To Frog or NOT To Frog?

Our bulbs are blooming!  I was able to pick a "spring mix" from the yard today.

 

Spring, too, has brought out some new creatures.  This is Clotilde.

She - or he - is a stray - or a wanderer - who comes by every few days.  She's friendly and seems to be well taken care of. 

She drives our cats crazy.

She makes me think of our old visitor, Clarence.  He belonged to a family a few houses down in Indianapolis, but spent a lot of time with us.

He liked to peek in our screen doors...

...or hang out with me in the garden.

If it wasn't for Todd's cat allergy, I would've approached his owners and tried to buy him.  They seemed indifferent about him at best.  Oh, well.  I hope he's being loved and cared for, wherever he is, and for now I'll just keep an eye on Clotilde for my vicarious cat thrills!

I just finished another knitting project, and unfortunately, that means frogging time.  'Frogging' is a knitting term that means ripping back your work...rip it rip it rip it...see the connection?  It's sad, but I've really lost my knitting mojo lately.  First, the socks.  I started this project recently.  The pattern is a traditional one called "eye of the sheep".  I used a white yarn as the background color and variegated yarn for the sheep eyes.

I finished one sock, but wasn't happy with how the variegated yarn looked.  It was too 'busy' and I ended up frogging that sock and putting away the pattern for a while.

Next, I decided on a more spring-like pattern.  Strategically-placed holes make the pattern of chrysanthemums and their leaves, and I always love spiky picot cuffs.

Normally I start with 64 - 66 stitches for a sock, but pattern notes on Ravelry warned that this was an especially tight pattern with little give.  I decided to go for the next size up, casting on 72 stitches and using a size 2 needle.  The completed first sock bagged around my leg.  Frogged, and re-knitted with 64 stitches and a size 1 needle.  This time the finished sock was too tight to fit over my heel.  Curses!  Sometimes a pattern is just not meant to be, at least in that moment, so I put it away, too.

Next I chose a tried-and-true pattern, Child's First Sock from a mid-1800s magazine, upsized for an adult woman.  I've knitted them before, for a gift, and loved them.  Forget the 600 other socks in my queue...I wanted to knit these again, for myself.

I started knitted with a 'mystery skein' from my stash.  I knew it was high-quality fingering weight yarn, but after I'd put in a couple of hours and was just starting on the pattern repeats...I realized that the yarn didn't seem to contain any nylon.

 Adding nylon to yarn adds 'give' and strength.  You can knit socks with 100% wool yarn, but they'll wear out a lot faster.  I hesitated, but frogged again.  I started over with more sock-appropriate yarn and am plowing through.

I've recently finished two sweaters.  The first was a stranded sweater that was my first steek - that is, the first time I cut through secured yarn to add in a neck.  The steek was easy...the neck was not.  It was an exercise in frustration from beginning to end.  I'm still not sure the neck is done correctly.  It's awfully snug.  And those shoulders....shudder. 

The second sweater was done with much nicer yarn and an all-over cable motif.

The knitting on the first sweater was basically mindless, but this sweater...it was knitted in 4 pieces and then seamed together.  A front, a back, and two arm panels.  The cables weren't comfortable 'knit 6 rows and then throw in a cable row', either.  Every line was a cable row!  It wasn't easy, even though it was repetitive.  And let's just say that I'm not a fan of seaming ever. 

The sad thing is that neither of these sweaters fit well.  I knitted them in my goal size, which is a size smaller than I am now (and that I've been maintaining for the past 5 months, unable to get any lower despite my best efforts).  It was meant to be motivating, a fun something to look forward to that would prod me on to greater loss if my willpower sagged.  In the end, though, it felt depressing and somehow debasing to put so much time and effort into something that proved to be tantalizingly out of reach.  I would have to lose an entire cup size for the purple sweater to fit, and I don't think that's going to happen, even if I lose this last 20 pounds.  I hate to say it, but I think that they're both headed for the FROG pile.  The purple sweater is going to hurt, but overall I rarely mind frogging my work.  I will always be knitting, and I can always re-use the yarn.  I think it helps to be somewhat philosophical about these things.  ;)

I'm gearing up to knit some sweaters that fit me now, at my current size.  Both are Kate Davies designs and feature cheerful colors and flower motifs.

I will knit them, wear them, and love them!  And hey, there are lots of projects I can use that other yarn for.

Fog-et About It

We never had much fog in Indiana, so I was thrilled the other morning when I glanced up from my morning cereal and saw this:

I left my Raisin Bran to get soggy and rushed outside.

My understanding is that fog forms with rapid cooling and high humidity, but this was actually somehow the result of a cool night and rapidly warming temperatures.  Wait, is that the same thing?  :)

It was a great day.  I went outside and gathered up more flowers.

I'm so in love with Helleborus.

I made bouquets for the bedroom...

And, with the shorter flowers, a long piece of tape to give them stability, and a square, Crate and Barrel-knockoff vase I found at Goodwill, I made a little bouquet for the dining room.

I just love having bulbs on the table.  It makes every day feel more spring-like, even cold, windy ones like today.

Last year, I remember going to Eagle Creek with Todd and seeing something new every week.  First the undergrowth started greening up, then we started seeing early spring flowers like trilliums and mayapple stems, and then the Virginia Bluebells started coming up...well, we don't have a hiking place yet here, so I am making careful observations in our yard.

More bulbs!  This, I think, is a hyacinth.

The snowflake flowers are blooming endlessly.

The crocuses are coming up, too!

We have several azalea bushes, and a few of them are tentatively budding out.  Just one or two flowers can be seen so far.

I think we have several white azalea bushes, too, that look ready to go:

Suddenly, some sort of tiny sedum is growing around the low rock wall behind the house.

And,  a mystery groundcover is pushing up over the leaves.

I was very glad to find this in the front yard:

It's a wild turkey feather.  I used to see the turkeys almost daily in the fall, but have only seen them a handful of times since Christmas.  This feather tells me that they may be roosting in our trees at night, which they tend to do to avoid predators.  Just because we can't see them, doesn't mean that they aren't there!

I wasn't so happy to find this in the yard:

I'm nearly certain that this hole was made by a chipmunk, which can devastate a garden.  I'll have to keep an eye on this area.

This wide, flat rock shows me that probably a squirrel, or perhaps a chipmunk, was eating here recently.

I was pleased to see this puffball mushroom in the yard, too.  I think they're so pretty.

Supposedly most puffballs are safe to eat, depending on the color of their insides.  However, I'm much too afraid to risk it!

I've been hearing a lot of hooting lately, but was unable to catch a glimpse of the owl. 

Mystery hooting

Using online sources, I was able to narrow it down to either a Barred Owl or a Great Horned Owl.  The other evening I was out in the yard, and happened to look up.  I saw two owls in a tree above my head, mating!  I rushed to get my camera.  Alas, I just got a quick, blurry shot of one of them.

Actually, this was incredibly helpful in solving the owl identity mystery.  These owls had smooth, rounded heads, and Great Horned Owls have big tufts of feathers on either side of their head.  Mystery solved:  they're Barred Owls.

I love these little trips around my yard.  Each time, it seems like there's something new!

I've been working on a few projects indoors.  I'm knitting a pair of mittens that I've started many times, only to put away.  Using size 1 needles and worsted weight yarn makes my wrists ache, but if I can just get past the cuffs, I think it will be better.

A quick sewing project:  I found a pretty tea towel in the discount bin at IKEA for $2.

I folded it over, stitched around the edges, and stuffed it with some stuffing that I already had.  Two dollars for a cute and easy throw pillow?  Not bad!

I haven't done too much new baking, but I've been revisiting some old recipes.  I couldn't believe how long it's been since I made a pumpkin roll.

They're easy to make and this is a "healthy" version.  I blogged about it here, but I think this one is even better.  I left out the lemon juice...added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, cardamon, and nutmeg, and 1/4 teaspoon of cloves and ginger, instead of the pumpkin pie spice...I used 8 oz. of neufchatel cheese and NO yogurt, sour cream, or crystallized ginger, and gave the filling a good dash of cinnamon.  Otherwise, it's the same.  Hey, I even used the same towel!  I hope you give it a try.  It was SUCH a nice treat this week.

Enjoy!