Posts filed under ‘Cool Things’
Success!
DD emailed this hat picture, taken with her cell phone, and asked if I could knit one like it for her:
Result:
Colinette Jitterbug in Morello Mash from Knit Purl in Portland
DD says it’s “AWESOME!”
Me: 🙂
When Life Hands You Lemons, You’re Lucky
If you’re growing them in Seattle.
I was happy to see this Meyer lemon plant survive on our deck all summer.
It came inside when the weather turned cold and it went (blooming) crazy.
The citrus fragrance fills the room.
While taking photos I spotted two tiny lemons:
Clover stitch marker for scale and attempt to include
knitting content.
Continuing with the citrus theme, we’ve had this orange plant for a few years, it lives indoors full time:
Tiny orange, these don’t get any bigger,
DH uses the peel in martinis.
Okay, here’s something more seasonal (for Seattle):
Pumpkins!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
I LOVE summer, but there are things I like about fall
Busy couple of weeks. No time to blog!
Weekend before last we went huckleberry picking:
And mushroom hunting:
chanterelles
It’s killing me that we haven’t had time to do more berry picking, the berries are the best I’ve seen in years:
huckleberries
and when the huckleberries are this good, the blueberries are INSANE:
blueberries
DD asked, “When you close your eyes, do you see huckleberries?”
Yes.
Love it.
Oh yeah, and
THE HUSKIES BEAT USC! WOOOO HOOOOOO!
Framing a Menu: Matson Lines Eugene Savage
Again, from the Not Knitting But I Made It files:
This bit of framing has been waiting a long time to get done.
I had to put the knitting down. In fact, I could always avoid this task as long as I had ANYTHING knittable going on. (does knittable have one ‘t’ or two? -you know, if it was a word)
DH found a vintage Matson Lines menu with Eugene Savage artwork when we were in Kauai on The Best Vacation Ever. Way back when, as a child, he had traveled to and from Hawaii on the Matson Lines.
A God Appears by Eugene Savage on one side
Framing it was a bit of a puzzle; I wanted to frame it so both the artwork and the menu could be seen while providing adequate support for the piece.
Matson Lines dinner menu on the other side
It took some fancy thinking to get everything lined up and mats cut with openings in the right places.
…and when I turn it over the text will be…where?
Final result:
“I tried to give you some lovin’ but you just gave me hives”
I was cleaning out an old piece of furniture and found a slip of paper with that quote attributed to me written in DH handwriting.
?
I did not remember saying it, but it made me laugh.
Fortunately, DH did remember and told me I said it to our dog (long since gone).
Now that does make sense.
I wish I was songwriter, because that is a heartbreaker right there.
good dog 1984-1995
I was making room for this, it’s not knitting, but I made it!
Well, OK, I didn’t make it, I put it together; it came in this box “Ready To Assemble”:
That worked out well, so…
another box:
another cabinet:
Wow, real furniture. I feel so grown up!
Resort Destination: Vancouver, B.C. and the New Location for Button Button!
It turns out, if you go to Vancouver, B.C. when it’s 93°F, it’s too dang hot to do anything downtown. Our hotel room did not have air-conditioning so we were forced to walk across the street and hang out here:
reading, people watching, eating hot dogs, and when that got too hot, going swimming in English Bay:
We could walk out of The Sylvia, in our swimsuits and towels and walk back all wet after swimming, just like staying at a beach resort! It was lovely.
We saw the UK fireworks for the Celebration of Light fireworks competition, with prime viewing from the park across the street.
video of fireworks 1
video of fireworks 2
and caught a performance of Othello at Bard On The Beach. It was hot sitting in that tent full of people in 93°F heat, but at least I wasn’t wearing a full length multi-layered brocade gown with long wavy hair hanging down my back or sword-fighting in thigh-high leather boots over ‘leather’ pants and a brocade vest with a leather doublet! I was afraid one of the actors might pass out from the heat. The tent is open behind the stage providing a gorgeous backdrop of mountains and sunset sky and mercifully providing some fresh air.
Too bad Othello always ends so badly.
Oh, and here’s where we ate breakfast every morning on the patio of the hotel restaurant:
(that’s the fireworks barge, yeah, Right There!)
On our last day, just before heading home we decided to brave the heat and venture into town. We visited Button Button in her new location, or rather my family indulged me by ditching me there.
New location:
and inside, the same overwhelming selection of buttons:
YOU can make a difference!
I didn’t have a specific button requirement, but managed to find a few things:
Cool vintage celluloid button
Back at home, this beauty from DH garden somehow managed to survive the (Seattle) record breaking 103°F heat without water while we were out of town:
No, it’s not a full size cabbage on a dinner plate, it’s an itty radicchio on a bread plate!
Yummy!
Mushroom picking and some knitting
Finished with a bit of lacy trim:
Vine Lace
Barbara G. Walker’s “A Treasury of Knitting Patterns”
And delivered:
Happy Birthday!
socks in Koigu KPPPM color 105d &
Planet Earth Fibers silk and bead trim
Also finished:
plain ol’ socks in Trekking XXL color 104
I love the color transitions of Trekking XXL!
And a new thing started on the way to the mountains for mushroom hunting:
DH posing my knitting in the Cascades off I-90
Apparently it is the time of year for baby animals.
Baby horses with their moms
Baby deer with their mom
On into the mountains…
We found:
mushrooms
Mom says:
“Don’t eat anything bigger than your head.”
(bolete mushroom)
strange flowers
these were growing in gravel with no leaves at all
fabulous views
This was actually a little scary it drops off pretty dramatically. When I lost my balance and grabbed the rock a chunk came off in my hand “AAAAAAAAH!”.
We brought home a few morels and boletes
and then had grilled steaks and morels in cream for dinner, yumm!
Husky Hat
My Catherine Lowe Headgear IV kit arrived!
The yarn is gorgeous…I am a little intimidated by the 23 page pattern instuction book.
At the opposite extreme, DH asked if I could knit a hat for him this week – I used leftover yarn from a pair of socks and no pattern.
I finished the hat as the UW Huskies clinched the Conference Championship, much better than the season the socks had.
quick hat, Blue Moon STR lightweight in colorway Husky
TREKKING (XXL) Color 100 Socks and New Shoes
When I first saw TREKKING (XXL) Color 100, I was smitten.
I started knitting and loved the socks
So much.
You know.
In that way that makes you go temporarily insane and back to the store to buy the rest of it that they have in stock.
Yes, those are all Color 100 and all the same dye lot!
…and then I had to buy shoes to show them off!
I don’t know what I am going to do with all that yarn,
I don’t need eight pair of the same socks
…not that any two socks will be the same, much less any two or eight pair!
xmas cards vs. mushrooms
I don’t know what possessed me to make xmas cards.
Like, addressing and writing cards doesn’t take long enough,
AND
it turns out making cards takes a lot longer than I expected.
The Plan today was to finish the cards (the making part, not the addressing and writing part), but it was a beautiful day and DH suggested a quick trip to the mountains to look for mushrooms.
1)Â Measure and tear paper
– or-
2)Â Tromp around in the woods looking for mushrooms…
Mushrooms: 1
Cards: 0
The cards didn’t stand a chance on a day like today.
Knitting In Mind 