420 Yards of 2-ply

Last night at spinning, I finished plying this yummy yarn. I believe it is merino/cashmere/nylon.

It's having a good soak in the sink right now, after which I'll thwack it and hang it to dry.

Now, what to do with 420 yards of fingering weight 2-ply multi-coloured yarn...

Sewing Fun

My spinnerly, weaverly, knitterly friend, Diane just took her first sewing lesson at a local fabric shop and got all enthused about learning to sew.

She came over tonight to get a tutorial on my old sewing machine I'm lending her and to do a project.

She decided she liked my weighted pincushion thread catcher that I made last year based on Rob Appell's 'Man Sewing' video.

She brought over some beautiful fabric she had purchased from a Canadian online fabric shop,  Fridays Off Fabric Shop. We raided my stash for a contrasting fabric and got to work.

 We just went step by step and before we knew it, she had her own weighted pincushion thread catcher.  Ta da!!

Isn't that a beauty?!

I'm all geeked up to do more sewing myself. Yesterday I purchased the pattern for Bendy Bags by Lazy Girl Designs. I'm going to do more stash raiding to make a couple of them. As if I needed another project...

Photo Shoot

I finished the i-cord bind off. It took less than 200 yd. of sock yarn.

I took it outside to get some shots. I still don't like that pesky, big, camo square.

I often just stick my knitted items to the brick wall.

and over the neighbour's fence.

Just to the right of this are several of my milkweed plants. I haven't found any more eggs. The count is way down this year.

I'm having withdrawal from knitting this. I certainly have enough yarn to start another.

I did actually knit a sample square and ripped it out to measure how much yarn it used. It was 14 yd. So if you're making 3" squares, swapping mini-balls of 15 yd. of yarn with your knitterly friends should be more than enough.

But I've picked up my stitching again and have almost finished the stealth project.

Backyard birding update... we had house finches, chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches at the feeder yesterday. It was great to finally see birds other than American goldfinches enjoying the nyger seed. I hope they spread the word.

Suburban Wildlife

There are several larvae munching away on milkweed and growing rapidly.

This year I plucked the leaf or leaf cluster that the egg was on and have kept the stem in water. The hope is to keep the milkweed leaves fresh.

 Three days after hatching, they're about 1/8" (3mm) long.

This morning we spotted a different bird in the yard out the breakfast nook window. I scrambled for the camera and got this shot.

Then we grabbed the bird guide and determined it was a first-year female Baltimore Oriole.

A couple of hours later, just by chance, I was walking by the window and looked out and saw a male land on the shepherd's crook of the finch feeder.

I wonder if they've nested nearby or are just passing through.

Since we stopped putting sunflower seeds in the feeder, we haven't had grackles. Sadly, there haven't been many chickadees, house finches, or cardinals either. However yesterday I spotted a mated pair of cardinals and their drab fledgling. So they are still around. The American goldfinches continue to pig out at their dedicated feeder.

I-Cord

I'm using i-cord to finish the edge of my sock yarn blanket. (crappy iPad photos - I didn't even focus them). I really don't like that big, ugly, camo square. I may just cut it out and replace it with some more attractive yarn.

I picked a dark grey sock yarn (Kroy) that I have more than one ball of in case I needed a second ball.

First I cast on three sts using dpns. Then on the edge of the blanket on the wrong side, pick up and knit one edge stitch. *Slide the 4 sts to the other end of the needle and knit 2, then k2tog. Then pick up the next stitch. and repeat from *.

On the inner corners, I omit the corner stitch. On the outer corners, I knit into the point three times to round the corner.

This has been good for catching up on PBS 'Endeavour' episodes that I had PVRd.

I will block it when I'm done and hope that the i-cord lies flat. It's pretty good right now and does have a bit of stretch so should block nicely. I've been sewing the ends through the tubular i-cord.

That's all I've accomplished since Friday. I was flattened with a cold and spent 58 hours from Friday at 7pm to this morning in bed mostly sleeping. I knew I was REALLY sick because I didn't even want to knit or eat anything.

Skip and I had planned a trip to visit my family and then go on to an LPGA tournament in Sylvania OH this week and had to cancel both.

Finally Some Eggs

I've been checking my milkweed plants every day since before the end of June and finally today I found 3 eggs!

I picked the leaves and have put the stems in a glass of water to keep fresh so the newly hatched larvae will get a good start. See? They're not that hard to spot when inspecting the underside of a milkweed leaf.

Egg 1

The milkweed flowers have been in bloom for over a week now so I figured the monarchs just needed a good, hot day to lay eggs.

Eggs 2 & 3

Since the monarch can often lay over 100 eggs, I'm going to take another look tomorrow. Skip and I are going out of town Sunday - Tuesday so I'll try to set each egg or larva up with it's own fresh milkweed leaves using separate canning jars. It worked last year so I'm confident it will work this year. Then I won't need a 'sitter' to look after them while we're away.

At the Monarch Sanctuary at Pelee Point, adult monarchs are already emerging (eclosing). When that happens, she provides sweet stuff for the adult to feed on before the long journey south. I'll try the same thing when mine emerge a few weeks from now.

Until then, I'll keep combing the local milkweed patches and the plants around our house for eggs and larvae. My goal this year is getting at least 20 to adulthood.

One more thing... Skip and I dropped into Value Village yesterday for a quick look. I've picked up very nice yarn there a couple of times. There weren't many knitting books but the one I did see was one I've wanted to get for a while - Judith Durant's 'Increase, Decrease".

Yippee!! It's the companion to Leslie Ann Bestor's 'Cast On, Bind Off' which I also own.

And I got it for 1/3 the regular price. I love a bargain.

The Year's Half Over

Last week, Skip and I ventured to the Finger Lakes region of NY state for a short holiday. We did some of our favourite things and some new things. One of our favourite things was to visit the Skaneateles Public Library where they have iPads sitting out for patrons' use and a jigsaw puzzle for anyone to work on it. I found a great book of fat quarter projects. One of the new things we did was eat at two interesting restaurants - Prison City Pub and Brewery where I had delicious shrimp and cheese grits; and Hunter's Dinerant which is an old train dining car with average food and kitchy atmosphere.

We made sure to get home before the traffic got too bad before the long weekend.

One of the things I purchased in the US was a device to convert the cassette tapes from my videocamera to digital files. As they transfer in real time, it is rather time consuming so I simply start recording and then do some stitching.

My sampler is coming along. I found a stitchery shop in Fayetteville outside of Syracuse, A Stitcher's Garden, that carried the green floss I was running out of.

It had many lovely samples stitched up. Including a trunk show by Elizabeth's Needlework designs.

Gentle Lamb Sampler

Antique Animal Sampler

This one from the Boo Club Double Flip series was stitched over 1 thread!!

This simple pattern repetition of Coverlet Houses from The Scarlet House was very effective and was also stitched over 1 thread.

These pieces were quite small. At first I thought they were punch needle pieces but they are actually comprised of French knots.

I've also been working on the brioche cowl. Last night I had to tink several rows to fix several errors. It took all night to do the tinking and get it knit just past the point I had stopped.

It is definitely not error-free but good enough for me.

I'm not sure how big I'll make it. I have lots of both yarns. Perhaps I'll stop the next time orange appears.

We didn't do anything for Canada Day other than putter around the house and garden. I was just enjoying being home.

The year is half over! Yet we have a few adventures still in store for us. 

Life is good.