I took your advice! I ripped back, added a repeat, and then started the decreases a second time. And then? It looked like I could get another repeat, so I ripped out again, added another repeat, and then finished the shawl. There’s no way I could have added a third extra repeat. And am I glad I did?

Am I ever! Do you see all that extra lovely gold color? That’s the kind of thing that really trips my trigger. A really stunning scarf for just a little extra work.

This is my nahant scarf. As you can see, I am very near the end. So near, in fact, that I can see that I probably could have added one more repeat before starting the decreases. I am sorely tempted to rip it back and DO that extra repeat. It’s handspun yarn. It’s also perhaps one of my favorite colorways ever. What would you do?

Yesterday I helped a friend pack up a moving truck to move to Washington. It felt like a good idea to pay back all the wonderful help we received during our move. I’ve also just always really enjoyed helping people move. It’s a time when I can get a little extra workout while doing something that is extremely highly appreciated.

The truck we loaded, early on in the process. Miss Bug was actually very helpful. She stayed at the edge of the truck, and pushed boxes to the back where they could be stacked easily. It’s nice to have a kid of an age where she’s hardworking and helpful!

Once we were done with that, we headed home. Mr. Ink wanted to go to the hardware store, and wanted to know if I wanted anything for my garden. After all, I’d just taken out 1/3 of this perennial bed:

In order to make room for veggies and herbs. Well, I just didn’t want him to get the pleasure of choosing what to get at the store, so I went along and picked up some veggie plants.

We then got home, Mr. Ink started preparing dinner, I yawned, and said “I just have no idea why I am so tired!”  And Mr. Ink says “It’s because you NEVER SIT DOWN!” He then told me to GO sit down and he’d cook dinner. So I went outside and picked a nice big bouquet of flowers, and spent the rest of the time dinner was being made straightening the house for our big party this weekend. Naturally.

I did get forced into sitting for a bit later on in the evening when my problematic heel got so bad I could barely walk. A little ice, a little rest, some seriously supportive shoes, and I am ready for an evening of work today.

I’ve still been getting some time in on Nahant here and there. I’ll take time to work on it in the mornings before work, and then it also goes with me TO work and I’ll work on it while I am on my lunch break. When you last saw it, I was in a gold/green section but headed toward red. Now I am firmly back into the red section, and I can see some more blue/green on the other side of that.

I probably won’t work on it much tonight, instead I’ll be vacuuming floors and doing laundry. And I couldn’t be happier about it!

When you last saw this scarf, it was just headed into the gold section. Since then, I’ve made some pretty decent progress. I am still in gold, technically, but moving back into a greener tone. Plus, on this last purl row I started to see little bits of red, so I know that’s coming right up too.

The colors got pretty muddy in this section, but the overall effect is still quite pleasing to me.

That’s about it from here! Hope you are having a great week!

I am starting to think that weekends just mean more hard work. I guess it’s been that way for months on end now, so why would I think differently at this point? We spent the weekend cleaning, hanging art, shopping, assembling, repairing, and on and on. The house looks beautiful, but we are getting tired. And, a little bit resigned.

And then, this morning I woke up and walked out into my pristine living area with the art up on the walls and realized that It. Is. Worth. It. In fact, I can’t wait to get home this evening, despite the fact that we’ve got a full evening of yardwork planned, SIMPLY Because I know getting home to a beautiful space really does make me a more relaxed person, even if it does take a little bit of energy to get there.

One of the items we purchased this weekend was a large floor lamp. Our living area is very large, and very retro. We’ve had some struggles with lighting in there. Mr. Ink and I went shopping for a floor lamp, and ended up with the biggest, tallest lamp we could find. Once put together, it fit the space so perfectly we realized that a really huge lamp was exactly what that space needed. As a bonus, we also purchased a matching lamp shade for a regular table lamp we already had. That tied everything in well together.

(BTW, yes, we are leaving the paneling. The room is big enough for it, and it works with our retro theme.)

I also made a mother’s day dinner for Mr. Ink’s mom, and we had her over to see the house. That was quite pleasant, and while Mr. Ink is the real chef in the family, I was cooking for her specific needs, and I really hit that dinner out of the part, if I do say so myself. Really delicious comfort food was had by all.

And, as usual, I did manage to cobble together some bits of time to work on some knitting. My Nahant scarf is coming along quite well, I’ve worked through the first teal bit, and into some gold. Looks like we’ll get teal again right after the gold, from what is peaking through the ball of yarn I have for this.

That gold color is one of my absolute favorites, so I am looking forward to this section quite a bit!

On my to do list for today has been figuring out how many grams a repeat of the nahant scarf costs. I figured it out, it’s 6 grams. Of course, I’ve got far more important things to do on my list, but this one got done pretty early in the day.

As you can see, I am transitioning out of the red and into a turquoise. The transition seemed to take forever! I am really enjoying the shawl though, it’s been an absolute pleasure so far.

We’ve also managed to sort all our art. This is about a week and a half later than I had hoped! Because I just cannot feel settled until the art is in place. We hung some of it late last evening as well, but there’s still much to be done.

But, every day sees more boxes unpacked. Our saving grace has really been all the storage space in the home. We’ve been able to live comfortably without tripping over boxes, just bringing one or two up at a time to sort and put away. That being said, I do struggle a bit now to keep up on all the regular type cleaning while also getting stuff unpacked and organized.

Happy weekend friends! I do hope you have a good one!

I finished my handspun baktus scarf last evening. I’d actually been done, but I decided to use the small remaining ball of yarn for some fringe on the ends. I had time to make that happen last evening, so I set out to take pictures of the scarf.

Now, being that it’s a new place, I really haven’t scoped it out for great places to take photos. As I was wandering around the house looking for a place, Mr. Ink came home from work. I greeted him, then continued on my quest to find an appropriate place to photograph the scarf.

I settled on a fence in the yard. the top of it is rather weathered, and since it was a very windy day, and we are at the top of a hill, the weathered top of the fence actually held on to the scarf. So I quickly grabbed a picture.

And got photobombed in the process.

I actually love this photo. Because it’s so alive. If knitwear could snap in the wind, the ends of this scarf would be. And the mischievous look in Mr. Ink’s eyes is also caught by the camera. It sort of sums up what life has been like ever since we moved into the new place. Wild, crazy, fun.

As for the scarf itself. It’s handspun I’ve had in my stash for ages. The original fiber was Crown Mountain Farms, and it was only half of their regular 8oz. bump.  The baktus scarf serves it very well, I love how it stripes but stays teal.

I also managed to finish the increases on my new Nahant scarf. I am still knitting red but I can see a color change coming up, and even the red has some striping to it. I’ll take a picture for tomorrow. I am very excited about that project!

I don’t know if you remember when I spun my Dyeabolical Yarns Themyscira colorway, but I ended up with 575 yards of 2 ply yarn, which has been enchanting me from my stash for the better part of half a year.

Well, I finally found the project for it. The Nahant scarf from knitty.com is a bias knit scarf that lends itself very well to handspun. I started it this morning.

I weighed my skein, and I’ll weigh it again once I am done increasing to see how many grams the increases and decreases eat. That way I can truly us as much yarn as is possible. Since it’s handspun, it really needs to go a long way!

I am really looking forward to this project. It isn’t a fractal spun yarn, so it won’t stripe like the pattern scarf does, as my color changes were random. But, I truly think half the fun of these projects is seeing how the colors play in it. I can’t wait! Expect to see a lot more of this one as I move into new colors!

It seems like most of my posting happens after a weekend now. As that’s basically my only real time to do any crafting, and even then it’s quite limited.

The house continues to be my project which holds my enthusiasm. Miss Bug was gone this weekend and Mr. Ink worked on Saturday so I was able to spend just a little time all by myself in the house. Well, alone except for the dog anyhow. Which brings me to a story.

In my last home, the only bathroom was a walk through style bathroom with two doors, each to a different room in the home. It was absolutely impossible to get some privacy in that bathroom while raising a child. Between her needing to use it at the same time I needed to use it, and a child’s natural inclination to lack of boundaries, at 10 yrs old, Miss Bug was still interrupting me in the bathroom. And I craved those boundaries. So, before we moved, Miss Bug and I had a discussion about those boundaries and how in the new house, with two bathrooms, there was really no reason at all to disturb me in the bathroom. She could give me AT LEAST that much time to myself. It was successful, and upon noticing that I was occupied, she’d wait until I was finished to contact me.

So, for the first time in 10 years I am consistently allowed a moment of peace and quiet in the bathroom. Except for the dog. Who has now accepted me as one of his humans, and rather than leaving me alone in the bathroom, paces back and forth in front of the bathroom door, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, the entire time I am in there.

You win some, you lose some.

Yesterday Mr. Ink and I spent over 5 hours on yard work. We mowed his family home and our home, each home having a huge yard with various difficulties to the mowing project. And then we spent the rest of the time cleaning up the waste leftover from last year in the gardens, and removing invasive paper mulberry stumps. We’ve still got a bit to do, but it’s in good shape now. This 5 hours was the brief window of time that the grass was almost dry enough to mow before more than a week of anticipated rain, and we were certainly feeling the pressure.

The reward for all this hard work? Our first iris! We’ve got so many more, but this one has made an early appearance. It’s such a mystery what will happen with these gardens this year and I am absolutely excited to find out!

In knitting, I’ve been working on my handspun baktus scarf. I’ve passed the midpoint now and am working my way through the decreases. It’s lovely, and I like that it is so muted, colorwise.

I’ve been picking it up in my spare moments. At work, when I am having morning coffee, when I am waiting for Miss Bug to finish getting ready for school. And, it’s moving along quite quickly even though I just haven’t devoted a ton of time to it. I guess that’s what monogamous knitting does to a project!

I spun for a couple hours too! But, sadly, I didn’t grab a picture, and I doubt I’ll look at the wheel again for awhile.