...as Granny Weatherwax would say. (From Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which I consider highly addictive.) No pictures today, just a quick post to say I'm alive. (Heck, I haven't managed to get the last four knitting projects photographed and onto Rav yet.)
It's been a crazy fall. Mostly fun and all, but I find myself needing more hours in a day, every day. There's been Havelock Fair and the Roxham WoolGathering, a dye class to teach, a baby shower, Rhinebeck, the Knitting Guild vendor's night, and now next weekend is the OVWSG Exhibition and Sale. On top of that, work hasn't had the September slowdown we did last year, and it looks like we'll be running another 2 weeks at least, when last year the garden end wrapped up a week or two earlier. I really hope we don't get early snow or really cold weather...
We worked yesterday, the first Saturday in a while. Today the apartment is going to be very warm and steamy, fan and open window notwithstanding. Damp socks hanging in the living room, damp skeins hanging on the rack in the bathtub, two dyepots simmering on the stove, and the week's baking (pizza and apple muffins) in the oven. Tags are on the table for writing out whenever I have 2 minutes to spare. With any luck I can get the lion's share of the prep for Ex and Sale done today, (apart from reskeining things once they dry), and do all the other little chores that are piling up (like sorting the recycling, which is also piling up), then I can concentrate on reskeining and packing during the week. I'm thinking the Sale should be pretty busy this year. Carole, the co-ordinator, has arranged an interview on TV this week (Wednesday on CTV Morning Live, I believe) where they will try to teach the interviewer spinning, weaving and felting. Sounds like a fun session!
...And there goes my timer. One batch of skeins ready to rinse, one dyebath ready to put skeins in, and the pizza's done, so I can start muffins as soon as the next round of pots is simmering.
Man, I'm looking forward to end of season. I want a nap. And then Kristina and I are planning a fibre prep day later in November, and then in the winter, Heather of HelloMello, who I met at Rhinebeck, and I are planning a SAL, like a little Tour de Fleece. I have ambitions to make a serious dent in the fibre stash this winter, and knit a few things for me, and...yeah, need more time again ;)
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Saturday, 22 August 2015
Summer To Fall
The last of summer is speeding by already. All the signs are here that fall is on the way. Cooler mornings, geese flying overhead, asters and chrysanthemums blooming, and a few early leaves turning. In the veg garden the tomatoes are ripening (there will be bruschetta this weekend!), and I took enough beets and onions out last weekend to put up nine jars of pickles.
Work has slowed down a little, but there's still plenty going on. Last week (yeah, in that heat wave) we had three of us out to an all-day job, clearing a massive set of stone terraces and steps on a waterfront property. The owner wanted some of the wildflowers left but the massive stuff and the bad stuff (like burdock and nettle and weed trees) gone. We put a good dent in it, but it will take another day's work at least to do it all. And thank goodness he had a burn pile, because that was so much easier than bagging it all - we got the pile to the point where it was six feet tall and at least twice that long. It felt at times like we were clearing Mayan ruins, and we should have had pith helmets and machetes. Yesterday we started another bigger job which will continue Monday - tidying up a property that I don't think has had much care in a year or two, but needs to get to a decent point, after which we will be doing regular maintenance. It's an older house and gardens, and definitely has potential, but some plants, like the day lilies and hydrangeas, have sort of started taking over - I think about 70% of the space is orange day lilies at the moment.
I'm still trying to finish re-skeining all the dyed yarn from the summer's batches. The bag of things to re-skein is slowly emptying (most of what's left in there is pastel shades of alpaca), and the box of things to label is slowly filling.
Only three weeks until the WoolGathering and Havelock Fair, and things need to be labeled and packed, and I'd like to do a bit more spinning and knitting if possible. Just finished a pair of fingerless mitts that are definitely seasonal, though!
The main reason the re-skeining goes slowly is HRH Julia. Standard session goes like this: I have the swift and the reel set up on the dining table, which is pretty much the most convenient spot in the place for me, and start working, then she decides after I get set up that she needs to stretch out right there also. So I shift the reel out of her way, she rolls over and gets whacked with it,
I move her over, she gets grouchy and comments that she's trying to sleep and I'm in her way. I reply that Temptations don't grow on trees and someone needs to buy them for her. I get a little more work done before she rolls over in the way of the reel again, I get up and go do something else, then several minutes later she gets bored and wanders off elsewhere. I go back to re-skeining, and try to get as much done as I can before the next round of need-to-nap-on-the-table-now-plz. Which is where I'm headed now, since the table's free for now...
Work has slowed down a little, but there's still plenty going on. Last week (yeah, in that heat wave) we had three of us out to an all-day job, clearing a massive set of stone terraces and steps on a waterfront property. The owner wanted some of the wildflowers left but the massive stuff and the bad stuff (like burdock and nettle and weed trees) gone. We put a good dent in it, but it will take another day's work at least to do it all. And thank goodness he had a burn pile, because that was so much easier than bagging it all - we got the pile to the point where it was six feet tall and at least twice that long. It felt at times like we were clearing Mayan ruins, and we should have had pith helmets and machetes. Yesterday we started another bigger job which will continue Monday - tidying up a property that I don't think has had much care in a year or two, but needs to get to a decent point, after which we will be doing regular maintenance. It's an older house and gardens, and definitely has potential, but some plants, like the day lilies and hydrangeas, have sort of started taking over - I think about 70% of the space is orange day lilies at the moment.
I'm still trying to finish re-skeining all the dyed yarn from the summer's batches. The bag of things to re-skein is slowly emptying (most of what's left in there is pastel shades of alpaca), and the box of things to label is slowly filling.
Only three weeks until the WoolGathering and Havelock Fair, and things need to be labeled and packed, and I'd like to do a bit more spinning and knitting if possible. Just finished a pair of fingerless mitts that are definitely seasonal, though!
The main reason the re-skeining goes slowly is HRH Julia. Standard session goes like this: I have the swift and the reel set up on the dining table, which is pretty much the most convenient spot in the place for me, and start working, then she decides after I get set up that she needs to stretch out right there also. So I shift the reel out of her way, she rolls over and gets whacked with it,
I move her over, she gets grouchy and comments that she's trying to sleep and I'm in her way. I reply that Temptations don't grow on trees and someone needs to buy them for her. I get a little more work done before she rolls over in the way of the reel again, I get up and go do something else, then several minutes later she gets bored and wanders off elsewhere. I go back to re-skeining, and try to get as much done as I can before the next round of need-to-nap-on-the-table-now-plz. Which is where I'm headed now, since the table's free for now...
Saturday, 18 July 2015
All The Dyed Yarn
It took me a week to get the pictures of last Sunday's dyeing off my camera and onto the computer so I could post them to show you all. But here they are at last. It was a busy day; I think about 7 dye baths, two of which (cochineal and indigo) had multiple batches of things going into the bath, with over-dyeing and such going on.
First out of the baths were greenweed yellow (which I actually did Saturday night, and left overnight to cool) and orange from dried coreopsis. I usually get a gold from the dried coreopsis, so the orange was a bit of a surprise, albeit a nice one. One coreopsis skein was done with sections in multiple mordants, but the results weren't as dramatic as I hoped; it just looks like a splotchy orange and brown-green (furthest left), not very pretty. That may end up getting over-dyed at some point to try and improve it.
While the coreopsis bath was simmering, I braved the heat and mosquitos and filled pots with sumac leaves for grey and goldenrod plants for olive green. The sumac greys are always interesting because you get a slightly different cast of grey on different fibres and yarns - all three greys in the picture are on different bases, and you can see the difference.
There was also a bath with madder, but I accidentally overheated it and it came out a dull salmon-y rather than the tomato-y red-orange it should have been. Not bad, but not the best. One of the coreopsis skeins got over-dyed with cochineal to fill that gap in my palette.
The cochineal, indigo, and walnut baths finished the day. Besides the solid skeins that were either plain or over-dyed, there was a dip-dyed greenweed/indigo skein, and a tie-dyed one with bits of coreopsis and cochineal showing through the walnut brown. But I think the purples and greens from the indigo over-dyes are still my favourites.
Today I'm dyeing just a couple more skeins. A tan with tea, and a gold with onion skin, to fill the gaps in the palette. Altogether a lovely pile of colours, if I do say so myself.
Saturday, 11 July 2015
Eye Candy From The Country
Wild and wooly, warm and wet. That pretty much describes my Saturday this week. I'm out at the parents' for the weekend, and it's been a hot, sunny, breezy day - to me, that makes it a good day for fibre, since things will dry well. So laundry and dyeing and fleece washing have been most of the day.
I started the day with a quick blocking of the hat I finished last night. Ribbed, in a cushy handspun Jacob wool I had a few partial balls of to use up. A post on the little porch proved a great place to put the hat to dry, and incidentally, provided a nice background for the photo.
In between loads of laundry, staying with the Jacob breed, I washed about a fleece and a half that I had gotten a while back and not done anything with yet. This is where the wet and wooly part comes in, since I wash stuff outside, which means hauling hot water in buckets from indoors to fill my tubs. A few old sheets went in a sunny spot for drying, and Mom said it looked like I was working with skunk pelts. Definitely smells nicer than skunk, though!
Cooled wash water from tubs was re-bucketed out and onto a bunch of plants that needed a water and fertilizer shot. More buckets of water came outside in the meantime for the next project, which is a batch of mordanting and dyeing. At this point the clothesline was full of laundry, so I hauled out a big wooden clothes-dryer, because something like 30 skeins got mordanted today.
In the little gaps between waiting for a mordant batch or a fleece batch to be ready for the next step, I got to shell peas. Result, a true green thumb (or at least thumbnail) and a lovely bowl of fresh peas.
Only had time to start one batch of dye after that - greenweed yellow, which will sit overnight - but there will be more dyeing tomorrow, and hopefully pretty pictures of the results. Although I'm planning mostly solid colours, a few of the skeins to be dyed will be multi-coloured, using different techniques, so I can show them as samples for a class I will be teaching at L'Ourse Qui Danse in a couple months. Ran over to the OQD ranch this afternoon to borrow some thiox for tomorrow's indigo dyeing and talk to Johanne about the date for the class - tentatively Sept 19 or 20 at this point. The road going to Johanne's is lovely; gravel road with maple bush along part of it, opening to fields of corn and soy, dark-green and silvery against the late-summer olive of the trees, with the Adirondack mountains misty-blue to the south.
Barbecued local sausages and homemade strawberry shortcake for dinner, and now the last thing before bed will be to go outside to turn off the burner under my dye-pot for the night, watch the fireflies winking for a few minutes, and smell the scent of the lilies in the air. Life doesn't get much better than this.
I started the day with a quick blocking of the hat I finished last night. Ribbed, in a cushy handspun Jacob wool I had a few partial balls of to use up. A post on the little porch proved a great place to put the hat to dry, and incidentally, provided a nice background for the photo.
In between loads of laundry, staying with the Jacob breed, I washed about a fleece and a half that I had gotten a while back and not done anything with yet. This is where the wet and wooly part comes in, since I wash stuff outside, which means hauling hot water in buckets from indoors to fill my tubs. A few old sheets went in a sunny spot for drying, and Mom said it looked like I was working with skunk pelts. Definitely smells nicer than skunk, though!
Cooled wash water from tubs was re-bucketed out and onto a bunch of plants that needed a water and fertilizer shot. More buckets of water came outside in the meantime for the next project, which is a batch of mordanting and dyeing. At this point the clothesline was full of laundry, so I hauled out a big wooden clothes-dryer, because something like 30 skeins got mordanted today.
In the little gaps between waiting for a mordant batch or a fleece batch to be ready for the next step, I got to shell peas. Result, a true green thumb (or at least thumbnail) and a lovely bowl of fresh peas.
Only had time to start one batch of dye after that - greenweed yellow, which will sit overnight - but there will be more dyeing tomorrow, and hopefully pretty pictures of the results. Although I'm planning mostly solid colours, a few of the skeins to be dyed will be multi-coloured, using different techniques, so I can show them as samples for a class I will be teaching at L'Ourse Qui Danse in a couple months. Ran over to the OQD ranch this afternoon to borrow some thiox for tomorrow's indigo dyeing and talk to Johanne about the date for the class - tentatively Sept 19 or 20 at this point. The road going to Johanne's is lovely; gravel road with maple bush along part of it, opening to fields of corn and soy, dark-green and silvery against the late-summer olive of the trees, with the Adirondack mountains misty-blue to the south.
Barbecued local sausages and homemade strawberry shortcake for dinner, and now the last thing before bed will be to go outside to turn off the burner under my dye-pot for the night, watch the fireflies winking for a few minutes, and smell the scent of the lilies in the air. Life doesn't get much better than this.
Sunday, 21 June 2015
Everything Going On
So here we are, at the official start of summer. Just over a week to July, folks, and the time's been going fast. This weekend seems to be my first breathing space in a while. A nice quiet Sunday with a little mizzle in the air, and a chance to sit down at the computer for more than the time to check e-mail or do work. At least for a little while, before I have to see about lunches for the week, and tidying the place for a friend's visit, and getting some work done on Liz's garden plan, a few changes to be made following a chat with her last weekend...
It's been busy in the gardens this year. We've had more clients at work, more jobs coming in, than last year for sure. No early finishes to the days. Little chance of getting rainy days off. More Saturdays worked than before. And then our head gardener let us know she was leaving, so the next little while will be more fun than ever. Thankfully Emily (the other gardener remaining) and I work well together, and the organizing of jobs we've been doing this week seems to be getting a good amount done. But if you know of an experienced gardener looking for work (a slim hope, but whatever), send them our way!
Actual knitting content has been happening also, no fear. I mentioned that I was doing one for the boss for his fundraiser, right? It got done, working on it right to the last minute. Under 4 weeks, dudes, and I am not trying that again. There are changes I would make another time, but it turned out well, the boss liked it, and he was happy with the auction results, and said it got a lot of positive comments. Phew. This was the final product (although you can't see the cables very well; they're on both red and grey stripes:
Please note the cat is helping. She's usually very good about not touching my work, so I don't know what got into her, but every time I had the afghan pieces out to pin and arrange for sewing, she was there rolling on my work, and I was panicking that she would coat it in cat hair or snag it. I ended up putting a tablecloth over whatever parts I wasn't actually working on.
The logo is from their website, and I will note that Photoshop or a similar image manipulation program is your friend if you want to copy/adapt something like this for knitting, especially if you're like me and can't draw. If you want to know how I did it, the process goes like this:
1) I grabbed the image from the website, then in Photoshop, I cropped it to the area with just the logo I needed.
2) I did a gauge swatch of my yarn, figured out how big a panel I wanted to make with the logo, and used that info to get an approximate stitch and row count for the panel.
3) Back in Photoshop, I changed the image size width in pixels to match my stitch count desired for the panel (I wasn't too fussed about row count, as I figured I could just make the shorter strips below it whatever length I needed, and I didn't want to distort the image.)
4) Then I magnified the image until I could see the individual pixels well.
5) I opened up a page of electronic graph paper (I found it as a free download somewhere a few years ago) in Photoshop as well, and copied the image outlines to the graph paper.
Since the original image had pixels in multiple colours and intensities, and I wanted essentially a black and white version, I had to decide for the in-between shades whether a square should be graphed as black or white, and I adjusted the lettering to be more regular than it would be by using strictly dark/light decisions. But the idea worked wonderfully on the whole, and I love the idea that it means there doesn't have to be a graphed image out there for something I want to do, because I can create one fairly easily in whatever size I want. (Of course, be respectful of copyright, if you are going to try this at home. I wasn't worrying about it because of it being done by request for the actual organization in question.)
Sort of funny that I had been working so hard on this afghan for a cancer fundraiser, when one of the other recent happenings has been that this week Kim, a knitting friend with cancer, got moved to hospice and subsequently passed away. It's not like we all didn't know this would happen at some point, short of a miracle occurring. And I'm glad for her sake that when she started going downhill, she went pretty fast, so didn't suffer as long. But it's still a hard notion to get used to, that she's gone, and she won't be at knit-outs or on Rav anymore, and I will be glad to be busy for a while and not think about it. She was a nice person, and will be missed around here.
It's been busy in the gardens this year. We've had more clients at work, more jobs coming in, than last year for sure. No early finishes to the days. Little chance of getting rainy days off. More Saturdays worked than before. And then our head gardener let us know she was leaving, so the next little while will be more fun than ever. Thankfully Emily (the other gardener remaining) and I work well together, and the organizing of jobs we've been doing this week seems to be getting a good amount done. But if you know of an experienced gardener looking for work (a slim hope, but whatever), send them our way!
Actual knitting content has been happening also, no fear. I mentioned that I was doing one for the boss for his fundraiser, right? It got done, working on it right to the last minute. Under 4 weeks, dudes, and I am not trying that again. There are changes I would make another time, but it turned out well, the boss liked it, and he was happy with the auction results, and said it got a lot of positive comments. Phew. This was the final product (although you can't see the cables very well; they're on both red and grey stripes:
Please note the cat is helping. She's usually very good about not touching my work, so I don't know what got into her, but every time I had the afghan pieces out to pin and arrange for sewing, she was there rolling on my work, and I was panicking that she would coat it in cat hair or snag it. I ended up putting a tablecloth over whatever parts I wasn't actually working on.
The logo is from their website, and I will note that Photoshop or a similar image manipulation program is your friend if you want to copy/adapt something like this for knitting, especially if you're like me and can't draw. If you want to know how I did it, the process goes like this:
1) I grabbed the image from the website, then in Photoshop, I cropped it to the area with just the logo I needed.
2) I did a gauge swatch of my yarn, figured out how big a panel I wanted to make with the logo, and used that info to get an approximate stitch and row count for the panel.
3) Back in Photoshop, I changed the image size width in pixels to match my stitch count desired for the panel (I wasn't too fussed about row count, as I figured I could just make the shorter strips below it whatever length I needed, and I didn't want to distort the image.)
4) Then I magnified the image until I could see the individual pixels well.
Since the original image had pixels in multiple colours and intensities, and I wanted essentially a black and white version, I had to decide for the in-between shades whether a square should be graphed as black or white, and I adjusted the lettering to be more regular than it would be by using strictly dark/light decisions. But the idea worked wonderfully on the whole, and I love the idea that it means there doesn't have to be a graphed image out there for something I want to do, because I can create one fairly easily in whatever size I want. (Of course, be respectful of copyright, if you are going to try this at home. I wasn't worrying about it because of it being done by request for the actual organization in question.)
Sort of funny that I had been working so hard on this afghan for a cancer fundraiser, when one of the other recent happenings has been that this week Kim, a knitting friend with cancer, got moved to hospice and subsequently passed away. It's not like we all didn't know this would happen at some point, short of a miracle occurring. And I'm glad for her sake that when she started going downhill, she went pretty fast, so didn't suffer as long. But it's still a hard notion to get used to, that she's gone, and she won't be at knit-outs or on Rav anymore, and I will be glad to be busy for a while and not think about it. She was a nice person, and will be missed around here.
Saturday, 23 May 2015
Of Mice and Men
Ok, seriously guys? It's Saturday suppertime and I'm having the second half of my lunch. The first half was at 3. I'm starving and in need of tea, which is steeping right now. And I need to whine a little. It's been one of those days. On the plus side, Emily (the new gardener) and I are having a lovely time exchanging tales of the co-op students...we laugh so we don't cry.
I had been hoping to get to the Glebe Garage Sale today, but no dice. Through a combination of factors, we ended up working today, 9-5:30ish. For one, it's first round of maintenance for some places, so we're doing gardens we haven't seen in over 6 months, and which are consequently a little, um, weedy. Then we have the fact that the co-op students are not getting any faster at working, and apparently are incapable of recognizing some basic weeds, so the work goes rather slower than it should. That meant we had a backlog of something like eight places from this week to catch up on today. And the head gardener took the day off.
Just to start the day off right, I discovered on the way to work that I had left my knitting needles at home. Had the wool, just not the needles. So no knitting during travel time. Fine, I spent the time doing a bit of planning towards Liz's garden on a scrap of paper.
I get to work and Emily and I divide up the jobs and the students, and head out. I took west end, since the biggest job there was one that I knew would be a mess. I figured it would be easier if someone familiar with it went in - they only came to us halfway through last summer, and it took two people two days to get it in shape to do maintenance the rest of the summer. And I don't think they had a fall or spring clean-up. Well, we took 7 bags of weeds and stuff out today and took 5 hours to do it. And just to make things more fun, I managed to kneel on a dog bomb in the back yard. Both knees and kneepads. So I used a spare handkerchief and some of my drinking water to clean up as best as I could, and kept going. My estimate is that I did about 3/4 of the place...
By the time we finished, it was going on 3. Emily and her student were done two small jobs and on to the third - Emily also doing about 3/4 of the work at each site. We stopped for a bathroom break on the way to our second place, and ate what we could while travelling, which added up to half a flatbread with hummus for me. Then another 2 hours work at site # 2. Emily finished their site #4 and got back to the shop maybe 20 minutes ahead of us. And bless the girl, she waited and drove me home - her new place is only 5 minutes from me. I was not looking forward to catching a bus - it comes every 30 min, I think, on Saturdays, and is 15-20 minutes walk down the road from work. She is getting cookies from me, since she is making a habit of driving me when the bus is not being convenient.
And we had our laughs on the way home. One site they went to, I had told her there was only the one bed in the back. She passed the information on to her student - who managed to walk right by the bed in question (which is in a raised masonry surround, filled with rosebushes, and right there when you go to the back). He went all the way down to the back corner where there was a patch of tallish weeds near the fence, and apparently started weeding between the weeds. Ten minutes later he comes to her saying he has a question about which ones are the plants...
I guess they haven't learned weeds yet at school? My student has been making a habit of leaving grass in the beds. Couch grass and lawn grass. He carefully cultivated around a patch of the latter at one place today. I told Emily if their prof ever gets arrested for losing his temper and killing them, I will totally support him on grounds it was extreme provocation and justifiable homicide...
Oh, and the mice? Somehow one or more have gotten into the building for the first time I've noticed since I've lived here. Woke me up one night scritching around and gnawing, apparently in the ceiling above my hallway light fixture. Reported to landlord after a couple episodes, who came and put baits in the ceiling and a few other likely places, and reported some chewed insulation and stuff in the ceiling space. With any luck the baits will take care of the problem before they start chewing electrical wires.
Ah, well. Off to enjoy what's left of the weekend. There's bread rising right now, so I will have fresh bread with butter later on. And maybe tomorrow I will try sleeping in a little, if the cat permits!
I had been hoping to get to the Glebe Garage Sale today, but no dice. Through a combination of factors, we ended up working today, 9-5:30ish. For one, it's first round of maintenance for some places, so we're doing gardens we haven't seen in over 6 months, and which are consequently a little, um, weedy. Then we have the fact that the co-op students are not getting any faster at working, and apparently are incapable of recognizing some basic weeds, so the work goes rather slower than it should. That meant we had a backlog of something like eight places from this week to catch up on today. And the head gardener took the day off.
Just to start the day off right, I discovered on the way to work that I had left my knitting needles at home. Had the wool, just not the needles. So no knitting during travel time. Fine, I spent the time doing a bit of planning towards Liz's garden on a scrap of paper.
I get to work and Emily and I divide up the jobs and the students, and head out. I took west end, since the biggest job there was one that I knew would be a mess. I figured it would be easier if someone familiar with it went in - they only came to us halfway through last summer, and it took two people two days to get it in shape to do maintenance the rest of the summer. And I don't think they had a fall or spring clean-up. Well, we took 7 bags of weeds and stuff out today and took 5 hours to do it. And just to make things more fun, I managed to kneel on a dog bomb in the back yard. Both knees and kneepads. So I used a spare handkerchief and some of my drinking water to clean up as best as I could, and kept going. My estimate is that I did about 3/4 of the place...
By the time we finished, it was going on 3. Emily and her student were done two small jobs and on to the third - Emily also doing about 3/4 of the work at each site. We stopped for a bathroom break on the way to our second place, and ate what we could while travelling, which added up to half a flatbread with hummus for me. Then another 2 hours work at site # 2. Emily finished their site #4 and got back to the shop maybe 20 minutes ahead of us. And bless the girl, she waited and drove me home - her new place is only 5 minutes from me. I was not looking forward to catching a bus - it comes every 30 min, I think, on Saturdays, and is 15-20 minutes walk down the road from work. She is getting cookies from me, since she is making a habit of driving me when the bus is not being convenient.
And we had our laughs on the way home. One site they went to, I had told her there was only the one bed in the back. She passed the information on to her student - who managed to walk right by the bed in question (which is in a raised masonry surround, filled with rosebushes, and right there when you go to the back). He went all the way down to the back corner where there was a patch of tallish weeds near the fence, and apparently started weeding between the weeds. Ten minutes later he comes to her saying he has a question about which ones are the plants...
I guess they haven't learned weeds yet at school? My student has been making a habit of leaving grass in the beds. Couch grass and lawn grass. He carefully cultivated around a patch of the latter at one place today. I told Emily if their prof ever gets arrested for losing his temper and killing them, I will totally support him on grounds it was extreme provocation and justifiable homicide...
Oh, and the mice? Somehow one or more have gotten into the building for the first time I've noticed since I've lived here. Woke me up one night scritching around and gnawing, apparently in the ceiling above my hallway light fixture. Reported to landlord after a couple episodes, who came and put baits in the ceiling and a few other likely places, and reported some chewed insulation and stuff in the ceiling space. With any luck the baits will take care of the problem before they start chewing electrical wires.
Ah, well. Off to enjoy what's left of the weekend. There's bread rising right now, so I will have fresh bread with butter later on. And maybe tomorrow I will try sleeping in a little, if the cat permits!
Saturday, 2 May 2015
A Day For Everything?
You know how there's days for just about any food/activity/disease/whatever? So apparently today was World Naked Gardening day. Seriously. (You learn about so many random things on Ravelry...)
Somehow, I don't think it's going to catch on, though. I mean, I'll give the originator props for trying. But some activities don't really go with naked, you know? And gardening is one of them (unless, of course, your idea of gardening is the Edwardian lady with a basket and a scissor cutting flowers to arrange indoors).
I was gardening today. There were shrubs to prune, and a rosebush. Would anyone care to try wrangling a rosebush 6+ feet high with no clothes on? On a nice hot sunny day? I didn't think so. At least the bugs aren't out yet, and there aren't any anthills nearby, but I think you would have been in pain by the end of the day, one way or another...
Pi Day I will celebrate happily. But I think I'll pass on the naked gardening, kthxbai.
Somehow, I don't think it's going to catch on, though. I mean, I'll give the originator props for trying. But some activities don't really go with naked, you know? And gardening is one of them (unless, of course, your idea of gardening is the Edwardian lady with a basket and a scissor cutting flowers to arrange indoors).
I was gardening today. There were shrubs to prune, and a rosebush. Would anyone care to try wrangling a rosebush 6+ feet high with no clothes on? On a nice hot sunny day? I didn't think so. At least the bugs aren't out yet, and there aren't any anthills nearby, but I think you would have been in pain by the end of the day, one way or another...
Pi Day I will celebrate happily. But I think I'll pass on the naked gardening, kthxbai.
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