A Little Yarn On The Side

Sorry, should I have warned you?  I know it's such a rare occurrence that the shock might be too much here, so sit down for these next bits: I am donating an entire (overflowing) box of yarn. I have admitted that 3 old sewing WIPS are truly irreparable and have tossed them. I am donating Christmas crafting books.   I am even donating one of those huge Rubbermaid totes BECAUSE IT'S NOW EMPTY AND I DON'T NEED IT! I know, right?????????????????????????????????????? This is even a visible dent in the craft room!  To be fair, none of the yarn was good stuff--I even found Fun Fur lurking in the bottom of the tote (which might be breeding as I swear I purged all this stuff before moving), but I still struggled a bit to part with this, which is crazy.  I believe I bought this for a sweater for my sister's first child, and he's now in high school.  In my defense, he did get something like 8 sweaters, but this has been in my possession for at leas...

Friday when I got home from work, I found a family of quail in our front yard, and as I was trying in my COMPLETELY unstealthy way to not frighten them, I frightened them into the bushes.  Wildlife photographers everywhere remain completely unthreatened by my prowess.  I spent a fair bit of Friday afternoon out watching to see if they'd decide to come back out--doing some weeding as a cover, just in case my neighbors would worry about shrub-watching as a new hobby or something--but I haven't seen them again. But they were adorable.   Yesterday was surprisingly chilly, so aside from some yardwork and a few chores, Venus and I worked on the quilt: Thanks to a thread-cutting button, I'm sewing rows of stitching on the larger dragonfly print blocks in long rows, and I'm just over half done on the second row of blocks--there are a total of 8.  So it's a long process, but it's a good after-work project as it's just the same thing over and over.  Slow is ...

So my new job is with a radio station/advertising agency, and we have live events and radio remotes and I've worked the last 2 Saturdays, so I haven't been keeping up with the blog, laundry, the garden, and pretty much everything else.  But let's catch up, shall we? Several weeks ago now, I went to a sewing expo, which was rather disappointing.  I'd gone two summers ago and there were SO many things I would have purchased had we not been packing and moving.  This year it was about half as big and there weren't that many things I was even interested in, but I did find this lovely little clock for the sewing room: I love it!  I've been looking for a clock for the sewing room, and this was just too adorable to pass up.  Don't you love the little scissors as a pendulum? My three-day weekend was unfortunately only a 2-day weekend, but there was some serious craft time.  While I set up the new machine to embroider some towels, I set up my other machin...

That's a nice way to start a weekend, isn't it?

And I haven't finished a single sweater.  I am indeed working on a sweater, and I think it's probably more than half-finished, but for the sake of my sanity, I'm thinking I should update my goal to 6 sweaters, quilts, or shawls.  They're still all large projects, right? And that brings me to ONE finished large project for the year, since I can count the quilt for my friends.  Now only 5 more to go.......

...but there's a cat on my project.  It's rather astounding how he can cover it so completely. Easter dinner was great fun, but it was a really busy weekend, so tonight I came home from work, crawled into pajamas, and thought I'd get a little knitting done.  But Valentino says there was too much cleaning and not enough kitty this weekend, so there's some petting to be made up.  And who am I to argue?

 There I was, all excited about the new tulips coming up to make up for the THOUSANDS in extra taxes we're paying this year, when I came home one night to find these:  reduced to this:  The survivors were brought inside for their own protection,  and Andy and I spent an evening spraying deer repellent on everything else.  If the deer finds it even half as repellent as we did while spraying it, our flowers are safe.   Luckily, I bought mid- and late-blooming flowers as well, so now that they stink, the next wave have been allowed to bloom:  as well as the ones that were already planted,   so we're looking pretty festive.  We have 12 people coming for Easter, so it's nice to have some color in the yard.  Of course, it means no sewing this weekend, but maybe the weekend after.... I think we've decided to keep the latest bowl , as it so nicely matches a table runner we just happen to have, so one less gi...