The weekend went too fast

So, I've been a blogging slacker. I'm trying to reform my evil ways. This past weekend, I had plenty of fun. I knitted a plethora of baby hats and visited a pumpkin patch and some farm animals.

I made a trio of cabled baby hats. Two for Steve-o's coworkers and one for my coworker. Pink, sage green and blue.

I usually dislike the way cables end up looking when you decrease, but I thought this pattern made a nice flower petal-looking top.


Without Mika's pumpkin party, we are going to have to roast our own seeds this year. The horror! But we did get to see some farm animals, and eat caramel apples, but we skipped the hayride....you know - allergies. The second goat looks like he's taking a nap in a really funny position, but he was just going after the good hay on top.


Steve-o and I in the field:
Eeeek, Pumpkin head guy!

I've also been doing a little scientific experimentation in dye world. To make reproducible results, I decided I need to be a bit more exact in my mixology. After all - a little of this, and then some of this, and now a bit of this other one, isn't really terribly accurate. So, I dyed some samples and created a chart of the basic stock colors. Now, I just have to get started on mixtures.

And also on the topic of dyeing yarn, I'm looking for someone to do some graphic work for me. To help design a logo for my handpainted yarn business/side job thingy. I have a concept, but I need someone to put it into whimsical form. If you, or someone you know might be interested, get in touch. $, or other services (no, not that!) to be provided by me.

Good wedding. Bad tire.

The wedding was lovely. My sis made a fabulously beautiful bride. I almost cried. Just kidding. It was a happy time! I don't cry when I'm happy. I even managed to keep my older sis from getting all weepy. No pinching required...just a few stern looks. The hummer limo was a crime against nature. The wetlands were weeping. Just ask my sisters about it.

All was well until we tried to leave PA for home. Steve and I were driving down I-83 in Pennsylvania, and the car started to do a little weird wiggle thing. We pulled over and sure enough - flat tire! So, we call up our handy dandy road side assistance folks, who say it will be an hour til a tow truck comes to take us to pepboys to get a new tire.

As we're standing there on the side of the highway, waiting for our tow truck, hoping it will be early, my phone rings. It's Ryan, who asks - Why are you standing on the side of the road? I don't know where he was coming from, or how he even managed to spot us, but we tell him the tow-truck is coming and so he drives onward.

It was about 4:30 on a Sunday, and we find out that the pepboys closes at 6, so waiting for the tow truck is going to be pretty useless. He won't be able to get us there on time. We don't have enough shoulder room to safely get the donut on the car on the side of the highway, but.... We have some "fix-a-flat in the trunk, so we decide to give that a try and the tire inflates more or less, and we drive slowly down the highway three miles to our exit....except the map says to use exit 21B.....but there is no B, and we drive right past exit 21, thinking that surely 21B must be coming. Oh, google maps, how you let me down!

We take the next exit - Exit 19, so now we've been driving 5 miles on a fix-a-flat tire that is losing air. Okay, we'll just get back on the highway and go back to exit 21. Nope. It's one of those damn PA exits where there is no way to get back on. People have always bemoaned these to me, but I'd never had a problem. I feel your pain.

As we're driving in the general direction we think we have to go, Carlos our tow truck driver calls, cause he's where our car originally was stranded. And even though he came out, only to find us gone, he kindly gives us directions. Thanks Carlos! Unfortunately, we did too much missing exits and getting lost, so about 0.8 miles from the pepboys tire store, the tire gives up and goes completely flat.....in scenic York, PA.

So....we decide to try the donut tire. As I'm blocking traffic for Steve and he's kicking the tire to get it loose, a friendly PA fellow comes out of his house to check it all out. We Pennsylvanians love a good show. He starts kicking the tire too, and when that fails, he goes back inside. I figure we're stuck now, but he comes back with a friendly 250 pound guy who kicks that tire right off the car and hooray, we can put the donut on.

We give the guys some cash for their troubles, and we go to put air in the donut and get some grub. We spot a five guys two doors down from the gas station, and after tasty burgers and fries, we're off....speeding down the highway at 50mph all the way back to DC. By the way, after driving 50 on 95 and the beltway, I will stop waiting to pass slow people until I'm nearly at their car. It is nerve-wracking.

We get home about 9:30 or 10, after leaving PA at about 1:30. A four hour drive became an 8 hour adventure. Oh well. Smidgen was well taken care of, but apparently, wasn't much fun cause she was lonely. Thanks for the effort, though, catsitters! Steve is buying new tires today, so we should be back in top form shortly.

T-ball, sugared dough, and showering with strangers

My little sis is getting married - Aaawwww. Okay, she's only younger by 17 months, and she's always been just about my height, but still... I went home this weekend to do my sisterly duties at my younger sis's bridal shower. I was in charge of running the games! Man, can we ladies be competitive when mysterious 3 dollar gifts wrapped in tissue paper are involved! And wow - can those old ladies talk and talk and talk and not shut up when you're obviously trying to tell people something and then they all say - what??!! - and you kinda wanna kill them. I mean - it was lovely.

It was a busy weekend. It started off with delivery by the mailman to my nephews' house. They like cats (and chinchillas for what it's worth) but they have a rather rambunctious dog, so owning a kitty is out of the question. So, I knit them cats based roughly on the Kate pattern from Knitty. But their cats had to have tails because - well, if I'd made them cats with pants and no tails, they'd tell me I was silly cause cats don't wear pants. Duh. Luckily, there was no fighting about who got which one, and they pet them, and slept with them that night. Ah, now that's what appreciation means for a knitter!


Following the mailman, there was a good ol' fashioned game of t-ball for my nephew. I forgot how amusing t-ball is. 2 innings, everyone bats, no one gets out, and neither team wins. Ahh...to be 5 again. My younger nephew is too young to play, so to amuse him, I let him walk around with my camera and take pictures. My nephews are actually very adept at handling cell phones (they know they can press just about everything except the green button) and cameras. Plus, my younger nephew had a death grip on the camera that probably made it safer with him than with klutzy old and busted, here. Anyway, he took some seriously artistic shots. See?



The rest of the weekend was spent making centerpieces and shower favors, assembling cookie trays, and eating church picnic food. Tasty tasty pizza frita (kinda like a big round poof of churro) and potato pancakes. I think they only do this is PA. I've never seen it anywhere else. Fried food is my weakness....along with ice cream...and cheese...and.....pizza and....well, you get the idea. I like eating.


The shower was fun (even though I had to endure Steve-o repeatedly asking me why I was showering with strangers - engineers [think they] are so funny), but I had to leave straight from there and do the 4 hour drive back home. Then, I got to be the first knitter guest to a friend's new house. Now I'm recovering from the past few days. I missed spending time in my garden, so I have to get back to that. I have green tomatoes and little baby beans waiting for me.

In my spare time, I'll be finishing my list of house duties, dyeing some yarn, planning a vacation, and finding a new job (fingers crossed). Busy, busy. busy.

Busy bee

I had a very long memorial day weekend - 4 days, due to my Friday off. I got to see the lovely Miss Rebecca - even without electricity, her hospitality was fabulous. Plus, I got a bunch of home stuff done. I painted my front door (4 freakin' coats!), mulched my flower beds, met my new next door neighbors (poor unknowing people - they have no idea what kind of shape their building is in), fought over a package and won (rescued my potatoes from the GA Ave. post office), did innumerable loads of laundry, and knit a special gift for someone.

I did hit a bit of a snafu on Sunday when I got stuck in rolling thunder traffic. But you gotta love it. Memorial day weekend - all the DC-ites leave town, and all the bikers come into town. Quite a switch!

I see baseboard

So, spring is normally a pretty short season in DC, but usually because it launches right into the heat of summer. But this year, it went in reverse, and we got winter back....complete with a bit of snow on Saturday. I was glad I hadn't done much planting so far.

The snow beat up my poor daffodils and put a kink in my plans for cutting baseboard on Saturday. In the end, that turned out fine, cause I spent some time on Saturday measuring walls, angles, etc. (Okay, okay, I had the engineer of the house do the angles). And then spent Saturday night having a fun time with Miss Rebecca, Mr Shawn, and some of Rebecca's pals from peace corps. Lots of eating tasty food and telling amusing stories. Grizzlies, lost skis, buff moms...the usual.

On Sunday, Steve-o and I spent the afternoon measuring, remeasuring (measure twice, cut once), sawing, double-checking, painting and re-coating about 100 linear feet of baseboard. Hey - that doesn't sound like much, except when I tell you that those 100 feet involved over 50 individual cuts....not to mention our mess-ups and re-cuts. We had quite the fiesta of high-fives. Now, we just have to borrow our friend R and his air nailer to install the baseboard, and then I have to crawl around on my hands and knees caulking all the tops and the seams. Wheeeee.

But seriously, it's all worth it (Remind me of this when my knees are numb). Even just leaning the baseboard against the wall in its proper place makes the room look so much neater and more finished.
Who-da thunk it? I guess that's why some guy invented baseboard. Plus, we gained back about 25 square feet of space where we had stacked baseboard on the floor in the living room. So, once the baseboard is up, we can push furniture back toward the wall and open up the space a bit. Hey - in my place, I can use all the spare 25 square feet I can find!

Unfortunately, on Sunday, just as we were packing up, three hooligans (I realize I sound like my grandfather) ran around the house next door. Then - the sound of broken glass. Then - the aforementioned three hooligans come running out, and one of them kicks over my planter of strawberry plants. Don't mess with a girl's strawberry plants!

They had busted the window of the neighbor's house. So, I call the cops and they show up eventually and tell us DC's laws suck for juveniles. Big surprise there! The kids came back later to check out their handiwork, but the police folk were nowhere to be found.

What did you do this weekend?