What Housework?

Ankle warmers?

No, just the current progress on my Undulating Rib socks (which are the coolest pattern ever, thank you Ann Budd, I forgive you for the Diagonal Cross-Ribs). These are in the bamboo blend sock yarn (see shop update, below) and I love both the yarn and the texture of the ribbing. They look quite different on than they do "at rest":

The above photo was taken as part of a shop update to advertise the skein of "factory seconds" yarn that matches my socks, but then Helen was passing through town and swept it away before I could put it up for sale. That is not to say there is no bamboo blend yarn for sale. In fact, I have four colorways available:

I just sent out a couple of wholesale orders, but I saved some for the shop. I also dyed up quite a bit of the new Real Vermonter yarn in the following shades:

I have five skeins of each, with a 10 percent discount for purchases of four or more skeins. (If you order the four skeins in different colorways, the discount may not show up; I'll take care of it.) There are over 300 yards in each skein.

A while back, I dyed up a solid dark eggplant skein and one of varied colors, thinking I would make my daughter stranded mittens. The gauge was just too tight, so I ripped. But I've got a new mitten pattern going in just the eggplant, in my own design:

These go fast, even though I keep having to rip them out.

It's been a while since I blogged. The summer is flying past with days of muggy heat and downpours. The garden is coming along. The green beans are ready for picking.

We had some for dinner last night:

The tomatoes are growing, if not ripening. I have all kinds, but the labels washed off so I don't know which are what. These might be Brandywines:

These, I'm not so sure about. Amish Paste?

I have some other things in the garden that I received as a gift. This is how it works: Some people had a boar. We borrowed him. We ended up keeping him. In exchange, my husband and brother-in-law rototilled the wife's garden. In thanks, she gave my husband some tomato, pepper, lettuce, and eggplant plants, all of which are doing great. Nice when things go that way, isn't it?

Look at this little eggplant flower:

And in case you were worried, the animals are fine. The other day we had a peahen on the back porch in the morning:

And turkeys on the front porch in the afternoon:

The peahen, as you may recall, had nested in the goats' hay. Sadly, they trampled her eggs and after a few days of nesting on nothing, she has given up.

And last, on a business note, I am about to make my first wholesale order with Louet, which means I will soon be carrying spinning equipment! I am thrilled about this, because at the moment there is no one in the immediate area who carries wheels, and there are quite a lot of spinners around. (I will also have to make a sacrifice and buy myself a wheel, purely for the purposes of having a floor model for people to try...)

It's a beautiful sunny day here and we haven't had our daily torrential rains yet. But it's early..

Introducing Ms. Marigold*

*Notice the complete lack of poultry or livestock (or a shop update) in this post.

I started Ms. Marigold late this winter or early this spring and then lost interest for several months. It wasn't much work to finish the waist and hem, once I figured out the waist shaping.

Picking up stitches for the neckline and armholes, however, took forever, especially since I had to redo each several times before I got the trim to lay right. Also, the neckline doesn't quite meet in the middle, but I think it looks fine.

The Details

Pattern: Ms. Marigold, by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed
Needles: 2s and 4s (pattern calls for 3s and 5s)
Gauge: 20 sts and 28 rows to 4" on larger needles
Size made 34". I knit 14" from armhole to lower edge and I should have gone a bit longer.

My thoughts: This is actually a fun little pattern and I think it came out cute, if a little snug; it rides up. At the hips, I added several rows of double increases every 4th row and then a couple every 5th or 6th after that.

It annoys me that there are no stitch totals given anywhere the pattern, even after you first cast on; only the number of stitches between 5 markers are listed. The upside is that it makes you feel pretty liberated when you have no idea whether or not you have the right number of stitches after increasing and joining and all that. Also, no suggestions are given for how many stitches to pick up around neck and armholes, although that's a flexible number. It would help to have a reminder that your count should be divisible by 4 to accommodate the 2x2 rib.

I'm still not sure whether this yarn is a bit warm for a summer top, but I'm wearing it right now and it feels fine.

Overall, this is a very straightforward and simple pattern knit from the top down and would be great for a beginning knitter, although the lack of stitch counts can be a bit disconcerting.

The question is, why am I wasting valuable knitting time on a summer top when oil prices are skyrocketing and it looks like we'll be paying $5.19 a gallon this winter rather than the $2.99 we paid last year? Need more sweaters, more fingerless mitts, and cowls.  I think I shall call winter 2008/2009 Year of the Neck Warmer.

Tomorrow I will be photographing my nephew's wedding. Here's hoping I don't ruin the happiest day of his life. :-)

He wanted to be a Dalmatian

Poor Milo. He once hoped to become a firehouse dog, but when that dream died, he had to settle.

Now he's just a pickup cat.

Summer is moving right along at the Lazy J (the name my rotten brother-in-law has given our farm, in my dubious honor). The same rotten BIL surprised me last week with improved tomato supports and a new screen door, so I can't complain too much:

Overall the garden is looking good. The snap peas gave out over the weekend, so I pulled the vines and gave them to the pigs, then planted late carrots where the peas had been. And the beans are happy:

A couple of months ago, the field beyond the garden looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

Do you think we'll have enough sweet corn?

There's a meadow on the other side of the path to the pond that looks like this:

But it will be getting mowed soon, if only because (a) my husband and BIL have the equipment to do it and (b) men abhor letting nature take its course.

Which brings me to the pond. It has, I'm happy to say, recovered from the recent backhoe trauma.

And although you can't see it from the pictures, there is something very different about the pond now: it is stocked with a few dozen brook trout! Matt Danaher, of the Danaher Fishery in Shrewsbury, came by to make sure the pond would support trout. It apparently has a spring or two in it, and temps vary from 59 to 67, which is on the warm side for brook trout, but they're doing fine. They were a test run, soon to be followed by more brook trout and a lot more brown trout, which do well in these temperatures. We've decided to skip the rainbows, which would do well in there, too. But my husband says they are too trendy or something; the Merinos of the fish world, I think. We've been feeding the brookies now and then, and it's like having a giant, half-acre goldfish bowl. Fun.

Along with the trout will be a wind-powered aerator. The windmill arrived via UPS yesterday; now we just need to take a few weeks to put it together and hook it up. The aerator will improve the oxygen in the water and clean it up and hopefully clarify it a little. We do plan to swim in it once we get a dock in, which has prompted a few people to ask if you can swim in a stocked pond. The hatchery guy said it will be better with trout because they eat a lot of mosquitoes and water bugs and keep the algae down. So I'm thinking Vermont tourist attraction: "Swim with the Trout." Well, people swim with the dolphins, so why not?

Here's another one of those I Spy photos: Can you spot the peahen?

If you look closely in the hay bin, you might see this:

The dumb ol' girl has got a nest.

Fortunately, the goats and sheep hate this hay, so they haven't eaten it out from under her yet. But the goats climb in there, and twice I've caught them curled up on either side of her, possibly TOUCHING her, and still she doesn't move.

I guess her forest nest didn't work out and she's learned to stay inside the electric fence and under the roof overhang. My husband only saw two eggs so maybe it'll be a small clutch. Stay tuned for a few weeks.

The goats and sheep are doing well, although a certain sheep has a bit of a weight problem:

She has such a pretty face, though.

Snowy:

We also have three new girls in the coop, a trio of young "Araucanas," who will hopefully give us some colored eggs this fall:

And we got our hay in. We had a local farmer hay our field, in exchange for 350 of the bales. He got another 450 or so for himself, plus he'll take all of the second cut. All we had to do was load it into the barn on a blistering hot afternoon:

And when I say "we" loaded it, I mean the guys loaded it. I took pictures of the barn:

In other farm news, I picked black raspberries ("black caps," but not blackberries):

which made a small but very delicious jar of jam that tasted as good mixed in with vanilla ice cream that night as it did spread on popovers the next morning. Yum. Also, although I didn't mention it earlier, we had our meat birds "processed" on site a couple of weeks ago. Despite the heat, I roasted our first homegrown chicken:

That bird has provided us with one roast chicken dinner, a couple of chicken sandwiches, one chicken casserole, one baked chicken/rice/broccoli dinner, and a couple quarts of broth. It was very juicy and tasty but there was not as big a difference between this and store-bought as there was with the pork. Whatever, we're happy.

Now, if you have had your fill of farm pictures, take heart: There is knitting.

I started a pair of Undulating Rib socks in a reject skein of merino/bamboo/nylon:

This is another pattern from Favorite Socks and much more Jessie-friendly than the Diagonal Cross-Ribs.

I also decided to finish Ms. Marigold, which stalled at the waist shaping. I took it off the needles for a try-on and it fits like a glove, which may or may not be a good thing.

I decided to add some rather aggressive shaping to accommodate my rather aggressive hips:

We'll soon find out if this was a good thing.

Ah, blogging. I could go on and on, if only because I am under a deadline and don't feel like writing my column today. But I'd better shift gears and get down to business. It's not all fun and games at the Lazy J, you know...

What I did on my summer vacation

Well, this, for starters:

Still smarting from the Three-Month Socks, I came back with a vengeance. True, they are totally plain socks in every way, except for the garter-stitch detail I picked up from Elizabeth Zimmerman:

This is the yarn my daughter dyed for me. Isn't it cool? And this is the merino/bamboo/nylon blend (available at A Piece of Vermont Yarn & Fiber, 'course) which I really, really like. But not as much as I like this yarn:

This, on the other hand, is not up for sale. It's the beginning of the spinning of the huge amounts of black alpaca and gray wool I carded two weeks ago. Well worth the effort, too. I can't adequately describe this yarn, but it's very heavy for its thickness. I assume that's the alpaca in there. Whatever. I love the way it's turning out and I can't wait to knit it up.

So that's about all I did on vacation. Other than lounge around in the sun (and rain). True, I don't consider camping the most glamorous activity. Camper camping is even less glamorous than wilderness camping, probably because of the contradiction of "roughing it" while still retaining all the comforts of home. Truth: I finished my column from camp and then emailed it to my editor using my niece's laptop and the campground's Wi-Fi. Not exactly Sir Edmund Hillary, that's all I'm saying.

Here's our campsite:

Too small for all our stuff. Our immediate party included me, my husband, and our daughter in the camper, Stepson #2, his college roommate, and his girlfriend in the tent, and Stepson #1 (home from OK for a week!) and his girlfriend in a tent on my nephew's site. I think our extended family occupied 6 sites on this campground and the total number of people was approximately 31, with another 5 to 8 drop-ins crashing in any available camper or tent during the week. How do you get everyone together? With this:

Sir Edmund Hillary can eat his heart out. My BIL bought an 18 x 31 canopy that at first we all laughed at. We said it looked like a pavilion at the county fair. We said we expected to see sheep shearing demonstrations at 1:00 and 4:00.

And then the rains came.

I didn't dare take pictures of the torrential downpours that hit on our first full day at camp, but here's the aftermath:

And, the next day, this grew under our Cabela's camp kitchen:

It gave us a real appreciation of why you might enjoy an 18' x 30' canopy. (While we were there, one person who sells T-shirts at rock concerts asked where he could buy one, and another family who owns a camp on the nearby lake asked to rent it. Who's laughing now?)

My nephew's wife came by. It's ironic to me that she's an avid knitter and spinner, because we both married into a family where no one does either. Anyway, she had her son model a hat made with my hand-dyed BFL, spun by her (her first wheel spinning ever!) and knit with her own semi-improvised pattern. This is the Peace Train colorway:

 
Cute or what?

I'm totally going to dye up more BFL for the shop. It's very soft but also quite sturdy. I see lots of hats and mittens for this winter...

So here's what I think of camping for 10 days with family: I didn't want to come home. This is not my usual reaction, which is generally, "When can I get back to my Simmons Beautyrest?"

But I really didn't realize how busy we are at home until we got away and honestly, when else do we relax? And with an 8 yo, there's really no other kind of vacation that would allow us to do nothing while letting her be totally occupied every waking moment. It's the combination of lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles with tons of activities that we would never get anywhere else. Disney World would make her as happy, but we'd be exhausted (and broke), and a cabin by the sea would make us happy but she'd need constant entertainment.

Anyway.

Now, before I go, here's a question: Knitting Olympics? I'm behind on blogs so I haven't checked the Harlot, but it must be almost KO time again. Last time I changed from English to Continental and knit a whole Tubey in 16 days. Summer Olympics don't lend themselves to a heavy sweater so I'm not sure what I'll do, if anything. A pair of socks, including hand spinning them? I wish I could finish my charcoal blend spinning in time to make a sweater but I might smother under it. Hmm.

It is good to be home. But it was good to be away.