I’ve neglected my lists lately. Things got busy and I forgot, then when I remembered, it was about time for vacation and I wasn’t about to work on lists then! So, at the end of this post will be a list for the week.

But, first let me show off my last vacation finished object.

412 yards of worsted weight yarn from batts I made myself. I think it’s an interesting color. It seems rather neutral in person. Not my favorite color, but I think it has its place.

A few more vacation photos, on Wednesday we went to Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. That place is HUGE! We walked and walked, I ended up with 20K steps that day, and we didn’t even remotely see all of it. Mr. Ink checked out the trees he specifically wanted to see, and we beelined for those. At some point we wandered into the area with all the rhododendrons. There was a small rocky stream, and Miss Butterfly and I had a great time doing some creek stomping. It was humid there, and the cold water felt amazing!

I am back at work for the first time in a week and a half. It’s tough! But I’ll keep busy and the day should fly by.

In the meantime, here’s a list:

• 1 repeat on Tibetan Clouds stole
• One bike ride with friends
• Back to school shopping with Miss Butterfly
• Work on new spinning project (will explain more tomorrow.)
• Do ALL THE THINGS in my planner that are work related and not work related. There are quite a few. I am hoping to do them and NOT postpone any of them since that will really help next week look a bit slower.

It’s my last day of vacation and a busy one too, but should be pleasant. We’ll be heading to a birthday party to play pub trivia. I’ve never played before, but I think it’ll be a good time!

Yesterday not a ton was done in the crafting department, but I did manage to finish spinning the orange singles.

I did some on my wheel, and some on the support spindles while on vacation. There’s quite a lot, I think I had about 7 ounces to begin with? So, it’ll be a longish plying project as well. However, when I woke up this morning, the weather on the patio was beautiful. That’s unusual for a summer out here, it’s almost always too humid and hot already to hang out on the patio in the morning, which also gets morning sun.

I got a fair amount done while enjoying my cup of coffee.

Let’s see if I can pull out a few more vacation pictures. On Monday, when we headed back up to Boston to visit with Mr. Ink’s family, it was cold and raining. It rained all day long, and so our plans for mountain biking and beach time were a complete bust. Instead, we wandered off to Harvard Museum of Natural History. We wanted to check out a lovely display of glass flowers. These models were made in the 19th century and were used for teaching botany. They were incredibly beautiful and it was so difficult to tell that they were glass.

Pictures were hard to get since these were in glass cases under lower light.

Of course, once in the museum we continued to look around, and I enjoyed looking at bugs as well.

Easily as beautiful and colorful as flowers, if you ask me!

That evening we had dinner on the porch. It got so cold that we all had to bundle up with blankets, and at some point in the evening, we realized we could see our breath. Quite an odd feeling in the summer for someone who lives in the midwest!

So, I am in that slightly strange situation in which I actually have too many crafting photos. Too many things in progress. Too much too show off. I want to break them up into separate posts, but I’ve been sitting on a finished object post for half a week now! I still think I might save that post for the day I travel.

Once the very big green spin project was complete, I went to my stash to see what I had that I could use to create something fairly quickly. I chose a batt from fat cat knits. These are NOT my normal colors, but it’s actually good for me to get out of my color zone.

I began it on Sunday. I thought “How can I do something new with the color combinations in this batt?” Because it’s another gradient batt, and I am tired of making gradients.

I split the batt horizontally. Then, I took half that batt, and stripped it vertically, putting all those little strips into a bag and mixing them up really well. That’s what you see in the above photo. Randomly placed strips.

I then took the next batt half, and split it horizontally again. So that it would be a gradient, but it would go from yellow into blue and back to yellow again. I spun that.

One problem:

When I finished the singles, I realized that I had significantly MORE yardage on the gradient bobbin than I did on the random bobbin. Guess I should have weighed those halves to make sure they were even!

So, now I am plying and I am well aware that my plan won’t QUITE turn out like I had hoped. But, I do think it’ll be very pretty even so. The colors are all not quite. Like, there’s a brown that is not quite purple, and a yellow that’s not quite olive green, and a blue that is not quite white. It’s an interesting color combination and I think it’ll make for a very interesting yarn.

Our gardens are beginning to suffer. The lawn has gone into a summer heat dormancy, and we just don’t have enough rain. We try not to water our lawn, as we believe it to be a waste of water. But we DO have to water the gardens at this point, and it’s becoming an all evening job. So we’ve finally broken out the sprinklers, which do water the lawn as well as the gardens. But, it saves Mr. Ink valuable TIME, and that’s something as well.

Because of this, we had rather a nice evening together. Mr. Ink went out to begin the watering, then at some point he came inside and wandered around a bit lost. Then told me he was uninspired to do ANYTHING. Since he’s king of the yardwork, I told him he didn’t have to. Then he revealed the true problem. He’d been outside, in the heat, wandering around trying to find SOMETHING to do. He couldn’t think of anything but laying more pavers. He decided against that because he didn’t want to screw up his back before vacation. And he said “Why am I wandering around in the HEAT looking for something to do, GO INDOORS!” So he did. But he’s so accustomed to being outdoors that he really could not figure out what to do with himself. In the end, he sat himself down in the living room and talked. Wonder of wonders! It was quite a pleasant evening. And I stayed up too late because I was just so happy to be sitting around chatting with the guy even after dinner.

So all in all a very pleasant evening. Tonight I had better get my butt in gear and do some last minute shopping. The shopping list has been in my car, but I keep putting it off and making excuses. I am working on rather limited time now!

Status Update: Done. And so worth it!

I am not even trying to hide the ties or put it in a pretty yarn mound. It’s just way too much yarn for that. 1225 yards of 2 ply yarn. It’s a fingeringweight yarn, though leaning toward the heavy side I’d say. I love it. It was worth it. I am glad I bought a pound of the stuff.

We had a little gathering of friends for a game night yesterday. A game night combined with Mr. Ink spending time giving a tour of the garden to a friend who will be making sure our plants stay watered over our upcoming vacation. I had to really work on cleaning up the house, I’ve certainly let it slide since Miss Butterfly left for the east coast. The place looks great, and I breathe a sigh of relief every time I go into the bathroom and everything is clean and tidy!

Of course, after game night (in which we lost at Pandemic, even though we were SO CLOSE to a win!) I looked around the kitchen destroyed with dirty dishes from dinner and snacks and empty cans and bottles and I was happy. I said to Mr. Ink “I am not sure why, but while I hate cleaning up the kitchen day to day, I LOVE cleaning up the kitchen after a social gathering.” So, I thought on that for awhile, and I think it’s because the rest of the house is nice and tidy. I mean, we aren’t young adults, there aren’t red solo cups throughout every room, and it’s never a rip roaring party. Things are tidy, and all I really have to concentrate on is the kitchen. It’s lovely.

In any case, Saturday was a pretty good day. Full of spinning and cleaning and preparing for a social gathering. And today promises to be pretty good as well, full of quiet if I have any say in it!

I’ll leave you with this:

My missouri evening primrose, blooming beautifully this morning. This is one of those flowers I got from a coworker who needed to split hers. It’s also one which I tried to pull out as a weed, and then when I realized what I had done I became So Sad. I just love these so much! And they love our hard clay soil as well, since they are native to this area, even me trying to weed it didn’t get rid of it.

Progress update: Slightly less sick of green.

Because I am closing in on halfway done with the plying already!

The plying really has helped refresh my enthusiasm for this project, mostly because it’s going so well, and while the greens are fairly subtle, the plying gives the yarn more depth of color and tone. I feel like I could have this done tomorrow even!

With today off, I sorta forgot about blogging. I got up early and had breakfast with Mr. Ink. He struggled with the same thing I struggle with when he’s off and I am headed to work. He wanted to play hooky. But he went into work like the responsible adult he is. I think we really have to plan a little vacation time where we are off and at home at the same time, we really enjoy that.

Once he left for work I did some plying on the patio because despite the fact it was humid, it wasn’t grossly hot yet. As it warmed, I thought I’d better get a walk in before it got hot enough to lose inspiration, so I did that. Then I actually got ready for my day and headed out to do chores, like the DMV for my motorbike registration.

Miss Marja is off today too, so I’ll scoop her up in a bit for a little shopping that I’d planned to do by myself but would be more fun with company. I’ve got quite a bit of shopping to do prior to vacation so I might even do more shopping after that. Those who know me would be surprised. It’ll be less surprising if I can’t do it all in one day, as I really do not LIKE shopping at all. I’d rather be at home. But, needs must so we’ll see how inspired I am to get it all done prior to the official start of the weekend.

I leave you with this picture:

As you know, Miss Butterfly is out east with my parents. Pictures have been few and far between, likely because they are busy doing stuff. But my father snapped this photo of her spending time with her little cousin who hasn’t seen her in a year. He’s only 3, so likely doesn’t remember her from last year. My  mom said that he stared at her like she was an angelic being, and spent all his time by her side or on her lap. Miss Butterfly thinks he’s the cutest too. I am glad they are getting the opportunity to spend time together. And I can’t wait to see him on vacation!

That’s it for me today, have a great one and enjoy your weekend!

Status Update: Still sick of green, but making progress even so.

That’s one pound of green singles done photographed on a rainy morning.

I have been going to bed late and not able to catch up on sleep the past few days. This has made me highly grumpy for 2 evenings, much to the chagrin of everyone around me. Namely, Mr. Ink. I went to bed quite early last night, but only after making sure that these singles were done. Pretty sure another evening creating a pound of singles was going to do my mood right in.

My exhaustion is currently exacerbated by back problems. I mean, at some point during the night it becomes quite painful to sleep, so I end up losing sleep that way too. I do hope everything resolves itself soon.

And then there’s work. While my particular job is going through a quick time of quiet, which is unusual, our group as a whole is still quite busy, which means I keep getting dragged into tasks that aren’t mine in any way. Now, I don’t mind helping out, I really don’t. What I do mind is working on a project with half the information, given to me at the very last minute, disrupting my entire day. And…I’ve had at least 2 weeks of that now.

So, I used my personal job’s slow time as an excuse to take tomorrow off. I mean, I can’t be forced to do something that’s not my job if I am not at work, right? (That wasn’t supposed to sound like a challenge.) So, maybe a day off and some time to nap will set me a bit further to rights.

I am back to being uninspired about TdF, and I can’t tell if that’s just busy and exhaustion combining, or if it’s the green. All the green. But, I did begin plying the project this morning, and at least it’s a change. Pretty sure this will be my final TdF project in the end, as I’ve only got one more week to spin, then my tour is over. Maybe I’ll get an opportunity to begin another project, but I doubt I’ll get something completed.

Current Status: Tired of Green.

This is how my third bobbin looks. I’ve 4 more ounces of the green to spin. I haven’t even been working on it much, but my hands ache and fall asleep when I am spinning. I blame the gardening. But I also rarely spin this much either lately. I am more likely to cut the spinning with a little knitting.

Over the weekend while I was away, Mr. Ink got me a truck load of mulch for my veggie garden. I approached this with both enthusiasm and trepidation. I mean, it is hot! And, it seemed like a big job and I was away all weekend and gardening. So, I wanted to do the job, but then, I also really didn’t. When I got home from work though, I fully prepared myself for the job. And then Mr. Ink said “The lawn probably needs mowing.” I don’t love quick changes like that, so I said “THE LAWN CAN WAIT!!!!” Which solidified the idea that I was going to get that mulching done.

I had a good laugh when I headed out doors and Mr. Ink followed. He must feel rather invested in that veggie garden now, because he was all “Are you going to weed it first? Are you going to tie up those tomatoes?” This is so highly unusual, he generally lets me get on with a job with no interference. In fact, I have to ask his opinion so often. I told him “Enough with your suggestions! I know how to do this. But you are welcome to help.” And so he helped make sure it was completely weed free before I mulched.

I grabbed a quick photo this morning. Mulch really does make a garden look complete.

Now on to other fun things. I picked up a few bits and bobs out in okoboji, mostly for the garden. At my favorite garden center I got this owl who glows in the dark and holds up one of my delphinium:

I also picked up this spinning metal flower:

Then my friend took me to an art shop she thought I’d like. I thought it was unlikely I’d like it, but she was so right! It was a great shop with a HUGE variety and a wonderful variety of prices of items from each artist she featured. I got this copper butterfly that I adore!

And, I got myself a new “spindle bowl.” At least, that’s what it is serving as at the moment.

The glaze on this is so interesting! I love it. I did put a little something on a spindle with it last evening, so I’ll have to grab a photo of that tonight.

Meanwhile, I’ve got flowers blooming. We are clearly in purple season because the tall phlox are going like gangbusters, and I’ve got about the same color bee balm blooming now. This is year one for the bee balm, we love it, but we want to plant red in there with it. Also, bonus hibiscus that we got last year that has made it through the winter beautifully and is ready to bloom in the near future!

I guess I said I was tired of green. That clearly only applies to spinning. The greens of my garden are spectacular.

I headed off to Okoboji for the weekend on Friday directly after work. Had a lovely drive out there, arrived in reasonable time to hang out, spin, and chat, and then begin our adventures on Saturday morning.

The entire weekend was most pleasant! I didn’t get nearly as much spinning done as I’d anticipated for two reasons. The first being that we stayed occupied quite a bit. The second reason was this:

This is my friend’s chihuahua. She had a really rough puppy mill start to her life, and as a result is sometimes quite fearful, making her aggressive. I was really only expecting her to tolerate me. But…she ended up adoring me, and wanted to spend large amounts of time on my lap, making it tough to spin. She was fun and sweet and I am so glad she so easily warmed up to me.

On Saturday evening, I decided enough with attempting to spin while having a dog on my lap, and I pulled out my knitting instead. She would then hop up on my chair, put her nose under my knitting, and flop it onto the floor so she could have my lap. After a couple episodes of this, I decided to try something new. I wrapped my scarf in progress around her, on a whim, intending to take a funny photo. What happened instead? She immediately curled up in a ball with my knitting around her, and fell fast asleep.

On Saturday we stopped at some local shops. I picked up a few things for the garden and a new spindle bowl. I’ll grab photos of them tonight. While at the gardening place, my friend decided that she’d like to pick up a few things, and then we made the plan to work on a garden of hers that is completely overgrown with weeds.

Here’s the garden. It’s got irises and stella d’oro daylilies in it, but it’s also completely choked out with weeds and junk trees. She’s been trying to get her landscaper to redo it for her for years, but he never has the time to do more than working on her current gardens. She’s not a gardener herself. So, I was surprised when she said she wanted to tackle this project! She even had to purchase a shovel and gardening gloves.

So, on Sunday we went after it. I dug up large chunks of daylilies and had her separate them out, while I continued to dig up the bed itself. We uncovered things.

Art, in fact. The previous owner was an artist, and there were clearly two pieces like the one above at one point. I ended up removing both pipes and the ceramic piece of art. When I first uncovered these, I was seriously worried that something was buried in there, a gas line or something, I mean, I am always concerned about random pipes when digging. But, once the fact that this was probably an old installation was established, I finished digging without concern.

I grabbed a photo before we got an opportunity to properly water the new garden bed and clean up around the edges, but it was also time for me to drive home and I wasn’t going to be around for that. In any case, we added a bunch of proper lilies of many different sizes and varieties. I chose a couple balloon flowers as my addition, knowing they are easy to care for and my friend would like the purple blooms that last all summer. Then, we added back the day lilies and the irises. And we mulched it all. We didn’t even have to go back to get more supplies, I calculated everything we would need perfectly, and that was great since we were on a major time crunch.

It turned out to be a lovely and productive weekend! I am glad we got that eyesore of a garden bed fixed, I’d been itching to do something about it for a year now, but never had the tools to do it. Plus, it’s better to do that job when the owner gets to pick her plants. She was so pleased with the result, and so it was a satisfying project for us both.

All in all, a great weekend! I am tired though, as I stayed in Okoboji quite a lot longer than I had planned. When I got home, Mr. Ink was still working on his rock wall area. But he was happy to take a break and take me on a tour of our gardens and show me what he’d picked up on clearance and what was now blooming. More photos of that to come as well!

I did get one photo of my current spinning progress though. This is the first 8 oz. of the CMF fiber. I am about halfway through the first bobbin on the second 8 oz. Not quick progress, but not bad progress either!

Upon my return home last night I was instructed to look for the surprise Mr. Ink had gotten me in the back of the truck. A load of mulch! Oh Goodie! Yes, you can read that somewhat sarcastically, it’s HOT! But, I do indeed want to get my veggie garden mulched before vacation so the friend who is taking care of our watering will have an easier time of it. So, no rest for the weary and weekend travel worn!

A number of months ago, a good friend of mine moved away to help care for her mom in another state. It was quite sad. This is a friend who does a pretty good job at hauling me out from under my rock of introversion, and her presence has absolutely been missed.

So, when I heard that she’d purchased a home back here for her and her mom, I couldn’t have been happier! She’ll be moving back next month, and last night we got together with a bunch of friends, toasted the new house, and welcomed her back home. It was a very pleasant evening and I caught up with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile as well.

So, I didn’t have a lot of spinning time. Once we’d gotten home from dinner out, I did yoga, and almost fell asleep halfway through. It was a little too relaxing.

The bulk of the spinning on the new green project was actually done the evening of the 4th. Here it is!

I think it’s quite charming! The colors are very nice, and the yarn is going to be perfectly bouncy. That wool has a lot of life in it, as polwarth often does.

Tonight is an evening in, doing laundry and packing for Okoboji this weekend. I am hoping to leave directly from work tomorrow, as to maximize my time there. I am anticipating much spinning, catching up, and looking at the lake. I’ll take a bit more spinning with me JUST in case. But, I am pretty certain that this green project will take at least the entire weekend if not longer. It has been awhile since I’ve tried to spin a pound of fiber.

A day off did me well, I finished plying my green batts. I was even able to get them hung out to dry after a surprise rainstorm in the afternoon. I now have 840 yards of a 3 ply DK weight yarn.

It’s quite lovely! One side is certainly greener than the other, but it does have a nice overall consistency. Best of all? I had two very nice open spots in my yarn storage for it, I didn’t even have to rearrange.

We had a very low key day yesterday. Yoga, spinning, knitting, gardening. Mr. Ink had a nice long nap, I listened to audio books. I began spinning this:

This is Crown Mountain Farms (RIP!) polwarth top, and I’ve got a pound of it. It’s the last CMF I have in stash, which is sad. But, I also really wanted to do another longer project. You see, I am headed to Okoboji again this weekend and I want to take something that won’t require me to bring a niddy noddy or anything extra. Just bobbins. Many bobbins. I am not sure how much spinning time I’ll have, I am going this time to meet up with my friend and the lake house owner. We’ve never actually been to the lake at the same time. So, I am sure she’ll have some plans along the way. My stay will be brief, I am not taking an extra day off or anything. But it also should be nice and relaxing and pleasant. And I am trying not to think about the 10 hours in the car round trip as lost spinning time. Rather in terms of necessary for experiences gained.

That’s about it from here! Hoping to have some spinning on the new green project to show off tomorrow. I love a good TdF!

Miss Butterfly made it to Philly with absolutely no incident. I got through work with very little sleep, amusing my coworkers with being unable to think things through properly, complete sentences, and remember words. Every task took longer than it should. But, I wasn’t too sleepy feeling for most of the morning, I managed ok. At lunchtime I grabbed a salad, and my coworker said “As soon as you eat that salad, you are going to really start feeling it!” She was right, I got super sleepy after lunch. In the end, I took 2 hours of vacation time at the end of the day and went home to sleep.

My naps only last 20 minutes. It’s amazing how consistent they are, no matter what, I cannot sleep more than 20 minutes during the day. Except for yesterday. I went to bed as soon as I got home and slept for 2 and a half hours. I must have really needed it. And when I woke up and puttered around the house for a bit? I felt great. Not drowsy, but able to think more clearly.

Which was fantastic because it was our annual Tank Wars event. I didn’t take photos this year so I’ll use one from last year.

Led by one of my best friends who has been doing this since childhood, he plans a yearly party complete with competing “tanks” and a serious bracket and competition. This is an event we would absolutely never miss. Unfortunately, Mr. Ink and I did very poorly in the competition this year, losing both our rounds immediately. That’s ok though, it left plenty of time for socializing, banter, good food, and this year? Baby holding. I don’t even know the couple who brought a very mellow 3 month old baby, but at some point I got hold of him and we happily sat together for a good portion of the evening. Never once did that baby cry, despite jumping at every boom of a firework nearby. So mellow. Parents of said baby would come by and ask if my holding him was still ok pretty regularly, and I’d say “Absolutely” and they’d run off to enjoy some baby free moment. I enjoyed my time with him, and I definitely got the feeling the parents enjoyed their time not baby holding. It was lovely.

Mr. Ink and I both fell right in bed exhausted as soon as we got home, and I got almost 9 hours of sleep which is unheard of for me. I feel so much better today! And we’ve a day of no particular plans, which feels quite luxurious.

I did get a bit of plying done for TdF. I really think I need a second wheel. One for spinning and one for plying. I don’t seem to love plying and it would be great to cut that pain with a little wheel spinning too! (I will probably never get a second wheel for plying, but it’s fun to imagine.)

Mr. Ink has already gone outside to play in the gardens, and I am really hoping to get a major chunk of this plying done so I can find something else to spin. It’s going to be a good day!

So, Miss Butterfly flew out this morning at 6. She’d gone with her father to a party, and I didn’t even stay up until she got home, I put Mr. Ink on bedtime duty. Unfortunately, sleep was well interrupted by fireworks all over the neighborhood. Then, I was woken up when Mr. Ink came to bed at 12:40, then again woken up when he decided an hour later that he couldn’t sleep without a shower. Then woken about an hour after that with a smoke detector battery that was failing. After that? I was pretty much wide awake with a headache. I had to get up at 3:30 anyhow so I gave up on the attempt to sleep, as all it resulted in was a massive headache.

Miss Butterfly is winging her way across the country as we speak, she’s made it to St. Louis and will get into Philly before lunchtime if all goes well. I am glad she’s got the opportunity to go and she’s really looking forward to it, but I didn’t want to send her. I am becoming a very selfish mother.

We’ve got a lot of people off this week at work, so I am at work on about 2 hours uninterrupted sleep. However, it’s also very slow, so I admit I am hoping that I’ll have the opportunity to skip out early and go home and nap. We have an event to go to tonight, one we won’t miss, so it would be nice to get a nap in.

But! I finished the singles for my first TdF project, so I can get my plying on soon!

Yesterday Miss Butterfly came home, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. Now, me being the smart mom I am, I knew that if I was going to spend some uninterrupted time with her, I’d need to make sure not to take her directly home. You see, her best friend had been in Australia for over a month prior to Miss Butterfly heading to camp, and so the two of them were hoping for a joyful reunion as soon as possible.

I made a convincing case to head to an outdoor mall near her father’s home. Convincing because her dad had her phone, and she wanted that phone back. So we arranged to go to the mall, and for him to meet us there with her phone. It worked out great! And I am glad we did it, because her friend wasn’t home anyhow.

We went to the Lush store and got her a fancy bath bomb so she could clean up from camp. Then we went on a long walk together playing our game, and sitting on park benches, chatting and giggling. I picked her up at 10, we didn’t get home until after 2.

Once home, she discovered that all friends were out and about, so she gave in and used her bath bomb and got cleaned up, while I mowed the lawn. Then we did 4 loads of laundry, unpacked her suitcase, and began repacking it for tomorrow’s plane trip.

And then I got a chance to do some spinning. I finished a bobbin of singles!

I began a second bobbin as well. I guess what I really needed to be inspired about TdF was to feel well. And, feeling well is absolutely what had happened yesterday. I felt good on Friday too, but yesterday I was up at 5ish, went to bed at 11, no naps happened, I was madly productive, and I never once felt like I even needed a nap. It was great!

She was able to spend about 2 hours with her favorite friend, then she came home and Mr. Ink made us a nice dinner and we watched “The Painting” together. So all in all, a fabulous day!

I am up early again this morning since I needed to get Miss Butterfly’s check in done. So, I’ve got the house to myself, and a cup of coffee, and I am hoping Miss Butterfly sleeps practically forever, since she REALLY needs the rest. Up next? Some spinning.

But before I log off, here’s a couple photos with her camp horses.

She’s a happy kid when she’s wandering through the barn!