Cleaning out the Attic

The crap we hang on to!  Both Eric and I owned 3 bedroom condos before moving here.  The fact we were both in our 30's when we met meant we'd already accumulated a plethora of goods.  We both had hobbies that took up space:  Eric owns scuba equipment, motorcycle racing leathers, loves his radio-controlled models, photography and books.  He owns the largest drafting table I swear I have ever seen, plus a drum set.

In retaliation, I own both downhill and cross-country ski equipment, tons and tons of books, and have a long-standing fetish for antique decoys and old linens.  I own a ton of Christmas decorations.  We might or might not want to mention my wool collection, which takes up about 5 large Rubbermaid bins.  We should mention that between the two of us, we owned 2 of everything:  irons and ironing boards, coffee machines, espresso machines, coffee grinders, cutlery, dishes.  Towels, beds, linens, chairs, desks, and sofas.  It's a miracle we actually need to buy anything ever again, as a matter of fact.

We have a barn beside the house with a little attic we store our duplicates in.  When friends mention they're shopping for something and we think we might have a match, we invite them upstairs and let them have a  look.  We're delighted when kids grow up and move out of their parents' home.  We give away things like colanders and bundt pans and pots and pans.  Need 30 champagne flutes for an upcoming event?  No problem, we've got you covered.  You might as well take the organza table runners and tea-light holders while you're at it, too.

Living in a sparsely decorated house with no attached garage, basement or attic, coupled with the fact old farm houses have no built-in closets caused us to become creative.  Rather, it caused us to become slovenly.  We'd pitch stuff up there so haphazardly that the attic storage started to become unmanageable.  And the more stuff we'd bring up there, the worse things got, obviously.  Excuses for not tackling the space piled up like the contents:  it was either too hot or too cold.  We didn't have the time, or we weren't in the mood for organizing.

Finally, it was Eric who made the first move:  his collection of National Geographics was on the chopping block.  I decided to take them to the War Memorial library, but when I got there to drop them off, a volunteer told me to chuck them straight into the recycling bins out back because there is no demand for them.  The horror!  I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Then I had a brain-storm.  Maybe the Montessori preschool was interested?  I keep forgetting to drop by and ask, so it looks like I've got a permanent collection of National Geographics in the trunk of my car now.  Dammit.

Well, with Eric parting with his precious National Geographics, we moved on:  We culled boxes and papers and obsolete computer equipment.  Mice had taken a feather bed to task, so in the garbage that went.  We found clothing that neither of us claimed to own.  (Maybe someone's living up there besides the mice, and we don't even know it?)  We've recycled tons of stuff, given away tons more, and every day, we put stuff at the road for passers-by to pick up.  By the next morning, it's almost always gone.   It's so nice that we've managed to make space upstairs and get things under pseudo-control.  My conscience is nearly eased.

Today, I went through boxes of old books and sorted a whole lot out.  All the books are going to the War Memorial Library for their monthly fundraising sale.  The paperbacks are left at the bookcase at our local IGA, which sort of functions as a lending library.  You take one book out and put one book in.  Or in my case, you put the books in and don't even THINK of taking one home.  (Must. Avert. Eyes.)

With the upstairs of our house in a state of renovating flux, my decoys don't have a proper home yet.  Today, for the first time in a decade, I opened up the box and had a look-see:

Ahhh, I'd forgotten all about the pin-tail.  I love those birds like they're my off-spring.  Every decoy has a story behind it, and I clutch them to my chest and carry them around, smiling like the damn fool I obviously am.  The photo above is just the tip of my decoy iceberg.

When we tore out our old staircase, we saved those balusters and newel posts that weren't cracked beyond repair.  Of course, we pitched them upstairs:

I have no clue what we're going to do with them, but I can't bring myself to part with them just yet.  I thought of refinishing the best newel post and putting it back into the house, but I'm not sure how I'm going to integrate it yet.  I guess time will tell.

Those lamps I swore I'd turn into piñatas?  They're all up here too...just waiting...for what I don't know.  Probably for me to clean them off and stick them on craigslist or kijiji:

I'll probably just get pissed off, one day soon, and put them at the side of the road.  I'm sure someone, somewhere, would love to hang one of these in their basement, above their poker table...

(I'm dreaming, aren't I?)

These hanging rattan chairs were THE cat's meow - what - 40 years ago?  They're like...vintage...yeah...vintage, that's it.  We have two and one day...one day...we're going to put them somewhere.  I remember swinging in these when I was a kid, and thinking I was a character straight out of a Pink Panther film.  I'm just seriously wondering if we can make them work somewhere in our house.  You'll notice the feathers stuffed in the top corner?  Part of a mouse nest, made out of that feather bed that died an unfortunate death.  I'm sure those mice were pretty happy, though.

Oh.  Pray tell, what have we here?  Why, it's box, a relatively LARGE box, with hundreds and hundreds of corks in it, that's what!  One of my friends has a gorgeous cork-board made from used wine corks, beautifully framed and hanging above the sideboard in their dining room.  It's a work of art, and when I saw it, I was smitten.  I feel bad for all those wine corks, unceremoniously chucked into landfill sites, slowly rotting away.  Sadly, this box makes us looks like we're world-class winos, but rest assured, we're pretty sober most of the time.  One day, I'm going to turn these into a bathmat.  Or trivet.  Or room divider. Or birdhouse.  Or whatever images dot google dot com spews up the day I get around to transforming them.  (Seriously.  Google used cork art.  You'll be amazed at the creativity.  You'll never throw another cork into the garbage, ever again.)

And that, dear friends, is but a small sampling of the goodies stashed away in the Shim Farm attic.  Slowly, we're organizing this jumbled space into a more functional area, clearing our conscience along the way.

In Other News

Just like that, from one day to the next, we received a letter in our mail box saying our postal service had been suspended.  Seems our mail delivery person deemed our road as "too dangerous" to deliver mail safely, and put a complaint in at the ministry of transportation, as well as the workplace safety board.

We now needed to drive into "town", (which is about 5 km from home, and not in a direction we'd normally drive in) to get our mail until a solution to our collective problem was found.  It's no great secret that Canada Post has been cutting back on their rural delivery over the past few years, and I can't say I really blame them.  What I disagree with is Canada Post's insane policies, and the creative ways they twist rules to suit their needs.

It was funny that about one week into our mail embargo, our postie went on vacation, and the replacement postie obviously didn't get the memo.  We started receiving our mail again.

I guess the ministry of transportation got the memo though, because a few days ago, a new speed limit sign was posted down the street.  Even I thought the speed limit at the end of our road was 70 km/h, but apparently it's been 50 km/h, just the sign was missing.  As in, for 10 years, missing.  Ahh, the bunglings of bureaucracy.  I used to burn up the non-emergency number for the cops in early years, complaining about the speeders tearing up and down our street.  Had I known the speed limit was only 50 km/h all the way along our street, I might have been a little more militant.  Alas.  I guess all we needed to do was clip the postie's car and watch the wheels that are government departments spin into over-drive.

Finally, four weeks later, we received a little envelope with 2 keys to an assigned community mail box.  We now get to walk down the street and pick up our mail and packages at a so-called super-box.  It's not convenient, there's no place to turn a car safely, but what the heck.  This little thing called "progress" is nipping at our heels.  As the saying goes:  You will be assimilated.  Canada Post will see to it, that's for sure.

In completely unrelated news, our town is still on a boil-water advisory because of high E. coli test results in our municipal water system.  It's been 3 months now, and a solution to our H2-Oh-Oh problem isn't anywhere on the horizon.  It's hard not to drink water out of the tap, especially while brushing one's teeth, for example.  I've never been a fan of bottled water, so buying water in bulk irritates me.  It's probably more dangerous than what comes out of the tap, considering most of it is bottled in plastic bottles and stored in dog knows what conditions, and for how long?  We always have the choice of switching over to our well water, but if the municipal water supply is contaminated with E. coli, ours is too, in all likelihood.  Why take that chance?

The only water that is tested potable is the run-off from our septic system, disinfected by UV treatment, no less.  Too bad we're not allowed to drink it.  Municipal rules, dontchaknow?  Oh, the irony.

So, every two weeks we receive a new notice, put in our old rural mail box no less, informing us of another 2 week delay.

It's great when systems work, isn't it?

Summer, Thus Far

It goes without saying I've been a crappy blogger.  Without further ado,  here are some photos:

It's been hot and dry.  Unlike many areas of Canada and the US, we've always had a good dumping of rain just in the nick of time, each and every time.  This hay was cut and baled on the same day, a rarity around these parts, where hay normally needs to dry at least a day or two before baling.

You might be able to make out the huge light-standard on the left-hand side of the photo.  This is the new extension of Highway 540 south, AKA Highway 30.  We don't call it the "30 in 30" for nothing - we've been waiting since the 80's for this highway to be built.  Work began in earnest three years ago, and this part of the highway is slated to open this December.

I'm not sure I'm eager to see just how much light those light-standards are going to give off, though.

And because I can't get enough of round bales of hay, here's the field on the other side of the road.

I'll say it again:  the weather this summer has been perfect.

No. Let me take that back.  We've had a lot of tornado warnings this summer, and a lot of wonky radar images that proved a bit troubling, but our general area was spared from really high winds and hail.  This time.

We have a new little JD lawn tractor.  I call her Fawn.  (Get it?  Baby Deer?)  Apparently, Fawn is my birthday present, but I'm still not buying that little gesture.  Ain't.  Buying.  It.

Fawn makes it possible, though, to make the grounds look semi-clean in record time.  Little Fawn is like a go-cart, but with the added bonus of blades.

I get excited about a cut lawn, okay?  Since Fawn's arrival, we were doing the lawn with the big JD and the bush-hog attachment, or my trusty walk-behind Eastman lawnmower.  I love Fawn.  Just ain't sure it's a good birthday present, Eric.

I caught a shot of this turkey vulture sunning himself on the roof of the barn.  The wingspan on these birds is from 63-72" if you believe everything you read on Wiki.  I don't need to believe it, I've seen it.  These birds are impressive.  This vulture sat there for a few moments, completely undisturbed, and then flew off, circling the farm on a thermal.

Because I am an idiot, we have a new cat:

Eric named her Capucine, which is french for nasturtium.  I don't agree on the name, so I'm calling her Cappucino.  Mostly I call her Cappie though, as a sort of compromise.  She's terribly cute and needy.  A real snuggle-muffin the likes of which this house hasn't seen in years.  She gets in my face (literally) and meows when she wants something.  Her meow features a little lisp, her tiny tongue covering her teeth in this adorable baby-cat kind of way.  Check out the hairy-ear action.  Eric always wanted a Maine Coon cat, and this is the closest we're going to get having anything pure-bred around here.  I'm all for mutts, cats and dogs and people alike.  Cappie was part of a stray cat's litter a friend was feeding, and our friend got terribly attached to her.  He couldn't keep her and suggested we take her in.  Well, twist my rubber arm.  I've got sucker written all over me.

The Bobberizer went missing for 5 full days.  I canvassed the neighbourhood, scoured internet missing pet boards, when low and behold, there he was, his little face in the window of the front door.  I haven't been that over-joyed in eons.  My Bobby, back home where he belongs.  He ate 2 tins of celebratory cat food upon his return, which led me to believe he'd been caught in a garage or shed somewhere.  At least he didn't smell of Bounce dryer sheets and cigarette smoke, and he wasn't wearing a flea collar...

Now, every time he comes into the house and I don't roll out the red carpet, he looks at me with disdain.  Sorry Bob, it's back to the mediocre dry food for you.  For some strange reason, he's actually spending the nights inside again, (albeit until 3:34 AM last night).  At 3:34, Bobby got all passive-aggressive, tap dancing on the dresser, and jingling the little pull-rings that open the night-table.  Bob has passive-aggressive down to a fine art, dontcha Bob?  Just another furry monster who has yours truly wrapped around their little paw.

Here's a double-rainbow for your viewing pleasure.  This is the view when I open up the Velux window in the master-bedroom, hence the corner of the roof in the picture.  This happens on a regular basis, so it's not that remarkable to us, but one of the rainbows was so bright I couldn't resist the photo.

Here's more proof:

See?  Awesome, isn't it?

That's been our summer in a nutshell.  I've got so many projects on so many burners that I hardly know where to start.  Stay tuned.

Greetings from Gougouneville

No, it's not a village in Senegal.  Gougoune is the Quebecois word for flip-flops, and it's my riff on the popular Montreal expression of Balconville.  If you're like us and stay home during summer vacation, well, you're staying in Balconville.  I washed Cooper this past weekend, and decided it would be appropriate to own a pair of shoes that could get wet, other than my ubiquitous rubber boots.  With a visit to the grocery store and 4 loonies later, here are my new gougounes:

Summer can officially start now.  I own a pair of flip-flops, a first for me, believe it or not.  While my feet look like they belong to a lady of leisure, my hands look like a diesel mechanic's at this time of year.  They should be OK by the time October rolls around and the dirt wears off and my nails grow back.  Right now, they're so unpresentable as to be terrifying.

The weather in June has been fabulous!  It's been bright, sunny, breezy, and with our early spring, it feels like it's been summer for-ev-ah.  This coming week we'll have temps in the mid 30C's, which translates to low 90's on the Fahrenheit scale, and if that weren't enough, this coming Monday is a statutory holiday.  So is the following Monday, it's our little way of kicking off summer with a double-whammy.  St-Jean-Baptiste day marks the beginning of school vacation in Quebec, and the unofficial start of summer.  Canada Day on July 1 is celebrated by the entire country, but we Quebeckers enjoy the double-header.  It's how we make up for our long and often miserable winter.  So let the games begin!

On the "projects" front, I have asked, begged and pleaded for a clothes line for the past ten years.  This year, I took matters into my own hands because my patience was wearing thin.  (I'm tolerant like that LOL!) I was sure a regular clothes line spanned between two trees or posts wasn't going to happen when Eric started to talk about putting in posts with 4000 psi air-entrained concrete complete with rebar, (Eric over-engineers, dontchaknow?).  I broke down and bought a Brabantia rotary clothes dryer at our local Crappy Tire.  It was 30% off, it's not made in China (it's made in Latvia), and it can be easily stored during winter months.  Since I took this bull by the horns, apparently I am in charge of installing the ground spike that holds the dryer into place.  With our hard clay soil, I'll need a sledge hammer or a backhoe (a thought I did entertain momentarily) to drive it into place.  I was hoping for a nice downpour to saturate the ground, but I think I'll be waiting for a while with the hot spell we have forecast for the next week.  I've decided to just water down the spot where I want the spike, and hope that I can drive the anchor in straight.  Clean laundry flapping in the breeze, here we come!

This year, our field is planted with soy, one of Quebec's largest crops, and it's growing by leaps and bounds.  Obviously, we have corn across the street, because crop rotation ain't happening here, and even though it was planted late, it shot right up with the recent hot temperatures.  We also replaced the two trees in our windbreak that were bulldozed over by the drainage work on the new highway 30, and planted 4 more alongside our driveway.  Hopefully we'll get the chance to plant another 4 on the opposite side of the driveway this week, so eventually, we'll have a sort of tree alley leading to the house.

This year, all I planted were annuals for a punch of colour around our slate patio.  The peach-coloured begonias above come courtesy of my grocery store's garden centre that gets set up in a corner of the parking lot every year.  President's Choice "Gigantico" plants have yet to disappoint me.  This begonia hybrid is called "Dragone Sunset" and was one of the 15 noteworthy plants at Canada's 2012 Blooms show in Toronto.  This photo was taken a few weeks ago, and the leaves have almost been obscured by the vibrant blooms.  I am in love with this begonia!  I also found some large Quebec-made planters which I filled with red geraniums, white wave petunias, dracaena, vinca, ipomoea and euphorbia.  Again this photo was taken right after it was planted, and it's exploded with blossoms and foliage since then.  This is my first time using wave petunias, and it most definitely won't be the last.

I did some planters with coleus and dusty miller, and others with gazania.  I threw some lobelia in with a flat-leafed parsley plant and it's turning into a nice combo.  I have a few herb planters I do every year with the standard list of characters:  sweet basil and "regular" basil (because I wanted to know, once and for all, what the difference is!), Thai basil, Greek oregano, sage, rosemary, cilantro and thyme.  I planted one "El Jefe" jalapeño pepper in a huge pot supplemented with lots of chicken manure and shrimp compost, plus I'm still on the look-out for a yellow cherry tomato plant.  I bought one at Quinn's Farm last year, and the little tomatoes were sweet like candy.  I'm not a big tomato fan (hello heartburn!) so this is a huge admission coming from me.  This year - the clothes line - next year - raised garden beds!  I've got to fight my battles one year at a time.

Eric is conducting phase II of a potato experiment in our sole garden bed that's not planted with our wind-break trees.  His father sent us true potato seeds from France (yes, seeds from the potato flowers he pollinated himself) which we planted last year.  I found an interesting article on growing potatoes from seed "seed" here, as opposed to growing potatoes conventionally from tubers.

A more in-depth read on potato breeding can be found here, courtesy of Raoul A. Robinson.  From the plants we grew last year, we harvested lots of teeny tiny baby potatoes, the largest of which was the size of an egg.  This year, we're growing plants from those tiny potatoes which we kept in the crawl space this winter.  When I took them out this spring, they were already sprouting, and we finally got them into the ground about a month ago.  Eric took the old rototiller he inherited from his father when his parents moved back to France years ago, and went to town preparing the bed for planting.  Our soil is very clayey and needs lots of amending.  We've brought in tons of manure with our tractor's front loader from our neighbour's farm, and put in tons of leaf mulch.   Eventually, we'll get there.  What we really need is a 48" rototiller for the big John Deere, and believe me, we're working on it.

The field right beside the house was left fallow, which is the second year running if my memory serves me well.  The hay fields are full of bobolinks, whose crazy songs fill the air.  In past years, the hay was cut before the baby birds could fledge, but I think they're safe this year.  Today I noticed a proliferation of birds which I'm going to attribute to our early spring and the head-start the birds got nesting.  In past years, the hay was cut before the baby birds could fly, and crows could be seen for days on end, feasting on the remains.  It made me sad to see, but this year I'm convinced the babies are safe.

BobCat surprised us this past winter, with his level of devotion and his Velcro-like behaviour.  He did two things that surprised me this week.  First, he hates it when I take a bath.  He circles the tub, meowing all the time, and won't leave me alone until I'm out of the water.  The other day, he circled the tub, and put his paws on a shelf in the tub, trying to get close to me.  Then he reached out for me, and grabbing hold of my scalp, dug his claws in.  While I appreciate Bob's concern, I'm not about to drown in the tub, but I guess he's not quite convinced about my ability to extricate myself from harm's way.  Second, Cooper got attacked by a friend's psycho Bernese Mountain dog, and although no blood was drawn, BobCat came to Cooper's defense, and puffed himself up and screamed bloody murder, ready to take on a foe 85 pounds heavier than himself.  Bob and Cooper aren't even buddies in the sense they don't cuddle together, but they are mutual in their respect for each other, and I found it remarkable that Bob would come to Cooper's defense like he did.

Another one who surprises us:

I cannot tell you how many times I hover over Schatzie's sleeping body, checking for signs of life.  Sometimes, she sleeps with one eye open, and I think - that's it - she's finally kicked the proverbial bucket.  I never cease to be amazed by this cat's perseverance.  This May, we started year 8 of her presence in our house, and it's hard to believe she's still around and kicking, considering the old snaggle-toothed hag was 20  when we adopted her.  With the warm weather we've been having, she stumbles outside when I get home from work and lays down on the slate tiles, warming her old arthritic bones.  This evening, BobCat went and lay down beside her, as though he knows she's old, frail, half-blind, stone-deaf and completely defenseless against a predator.  I'm not anthropomorphizing, because I am convinced he was looking out for her.  BobCat's that kind of cat.

That pretty much summarizes the month of June so far, but it's not over yet.  We still need to get a few more trees planted, the ground spike for my rotary clothes dryer driven into the ground (the laundry's piling up and I'll be damned to turn on the dryer once more this season...), plus all those other summer rituals like mowing, mowing and more mowing.  Summer is the busiest time of the year on so many fronts, hence this long and disjointed post.

Until next time, greetings from Gougouneville.

Organization for the Nation

Despite having been the teacher's pet many a time and graduating with honours, I despised school.  I was the one child who counted down the days until summer vacation, (do you want the count with or without weekends?) and then counted down the remaining days of summer vacation with dread in my heart.  Just thinking about Labour Day weekend elicited palpitations in my young chest.

Every single one of my first-day-back-to-school photos shows me red-eyed and sniffling, wiping the snot across my face while I waited for the school bus.  I can only imagine my mother, walking back to the house, confoundedly shaking her head and wondering what she did wrong to have been burdened by such an anti-social and non-conformist progeny.

One slogan from my skool daze remains indelibly etched into my gray matter:  Sanitation for the Nation.  That's what the toilet paper holders said in every school I have ever attended, and it's stayed with me to this day.  G. H. Wood. was a supplier of toilet paper, hand paper, and a variety of institutional sundry goods, especially within our school jurisdiction.  The logo could be found everywhere if one was observant enough.

It goes without saying that pretty much any word ending in -ation makes me think of G. H. Wood and Co. and their "Sanitation for the Nation" catchphrase.  Procrastination for the Nation - that's one of my favorites.  Another one is Organization for the Nation.  Having spent exactly half of my lifetime working in some administrative capacity or another, organizing is something I take pride in.  Being able to find the receipt for a 13-year old toaster is a skill (!), and implementing cohesive systems that even alphabetically-challenged coworkers can use efficiently is my forté.

One thing I didn't take pride in was my jumbled recipe file.  Rather, files, folders and binder.  Since the advent of the internet, I have so many favorite cooking sites (Taste Spotting, anyone?) and I have printed up so many recipes that I hardly use my cookbooks anymore.  Organizing all those recipes was my proverbial Waterloo, however.  I tried a binder with a handy A- to Z- index.  Turns out I filed so much stuff under C- (cakes, cookies and chicken anyone?) that looking for the Chicken Marsala recipe caused me to salivate over things like Blondies (should that have been under B?), and swoon over Carrot Cake.  My system lacked a certain efficiency, but I knew where everything was, and pulling the files out and reminiscing about tried-and-true recipes is a task I quite enjoyed, thankyouverymuch.

But I've been on an organizational bender these days.  With our on-going renovations upstairs, we've had to store lots of things, and cull clothing, books and knick-knacks.  The other day I went through the bedroom and ended up with a trunk-full of clothing to be donated to Hudson's community health care society.  I sorted through old books, and many of them ended up in the handy bin at our neighbouring War Memorial Library.  Household goods can be dropped off at the War Memorial Library as well, and are sold on Saturday mornings from 10-12.  Going into "The Bunker", as the basement is affectionately known, requires restraint.  The last time I went, I had to control myself from buying a tiny red table-top piano.  And I don't even play piano.  Go figure.

But back to the recipes.  The other day, I spotted a clear plastic accordion folder at my grocery store.  It was sturdy, it could be wiped clean, and my wheels started to turn.  I picked it up for $5.  If it didn't work for my recipes, it would work for my knitting patterns (again, blame the internet for enabling us knitters).

It took me a while to create my headings, trying to maximize the use of the 24 folders in an efficient matter.  Where do I file my Osso Bucco recipe?  What about my slowcooker recipes?  And those handy little booklets from Carnation Milk and Robin Hood Flour and the BC Salmon Fishing Council?   I needed a cohesive and intuitive system, and wanted to utilize the folder to its full capacity.  With a few Post-it notes and dry-runs under my belt,  I was confident enough to make permanent folder names with my beloved P-touch labeller.

Oh bliss:

I am enjoying my new filing system more than you can imagine.

Now, what's for dinner again?

Rams and Yowes - A Progress Report

Sad but true, I am ashamed to admit that I fell out of love with my Rams and Yowes project.  This is the first time I've knit with Shetland wool, and if I were smart enough (which obviously, I'm not), I would have made a swatch and blocked it before launching into this project.  But I'm not interested in getting gauge - it's a blanket, after all - but what swatching would have done was still the nagging thoughts in the back of my mind that my knitting wasn't even enough.

When I looked at photos of blankets-in-progress on-line, I decided I must have been doing something wrong.  This blanket surely wouldn't block out perfectly, and with every passing row, my doubts and fears grew thanks to my very active imagination.

As projects are sometimes wont to do, it got put in its dedicated clear zippered bag, and placed on top of the dryer, not quite out of sight, but there as a mocking reminder of my knitterly short-comings.  Every time I went into the laundry room and did a load of laundry, there it sat, unrequited and unfulfilled.  It was the "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah" of the wooly world.  And it was in the laundry room that my stroke of genius (I'm being kind, it was more of a lucid moment) came to me.  I'd just purchased a new state-of-the-art pressure steam iron.  A real steam iron - let me tell you - this thing ain't messing around.  And using said steam iron, I steamed my uneven stitches, and watched in joy and disbelief as each stitch relaxed under the steam's spell.  Suddenly, the knitting evened out, and I did a little jig.  If this were a relationship, well, we're back on again, as the saying goes.

So I'm giving the Rams and Yowes full attention these days, now that it's back on the front burner and the heat's turned up to high.  Since the above photo was taken, I've managed to finish the Rams in the middle section, and start in on the Yowes which mirror the opposite end.  I'm starting my third section of Yowes, so the end is in sight.  With a few more days of love, we'll be ready to steek and start the border, which involves picking up 700 plus stitches along all four sides.  I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

On Lilac and Lopi

The lilac is in full-bloom as evidenced by the above, and our weather has been balmy and sunny, reaching a high of 31C or 88F on Monday, May 21.

We've got all sorts of lilac growing all over, most of it where we don't exactly want it, but when they're in full bloom, we forgive them their location, and enjoy their heady scent and beautiful blooms.

These were all started from seed by a previous owner, so bonus points there, but eventually we're going to have to relocate some, and hopefully they'll take in their new location.  The ones above aren't perfectly white, but have a light, light lilac tinge to the blossoms before they open.  They are superbly beautiful.  This year I picked a few vases' worth, and the smell in the house was unbelievable.  It's just a shame they don't keep well as cut flowers.

Besides the great weather we've been enjoying, last Monday was a holiday, so all the better!  It gave me the opportunity to sit under our new steel-blue umbrella and enjoy its lovely cast while knitting a long-forgotten UFO.

I started this Védis Jónsdóttir design called Nú last October or November, right after I received my big batch of Lopi from Iceland.  It was supposed to be a quick knit - maybe a day or two worth of work - but through a bit of carelessness, I ended up making the wrong size sleeves.

Try as I might, I couldn't get the yoke decreases to work properly since I had 4 extra stitches, and since these decreases form an integral part of the design, I couldn't really fudge a "knit 3 together", although I gave it my best shot.  Bulky yarn is unforgiving like that.  The project was stuffed into a bag, and stuffed into a Rubbermaid bin, and clear out of my consciousness.

So the project languished until Monday morning.  Armed with a free day, sunny skies, and nothing on the agenda,  I sat outside and pulled the yoke back.  For some obscure reason, I had even proactively grafted the underarms already, and once I unpicked my grafted stitches, I could pull the arms back.

Working with 12mm needles is hard work.  The stitches don't flow, instead, they need to be pushed on the needles with coercion, every stitch requiring effort to load it on the needle, knit it, and push it onto the next.  (Note to self:  bulky yarn and fat needles do not a quick project make).

To top things off, I needed to use the dreaded magic loop method of knitting, because I couldn't find 12 mm double pointed needles.  I cannot fathom why anyone would knit this way, unless it's under duress.  Give me my 12 mm double-pointed needles, and no one gets hurt.

But spurred on by a gentle breeze, I had one sleeve knit back up again, in the correct size this time, of that I made doubly sure.  I was on a roll, and I know myself well enough that I needed to take full advantage of my mood, lest this project fall off the radar for another few months.  The next sleeve didn't exactly fly off the needles either, more of a push/knit/push slog-fest, but soon it was done, too.  I joined sleeves to body, and started in on the yoke, and from there on, the finish line was clearly within reach.

At 10:30 PM, with ends woven in, I called it a night.  I just had the underarms to graft, but even that was accomplished during my lunch-time at work the next day.

So, with one less thing in the UFO basket, my knitting resolution for 2012 won't exactly hold, but finishing one more UFO makes me feel infinitely better about the Sweet Georgia CashLuxe Fine yarn I just bought on-line to make a Colour Affection Shawl, known in knitting circles as the Colour Infection Shawl, because it's gone viral as some knitting patterns do.

Sometimes I amaze even myself.  And what I didn't realize, despite the dire remarks all over the website, is that Sweet Georgia is dyed-to-order.  Naturally, I am just chomping at the bit to get my eager little hands on that wool.  But what it's done is buy me some time (4 to 6 weeks?) to finish my Rams and Yowes blanket before my order comes in.  It's back on my radar with a progress report forthcoming.

Resistance is futile.  I will be assimilated. Of this I am sure.