another part of my life that keeps me awake at night. After our divorce we were OK and she and Karen would spend weekends with us. Now, she works at avoiding me and is distant as if we don’t know each other when I do see her. I’m not sure what I did that caused this behavior and those who suspect that they know will not say. One told me that she took something that I said in the wrong context and, if it’s what I think it was, it was a comment on Facebook. There was a conversation about having children. My comment in the thread was that I had thought about not having children once, then I changed my mind. There were actually two times that I had thought it might be the wrong choice. The first was after her father’s rendezvous with someone else before our third anniversary and the second time was when my dad was fighting cancer.

Since she causes me anxiety I often wonder if I should just let it go and hope like heck that she doesn’t live up to the lyrics in The Living Years.