Sunday, September 29, 2013

Ants and quilting


The ants are marching one by one... Hurrah!!  Taken a week ago, and now...not so many are marching.
And the machine quilting came back in record time!
I guess I didn't take a picture of the finished product.  It got a little hectic on the last days of our daughter's visit.  I tried to finish up projects, and managed to accomplish the binding off of that quilt, so it's in Norway, soon to be delivered to Denmark for C's sister-in-law's baby.  (GAH!  My daughter is going to be an AUNT!)
Meanwhile, the day she left, her second quilt was finished (at the shop for machine quilting), and suddenly it doesn't seem so crucial that I bind it immediately.
So I took pictures instead!  It looks like a dual-purpose quilt.  This side is suitable for company... Design: Thank you, Pinterest.
 And the machine quilting is amazing!
 The other side will be the popular side in a little girl's room, and probably won't be seen by company.
I just have to decide on the binding... Blue?  White?  Purple?  It will be awhile, because I see many other things I could be doing...

Friday, September 27, 2013

What happened to September?

Somehow, September became the shortest month of the year!  It takes a four-year-old to do that.  Her 12 hour days are cyclonic!
Much time was spent in the hot tub.  Grandpa helped her learn to use a snorkel, mask, and flippers.  I've never heard such silence!  She spent a lot of time UNDER water!!!
The sewing machine got lots of use, too.  Two crib/lap quilts were assembled.

A pullover that I knitted in 2007 returned for an updated collar.  It was "thought about" more than worked on, so it's still here needing to be tacked down.  I hope that the finished look will be this.  (It was a regular rounded neckline, with striped garter stitch.)  Ravelry link
It's a Loop-d-loop pattern.  A tricky fair isle with short rows.
I often become a "bag lady"... Used a pattern (from a previous post) to make a larger version as a satchel.  Dang... didn't take a picture of that either!  Maybe the owner will send me one!
And then there was the knitting that I carried around.  Didn't get much done...
Socks for the four-year-old, which if I don't get them in the mail soon, they won't fit.
Yes, photo is complete with cat tail...
And my Mystic Mosaic Jacket.  Ooooo... I love the colors which don't seem to reproduce well in photography.
I managed to finish both sleeves, and started the body, but yesterday I (again) thought that there seemed to be A LOT OF STITCHES.  Well, of course, there are a lot of stitches in the body of an adult knitted jacket... so yesterday, as I finished off row 10 of the chart I thought I ought to check gauge AGAIN!  The sleeves are fine... but the pattern is different on the body, (mosaic patterns), so I pulled some inches off of the needles and measured.  My calculations showed that with the number of stitches I had (which should give me a 46" diameter body, I confess---LARGE) I probably had close to 60" to wrap around me!!  I took it completely off the needles:
 Yikes!
 It was almost 60"!  Below I'm holding it out to show my friends... "Do you think it will fit?"
I spent the rest of the evening frogging and casting on.  Crazy lady... but better than discovering it later.
To my Shelridge Farms friend: I'm going to try casting on using the size SMALL, with lengths adapted for me.  WHEW!  Disaster averted, ....again and again and again and again.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Butterfly - Chrysalis at two weeks...and counting!

No change, so we continue to wait and hope.  The chrysalis stage began two weeks ago, and I'm hoping Ichabod hasn't decided to die over-winter here!  There are plenty of 80ºF days ahead.
The previous butterfly was SO lovely.  It emerged from the chrysalis in 10 days, and I had it briefly on my hand before take off.
Saturday, September 7, 2013

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Butterfly

Yes, congratulations to Sacajawea, who crawled out this morning while we were gathered around the breakfast table.  It was very surprising even though we had anticipated it.  First of all, she has been inside the chrysalis for 9 days, and since the target time was 1-2 weeks, we were watchful for the past few days.  BUT!!!  This morning I noticed the chrysalis had turned dark, and didn't look green like before so I thought this might be close.  Still, I saw no movement until I glanced over 10 minutes later, and there she was, hanging on the stick.
We moved outside and in the sunshine, she stretched.  I thought that she would crawl into an upright position, and that would be the time to put her on my hand (or on Juju's hand) but she didn't ever move up on the top of the stick.  About an hour and a half later, I took a short stick, and she readily crawled onto it and onto my hand.  I had only less than a minute to move to the grass where I thought we could transfer to Juju's hand, but instead, Sacajawea fluttered off, across the yard and through a wire fence.  First flight, and she handled it perfectly!  Gone...
We have one more, Ichabod, who will probably leave us tomorrow or Monday.  We HOPE to get a little more contact with him.  It's all in the timing!

Friday, September 6, 2013

A Day's Work!

The ANTS arrived!  In a tiny vial, in a big envelope, hurrying, and nasty looking... A quick trip to the refrigerator, and they slower down to less than a crawl, and were dumped into their new home.

It's some sort of space-age gel... and they went right to work!
Meanwhile, we went to work on a baby blanket.  It's for C's sister-in-law's baby due in October.  The idea of a blanket is always nice, but this one contains lace from a dress that C wore to sister-in-law's wedding!  More frogs, please!!
The back will be minkie material, and Oh-so-soft.  It will be machine quilted by Patchwork Pig! A quick project for little Robert half-Norsk-half-Dansk.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Did you know?

Vicuna yarn? It costs a LOT!
See this offer:
http://www.paradisefibers.com/jacques-cartier-vicuna-yarn.html

Really?  Maybe it's a good investment!  I see a stash maker!

Monday, September 2, 2013

The end of the month


It becomes an obsession, when you HAVE to find a cache, just because it is August.
Here's the last one: August 31.
Here's a nano sized geocache, with a tiny strip of paper wound up inside. That would be the log that I signed and dated.  And here's where I found it.  This is called a spoiler, except I haven't told you the name of the cache.
And what did I get?  The satisfaction that I found a crazy number of them. And my reward was a "souvenir" for each day, shown here, plus the other landmark souvenirs found throughout my geocache life.


Countries, States, Cities, Provinces, and events are marked by a "souvenir".  It's like a stamp in your passport!

A sigh of relief,... I don't have to get a cache today or tomorrow....

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Nature Rearranged

Bringing insect life into the house carries a lot of responsibility!  I don't like to mess with nature, although wasps living in my eaves is another thing that I gladly will rearrange.
Ichabod doing acrobatics: 8/30
I will now make a report that should be good for a week or two:  Both caterpillars are now doing whatever they do inside their chrysalises, and we don't expect any change.
Ichabod surprised us by staying low in the container, and made a brown chrysalis unlike Sacajawea's bright green. To get any kind of photo, and to protect the species, (I read that as a newly hatched butterfly they need room below them to stretch their wings, so it wasn't totally blog-driven) I clipped some parsley, removed unused sticks, and moved I and S to more flattering poses.
Ichabod from Saturday morning: 8/31
It's amazing to see Ichabod masquerading as a dead leaf, which is exactly what I would think if it was outside.
In the meantime, the granddaughter arrives tomorrow, so there will be little time for this blogging nonsense, and I just ordered ants for an ant farm though I pointed out we have a crop of ants in the living room!
Changes to come!

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