And June comes to an end...

It's the last day of June, yet it feels like a late September day. It's a whopping 65 degrees here today, which I'm not complaining about at all. It was just 90 degrees the other day, so I'll take a day like this to balance that out. Any day in the summer when I can have the air conditioners off is a good day. :)

I'm happy to report that my groove has returned. Or, at least, a groove. I've managed some decent productivity lately, and that is a good thing!

On the gardening front, we have garlic just about ready to be dug...this was a test bunch Kevin dug last night...

In all honestly, this garlic has nothing to do with my productivity, other than me saying to Kevin the other evening, "Isn't it about time to dig the garlic?" ;) As for the rest of the big garden, aside from the broccoli that the #@!$ ground hogs ate off, everything seems to be doing well! I got some peas, which is better than some years, and the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cukes and zucchini all have baby fruits on them. My salad garden is still producing some lettuce and onions, and the herbs are doing fine. Praying no Acts of God come and destroy things this year!

Where my efforts did go earlier this week were to this area of our yard...

This spot is at the back of our house, next to our porch. Of all the areas of our property, this has probably been the most neglected for the 17 years we've lived here. What this "before" picture does not show is all of the crap that had accumulated here over those years! Saturday night, I had the kids help me clear it out...lots of old lumber that had leaned up against the house, an old pool wall from when the kids were little was rolled up and sitting there, and lots of other weird, yucky detritus left over from various other projects. If it didn't have a home, it often got tossed there.

I make an effort to have the back porch be my "happy place" during the warm months. I like to sit here and have breakfast or coffee or journal or knit (or write in my blog, as I am now!). I decided, however, that the happy place would make me far happier if I was not looking at a garbage dump right next to me. So, getting the crap cleared away was a good first step. But on Sunday, Emma and I set to work taking it a bit further. We spent over four hours digging up close to 100 bricks that were embedded in that patch of ground (I think the previous owners used this spot to sit their garbage cans maybe?), and then we dug up all of that ratty ground cover & transplanted it to our front embankment, which is very rocky and the rain causes regular landslides to occur (hoping the ground cover takes root and helps stem that trend). Then we hit Lowe's for mulch and flowers, and behold...a truly happy, happy place!

It isn't perfect, but it's WAY better than it was! And it's pretty to look at now, too! The bonus was spending the day working with my 13-year-old daughter on this. She even told me she had fun helping me. Total bonus! :)

On the fiber front, I don't have any new knits to share right now, but I should have a new shawl finished up pretty soon, so stay tuned. I did, however, finish plying the never-ending fiber two nights ago!

Sorry for the crappy nighttime cell phone picture, but it's all I have at the moment. This is 654 yards of 3-ply fingering weight that I spun from 4 oz. of Tempted merino-silk in the Positivity colorway. It is destined to become a Citron shawl, which I will cast on as a reward for finishing a test knit project that I need to work on.

I am going to be taking part in Tour de Fleece again this year, though my chosen project is anything but exciting. Can't remember if I mentioned it here before or not, but when I showed my finished Caricia to my mother-in-law, her response was, "I want that!" Only she wants one in all white. I'm not sure she even cares if it is the same pattern. But she wants a lacy shawl, in all white. ALL WHITE. I cannot emphasize that enough. ALL WHITE.

There are two solid colors that I hate knitting: black and white. Black, because it is very hard to see the stitch definition, and white because...it is boringboringboring! Any solid runs the risk of boring me after a while, frankly, but white is just so...white. There is no color at all to keep things interesting! The fact that I'll be doing a lace pattern with it is all that will keep me from wanting to jab the knitting needles straight into my eyeballs, I promise you. But I digress (kind of). This tells you how much I like my mother-in-law that I am not only willing to knit a white shawl for her, but I'm going to spin the #@!$ fiber for it, too. I have a hard time finding pure white yarn that I like to work with, and for this kind of project, I have to like the yarn. It is imperative! The white fiber I'll be working with is the same BamHuey fiber I used for the Caricia yarn, only in its undyed form. (Thanks to Cheryl for being willing to sell it to me that way!) Six ounces of it. Yep. Check in with me at the end of TdF to see if I'm still sane. ;) (Though my sanity might be in question for even taking on this project!)

Should I survive the spinning of the white, I think I may move on to a stash of various natural colors of Icelandic wool I picked up at a fiber festival last year. I want to create a color-graded yarn that I will then knit into a (wait for it)...shawl. I know, who'da thunk it. Me, knit a shawl. LOL I don't yet know what pattern I'll use for this as-of-yet unspun fiber, but I can envision the general project in my head, looking soooo pretty going from the lightest shade at the top down to the darkest shade at the bottom. It's visions like this that make me giddy. I'm such a dork. ;)

Fall cleaning...

This picture is apropos of nothing I've written in this blog entry. I just wanted to share it because it is of my friend Sho-Sho, who WON her first kickboxing fight last weekend! How freakin' cool is that? She's awesome! Loved watching her fight and celebrating the win with her! And thanks to our other friend Hannah for taking the picture because I was a total photo slacker.

Yep, it's that time of year again. The time when I start to feel the urge to clean house, both literally and virtually. Some people do spring cleaning; I do fall cleaning. (With my mom coming to visit in early October, the importance of fall cleaning cannot be overstated. Ahem.)

I wanted to get the big cleaning jobs done over the summer months, namely the basement. Ugh. The basement. But did I? Did I use those three, long summer months for that good purpose? No. No I did not. And now I'm kicking myself. Alas, it will get done. Oh yes it will. It WILL get done.

Last evening as I was waiting for a friend at a coffee shop, I used my time to make a master list and I decided today to try and tackle at least five things on that list every day. Maybe not finish all five, but I would at least make progress on them. Today, pretty good...I got four of the five finished and did a couple more. If I can just keep that momentum going, I'll be golden!

As for my virtual housecleaning, I decided to clean up the blog a bit today. Gone is the Tour de Fleece '09 button. I'm not sure if I ever shared my TdF results here, but I did indeed accomplish my spinning goals in July, spinning up two different yarns to match the albums Team BKG were using for their TdF theme. I never bothered to download whatever button they had for the winners, though. But I know I was a winner, and that's what matters, right? ;)

I'm not sure if getting rid of the TdF button counts as cleaning, though, since I replaced it with the Facebook badge. Not sure if I like that there or not. We'll see.

Then there was my summer reading list, which is also gone. It was an ambitious list. A little too ambitious, as many of my lists are. But I did get some reading done this summer, reading that I enjoyed. The three titles I finished this summer were:

• The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, by Joshilyn Jackson
  
• The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coehlo
  
• Dead to Me, by Anton Strout

I loved Joshilyn's book. I love all of her books. She is incredible with the words and the stories. Can't sing her praises nearly enough. I also really enjoyed Anton Strout's book. Very quirky genre, but a lot of fun to read. Loved the humor that is infused throughout. Sadly, though, I was not impressed with the Coehlo book. The Alchemist remains my favorite of all his books I've read. Most others have paled in comparison. Witch just didn't really do much for me. 

I did start to read The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, but I didn't get far. I find the older I get, the less tolerance I have for books that seem to be one thing but are really just a venue for the author to spew his or her crankiness and cynicism. This is why I've stopped reading Anne Lamott's non-fiction. (Issues, baby...let 'em go!) Admittedly, I didn't get far enough into Shipmates to know for sure that was what was going on, but having read a couple other of Vowell's books, I'm pretty sure it was, and I just wasn't in the mood for it. Life's too short. 

I also started Strout's second book, Deader Still, a sequel to his first. Again, really fun read. I started it on our Chicago trip a few weeks ago and in fact spent all my airport and plane time on the trip home reading it. (I didn't knit a stitch! You know it had to be a good book!) But since getting home, I haven't had time to sit with it, so it remains unfinished. 

Did I say Chicago? Great! How about another picture then!

My great kids on our first day in the Windy (and hot and humid) City after we spent a few hours in the Shedd Aquarium. Chicago was such a cool city! I'll have to share more pictures from the trip soon.

And while the Ravelry work-in-progress widget isn't something I clean up here on the blog, I'll direct you to note that I have finished a few things, hence bringing the number of current projects down to seven. I finished the design project hat I was working on. I'm so anxious to release that, but I wanted to do matching mitts and haven't had time to work those out completely yet. I also finished my crocheted Noro granny square afghan. It's blocking now, so pictures will be forthcoming soon. I really love how it turned out! I'm finishing up my daughter's pillow project now, and then I have to do a special project that I won't even be listing on Ravelry for a while due to its secret nature. But then I'll get back to the WIP list. 

Ok...one more picture before I go, just because blog entries need pictures...

Our tomatoes all died off this year due to the blight, so I was in heaven yesterday when my friend Myrna shared some of her tomato abundance with me. I enjoyed the first of her tomatoes this morning in the form of a tomato and herb omelet. Mmm. And that scone there on the plate? That is one of the best cinnamon chip scones I've ever made! 

Fiber-related progress...

I realize I've been a slacker with regard to Tour de Fleece updates, but rest assured, I have been spinning every single day of the race, and pretty much all of my bobbins have looked like this once they were filled...

Team BKG decided to spin yarns to match various album covers. The first I chose to do with Joan Jett fiber (singles pictured above), which I finished plying today...

...I totally love how it turned out, even if the colors didn't match the album cover quite as well as they did in their original fiber form. The fiber was 8 oz. of Scarlett Fleece 100% Australian Merino Wool Top in the Raisin Berry colorway. It is so soft and yummy! I got just under 600 yards of a 2-ply light worsted weight yarn from it.

In the land of crochet, the Silk Garden granny square afghan continues to grow...

...I am in love with this project and never want it to end. Ever. You might think I'd be bored doing that same crochet thing around and around as the blanket gets bigger, but no. Not with Noro. The colors just keep pulling me along, like Bugs Bunny following a carrot.

No knitting news to report. Spinning and my Noro blankie have been taking up all of my crafting time. That and learning how to process RAW images from my camera, something that I've been successfully ignoring now for several years of digital SLR ownership. I'm still not sure how much I like working with them versus the JPG images I'm used to, but I'm going to continue to play and see how it goes.

And apropos of nothing fiber-related, I took this cool picture of the newly waning moon last night...

I love the moon.

TdF x 2

Ok, just to make things more confusing exciting, I've decided to ALSO join the Tour de Fleece that has a presence on Ravelry, as well. I wouldn't have bothered, but one of my favorite groups there, Bad Knit Girls, has created a team, and how can I not join them? ;) Luckily, my spinning for the Team BKG will most likely totally count toward my (as-of-yet-unstated) goal for the original TdF I joined, so I shouldn't go any crazier than I already would be. That's a good thing. ;)

Tour de Fleece...

...is speeding towards us! Are you ready? :)

Last July, I took part in Katherine Matthew's Tour de Fleece for the first time. (I specify because there is another Tour de Fleece challenge, which has a large following on Ravelry. Katherine's is not associated with that one.) I'd found out about it through Yarn Harlot's blog (I don't imagine she's going to do it this year since she's so busy with Sock Summit, but who knows?), and even though I was a very newbie spinner and only spun with a drop spindle, I decided to give it a go. My goals were two-fold: try to spin daily in order to better my virtually non-existent skills and to try and spin some small amount of yarn that I could actually use for something.

I know I did not spin every day. I did, however, spin yarn I was able to use in a garter stitch afghan project I'd just started using a lot of different yarns (a project that, a year later, is nowhere near done!). So, I consider my first TdF a limited success.

This year, I've got my wheel and my spinning skills have grown tremendously. So now I'm trying to think of what goal to set for myself this year. The TdF is pretty laid-back...aside from the date parameters (the same as the Tour de France race), the goal aspect of Katherine's TdF is pretty open.

My thought, at this point, is to try and spin down my fiber stash. That's not a very specific goal, I realize. I've got a few days to further refine that goal, though, so let me get back to you on it, 'kay? LOL I will likely either choose to spin all of the small quantity fiber I have around, or I may try and tackle one of the large lots of fiber I have that should yield a sweater's worth. We'll see.