I rode my bike to work yesterday. It was windy in the morning, but I didn’t really bother about it much. It didn’t slow me down. But, on the way home, the wind had picked up significantly, and I had to fight it all the way home. Despite my heavy fatbike, I was struggling to keep myself upright in addition to fighting against the wind. It was a rough trip home. Thankfully once home and showered I really didn’t have much else planned other than regular chores. No more commuting to work this week, it’s supposed to be 34F the morning that I could ride due to the forecast being dry. No thanks, I’ll save it for another day. Needless to say, I am exhausted.

I remember this feeling from when I was training hard for RAGBRAI a few years ago. (520 miles in 7 days). I’d train and train and train and then I’d just hit a wall where I almost couldn’t pedal my bike. I worried, that entire spring, that the wall I hit would happen on the week long ride. Then, I realized that’s why all the experienced riders took the week before off. Or at least seriously cut back on their rides. They rode for fun during that week, gently, and spent a lot of time packing rather than riding. And it was true, it worked!

So, tonight is my night “off.” I’ll do a ride around the block to get my 30 days of biking ride in, but I can feel that I need time off the bike now. Actually, I’ll probably do a ride around the block 2 days in a row. By Thursday, things should be looking up.

I got a photo of the 3 braid combo spin. I am working on the yarn wench braid, as of this morning I am halfway through it.

Somehow those colors are a lot more muted in real life. But, if we put it next to the dyeing arts braid:

Well, already I think this will be fun!

I also grabbed a photo of my huge mulching project. A before picture of a small section, and the after photo.

I still have a small but complicated section to work on to the left of that mulched garden photo. And sorry about all the drooping plants, Miss Butterfly and I actually sat on them in order to access other areas of that garden.

And now on to the front banks. Over the winter, Mr. Ink chopped back the spirea on the front bank. He decided that the older dead wood had to go. He spent an amazing amount of time on it, and it surely paid off.

The rock alyssum is blooming nicely now, the sedum look great, and the spirea on the front bank give it a burst of different greens that looks really nice. Still a ton of work to be done on the front bank, but it sure is different from when we moved in.

Check this mess out!

It’s good to look back at what we started with from time to time. In fact, I need to do it regularly.

Last week’s list:

• Ride bike every day
• Finish “Sugar Skull” spin
• 2 repeats of Lighter than Perfume
  • This is actually pretty close to being done now, I’ve got a lot more yarn, but there will be a point at which the length gets ridiculous. I keep reminding myself how much lace grows upon blocking as I knit yet another repeat in hopes to use more yarn.
• If weather continues to hold beautifully…scrape, sand, and paint around shop doorway.
  • I didn’t do this. The weather held, but I didn’t do it. Instead, I took that really weedy flower bed, pulled weeds section by section, and mulched it really well. I spent all weekend on it, and it’s not done yet. But, I also dug out the ditch lilies and planted hollyhock and poppy seeds. I figured that while the shop doorway would hold, those weeds weren’t going to get any easier to deal with. Priorities, right?
• Commute by bike one day this week.
  • Yeah, did that Friday and again this morning. It’s wonderful!

This weekend was just a whole lot of getting on with it. I am afraid I didn’t do very well at all with gathering pictures. I was just too intent on all the things I was doing. It was an absolutely lovely weekend.

We went to my favorite little farmer’s market style plant shop on Saturday, just an open air place with inexpensive fairly local plants. They don’t bother with shrubs or trees, so I think that keeps prices down, needing less real estate over all. We got a bunch of plants for our containers and hanging baskets, and spent a good portion of Saturday creating baskets. I also decided to work on that flower bed, and it looks fantastic now! I am not quite done, but it’ll be a lot easier to keep up with now. I will get a photo of that this evening. I am only not done because I ran out of both time and mulch.

On Sunday, we went to another plant nursery. Mr. Ink said “It’s too bad my bike is out of commission, we could go there by bike.” I had a sadface. Then I thought about it for a minute, and thought about the fleet of bikes in the garage, and thought that there had to be a solution here. I said “Do you want to ride my fatbike?” His hearty YES! told me that he’d been waiting for me to ask.

I told him later “You look good on that bike!” And he responded “EVERYONE looks good on this bike!” It’s so true. Sadly, the bike is ridiculously small for him, but he carried on and enjoyed the ride. As did I! Today marks day 24 of 30 days of biking, and I will certainly do it again next year. It’s been a great way to get back in biking shape, renew the interest, and just feel all the joy there is to feel about biking. Long gone are the days of sore butt and cramping leg muscles, that ended pretty early in the month. Now it’s just hard work and good fun!

In spinning, I did begin my 3 braid combo spin. I did get a photo of the first braid in progress, it’s the one from The Dyeing Arts.

I did finish this braid and I started the next one, the one from Yarn Wench. But, I didn’t get a photo of that one, I was too busy just getting on with it. I’ll try to slow down tonight for a photo of that too.

There’s cooler weather and rain in the forecast, that might be what’s driving our motivation at the moment. However, we’ve been hitting the yard pretty hard, and the rain will be a welcome down time, at least for me.

I am not making a list this week. I’ve got a grant due and a progress report due and a bunch more visitors coming in. There’s just no telling how this week will look, and adding the stress of trying to achieve a particular list probably will not help stress levels. I’ll be back at it next week I think.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend!

 

Guys! I did it! I woke up very early, and rode my bike to work, and got to watch the sun come up while I was at it. It was lovely! It took me exactly 1 hour from my doorstep to the bike rack at work on the fatbike. This means next time I can move my leave the house time back another 15 minutes. Somehow, 15 minutes makes ALL the difference at 5:30 a.m.  In fact, pushing my wake up time to 5:45 means that I’d be waking up at the same time I often do when not biking to work.

This morning I was so nervous about missing out on the morning ride that I woke up before 5. So, I actually got coffee and knitting time in before I left. I think the hot coffee kept me warm in the 45F weather. My toes are a bit cold, but other than that I was ok. The ride home should be a pleasant 65F, so I’ve got no worries at all about the afternoon ride.

Check this out! That’s 760 yards of fingering weight 2 ply! It may end up being one that ends up wound and on the needles in short order. There’s just something about those bright colors that calls to me. I showed it off to Mr. Ink last evening and he agreed that it really does resemble a yarn dyed with candy buttons.

While plying this handspun, my brain was already on to my next handspun project. I decided that after watching so many others do one of those 3 braids of different colorway combos, it was my turn.

This is what I picked out. On top, Iris You Were Here from Dyeabolical yarns, Peacock from The Dyeing Arts in the middle, and Gypsy Soul from The Yarn Wench at the bottom. After I took the photograph, I divided all the braids into smaller color sections, set two of the colorways aside, and began on the middle color. I am going for a fingering weight 3 ply, so I am spinning very thin, and the project may take quite a bit of time.

Our front bank is looking quite charming this spring, our rock alyssum is blooming nicely all of a sudden, and Mr. Ink cut back the dead stuff on all the spirea. With the spirea beginning to grow again, the bank is fairly tidy, neatly trimmed, and getting colorful. So, I took some photos for you. Charming photos. Except that when I went to post them, I realized an errant piece of newspaper had flown into the photo, ruining the shot. So, I’ll try again tonight!

Things are really starting to move in the garden. I mean, we’ve had warm pleasant weather and lots of rain. Ideal growing conditions. Which means great results with flowers, and unfortunately, also great results with weeds. Here’s some updates:

I bought this bleeding heart last year. I planted it on the north side of our house, but the soil there is awful. It just didn’t do well at all. So, I moved it partway through the year to the north side of the shop. It is already this year about where it was when I planted it last year. Meaning that last year it died back really badly. But, it has survived, and must like it’s new home.

I got this plant from a friend last year. It stayed green all winter, and has spread considerably. I didn’t really know what it was. This is the first flower, and my flower ID app says it’s a creeping buttercup. Which is….basically a weed in this area. Meaning, once it’s established, it’s really hard to get rid of. But, it’s so green and pretty! I am having a hard time saying no to it. I may dig some up and put it on the north side of the house where the soil is poor and I desperately want ground cover, that way if it spreads I won’t mind, and if it dies, I won’t mind.

Check out these lilacs! The neighbors have 5 lilacs that hang over our fence line. I like to say this means we have lilacs too, until I think about the other stuff that hangs over our fence line creating actual problems. Like, volunteer black walnut trees, volunteer paper mulberries, and volunteer chokecherries. Meaning that we spend a LOT of time during the year yanking volunteer seedlings from these trees out of our yard and garden. That being said, these also provide a nice addition to the fence line, keeping extra privacy between the two homes. Mr. Ink is working to fill in the privacy gaps with what he’d call more appropriate trees.

In spinning, I spent less than 5 minutes spinning to finish up my singles and grab a photo:

I then took a nap. Being out late at that show had me worn out more than expected. I was having trouble driving home without falling asleep! Then I began my plying project.

These colors, even though they aren’t “my” colors, are fantastic together. I am really loving the resulting yarn. The fractal spin was a perfect choice for the colorway, as everything looks pretty nice together. Though I find the lime green plied with bright pink maybe slightly less than awesome. However, that’s just a small portion of the project. I suspect I am about halfway through the plying of this one.

30 days of biking and a highly recognizable pink fatbike has yet another unexpected advantage. Last night Miss Butterfly and I made a new acquaintance. Actually, we met an entire family. Now, a few days ago I was riding pinkie up a hill in the neighborhood with Mr. Ink in the lead. I was, naturally, struggling up that hill. I got to the top of the hill where there was a stop sign and stopped. Some guy in a car coming the other way was also stopped, and hollered out of the car window at me. But, it was nice hollering. “I like your bike! Is it hard to ride? Are you doing 30 days of biking?!”

• Ride Bike Every Day
• Finish Lintilla shawl
• Finish brown batt plying project
• Work on some corespun yarn
  • I finished this actually, and I’ll show that off tomorrow.
• 3 repeats of Lighter Than Perfume shawl
  • This was quite a slog actually. Even with the extra days off, I had trouble completing this.
• Work on something off the master house list.
  • Windows were washed, the outsides of them anyhow.
• Rearrange furniture in craft room and den of slack (Weather permitting)
  • Nope nope nope. It was supposed to rain all day Saturday. It didn’t rain at all. We spent all our time outdoors. It’s getting bumped from the list at this point, as next weekend looks to be lovely.
• Get Miss Butterfly a haircut!
  • Not only did I get this done, I also went so far as to set up her next appointment so that we don’t get to the point where we cannot run a comb through her hair again.

When we last left off, the girls were dyeing easter eggs after having a living room tent sleep over. I’d found eggs for 50 cents a dozen, so I boiled a dozen and a half for dyeing, anticipating plenty of had boiled eggs for egg salad and other yummy things. I really should have known better, of course our young guest wanted to take her decorated eggs home! I don’t know why I imagined she wouldn’t! Plus, the girls were eating eggs as well as decorating eggs. At least they were well fed.

After they were done with the 13 cups of dye (!) I threw some silk hankies in some of the dye cups and microwaved them. The girls had a lot of fun watching that process as well. I mixed cups of dye, which gave me some variegation in color.

I got a nice assortment of springlike colors out of leftover dye. I am glad I thought of my 2 oz. of undyed silk hankies laying around in the undyed fiber stash.

Later on, I’d decided to start a new spinning project. Miss Butterfly caught me contemplating my stash, as I was having a lot of trouble deciding on a fiber. She quickly made a choice for me, and the colors absolutely reflected the easter eggs she’d just dyed.

This is “sugar skull” from The Dyeing Arts. It really reminds me of candy buttons, remember those? The little dots of sugar candy on paper? I remember my cousins purchasing them at the five and dime store, and wanting to like them, but really secretly hating most sweets. In any case, I’ve gone off track. The fiber is superwash merino with 10% nylon and 10% sparkle. I have another 4 ounces in addition to this, which is just superwash merino. Should make a fun 2 ply yarn, and it’ll be a fractal spin. I began this on Saturday, and as of this morning I am about 3/4 done with the second bump of fiber. It’s busy tonight, but I should be plying by Tuesday or Wednesday.

This week:

• Ride bike every day
• Finish “Sugar Skull” spin
• 2 repeats of Lighter than Perfume
• If weather continues to hold beautifully…scrape, sand, and paint around shop doorway.
• Commute by bike one day this week.

That’s it! Can’t wait to catch up on all the blogs I’ve missed this weekend.

Guys, I am having such a lovely vacation! Yesterday it was supposed to rain, but it didn’t. Miss Butterfly and I left the house by bike at 8:45 in the morning and didn’t get back until almost noon, having gotten a lot of sun, a great bike ride, a bunch of pokemon playing, and lots of wonderful time together. We took a bit of a break once we were home to do our own thing, had lunch with Mr. Ink who comes home from work at lunchtime, and then headed out again to run errands. We got Miss Butterfly’s hair cut, went to a shop to get a new bike tire for the fat bike, stopped at a creamery for ice cream, and then went to my favorite farmer’s market to buy plants.

Once home, we got lettuce planted, and then a bunch of little flowers we’d picked up as well.

The orange poppy was Miss Butterfly’s choice. The other two were for me.

I began working on a corespun project using a very chunky sparkly batt with tons of extra dyed locks thrown in. I do love a good corespun! And, in the project of using up more stash than I spin up, I figure corespun is a neutral. I make new yarn using yarn that’s already in stash. Pretty cool.

In the evening it was sleepover time. Miss Butterfly and her friend set up the tent in the living room and “camped in.”

The house is a ridiculous mess right now, and I can’t even care they are such good kids.

This morning I boiled a bunch of eggs before the girls woke up so that they could have a marathon egg dyeing session.

I got them an extra large dye kit with an assortment of various decorating supplies included, and Miss Butterfly had leftover dye from last year as well. You may notice I’ve got some undyed silk hankies hanging out on the table. I am figuring I’ll throw those in the dye cups and microwave them a little later. Can’t hurt to use up the dye in another way!

This morning was beautiful! And once Mr. Ink left and I finished boiling the eggs, I was able to spend a good amount of time spinning on the patio and listening to the birds. Unfortunately it is now raining quite heavily and looks to do so all day. We are hoping for a short break so we can go walk Miss Marja’s dog Max. I don’t think he likes the rain too much, so if it could settle down for a bit, that’ll be good.

I may not have gotten much on my list done, but none of that matters right now due to all the good fun and memories we are making.

Last week’s list:

• Resume daily push ups.
  • Failure. I think I might take this off the list for now.
• Rearrange furniture in craft room and den of slack
  • Failure, we really need a rainy day for this and thankfully we didn’t get one of those this weeked. I’ll leave this on the list for the upcoming week as it currently looks like rain on Saturday.
• Finish Find Your Fade
  • Success!
• Establish leftover yardage amounts from yarn used for find your fade
  • This is also done. Bonus, I had to have Mr. Ink help me with the math, weighing the skeins in grams and figuring out what that would equal in meters using the amounts listed in the entry for this yarn in the yarn database on Rav. I am not so math minded, so for me this was kind of a big deal.
• Work on Big Waffle, get into next color at least
  • I did this, worked my way into the next color and that’s about it. I then moved on to a couple different projects.
• Spin a little
  • More than a little, I spent most of the weekend spinning, you’ll have to see those updates below.
• Ride Bike Every Day!
  • Did this too, and there are stories.
• Work on something from the master list of house projects
  • My master list house project work was to move plants out of the veggie garden and rehome them elsewhere. There are a couple tulips left, but I want to see what they look like before I rehome them.
• Commute to work by bike one time this week
  • Did not manage this one. It seemed like such a good idea, but on the days I actually could do this, it was 33F in the morning, and I just…couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Spinning:

I did a whole bunch of spinning this week, bringing my current batt project far further along. I finished the singles.

They were a pleasure to spin, and they are both smooth and chunky, and definitely luxurious. I did also begin plying, while hanging out on the patio in weather in the high 70s.

I am more happy than I thought I would be with this 3 ply, the yarn has a ton of depth, in addition to it’s chunky bits. Far more color than I imagined seems to be making an appearance. I got this large bobbin finished, but didn’t get an opportunity to start another bobbin. It should be done in the very near future, if not tonight.

Biking:

There’s quite a lot to talk about for both Friday and Sunday’s rides. Saturday’s ride was just a simple one around the block, as between gardening and going to the botanical gardens, we’d already been on our feet all day.

On Friday, Miss Butterfly and I drove to a local park, then hopped on our bikes to ride to another bigger park. There were pokemon there she wanted to get, so we knew it would be a slower roll around the park, with numerous stops. It was getting pretty late as we wrapped up our trip, and she was about to get one last pokemon when it happened. I heard what sounded like a gunshot, and then the hiss of high pressure air leaving my tire. My fatbike got an epic flat. It scared Miss Butterfly quite a bit, and as she turned around she said she could see sticks on the trail flying to the sides, so large was the hole to release air pressure.

Quite frankly, there’s no turning back from that kind of flat. I could have tried to fix it, but first of all, I didn’t have my supplies as I knew this to be a short trip, and the likelihood of being able to do so anyhow is pretty slim with as large a burst as it was. In fact, I didn’t even look at it. I phoned Mr. Ink, but I knew I wasn’t going to catch up with him, he’d have been out gardening. And then I started walking, pushing my bike. Miss Butterfly wasn’t too upset, she entertained herself by riding slowly and doing tricks on her bike. We got home far later than anticipated, but in the end no harm done.

Once in the car, we hit every single red light on the way home, further annoying me. I got home, took the bikes off the car, and put my fat bike away without even bothering to look at the flat. Of course, Miss Butterfly headed right out to Mr. Ink to tattle about it, telling him he’d better watch out, I was annoyed! This was really only half true. I was annoyed, but I wasn’t taking it out on my family!

Saturday morning I took a look at the tire. I had a larger than half inch gash in the tire itself, and the tube was looking terrible as well. I didn’t have a spare tube for that bike, so I pulled out my patch kit. Unfortunately, the glue on it was dried and unusable. We will patch both the tire and the tube, as fat bike tires are ridiculously expensive. I’ll keep the patched tube as a spare, as a good friend of mine had a spare fat bike tube from her bike which she just converted to tubeless tires. I should be up and running on the fat bike again shortly.

Next Up, Sunday’s ride. We had planned to ride as a family from our house to meet up with a small group of cyclists for a family friendly jaunt around town. We decided to ride to a restaurant first to have lunch. We left the house, headed down our long hill, and got on our trail. Now, I am sure I’ve mentioned it before but in case it’s been forgotten, I hate snakes. REALLY hate them. And, I recognize them very quickly. Mr. Ink was pretty far ahead of Miss Butterfly and me when I looked at what was in the road and yelled “SNAKE!” By this time, Mr. Ink had already gotten past it. Miss Butterfly and I came to a screeching halt far away from the large bull snake over the trail.

Mr. Ink tried to get it to move along, but in true bull snake bad attitude form, it decided to do it’s impressive impression of a rattlesnake instead, coiling up, hissing, rattling its tail, and acting like it was going to strike Mr. Ink. In fact, soon it had him fooled, even though in our area of the country, rattlers are very rare. Other cyclists passed by as well, not noticing what we were stopped for and it was rather comical to watch them startle and their bike shake and swerve as they came right up on a coiled snake. In the end, Miss Butterfly and I walked through the grass, giving that thing a really WIDE berth. Mr. Ink wanted to take a photo, but thankfully he hadn’t brought his camera.

After that rather shudder worthy encounter, we had quite a nice day. Miss Butterfly saw a ground hog, and we got quite close to geese on the trail, and she decided she enjoyed seeing wildlife by bike. We had lunch, we met up with friends and Miss Butterfly participated in her first ever group ride. She followed our fearless leader very nicely, staying a couple feet away from the leader’s back tire the entire time. She was an extremely consistent rider. We did some trails, some road riding with a bike lane, and even a little road riding without a bike lane and she didn’t get too upset about any of it.

We’d gotten a bit ahead of our group so we stopped to see a fun cement art installation and she wanted a photo. This is about 2/3 of our way through our ride. We ended up with over 17 miles yesterday, a personal record for Miss Butterfly. She got home with sore legs and couldn’t wait to make herself a large smoothie. We are all slightly burned today, and have that residual next day hunger from a nice long hilly bike ride. (I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to have food, as I couldn’t sleep through my hunger!)

All in all, a great family oriented weekend. I’ve got photos, just a few, from the botanical garden as well. It’s a bit of a problem going there, as we always find new plants that we want to add to our own garden.

List for this week:

• Ride Bike Every Day
• Finish Lintilla shawl
• Finish brown batt plying project
• Work on some corespun yarn
• 3 repeats of Lighter Than Perfume shawl
• Work on something off the master house list.
• Rearrange furniture in craft room and den of slack (Weather permitting)
• Get Miss Butterfly a haircut!

Work has been so busy these past few months (well, if we are honest it’s like closing in on a year now) that often times since this fall I am too tired and mentally overwhelmed to be in any way productive around the house after work or on the weekends.

Work has not gotten better, but spring has somewhat brought on a renewal, and looking at those old lists that Mr. Ink and I made at the beginning of last summer really helped focus me a bit. On the list was the desire to clean both fridges. We’ve got the normal kitchen one, and then another in the garage. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think cleaning a fridge is a miserable job, and while I knew it needed to be done and put it on the list, I ignored the job and just kept wiping a tray out once in awhile as a stop gap measure.

This weekend? Both of them were thoroughly cleaned. And that feels like a measure of focus.

It’s also 30 days of biking, day one was yesterday. We were to get rain starting around 11, so when Mr. Ink mentioned he’d like to go to the grand opening of a local garden center under new management, I suggested we do so early by bike. So, day one of biking was also complete. And that rain never did show up. The bonus was to have that off my plate nice and early so I could work on other projects.

Of course, this morning it is raining. But, Miss Butterfly is also doing 30 days of biking so I will wait for her to get back from her dad’s so we can bike together.

Rather than spinning which I just wasn’t inspired about, I made batts in my spare time. Batt making is really one of my favorite things right now. I am not that good at making plans, but when I make batts, I do plan them out nicely. It’s fun to see how they go together and it’s really nice to imagine how they are going to spin up. I also like that feeling of adding to my fiber stash out of my fiber stash. Meaning, I’ve got all this hand dyed fiber floating around in my craft room but I don’t document it. It’s like art supplies, they don’t actually count. They are the tools for creating a project. Once the batts are made, that’s when they get stash status.

These were yesterday’s batts. There’s a lot going on in them as usual. I started with a base of superwash wool of an indeterminate type. I added a bit of alpaca, some sparkle, a ton of silk including, of course, throwster’s waste. There’s some merino and a little flax mixed in as well. And I ended the project with over 11 oz. of fairly similar batts that are nice and full of fun add ins, just as I like them.

I think I am going to keep working on the batt project. It feels good to be making progress on cleaning up the dyed wools, and turning them into something I will use. This in turn cleans up my craft room. I may never have a craft room that’s completely free of the tools to turn wool into batts, but the overwhelming amount I have now that I dyed last year could easily be paired down significantly.

The one other thing I managed to do yesterday was make some almond meal buns. A very simple recipe turned into a very edible item for a couple who have given up carbs. I was looking for something that I could use to carry soft cheeses as a snack. I did manage that, even though the texture is more like cornbread. Mr. Ink, as he is eating one for lunch says he was just happy to have a platform for some butter.

All in all, it was a pretty decent day. Relaxing despite the return of a bit of focus. I am hoping the upcoming weekends find more of the same.