One day I'll learn

So today I woke thinking that it was a nice day and nothing was planned maybe I should block and wash the knitting that has built up.

This is what was in the Lowe's 5 gallon bucket I use. Its a lot. 3 shawls, 1 cowl, a scarf, several hats, almost all of my socks and a bunch of little things.

Ok and 1 not so little thing. My knitted doily that almost 2 feet across

Blocking pic

ornaments I made last year and just never washed. Still need to stiffen them.

The hats and socks are down in the laundry room drying. They were just washed nothing new to show. I KNew there was a lot but boy was there. It took me hours just to get everything washed and what needed to be pinned out pinned out. Only two things that were drying on my bed (the ceiling fan helps a ton to speed things up) were not dry so they are now in my closed closet. A certain furry little girl loves to lay on the knitting. In fact the moment i opened my door that is exactly what she did the little stinker. 

My sanity

Ok, so this is my new weaving. It may be hard to see, but in the bottom part are what are called pinwheels.  

There are several problems.

1. I don't think my yarn contrasts enough to really see them. Of course you can only really see this after the loom is warped and you start weaving. I was NOT going to waste the yarn (Periwinkle Sheep in Goth Girl and 11 Ways to Dry a Chili Pepper- that's the lighter orangey one)

2. There are 8 row to a repeat. Nothing really hard but 6 of those rows I have to sit there and go under and over individually with the yarn. It takes time a lot of time. which leads to...

3. Its taken me 4 days to just get 21 repeats done!

4. The pinwheels don't even look that great because I am pushing down to hard and it seems the more I try not to I wind up squishing them even more. ( Here is to hoping a nice blocking helps)

So, to save what little sanity I have left, I have switched to plain old weave. That's the top part of the weaving. Still keeping 8 row repeat just plain weave and just changing colors every 8 rows. Took about 5 minutes to do 4 repeats. Much quicker. Now I may throw in a pinwheel row here and there or I may just wait until the end and end with 21 pinwheel repeats. Well That I most likely will do. At least that way the ends are the same and it looks like I designed it to look like that.

The reason why it takes so long long is my loom only has 2 positions - Up and Down (or more technically open and closed) The pinwheel pattern was originally made for what is called 8 harnessed looms.  Basically instead of me weaving those 6 rows each time those warps are attached to a bar and you just lift that one bar depending on the row. 

For example The first pattern row goes over 4 under 4 across 104 warp threads on my loom.  An 8 harness loom you just have to lift one bar and boom the threads are up that you need and weave.

I don't know why I thought this would be a quick weave.

Weaving and a miracle

This above is me finally going beyond just plain back and forth weave. I read and then read some more -patterns blogs and articles. I am very much new to this even though i have had my loom for years. It seems that I do this. Hop around learn something move on then come back and learn something new and repeat. Well it turns out that not only knitting patterns lie so do weaving ones. I wasn't even close to having enough yarn for the blue one. =(  I'll make it into something from it. The color is too pretty not to.(BTW its Periwinkle Sheep aran in Grace.

This is the same pattern in a different yarn. Its in black and white. Hopefully a Christmas gift. Now I actually finished the weaving and its off the loom (weaving is very fast compared to knitting) half the ends are finished off. Of course it still looks the wrong size. To me it looks to short but we shall see after a nice soaking and blocking. One more thing to block-ugh! I have literally a Lowe's 5 gallon bucket full of blocking. Probably should do that soon.

This is the miracle. Only Mj knew I was taking the picture ( hence why it not a great picture). This is proof that my 4 wonderful kids can actually be in a room (Dillon's) and get along!!!!Yes the 3 older ones are on their laptops playing Minecraft together. For almost 2 hours!! Together the 4 of them!! WITHOUT FIGHTING!!!!!! They were being nice to each other!!!

I'm sure you can tell by my wording this is not something that happens in this house. I just had to mave some sort of proof. I'm thinking of having this picture printed and framed. It give me hope that it can happen. Fingers crossed.

Don't mow your phone

I know its common sense =). Honestly I don't even know how it happened. I only knew something happened because the song changed. I looked down and no phone.  Thankfully my case saved my phone from becoming trash. Just needed a new case.. Thank you Otterbox.  Worth the money.

I spent yesterday harvesting from the garden again. I feel like i just did this.

TOP: peppermint and regular basil

BOTTOM: thyme, parsley (not so much this time - a caterpillar found my parsley last week and got nice and fat. Said caterpillar has been relocated) lemon basil (not so much this time because the regular basil over crowded it out. That has been fixed) and purple basil.

My peppermint. Tea anyone?

The tomatoes are starting to turn red.  I have a feeling that they are going to turn together and that will be a lot of tomatoes from only 4 plants.

My garden this year has already been a bigger success then last year. I really need to clean up the flower bed and replant some plants before fall gets here. Just need the be a little cooler for me to get out there.

Next time - Weaving! Yes I dug my loom out and finally got around to learning more then just plain weave =)

Sometimes you just have to stop

It has felt like the only time i seem to be not doing something is when I'm sleeping.

Tonight dinner ended early enough and it was nice out, so I figured before everything becomes a muddy mess (lots of rain due tomorrow and our soil here is clay and there is underground streams which makes for a messy yard for a few days before it dries out) we would have a fire.  

Of course you cant have a fire without marshmallows, and then you need chocolate and graham crackers

We just sat and s'mored until Mj's bedtime.

It was just what i needed.