i scream

today's ice cream is vanilla rhubarb ripple! sadly it's not solid enough to eat yet.



h has taken to chomping on the salty ice though, so is no longer encouraged to take part in the churning!

summer backyard breakfast

how happy am i to have been given some lovely vintage linen placemats that coordinate wonderfully with the napkins i made last summer?

blocking

blocking the entire dining room, actually. this is why i wanted to get it done before we went away.

a sweater for coraline

coraline has been dragged around by her hair for a while wearing nothing but a grubby old t-shirt grabbed from the beenster's "too stained to wear" pile. so, i thought i'd make her a sparkly star sweater just like in the movie. i'm knitting a strand of sinflex metallic in indigo along with some midnight heather briggs & little. the picture looks brighter than reality. i really like the way it is knitting up.



and, i got some silver sinflex to make stars to appliqué on once the sweater is done. here's my first attempt:



needs blocking, but not bad i think!

ooh!

i am on target to finish the leafghan tonight (yay!) and deciding what to embark upon next. i really need a new black cardigan (staple in my wardrobe, and my old one is no longer on its last legs, but quadriplegic), and i have 8 balls of knitpicks gloss sock which i bought ages ago for this very purpose. so, the time has come - but what pattern to use (other than something pretty basic)? i googled "audrey hepburn cardigan" for inspiration, and didn't find exactly what i was looking for, but found clothes on film instead. lots of ideas and inspiration. also, kitschy kitschy koo has awesome craft projects of yesteryear every friday. more yay!

booooo

okay so i ran out of staycation-posting-steam after spending a couple of days doing unpleasant paperwork and making unpleasant telephone calls.

but i had this great plan where i would finish the leafghan by friday night, so i could leave it out to block over the weekend while we are at the cottage. but! i cleverly left one of my needles at work. so, i won't be working on it tonight. or on tomorrow morning's ttc ride.

but still, i hope. i bought these on the weekend with the intent of using them as padding/protection under a wading pool, so soon they will be busy and not available for afghan-blocking purposes. and it's pretty big. this is a very economical pattern. i'm so happy, i even bought a bunch more yarn so i can make one for my mother-in-law (how's that for currying favour?)

staycation day four

found the leafghan yarn! yay.

day four saw a lot of sewing get done. i'd been monopolizing the kitchen for too long with fabric i'd pulled out for projects and didn't want to put away till they were done, so today was that day. i made a new summer skirt for me (where did summer go?) out of some of the lovely fabric i ordered from runner girl and another pair of pjs for the beenster. and, a new yellow cover for the ironing board (to match the roman blinds i made last month. yes i'm a dork). i also made a black wool crepe skirt out of an old skirt i never wore, and it's going straight into storage for next fall.

staycation day three

this was the first "real" day - the first day i was supposed to be at work but wasn't. i started by emptying all of the detritus from my closet (making, i fear, one crucial mistake - i put a ton of yarn away in storage, and i think i accidentally packed up the rest of the yarn for the leafghan in that bundle), packing away winter clothes, and sorting out potential garage sale items (including small balls of yarn and some old knitting needles!). then with all the additional closet space, i put away my suitcases and miscellaneous other items from the bedroom, and started going through our storage room for more garage sale fodder. it's all a big game of dominoes; once the storage room is sorted, then the jjunk that was in the dining room can be sorted or got rid of!

then after dinner we had a mini neighbour knit night, and that's when i discovered that i seem to have misplaced 4 balls of yarn needed for the leafghan. sigh.

staycation day two

day two was mother's day! so, i took it easy. the bambino made breakfast all by himself (well, he made the toast), we played, ate cake, went for a stroll, and i hit the halfway mark on the leafghan and picked up the stitches for the second half while watching some awesome old science fiction flicks (them! and robinson crusoe on mars. they don't make them like that any more). why have i never knit lace before? it is so much less difficult than i expected (i hesitate to call it easy because that seems like asking for trouble). and looked at patterns for the qiviut. so far travelling woman is leading the pack.

staycation day one

i've booked a week off work to de-stress and get the house a bit sorted. it's begun not terribly auspiciously; yesterday a toothache sent me to the dentist and resulted in an extraction (i got there at three-thirty and didn't leave until 6 o'clock!) complete with pain-killers and a mush-diet. so, i was not in a great mood when the painter arrived to finish the dining room. but it is so lovely now! photos don't capture the colour perfectly, but it is a lovley mauve-ish grey:



as opposed to voice-of-fire:



while the painting was happening, i rolled all of the lovely skeins cathryn sent me into balls, guesstimating the yardage on each as i went.



still searching for the perfect pattern for the qiviut! (i think it's around 280 yards of 16 wpi)



and just for fun i baked a cake: chocolate-peanutbutter-banana.

photos!

a quick drive-by post of some photos i didn't provide earlier!

first the dutch baby



with caramelised apples




and a few "before" pictures that don't quite capture the hideous brilliance of our voice-of-fire-themed dining room

busy busy busy

no photos today as i've misplaced both my mobile and my card reader! how? well, we cleared everything out of the dining room to repaint! it was previously an absolutely mind-boggling and eye-crossing concoction of red, yellow, and blue, which made my brain vibrate if i looked at it for too long. now it is pristine (although i think it needs another coat, and there's the trim, too). anyway, everything from the dining room (including tg's computer lab of doom) had to be shifted out, and now the house is an utter disaster. but not for long.

aside from that madness, it was a lovely weekend - saturday's financier turned out delish, the dutch baby (which is actually just a giant yorkshire pud if you think about it) was yum (topped with caramel-sautéed apples!), i did a bit more gardening, and made bbq ribs and potato salad with asparagus for dinner. now, after all the exertion, dust, and paint fumes, i am not quite able to breathe, but other than that all is peachy.

aniticipation

the financier is out of the oven, cooling - and i'm about to leave for dinner without even a taste! le sigh.



also made a big batch of lemon-lentil soup and bbq sauce today. i wish every day was a weekend!

le afghan

le afghan? or leaf ghan? either way, i've started my afghan (finally!) using spring leaves - a rectangular re-write of the much-coveted gail aka nightsongs. conveniently, i've done one pattern repeat out of one skein of lett-lopi, so i have a pretty good idea of how big it will be and how to get the most out of my yarn. whee!





other plans for this weekend: baking this (using up all of the egg whites left over from making ice cream), clearing out the dining room for the painters, and making one of these for sunday brunch!