A Little Yarn On The Side

Now that the party is over, I'm caught up on the canning, and the garden is going to have to get along without me until we drop below 100, I am concentrating on my hip again, so this morning I went down to the gym for some weight lifting and some pool walking.  I've decided that it must be something about being almost naked around a bunch of strangers that really brings out the best in people, because I always meet such nice people when I'm in the pool.  Today was Wilma, who is 82 and who goes to the gym 6 days a week.  While we were talking, another woman showed up who has had both legs amputated below the knee and who is apparently a Monday-Wednesday-Friday regular.  I think any excuse I can come up with for not exercising has just been annihilated, so I'm going to drag my sorry self there again tomorrow morning.  After spending time with them, I came home determined to tackle that blasted table runner and stitched the remaining red ribbons: and almost ...

We had a fabulous time last night and got to catch up with lots of great people.  I'm pretty wiped out, but I have to show you this: A friend of ours does portraits for everyone when they turn 50, so this is Andy with the one she did for him.  It's hard to blow it up enough to see, but she gave him a mandolin earring, and reflected in one of the lenses on the glasses is a ball of yarn and needles to represent me, and on the other side is a cat just peaking over the edge.  It's wonderful--we had to hang it up first thing this morning.  Don't you just love it when people share their creativity?  I just love this picture. Today Andy went out with a friend to listen to some blues, but I am resting and staying well away from the heat.  I don't know why barbecuing is so popular in the summer.  It was over 100 last night, and bright bulb that I am, I had invited everyone over for barbecued hamburgers and sausages with a selection of my homemade mustards...

We're having a party for Andy's 50th birthday tomorrow, so things have been a bit busy around here, but there has been some crafting! First, R obin had suggested pinking shears as a way to rescue the second frog blanket,  so even though it's a completely lame project (piece of fleece with pinked edges), I'm counting it as a finished project: When it has an intended recipient, I'll embroider the name on it to spiff it up a bit.  I could have left it as a bigger blanket and let my two oldest nieces duke it out over the frogs, but the baby gift bin was running very, very low lately. I also finished an almost-identical pair of socks for me!  Really, I gave up trying to get self-striping yarns to ever really match, but I take full credit when they match out of sheer dumb luck.  I bought this yarn while still living at my old house, so that puts it as at least 8 years in the stash, and there's something always a bit thrilling about using up Deep Stash.  ...

And I sort of got to use the new thread chest.  I tried, at any rate.  A friend of ours had a birthday Wednesday, and his wife surprised him with a dobro (resonator guitar) .  I was excited because I knew I had an embroidery design of one of them, and I hadn't made a music bag for him yet.  After a little brainstorming for something funny to say, I came up with Some days I crack myself up--though it could be the heat as it's been 100 degrees or so for the last several days and it really isn't that funny.  At any rate, the really exciting thing about this design was that it was laid out in Madeira colors--which I now have!  Usually, I have to sit down and go through each color online because my software imports the color numbers as belonging to Sulky, so this company's designs come through as a bizarre array of purples and oranges.  But I had the color chart!  So, after fixing it on screen so I could see it clearly, I pulled open the "warm" ...

Ideally, yesterday I would have had a basket all neatly filled with what I plan to make between now and August 31.  However, on Saturday we went to a Harvest Party at one of the local-ish orchards and wineries, and they had a wonderful variety of apricots that I hadn't tried before.  In general, I don't care much for apricots compared to other fruit as the things in stores are pretty dry and flavorless, but these were quite wonderful, so being me, we bought a box of them.  Which explains why I haven't gotten my basket done this morning either: though I'm thinking I should get a special gold star or something for 18 jars of apricot jam in two days.  And, in case you were wondering, 16 pounds of apricots makes significantly more than 18 jars of jam, making tomorrow "brandied apricot preserves" day.  Maybe I should have made that apricot box part of my basket? Speaking of items for my basket: a pair of socks that I started with a pattern I really...

The problem with being a Type A crafter who feels the need to have goals every year is that those goals are rarely reasonable.   If I were every prone to being reasonable in the first place, I wouldn't have goals for my hobby and my friends wouldn't speak of my crafting room in the hushed tones one only uses when discussing those who have gone completely off their rocker.  So, here we are. I ended the first half of the year with 45 finished projects, just over 29 yards of fabric and 22 balls of yarn used up.  I think I can still make 100 projects, though I find the idea of 71 yards of fabric just a wee bit daunting.  Can I do 12 yards of fabric per month?  And how many pairs of pajamas can two people wear......?

Saroyan is done! It used up almost every bit of the Aunt Lydia's worsted weight denim I was using, which is where the cool cardboard tube came from.  It actually found a home protecting one of my pepper plants from my little helper so it turned out as sort of a win-win.  I did use it and it IS doing something helpful, but it isn't in my craft room.  Which is good, because basically everything else IS.... ...which is why I am joining in a 2-month basket dash on Ravelry, starting July 1.  I have made 45 things this year so far, but it doesn't really feel like I've used up much of my stash, so I thought I needed a little visual reminder.  I'm putting together a stack of things to use up in the next 2 months. I think sewing and I are back on speaking terms after this: I've had a yard of this adorable froggy fleece fabric for several years, and had just taken it out of a shelf to make room for this which is seven yards of some sort of suiting mater...