Our Messalonskee “TV” station has been providing so much entertainment in the last few days. We heard these two chirping at each other before we found them – it took a minute or two to figure out they were sitting in the tree at the corner of our shared driveway. And there they sat until my DH (dear hubby) had to chase down our naughty, wandering dog. We’ve seen a “critter” swimming by a couple of times and once it dove with a slap of its tail (a beaver). I’ve heard the owls in the evenings again which tells me they’re coming back out of the deep woods. And until this morning we had a couple of female hummingbirds. There’s been a lot of activity on and around the water with cormorants, gulls, loons, ducks and even a dead pike.
I’ve been at work inside finishing projects and just got back from a Target run to buy wrapping paper and tissue paper so that I can package them up and send them off on Monday. I’ll have one to deliver locally in late November but the rest will be fully checked off my list. Yay!
I’ve spoken about the baby hats and matching thumbless mittens. I’ve shown you the French Macaroon and cabled toddler mittens for my great-nephew’s birthday. And today I blocked my Fiddlehead Mittens and I’m tickled pink with them. They turned out beautifully if I do say so. I knit them with a partial skein of Patagonia organic merino by Juniper Moon Farm and a skein of handspun by Clarion Call Fiber Arts that my daughter gifted to me several years ago. I finally found the perfect project for it. The lining is knitted using a hank of yarn that I must have bought at Mardens years ago it’s Classic Elite Yarns, Escape. The Classic Elite company has closed. Despite the fact that these aren’t “my” colors, I love them.
And once blocked, the stitches have evened out and they are simply stunning. I have knitted a lot of colorwork but I love these the most of any. The lining yarn is so soft (I hated knitting with it!) and the little bit of yak in it will make these mittens so warm and cozy.
I have packed up the little Oorik vest, with another little toddler-sized sweater that I made for a workshop that I taught and a pair of the toddler cabled mittens for my darling granddaughter. I have five more packages to wrap and get ready to ship off on Monday. I’m very pleased with myself. This leaves me the Christmas stocking to knit for my college roommate’s grandson and a pair of socks for my brother-in-love. I have caked up my son’s hat yarn and will likely cake up his fiancees hat yarn, too. I believe these will be my last projects for Christmas 2024 leaving me open to start a couple of sweaters that I am itching to knit.
I have several to choose from and that I already have the yarn in my stash: Big Love in Berroco Pima 100, Lane’s Island in Berroco Remix Light, Ouzo in Patagonia (or Wool and Honey), Poet in Julie Aslin fingering from Knit City Montreal, Cardoon in a yarn (forget it’s name) that I bought on clearance at work, Diggory Venn in Lore and there may be a few others in my stash but this is a good start. Ha! Ha!
Aaaaand, on that note, I’m going to sign off and get cracking on the stocking. Think I can get it done in a couple of days? Yeah, maybe not.
Well, it’s been another busy week at the Warner homestead! We’ve had a couple of rainy days but this morning we were able to enjoy our coffee on the porch. What a wonderful way to start the day. Coffee, my favorite husband and the BBD.
I’ve been home from my babysitting gig for about a week and a half and I’ve more or less recovered from full-time grandmothering. AND then life started up again. In the past week we’ve both had our eyes examined, I worked a little bit extra and a Saturday when the boss was out of town, had a board meeting, Maine Arts Academy graduation and a couple of committee meetings. (Thank goodness for Google Meets.) We are now looking ahead to our youngest daughter’s wedding at the end of the month and a bit of travel. I’m excited about July when we will just be at home. I know we have at least one visitor for the 4th of July so that’s exciting!
Yesterday “the girls” at work and I dressed our front window at the store. We’ve been planning this for a few weeks and announced to our LYS community an Emotional Support Chicken kal/cal in our weekly newsletter. We’ve had terrific participation and we are so excited by our summer window display! Our customers are excited about it and we are, too! We even have a couple of foxes.
Today I spent the morning running little errands. One of which was to deliver the little signs for the window. This is one of my boss’s favorite lines and we thought it was appropriate for our window. The ESCs have been such a great fad and we capitalized on it. Isn’t it great!? (New from Lake Yardgoods is that four more chickens arrived today! Yay!)
I’ve knitted four of the ESCs myself. One was sent to a friend in Florida and one was delivered to my granddaughter. The other two are in the window for now. The purple ESC who I’ve named Janet is going to be raffled off to one of my donors for the Longest Day Knit-a-thon that I do each year. The longest day is actually on a Thursday when I have to work so I’ll be knitting on the following Saturday. I hope that maybe some of you will donate to the Alzheimer’s Association through my link.
Thank you to those who’ve already given. I’ve raised $450 of my $1600 goal. But we’re getting close to the date and I hope to amp up my fundraising posts soon.
I’ve been in a little bit of a knitting slump. I don’t really want to knit anything that takes any bandwidth. I’ve started a pair of socks ostensibly for my brother-in-law or my sister and I’ve been working on a little sundress for my granddaughter. I need to frog back a bit on the socks because I noticed last night that I’d made a mistake in the pattern an inch or so back. Since these are gifts, I have to make them right – I see the mistakes and I won’t gift them that way. I might be able to forgive the mistake if they were for me … alas they’re not.
Emotional Support Chickens
I did make a couple of chickens and a giant ray which I finished. BUT I just noticed that the ray doesn’t have a tail and I threw away the left-over yarn. I also returned the other balls of yarn to Michael’s because the yarn had changed. The new white yarn was SOOOO messy and was shedding all over me and all over my atelier when I was working on it. I hated it. Hopefully, though, my daughter will like it and she can stuff her corn heating pad into it and use it as a heating pad cover. We’ll see how the reports come back. I may also close up the hole after I stuff it like the one for Sylvie (which lives in her crib!)
Ruby Ray the Mega Ray
I also ran out of the blue yarn so the poor ray is a bit wonky. But that white yarn was a horror to work with. I’ll be finding white ray fuzz in my studio for years.
Sunbeam Kids Dress
The body of the little dress is finished. I have a few icord edges left to knit and I hope to get to them today but I had to run my errands and pick up some veggie plants for the garden before it’s too late. We have a short planting season here in Maine and we’ve been derelict in our planting duties. My sister-in-love had kale and lettuce ready to eat in her garden. We hadn’t even planted any but today we got some in. Swiss Chard, tomatoes, yellow summer squash, broccoli, kale and some radishes are in. We have to soak our pea and bean seeds and get them planted … maybe tomorrow.
The gardens are full of weeds but the flowers are blooming all around. Spring bulbs have faded into lilacs and then into wild roses and peonies and iris. I love watching the gardens come alive again year after year. We may even get a blueberry or two this year – if we can beat the birds and critters.
The King Fishers have returned to the lake as have the Humming Birds, the Great Blue Herons and, of course, the loons … I mean the fishermen. We had two old guys who could have heard me (ahem) sneeze this morning. I watched them from my atelier window as they scrutinized our house and I’m sure they heard me yell down to my hubby, “maybe they’d like an invitation to dinner” because they quickly motored away. They were close enough to cast their lines onto our shore and hook the dog! With hundreds of acres of water, you’d think they’d choose a spot where people aren’t obviously living – our cars are in the yard, the doors are open, the flag is flying … geesh!
Still on the needles where I was when I last wrote about them are WIPS: 1) Fiddlehead Mittens, 2) Oorik Tank Top … I did at least pick up the stitches and knitted the 5 rounds and bound off for the last arm hole. All that remains is to stitch down the steeks and I can block the sweater. 3) Pink Mittens, 4) Three Seasons Cardigan: I’m going to have to frog this and start it again when I’m ready. My tension is bound to have changed since I bound this on over a year ago. I have done a tiny bit of hand stitching; started a new block for the love note quilt – a picture of our old house here on the lake before we rebuilt.
All I want to do it knit little things. I have yarn for two French Macaroon sweaters by Purl Soho for Sylvie and her friend Isaac. Mitten yarn was purchased for Sylvie and cousin Noah. Dish Towel yarn is in the house for a pair of Farmhouse Dishtowels by Purl Soho (they have some terrific free patterns!) Little things, boring things, things that don’t take a lot of thought or effort because I’m not there and it’s okay.
Today I mixed up some natural ingredients that I hope will work as ant repellant. I am allergic to everything (allergies may be part of what’s going on with me because my system is overwhelmed) and we can’t use any chemicals in our house. This ant repellant is all natural with witch hazel, water, castille soap and essential oils. I’ve had an infestation in my atelier and it’s bugging me (ha! ha! funny!) I had to have a full on cleaning session before heading to work yesterday because they were everywhere – turns out they were in my bag of cough drops the little buggers. I vacuumed, washed the floors and walls and my desk, tossed anything with ants in it and now I sprayed. Crossing my fingers they’re gone forever.
Ant Repellant – Mix in an 8oz. glass spray bottle:
Well, here we are on the first day of the New Year … 2024. It’s another gray day here in Central Maine and it’s, honestly, getting a bit depressing. We had a brief glimpse of the sun yesterday morning and I was hoping that it would be re-energizing but the clouds came barreling in in the late morning and that was that. We did have a beautiful sunset last night though.
I wanted to take a few minutes to sum up my 2023 year in yarn. I was changing over to my new bullet journal book yesterday and so I reviewed 2023 and I officially finished 54 projects. A. few of those were sewing or hand-stitching but the majority were knitted. I have 10 WIPs that I’m carrying over into 2024 (and I have one or two projects that I need to add to my queue.)
I attended a week of sewing camp, Slow Fashion 101, with A Gathering of Stitches at Medomak Retreat Center in Washington, Maine. I took 4 knitting classes centered around traditional Norwegian knitting with Knitography Farm, I attended Knit City in Montreal and took a class with Bristol Ivy and another with Stephanie Purl McFee and I took 5 sewing classes on Creative Bug.
2024 could be a bit gentler to us all and I so wish that there was peace in the world. My heart breaks to think of families in Ukraine and Gaza being terrorized by war. I hate the Israeli government for what they’re doing to innocent citizens while I recognize their right to fight for the hostages taken by Hamas. It’s a difficult situation and one that seems to divide us rather than unite us. It seems that people around the planet have forgotten to listen to others and have compassion for others. Judgement and anger and, dare I say, hatred are flourishing in the current environment which seems to make people less tolerant of others.
In 2024 I’ll continue to work on myself and working to be more accepting, loving, and grateful. I’ll continue to work to move my body more and eat healthfully. (Today I’m starting Dry January.) I want to build in more time for sewing and hope to knit mostly from my stash … we’ll see how that works out. Because I work in a yarn shop, it’s really easy to find new projects to bring home … and I’ve done quite a bit of that in 2023. I’d like to finish up more WIPs and knit from stash this year to make some space for new projects and yarn in 2025, maybe.
I want to take some more day trips around Maine this year and maybe even a few overnights. We live in such a beautiful place and there are so many parts we haven’t seen yet. Maybe we’ll even get out of the state! We have two family weddings this year and I’d love to visit my sister in Arizona and my Aunt and Uncle in Nevada. None of us is getting any younger and tomorrow is not guaranteed.
We have a few house projects to work on. Our guest cottage (it sounds fancy but it’s not) was built in the 1950s and it’s in dire need of some work. We had it lifted up and leveled this fall and we want to paint it and put in a new “kitchenette” so we can rent it. We lived there for 7 months while we built the house and it is comfortable and has a gorgeous view of the lake. It’s a perfect place to paint or write or just escape from the workaday world for a little while. I’ll be providing muffins and scones, of course! We also want to take down our old wood shed building that has been sitting idle for a couple of years. The building we are told was an ice house built in the late 1800s and it’s in bad shape. We will replace it with a garage for one of our cars and put it closer to the house. Once the building is complete, we’ll be adding trees and plants to protect the lake and so we have less lawn. When you live by the lake, lawn is the worst … allowing rain and surface water to run into the lake with phosphorus and other chemicals. It’s bad enough that it’s New Year’s Day and there’s not even a skim of ice on the lake. Climate change is real – this is the first time in 28 years by one neighbor’s experience that we’ve not had ice on the lake at this time. I fear for this beautiful place and will do whatever I can to make our space here be a place of beauty and caring.
A summer home on the lake is lived in for a few months a year. We were here last summer for five months – a rare gift of time in a very special place. This year, we’ll be here two months. Between the times that we’re here, many little critters call it home. And those critters leave feces. Yuck! So, when people move back into the house, cleaning has to happen … especially in the kitchen but I’m a bit of a clean freak and I like to clean all over because we have dogs and I don’t want them eating yucky stuff. I had a miniature panic attack/meltdown when I finally decided to clean the bottom cabinets in the kitchen. Thank goodness N. took pity on me and finished the worst part for me. Ugh.
Mouse-infested before ... clean now!
And then there’s the age of the house which contributes to its awkward angle on land. The house is about 100 years old and it’s been sinking on its “fishing camp” (negligible) foundation for 99 of those years. So, you walk into the house, up over a rock, down into the bedroom. Up over a rock, down into the bathroom. Don’t drop anything in the living room that might roll … or you’d best be ready to chase it toward the lake!
View over the septic tank
The result of the sinking house is that the septic tank doesn’t work properly and despite having had it pumped three times in the last 12 months, we had some lovely water in the shower. And now we’re having a new “platform” added to the bathroom (we will have a true throne) so that we can “fix” the problem. (Long-term fix is lifting the entire house up about 24 inches and putting a more sturdy foundation under it … at a frighteningly high price tag and with a huge permitting question as the “new” set-back is over 100 feet from the lake front.)
Throne in progress! And you thought I was kidding?!
So, there you have it – we’re happily (most of the time) dealing with s@*t …
We sat on the front porch tonight listening to the silence.
The rain had stopped and it felt good just to get some fresh air.
The fog was rolling across the lake and filling up the valleys between the trees on the other side. Fluffy. Thin enough to see through in some places and pea soup thick in others. There was a loon fishing – moving from the left of the house to the right of the house on three or four breaths – and a pair of Canada geese flying through the fog just above the water. Honking to each other all the way up the lake. I could sometimes see them in the foggy misty white and then they’d disappear.
The people in the big house across the lake must have arrived for the weekend and were banging open their house. It’s a mile across but when the lake is mirror smooth, you can hear everything. Even from a mile away.
And as we sat, the fog rolled closer. Obscuring the ability to differentiate between the water and the fog and the clouds in the sky.
Until a bat flew over the water and we couldn’t tell if it was one bat or two.
And now, the loons are outside calling their calls. It’s apparently mating season but we’ve missed the sounds because of the sound of the rain on the roof. Their calls are one of the reasons that I love this place so much and am grateful to be here.
Queen Bee Knits 