rough cuff

One of the great things about our new location is that there are always little unexplored hiking areas within a 30-minute drive.  On Valentine's Day, we drove out to Lake Monroe, which is about 11 miles from our temporary apartment.  Blue skies...

...big water.

Borga was not a fan.

It's mid-February, but I'm definitely noticing signs of spring.  Even on dark, 20 degree mornings, birds are starting to sing around 6:30 a.m.  The winter palettes of morning sunrises continue to be amazing.

And I'm seeing some green on the trails.

Still plenty of earth tones and fall leftovers...

...but I'm loving the slow changes.  As the weather warms, we'll be out on the trails several times a week.  I'm really looking forward to it!

I'm still working on my watercolors...

...and knitting.  I've finished one arm and cuff and am working on the final side panel.  The cuff construction is pretty remarkable.  You cast on several stitches with a spare needle and knit the stitches, picking up another stitch from the sleeve end each time you make a round.  Although it looks strange at first...

...the cuff emerges, sideways, and first-row slipped stitches create a tidy "braid" that separates the cuff from the sleeve.

It's unblocked, but I'm really pleased with the finished piece.

There's a little 'V' where the cuff gaps open.  I think it's a really cute detail.

I'll keep working on it and hopefully will finish up in the next few weeks!

Todd asked me to create a "We've Moved!" picture for our website, which hasn't been updated in a while.  I made a few silly ones...

...but to me, this really epitomizes my feeling about those horrible sleepless weeks preceding our trip.

We love living in Bloomington and have slowly started looking for properties again.  Moves are always tough, and we have about 8 storage units crammed full that will be a pain to relocate, but it won't be anything like our move from South Carolina.  I'm so excited about finally setting up a hobby farm and slowly adding animals to it, to establishing a large garden, and to customizing our house to our specific needs.  Hopefully I'll have some news in the next month or so.

Have a great week! 

the humble crumble

It's been a whirl of weather weirdness here over the past week.  We've gone from warmer temps and heavy morning fog...

...to torrential rain and flooding.

These photos were taken by residents all around town earlier this week.  The water level came up, the water level went down, and then...snow.

It's pretty typical for a late Indiana weather, but it's kept us inside for the past week or so.  When 'regular' work is done, I've been working on puzzles...aided by the cats.

They are wonderful 'helpers,' at least in their own minds!  When not trampling on puzzles and dragging pieces all over the living room, they've been fighting to get into my lap.  Having clingy cats is pretty amazing. 

They're pretty spoiled, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Another indoor activity I've been getting into a little bit more lately is knitting.  I'm working on replicating a sweater I knitted for my sister-in-law a few years ago.  Here is hers...

I'm making mine a little differently, mainly by shortening the cardigan a little bit (I prefer a 22" length) and leaving out the pockets.  Knitted fabric is already so stretchy, and it seems like thrusting hands in knitted pockets, in a knitted garment, is just asking for the garment to be stretched out of shape.  I've also moved the arm cables.  In the original, they are off-center, more on the back of the arm.  I've relocated them to come over the top of the shoulder.

I only knit for a few minutes a day, but I'm trying to be more disciplined about it.

I've also started an (online) watercolor class!  I fell in love with watercolor-illustrated nature journals years ago and always wanted to make my own, but I have a complete and total lack of natural talent.  Turns out that watercolor is incredibly forgiving and that using a light board allows you to trace a photograph, relieving the awkward sketcher of the need to do a reasonable replication. 

My light board is in storage, but I'm going to work on the basics when I have a few free minutes.  I'm really enjoying it.

I've also been doing a little bit of baking, a rarity for me in this really cramped space.  Todd brought home a massive bag of frozen blueberries from Costco and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them.  Then I thought:  blueberry crumble!  I found an amazing "crumble for two" recipe and I've made it several times.  Any small dish will do.  I just used the 6" x 4" dish that I've been using for a spoon rest on the stove.  It's not too sweet, and I've substituted whole wheat flour for all-purpose and raw honey for part of the sugar without sacrificing taste.

Hopefully the weather will moderate soon and we can get back on the trails again, but these indoor activities are a pretty pleasant way to fill a little free time.

Have a great week!

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!