Monday, May 25, 2009

Real life is always interrupting my fantasies

You know the fantasies where you stay at home being paid the mega moola to lay around and do nothing. Not even knitting, because that would be too much pressure.... So.... where was I? Ah yes, bowing out to Real Life. Not that my Real Life is terribly busy. It's just terribly uninspiring. I do very normal things like go to work, come home watch TV and go to bed. All without knitting a stitch, which is precisely why cable TV is the Devil.

Although, there was that one weekend in April when my mother came up and she spent her monies on my yard, because let's face it-I don't have any. See my above fantasy. Moving on, we planted things and experimented.

First the container garden, because my yard is riddled with moles.


Right to left we have strawberries, which have produced some small, very delicious berries. I eat them straight off the vine. The strawberries sit on stacked cinder blocks for two reasons: a) to keep the bunnies away which my yard is also riddled with, but I don't mind as much as the moles, and b) to keep the dog pee away. I wish I could let my dog eat the stupid loose dogs which pee on my plants. I'm bitter.


Next are my tomatoes and onions, which according to the fantastic book Carrots Love Tomatoes are companion plants and should help each other thrive. I highly recommend this book for anyone who even thinks about gardening.


Further along, we have a fun new addition to the garden picked out by the Hubs; In the front are sweet peppers and the back are okra (also companion plants). I LOVE *say in singsong voice* it when he puts in his two cents on the vegetables we should garden. No, I really do because then he's invested to help eat said vegetables.


Then we have buckets of extra okra, peppers and onions, but I won't bore you with all the plant photos. I just show you a sampling of the okra and peppers in my recycled kitty litter containers. Don't worry. These aired out for months in the yard collecting rain water and dead bugs.


And finally we are experimenting with sod. See the hill of poor drainage behind my garden? All it does is slowly slide all that Georgia red clay into my yard. We got five squares (not all visible) to throw up on the hill and hope they rooted to help slow the creeping mud. And guess what?! They did! My Mom's a genius.

Friday, April 10, 2009

More blame placing

I hand wound the largest ball of yarn I have ever wound before. It's a scrumptious plum color ecowool from CascadeYarns for an upcoming project (more on that later). After 45 minutes of continuous winding it got me thinking...


Just how big is this ball of yarn? Is it as big as my head? Let's find out.


Huge ball of yarn: 19.5 inches.


TURBOchic's head: 21.5 inches. Unfortunately, TURBOchic's head wins the size game.

Obviously, I had to get help with these shots from the only other creature with opposable thumbs in the house-my Hubby. And like any normal person on earth, when you give him a flexible tape measure he must find things to measure. He found Nigel's belly, which made me feel slightly better about the size of my head.



Nigel's Belly Swag: 22 and a quarter almost on the 'in' breath.

Good Friday

Bunny Hat (rav)


This project has been sitting in my yarn bin waiting on me to get unlazyfied. (Yes, that's a word I just made up, but it suits me.) I had the remaining yarn. I had the ribbon. I had the pattern. I just needed to knit it up. Then, finally my Easter Mood sprung upon me and I knit this baby up in just one day.


I blame my Husband for my lack of Easter mojo, because every year I get excited by all the baby chicks and ducks for sale and the Poultry Scientist in me strongly desires some for the eggs and meat and the cuteness, and then the Hubby always puts his foot down. Isn't that nice the way I can blame the Hubs for stuff?

(Does this picture remind anyone else of Ghostbuster's Stay-Puffed Marshmellow Man?)

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

One hint that your stash is starting to get large

I know that I have some ecowool leftover from my hemlock ring blanket. It natural in color. I cannot find it anywhere.

I need it to gauge the beginnings of a new sweater for PoPo.

It's snowing today and she likes to be warm.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Grandma's no frills hat

Story behind this hat. Grandma loves supporting my knitting hobbies, as a crocheter she understands the need to craft with yarn. Grandma decides that she wants a hat last fall. Faithful Granddaughter (that's me, TURBOchic) offers to make her one.


Grandma announces that she's allergic to lanolin. Dang it all, I hate cotton! Faithful Granddaughter procrastinates...after all she is knitting up a whole sweater for the Hubs. Enter the new year, Faithful Granddaughter still decides that more FO's must come off the needles be fore she will cast on yet another project and continues to procrastinate. Grandma begins to offer to buy her own hat instead of getting one from Faithful Granddaughter. Faithful Granddaughter feels a slight twinge of guilt and goes out to buy the yarn. Two weeks pass, Hub's sweater awaits seaming and Faithful Granddaughter has no reason to not knit up Grandma's hat. Knits hat up in 4 days.


Pattern: Black Sea hat by Grumperina (rav)
Size: the 112 sts co
Yarn and Needles: my new BFF, Cascade's Cotton Rich DK in natural on size 6 needles.
Notes: My first beaded knitting and Grandma announces that she doesn't want any color or beads on the dang thing. I love you Grandma, but this hat is down right boring without something on it.

Covering feet one book at a time

Sock innovation (preview) by cookie a. She's my favorite sock designer. I've knit up her pomatomus twice and monkeys once. Both have reached world wide sensationalism, but I'm preaching to the choir here. So you know when my mother handed me a twenty spot for gas in February I immediately spent it one pre-ordering her new book.

I could go on and on about her new approach to helping each one of us become sock designers, but I'd rather just show you what instantaneously has been added to my sock queue. Not that I needed anymore, but these next few patterns do give me the excuse to buy more variegated yarn. We know how hard I have been trying to stay away from the pretties-well no more!

First up: Angee (rav)
Second batter: Rick (rav)
And lastly, Kai-Mei (rav)
All that's left is a trip to the yarn store for some yummy yarn supplies.