ren-egg-ade

With the exception of two wiltingly warm weeks, this spring has felt much more like an Indiana spring than one in South Carolina.  It was 38 degrees when we woke up yesterday, and today's high is 58.  I love it!  Lots of blue skies...and hot air balloons over our house!...

...and other signs.  Ants crawling on my peony buds means that they'll be opening soon!

We have house finches nesting in one of our hanging ferns!

They've tried to nest here for years, but I've put balled-up pieces of aluminum foil in the ferns to keep them out.  It's not an ideal place to nest.  They're constantly disturbed as we go in and out of the front door, and the fern also has to be watered regularly.  But I was lax this year about my deterrents, and eggs were laid.  So now we're all going to have to just roll with it!  The female has another week to sit on the eggs, and then the babies will be on the nest 11 - 19 days after hatching.  BABIES!!  And speaking of babies, we should have goslings running around in about 3 weeks.  I can't wait! 

I saw my first anole of the season last week.

Every day, the tentative leafing out of the surrounding trees becomes more pronounced, and all of the azalea bushes are ablaze right now.  I never realize how tired I am of dull brown, dead branches until I see these tender green shoots!

We finished another home improvement project.  Todd's dad came down from North Carolina to repair our deck...

...and I spent several days staining it (screen door webbing causes the photo distortion here).

The cats are incredibly interested in all of the exciting outdoor changes!

Meanwhile, I finished a project I've been slowly picking away at for a couple of months.  My Adelaide sweater! 

I learned a really valuable lesson here.  I measured every few inches as I knitted up from the bottom, but I kept getting gauge so stopping measuring.  My knitting got looser and looser, and by the waist I discovered that I had 3" of extra fabric.  Here is where I should've frogged the sweater down to the bottom band and started over with smaller needles, but I didn't.  "What's three extra inches?" I thought.  Well, the looser knitting made the sweater a little longer than I prefer, but that's not the main issue.  The arms are fine, and I always knit tightly in colorwork sections, so that area is fine too.  But from bottom band to colorwork band, that extra three inches means that a sweater that's supposed to fit snugly against the skin now bags.  It's just too big.  The good news is that I recently took a "sweater surgery" class on Craftsy.com.  I can literally cut this sweater in half, unravel the excess length fabric, and graft it back together.  I can also cut excess fabric out of each side, although I'm a little unsure of that process.  I'm putting the sweater aside until next winter, and then I will fearlessly chop into it!  Meanwhile, I'm ready to start another one!  I originally knitted Ysolda Teague's Pumpkin Ale for my sister-in-law a few years ago (modeled on a friend at the gym):

I've decided to knit one for myself in maybe a deep red or mustard color.  I also want to re-embroider this German language shelf liner that I made a few years ago: 

The work is sloppy and uneven.  I loved the idea and the expression ("There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company, than a good marriage.") and was in a hurry to get started.  I think I will use plain white cotton fabric and navy thread, but perhaps a different font.  So lots of fun projects in the works! 

Have a great week!

this old house

We've had some odd weather here.  First in the 80s, then in the 40s, then rain.  Random warmer days pop up, and in those days, we've been outside working.

Even the cats have been getting in on the action.  Who cares if it's a one-story fall from the deck?  I want green grass!

The azaleas are just budding out...

...and the redbuds look amazing!

I have been so busy with house projects and work that my quilt pieces have sat, forlorn and ignored, on my sewing table.  At night, I've been knitting to relax.  First, a simple striped cowl that has been desperately needed on cold hikes.  So often cowls are wide enough to be looped twice or just hang open at the neck.  That seems to negate the purpose, so I made this cowl fairly narrow.

I've also been knitting a sweater.  It's been a real learning experience for me.  The sweater is meant to have zero "ease," which means that it's meant to be snug against the skin.  To get the correct size, the pattern says that I need to have 18 knitted stitches per 4 inches of fabric.  I managed that number with size 8 needles on my practice piece, and cast on for the sweater.

The arms were knitted first, and then the body, from the bottom up.  I "got gauge" (or had 18 stitches per 4 inches) in the first few inches, but I didn't measure again for 7 inches of knitting.  Then I discovered that instead of 18 stitches, I had around 16.  So each 4 inches of fabric was off by 2 stitches.  No big deal, right?  But when I measured the waist, I discovered that I had an extra THREE INCHES of fabric.  I thought about ripping it all out and starting over, but decided to keep moving forward.  Three inches will (hopefully) just give it a bit of room, but not cause bagginess.  I'll soon see.  I'm getting ready to start the yoke of the sweater, which will be a stranded star design in shades of purple and white, similar to the cuffs.  I still struggle with stiffness and pain when I knit, and I have not discovered an easy or pain-free method of knitting, so ripping out enough half of a sweater to switch to a slightly smaller needle sounds horrible.  But if I'm wrong, the entire sweater will have to be remade.  Fingers crossed!

Todd and I have been doing a lot of future-planning this spring, thinking about where we want to live, how we want to live, and the meaningful activities in which we want to engage.  I've been thinking a lot about my great grandmother, who lived close by when I was growing up.  She had a lovely white house with gingerbread accents and a front porch full of rocking chairs.  A big weeping willow tree, rose and grape arbors, and a special long bed for her 50+ varieties of irises.  The back yard was almost completely converted to garden space.  On one side, row after row of flowers, and on the other, vegetables. 

Incidentally, my grandfather sold the property and it fell into disrepair.  A flood in 2006 destroyed the whole neighborhood, which was converted into a public park.  Someone took a photo of the house before it was demolished.  Porch torn off, trees uprooted, walls sagging...such a shame.  Thankfully my great-aunt Ruth, now 101 (!), is going to send me some photos of the home in its heyday!

My great-grandmother, Grace, founded the first animal shelter in Anderson (Indiana), and continued to be involved in animal charities.  She was always surrounded by her cats and dogs.  She was very poor, but gave everything she could to the needy, from cutting old sheets into strips for leper colonies (apparently more prevalent in 1920!) to taking her famous vegetables and flower bouquets around to sick neighbors.  Her daughter, my great aunt Ruth, was a clever seamstress and regularly made over thrift store clothing to improve it and then donate to homeless shelters.  She and her family also brought their instruments to shelters and had singing time.  They were really inspiring women.  This is how I remember them both:

Todd and I have talked about wanting to have a similar life:  in a community of family and friends, downsizing, simplifying, beautifying our space with large gardens, surrounded by our pets, and engaged in social justice causes that are important to us.  I think the next year or so will bring some major changes for us...stay tuned!