battle of the scale

 Ice!!

We had another dire forecast ("Eight inches of snow!  Sleet!  Ice!!") that turned out to be basically nothing...rain, a freeze, and then a fairly rapid melt.  But before the warm-up...magic!

Closer inspection of the frozen drips revealed a tiny drama within...intricate shapes that almost looked like flowers, caught in the ice during the rapid freeze.

It was so pretty that I almost hated for it to melt.  But, winter is passing.  Here's a reminder:  with an odd juxtaposition to the ice, our daffodils are starting to poke up, despite the crunchy top layer of soil.

While I would say that mid-May through June is the absolute peak garden time for beauty, I absolutely love early spring.  Despite the cold temperatures and frequent dustings of snow, these green tips pop up all over.  It's a reminder that I need to start clearing out the old growth on warm days.  It's nearly time to start sowing late-spring flower seeds, too!  I love having four seasons and right on time, just as I'm getting tired of the cold, we have red-wing blackbirds, spring peepers, and green tips everywhere, reminding me that the new season is just around the corner.

Some tiny drama inside, too!  I noticed odd barnacle-like lumps on one of my tropical plants.  I recognized it as a type of scale, which is a parasite that sucks moisture out of plants and can rapidly kill them if left alone.

I looked it up and indeed, it was barnacle scale!  Their little babies are pretty remarkable-looking, like gigantic cells run amok.

photo courtesy of Ben Faber, UCANR

These little creatures secrete layers of a waxy substance for protection.  The only way to get them off, really, is to scrape them off with a hydrogen peroxide-soaked paper towel. Then watch...they will come back!  It will take several scrapes to rid your plant completely.  

I spotted another little creature this week...a possum is continuing to come to our porch to clean up the leftover cat food!

I'm so glad to see these little guys around.  He's a big one...and soon he'll be filling his belly with ticks!

In other news, I finished my socks.  

Socks are a bit frustrating to me.  Some patterns have you casting on 80 stitches, and some as few as 60.  The standard seems to be 72 stitches with a size 2 needle, and sometimes that works.  For example, I knitted these socks with those specifications, and they fit like a glove.

Todd accidentally washed these and they felted/were ruined, but I am almost over it!  ;)

But when I knitted these recent socks with the exact same specifications, they initially wore well, but became loose after a few hours.  It's fine, because I can wear them around the house, but I do like a well-fitted sock.  

Otherwise, in my free time, I've been working on my painting...

hitting the mediocrity sweet spot! 

...and puzzles, if I have access.

Work has been incredibly busy, and it's about to get busier here, with a big seeding push and yard clean-up.  Spring comes quickly here.  I just have to scroll through same-month photos from earlier years to see that very soon, EVERYTHING will be sprouting!  I can't wait.

Have a good week!  

setting the stage for average

I have a confession to make:  I'm a quitter.  My past is littered with ambitious projects that ultimately never got off the ground.  Mutilated first chapters of short stories, edited relentlessly and then shoved away in disgust.  Huge piles of rubber stamps, which somehow never assembled themselves into Hallmark-quality greeting cards.  Nature journals, ripped to shreds after my first feeble attempts to sketch a cardinal. I approach ideas with great zeal:  I make lists, spend days or weeks assembling information, and then organizing it in a pleasing way.  I clear a spot in my day and in my office to work, pick up a tool, and then freeze.  You see, I'm a perfectionist, and it's really, really difficult for a perfectionist to see a flawed output. I feel overwhelmed, or disgusted with my initial scribblings.  In my mind, I know that it's rare to try something new and be instantly great at it.  I know that "practice makes perfect."  But it's hard to break old habits, even though that my photography, my quilting, my sewing, my writing, and all other hobbies are seriously affected by my inability to get better through real practice and learning.

Enter watercolors.  I've always loved their look, but my little efforts have looked like something created in an elementary school art class.  However, the desire to learn and practice perseverance has been growing for several years, and I decided to put it into practice by taking an online watercolor class.

I hated it.

I was terrible at mixing colors.  I added too much, or not enough water.  My teardrops looked like circles, and my straight lines were fat and uneven.  "You should just donate these supplies," I told myself, but every few days, I picked up my brushes with resignation and submitted to another class.  After a couple of weeks, I was shocked to see that my leaf shapes were starting to look like leaves!

before and after

"Let's make a peony, step by step," the instructor said, and suddenly my feeble splotches started to assemble themselves into something recognizable.

It wasn't perfect, or even close.  But it's something that I COULD NOT DO three weeks ago.

I still dread watercolor lessons, because it's a constant struggle against my discouraged - and discouraging - inner voice.  But I'm doing it anyway.  My goal this year is to EMBRACE BEING AVERAGE.

(The classes are free on youtube:  Jenna Rainey)

Even my knitting has been affected by perfectionism.  I'd start a project and work for a while, get hung up on a technique or a less-than-desired output, and ball it up.  I frogged so many old projects last year, but this year, I really wanted to keep it going.  Kate Davies' Funchal Moebius was a great project for this.  FIFTY-FIVE INCHES of tube-shaped stranded knitting.  "Your tension is off!  It's going to be puckered!!" my inner voice shouted, but I doggedly kept knitting round after round.  When the monotony got to me,  I picked up another - very quick - project: a bulky-weight hat for a friend.

It was really nice to go from two skeins of skinny, fiddly yarn to one big, thick strand.  I finished it in two days...

...and went right back to Funchal Moebius.  Perseverance!!

And...it's finished.

All fifty-five inches!  All I need to do is join the two open ends together.  I shrank back yesterday from such a complicated graft, but I knew it was my old perfectionist demon poking:  "That is never going to be a tidy, even join.  It's going to be bulky and obvious."  I set daily mini-goals for this:  today, I will prep it for joining and do a few stitches.  Tomorrow, I'll do another few inches of join.  Repeat, repeat.  No hurry and no bother if it's clunky.  Baby steps!  Every time I complete something, regardless of the quality, it's a huge victory for me.  I've already started another project:

It's a warm worsted-weight shawl (Almina on Ravelry).  The pattern is challenging, but not too challenging.  I splurged on some delicious, pillowy-soft Malabrigo Rios yarn in a silvery colorway that has subtle lavender highlights.  It's such a joy to work with!  Note to self:  when I decide to go grey, subtle lavender highlights are a must.

It's cold here, but no real snow yet.  We'll get an occasional dusting...

...but it will be gone in a few hours.  The pumpkins have started to crack in the constant freeze-thaw cycle, but it looks beautiful.

Claudia is as fat and wriggling as a grub worm from her extra winter feedings.  Sometimes she slips into the barn with us while I pack orders, usually settling into an inconvenient place.  She's so sweet, though, that I can't be too irritated!

She's got a cushy set-up in our garage for nighttime, too.

It's been so quiet outside.  The front pond is frozen and I haven't seen any minks or muskrats.  I spotted a rabbit feeding last week in the very early hours...

...but our outdoor activity right now is pretty much birds and only birds! 

We're hunkering down, working on the business, keeping our two indoor cats separated with an unwieldy system of baby gates, and enjoying cozy nights by the fire.  It's been a pretty nice year so far. It turns out that low expectations + embracing your average-ness = a less stressful life!  

Have a great week!  

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!