Election Day!

When Two Blogs Collide

Dear Mom,
Knowing she is new to Hamilton County, Indiana, I invited Christine, of Front Porch Indiana to join the happy group of spinners on Sunday's monthly Spin-In at Tabby Tree Weaver. Christine blogs about it here, and her photo is much more flattering (in other words, my double chin is less doubled than any photos I have)- so go look there before and after you look at this next picture because I am swallowing what little pride I have left in order to post it.....

I may never wear a turtle neck sweater again.
 And Such is my Horror that I actually EXERCISED today.

As testament to the power of blogging, meeting Christine for the first time was like seeing a friend you just haven't seen in awhile and picking right up where you left off. She is every bit as nice and funny in real life as she is in blog life, and even more so.

Hopefully, it was the first of many more happy get togethers.

Love,
Kim

Friendly Reminder

Dear Mom,
Tomorrow is the big day!
Hopefully you will have a great turn out at what may be the First Annual Craft Bazaar.
Anyone interested in getting a jump start on holiday gifts will find a nice variety of hand crafted items.
The bazaar is off Allisonville Road, in Fishers, across from Conner Prairie. Just follow the signs!
Love,
Kim

Happy Halloween

Dear Mom, 

When you are just a puppy, 

this :  

  

is VERY SCARY

  

Love,
Kim

Start your holiday shopping early....

This Saturday!

Dear Mom,

Your sewing circle has pooled their impressive creativity and put together their first craft bazaar. Elle will be there modeling your aprons. In addition, there will be some of your original art notecards, some of my knitted jewelry and handpainted mugs. Anyone in the central Indiana area who is interested in some special, one-of-a-kind gifts will do well to stop in and have a look.

Love,

Kim

A Good Dog

Dear Mom,

She might not be the smartest dog I've had, or the biggest, or the prettiest, or the softest.
But God knew that Olive is just what we needed, and she is growing up to be a Good Dog.
And I love her.

Love,
Kim

Potatoes

Dear Mom,
Last spring, inspired by something I saw on Pinterest, I decided to try growing potatoes in my garden this year.
The idea was to build a "potato tower", which would (I hope) allow me to grow potatoes above ground level, using up less square footage in the garden and making the harvesting easier.
I built a cube with some cheap garden fencing, lined it with straw, and built up layers of dirt and seed potatoes as I filled the cube.  The potato vines would grow through the straw and the potatoes themselves would all be contained within that cube.
Easy enough.
I planted 5 lbs of seed potatoes. I'll be honest and admit that I told just about everyone who was unfortunate enough to bump into me  about my Potato Tower. I envisioned having such an abundance of potatoes that I would have a serious problem storing them.
This weekend, when I cleaned up my garden, I harvested my potatoes.

Net yield from 5 lbs of seed potatoes? 1 pound of potatoes. Some of them smaller than a grape.
(Such was my determination and dedication to those potatoes that I rooted around in the dirt ( literally ) for grape sized potatoes.)

Our hot, dry summer may have had something to do with my results. I may try again. Maybe.

Last night we had our homegrown potatoes for dinner. I announced the fact to the Young Lady and My Hero and I broke out in laughter when, in unison, we said, "ALL of them!"

Love,
Kim

Answered

Dear Mom,
Like most moms, I pray that my children will grow up to be healthy and happy. I also secretly....well, maybe not so secretly..... hope that one day they will WANT me to knit something for them.

Let me qualify that statement.

I want them to want me to knit them something I want to knit.

That hope was fulfilled a few weeks ago when the Young Man, home for Fall Break, asked if I could knit a scarf. For him.

Within 24 hours I had that boy in the yarn shop.

Having grown up in this knitter's house, he knew the right answer to question #1, "Will you be taking care of this scarf, or throwing it into the washing machine?", which allowed him to choose some baby alpaca for his scarf.

I used three skeins of Cascade Yarns Baby Alpaca Chunky Paints and a size 9 needle. I found a simple reversible slip stitch pattern in one of my Barbara Walker stitch treasuries (Row 1: *k3, sl 1 wyb* rep bet we *'s to end of row, ending with k3. Row 2: K1, *sl1 wyb , k3 to end of row, ending with k2), cast on 31 sts and a scarf is born.

Love,
Kim

Best Halloween Decoration, ever

Dear Mom,
I drive past this house on my way to and from the yarn shop.
I love their Halloween decorations!

Love,
Kim

In which my absence is explained. (a little)

Dear Mom,
Teaching 4 knitting classes and knitting samples for said classes, knitting for gifts,

 Young Man home on fall break, jury summons,


Annual Up North trip,

fall yard clean up, and an obsession with James Fraser have kept me away from the blog a little too long.
I'm back now.
Love,
Kim

p.s. Olive is well and has My Hero properly trained.

Dear Aunt Bonnie,
I am sorry I scared your chickens. I just wanted to play! I thought they were having fun when that one jumped up so high and gave me her feathers. Mom says chickens aren't supposed to do that and that it maybe hurt her drumstick when she landed. Mom says I can't go back there until I am better at Leave It and have more Self Control.
She also says that those girls were Bawking like Sailors and I am too young to be exposed to that kind of language.
Love,
Olive 

Blak Beest

Deer GramUdder,
 
A big blak beest kam to our koop.  

Ant Kim sed "Oluv leevit"!  The beest triid to get us. 

Gloria ran so fast that she got a kramp in her drumstik.  We hided in the koop.   Gloria wus SO SKARD!

 
We r  O K.  Mom sed the beest kant visit us eneemor.  Just chikins.
 
Luv, 
Marge

Elle gets Attitude

Dear Mom,
I promised a photo of the latest Color Addiction  Aggression Affection Shawl. Elle was agreeable (she has nothing else to do) and the day is pleasant, so out to the back yard we went.

"I always stand like this," pouts Elle.

"Can't we please try something different?" she whines.

"How will I ever make it to the pages of Vogue or Rowan Knitting magazine if you keep taking the same old boring shots?! YOU are holding ME BACK!" she shrieks.
(I think she may have even rocked to the side a little in an effort to stamp one of her three wooden feet.)

"Much Better."

Love,
Kim

Bird Brains

Dear Mom,
Lots of finishing happening here. Over committing myself in the knitting department will do that. And of course those projects that have been limping along are somehow suddenly more appealing than the projects demanding my immediate attention.
Freshly checked off the list:

 Bird saw these Brain Hats on the internet a long while back and asked if I would make one for her and one for her Colonel.  I had plenty of time. Deadline: Halloween.

This is a more accurate color.

Nothing about these hats was difficult. Stitching the icord to the hat was daunting at first, but breaking it down into small bites made the process manageable. If they occupied my kitchen table for much longer I was going to have to give them names and start setting places for them at dinner. Bird, the hats are on their way to you! Send photos!

Also off the needles recently, a baby blanket for a neighbor's soon-to-be first grandchild.

This is Oat Couture's Prairie Blanket. This may be my new go-to baby blanket pattern. I used Encore Chunky for this one and was able to start and finish the blanket within a week. Oh. Yeah.

Hot off the needles last night and currently blocking is another Color Affection Shawl. I'll have to show you that one another day- it is not ready for the camera just yet. I'll try to post a photo tomorrow.

In the mean time, Olive's Cone of Shame is making all of us NUTS. The staples and stitches come out on Thursday morning at 10:30. The Cone is now embellished with DUCT TAPE. Little Miss Bludger just plows through anything and everything, cone be damned. The backs of our legs may never be the same.

Here we see Olive and Cone caught between the couch, trunk,  and My Hero's legs. Notice the pretty bow is now missing. Notice the lovely the duct tape. And the general beat up condition of the cone. Notice we are not helping her move. Moving means bumping into something else. Two. More. Days.

Love,
Kim

Bumper Joseph

1999-2012

Rest in peace, Mighty Dog. 

The Cone of Shame

Dear Mom,

IF a Girl is forced to wear the Cone of Shame....

....it might as well be accessorized, right?

It's been a long week.

Let's just say that I may be awarded with a personalized parking spot at the vet.

Love,

Kim

One Child Left Behind

Dear Mom,

After dropping the Young Man off at IU on Monday morning, My Hero and I took a spontaneous detour on the way home and treated ourselves to a wine tasting at Oliver Winery. It was the perfect, even though accidental, way to transition from leaving our oldest and coming home to a Half Empty nest.

One of the wines I tasted was their Black Cherry Honey Wine. DELISH. I brought home 2 bottles. One for me and ONE FOR YOU! I don't know what goes into making Honey wine, but you and Bonnie Jo certainly have the honey.....

Tuesday morning I woke up excited and motivated to clean the Young Man's room, knowing it would Stay That Way. I won't go into the detail of how full the trash bag was, how many empty PowerAde bottles I found, how many little scraps of paper and wrappers I picked up, or how full the vacuum canister was when I'd finished. Let's just leave it that I haven't seen that much carpet in his room for years and that I get a THRILL every time I walk past his room and look in to see that it is just as I left it. (and I KNOW! I get IT! I deserved to have a child with a sloppy room... I earned that. I admit it. Except in my case, my bedroom floor was littered with record albums and guitar music, not dirty tee shirts and socks..... Paid back in full.)

The thrill of clean and organized is spilling over into the rest of the house. It might be the promise of Autumn, with the crisp evenings and mornings we've enjoyed, or knowing that school is starting soon and I am gladly saying Goodbye to Summer and giving it a good hard kick in its backside on its way out.

We are enjoying the bounty of our harvested tomatoes from the garden. The corn and beans are done. Keeping up with the tomatoes is going to be a challenge. I took advantage of the abundance of fresh Roma tomatoes, and the basil growing in my herb garden, to make and freeze a batch of Roasted Tomato Soup. It occurs to me that I prepared this soup on a warm summer day, from tomatoes and basil grown in my garden under a hot summer sun, with the promise of enjoying it on a cold winter afternoon while thinking of warm summer days ahead. A sort of circle of life here on the cul-de-sac.

And another sort of circle of life...In May we faced the tragedy and heartbreak of losing Patsy (I am still not over that)  And today I brought a spayed Olive home. Bless her sweetness.

All is well.
Love,
Kim

Wordless Wednesday

Disappointment to Delight

Dear Mom,
I took that stubby woven scarf disaster and turned it into a lovely cowl!

I could almost pretend I planned it this way, it turned out so nice.

Using a length of the warp thread, I hand stitched the ends together into a flat felled seam. (Thank you Mrs. Roos and high school tailoring class!)  Actually, the first thing I did was add a twist to the scarf so that it would become a moebius ring when the ends were stitched together.

The nice thing about adding that twist is that the scarf/cowl will hang flat when worn under a coat.

And the cowl had just enough length to allow me to wear it doubled around my neck, too.

I now have plans for those single skeins of hand spun, hand dyed yarns I've been producing!

Love,
Kim

A Successfully Finished Knitted Object!

Dear Mom,
Just so you know it isn't all clean ups and failed weaving projects around here....
I started and finished this shawl in about 10 days. It is the Stitch Sampler Shawl, and I succumbed to this one after seeing too many pretty ones at the Village Yarn Shop. I must have been in there at a weak or highly suggestible moment, because this is not something I would normally find myself knitting. Still, I enjoyed it; it was simple and quick; and I could knit most of it while reading a book I didn't want to put down! ( The book was Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, the 4th book in her Outlander series).

I used Mountain Colors Twizzle, a beautiful merino/silk blend, in three color ways- Cedar, Harmony Woods, and Red Tail Hawk, and I modified the pattern instructions to repeat rows 43- 70 to give the shawl a little more length and to use up as much of the yarn as I could.
I seem to be on a bit of a shawl kick right now. Two more on the needles- one requiring some attention, and the other is another Color Affection Shawl. With all that has been going on around here this summer and in these last days before we take the Young Man off to college, my knitting once again gives me solace and something I can still be the boss of.... ( and reading about James Fraser isn't hurting anything, either! noooo sirrrreeee.)
Love,
Kim