Day 336

Cast on the second stocking of the pair.  Ready to start the intarsia, so getting through Santa's beard and the garter stitch is my goal for the evening. 

I did get the systemic pest control applied to all the house plants currently living on the front porch.  I need to bring them in before the snow flies and time is getting short. 

I did get the amaryllis bulb planted and will probably plant the paperwhites when the potting mix cools off.  (Add hot water to a blob of compressed potting mix)  Poof. But too hot for the bulbs.  I need to find some gravel or maybe marbles to put on top of them to keep them in the pot.  They should bloom by Christmas.

Day 335 - Two Stockings

I reworked the first stocking as I didn't like how close to the seam the picture ended up.  So I ripped it back and rehung it on the machine and reknit it. 

The stocking with the deadline went back to the LYS for some additional instructions.  All agreed that the yarn provided, while a dead on color match, cannot be knit to the same gauge.  The LYSO will consult with the client to determine priority, color or size match.  I brought home additional yarn in DK weight on the chance that size will be the deciding factor.  That way I won't have to go back.  Need a decision ASAP as this baby is due on the 12th.

Courtney planted my bulbs and since I didn't watch, I'll be surprised to see the colors come spring.  I brought home an amaryllis bulb and more paperwhites from the grocery today.  I really want blooms in the house. I need to bring the rest of the houseplants in for the winter.  The dining room is going to get crowded in a hurry.

Day 307 - Planning

Traded work for plants today.  Some will replace the daylilies that the gas company destroyed.  The evergreen will add a bit of winter interest at my front steps when everything has gone dormant.  I need to move a hosta and some bulbs to plant it.  Hopefully tomorrow morning when I get back from work.

The gas company showed up after 10 am thinking they were going to work in the house today.  I politely explained that I had a birthday lunch to attend and would be leaving.  When would I be back?  Turns out that 3 pm didn't work for them.  I'm not real sympathetic, birthdays come once a year.  Lack of communication and coordination on their part does not make this my problem.

My sister and I both had a fiber filled day.  She hit her favorite needlework shop in the morning before meeting Mom and myself for lunch.  After lunch the two of us hit the LYS, Joanns and B&N on the hunt for magazines and books.  She also drooled over some of the sample garments and yarns.

We made plans to start a family knit night for herself, her daughters, our cousin and myself.  I've taught all of them at some point and they want to learn more.  This should be fun.

I did get the shaping finished on my beret and got it off the needles, although I'm now in the process of taking off the band and picking up the live edge to knit down and re-do the band to make it smaller.  I've more than made my 11.

Day 267 - Colors

I love this time of year.  I like watching for the colors to start bleeding into the landscape.  The newly fallen leaves, the final fling of flowers and the unexpected spots of color.  And then there are the yarns...

Day 265 - September 23 - Welcome to Fall

We've again skipped the bridge season and dropped straight into fall.  I went to work this morning in the rain, and came home to dark clouds with flashes of sunlight and MUCH cooler temperatures.  I wore my fleece in the house all evening and dug out an afghan because it was chilly.  And looking at the forecast it will probably get cooler in the house.

Yes I know, there is this thing in the basement called a furnace which would work a treat and make the house warm, but stubborn, frugal German kid, I'm holding off on turning on the heat until I can't stand it.  My goal is November 1.  Actually right now the house is 70 degrees and that's warmer than I keep it in the winter.  I'm just so used to upper 80s to mid 90s that the whole world seems a bit cool at the moment.

In keeping with the cooler weather, my hat is showing much progress.  According to the pattern, I've passed the halfway point.  At this rate it may be done before the weekend is over.  I've got a couple of other ideas that are marinating in the back of my mind.  I'm really trying to avoid a case of startitis, but the cooler weather begs for new woolens.

On another note, I literally found a note tucked in the side door. (For those who know my house, the door that NEVER gets used.)  It seems that the contractor who is destroying all the yards installing all of the service lines in the neighborhood would really like to get into my basement so they can figure out how to do the most damage they can to my landscaping route the service line and where to install the new meter. 

Best as I can figure from how they've done this to the other homes on the block, is that they are going to want to run it right here.

They've trenched every other house on block, and re-seeded them today.   I'm finding it sort of funny and yet know that it shows how ignorant they are, that they got dirt/debris all over my driveway from their installation in my neighbor's yard and instead of shoveling/cleaning it off, they threw down grass seed and straw on the driveway. 

When Columbia's project manager met with us a couple of months ago, he indicated that they would be using directional boring to install both the main and service lines to minimize damage to our property.  From the looks of it, this contractor has decided to ignore that part of the specifications.  I'm thinking that my best option will be to insist that the project manager be present for any meeting with this contractor.  I know of no other way of impressing on both that I'm dead serious about forcing them to limit the damage they will do to the plantings.  I worked too long and hard to design and install these gardens to let lazy contractors who don't give a damn destroy them in less than an hour.  If this were one of my projects they would be forced to bring in a landscape contractor to move the plants out of harms way and restore them once they were done.  Whether Columbia was that clever to require that in a blue collar neighborhood, is up for debate.  You can bet they require it in Upper Arlington and Bexley.

Day 263 September 21 - Long Day

Let's just say that the way it's going Friday is going to be really short.  However, I'm winning the competition that we have among ourselves at the desk each week, which is kind of surprising since the road to the store closed for reconstruction yesterday morning and sales dropped 40% for the day.  Ouch...

This time last year I used my down time to completely redo my front yard.  I brought in topsoil.  I regraded, and reseeded/overseeded the entire yard.  And to top it off I enlarged two tree rings into one large, freeform planting bed extending from the sidewalk to the front porch, wrapping across the front of the yard to the large oak closest to the street.  I moved several hostas and other perennials, edged it and mulched and really started building the foundation for a new planting area.  These pictures are from October after the grass had regrown and the beds had been mulched.  I've discovered that newly seeded lawns do much better if you keep people off of them as much as possible for many months.  The ropes stayed up until mid June this year.

In July every one in the neighborhood got a letter from Columbia Gas telling us that they were installing new gas mains, services lines and moving all of our meters to the exterior rather than leaving them in our basements.  What the letter didn't say was that the new mains and service lines were going to be in our front yards rather than the alleys and backyards where they are currently located.  I came home from work several weeks ago to find what looked like an open grave and two large piles of dirt on my new lawn.

I've been in this house for 20 years.  And in that time this farmer's daughter has done extensive landscaping to the entire property.  You can definitely time that someone in the design business lives here.  This week I've come home to see that they have started running the service lines and setting the meter locations.  My neighbor to the north has his new meter located right next to my driveway.  Right next to where I park my truck.  This ought make getting into my snowy driveway a real treat this winter.  But the truly best part of this is that every yard on the street so far has been trenched to install the service lines.  This is completely contrary to what the directional drilling approach that project manager told the neighborhood would happen at the public meeting.  Since the only possible path to the only possible area they can install a meter on my house is also the most heavily planted.  I expect that this is going to cause real problems.  Because if they think that I believe an excavation/mechanical contractor is going to give a rat's behind about protecting my rather expensive and labor intensive plantings, they are idiots.

I'm getting rather tired of hearing that "You don't understand construction," when I politely ask to speak to the project manager.  I've never quite figured out why anyone would assume that a soprano voice or boobs make construction incomprehensible.  Never mind that I've worked in the construction industry in some capacity or another for about 30 years now.  Tonight my yard is the only one on the block without a trench, and that's because they have no idea where they can run the line as I refuse to take unpaid time off from work to let them fool around.  This wasn't my bright idea and I'm not shorting my paycheck to accommodate them.

My fibery fun for the day was getting about 10 rows complete on the beret.

Getting my hands dirty

On today's never ending list is the garden, more specifically the container gardens.  Every summer I create a series of container gardens to cover the driveway between the house and the nominal one car garden shed, known to the county auditor as a garage.  (Never mind that I've never had a vehicle in there, I don't think one would fit even if it were empty.)  The container garden is where I get to try all the plants that we tend to label as weird.  They may be unusual textures or shapes, many are definitely tropical and uncommon in the northern US.  This year's color theme seems to be trending towards red, white and blue.  Mainly because I love black and blue salvia and the hummingbirds that it attracts, then I started adding red wave petunias or true red geraniums and complementing them with silvery textured foliage or white flowers.  And interspersed with elephant ears of various types. 

But all of the containers have to be planted and there are getting close to 20 or so.  The planting "bench"/ staging area is also on the driveway and I have literally been shoveling potting mix into containers from the 25 gallon bins of potting mix and compost that overwinter on the drive every year.  I believe I counted 13 or 14 bins before I started filling containers and I've only emptied about 6 as of last night.  I fill a container, plant it and if it is small enough to be easily moved, set it to one side to be arranged in the final grouping.  If the container is large and there are several that I could actually curl up in, they are set on pot feet in what I hope will be their location for the summer.  All of this takes time, and when I have a large enough chunk of it, I can get a rhythm going and really make progress. 

Hopefully I can get the containers planted over the next couple of nights and move on to infilling the small areas available in the perennial beds with annuals for summer long color.  The theme in the front yard appears to be leaning towards yellow and black/purple with the bicolored petunia baskets on the porch and the chartreuse gladiolas in the new planting bed.  I'm thinking that yellow snaps and maybe purple petunias will fill in the holes nicely.  The backyard is a riot of colors from the perennials, so I think that I'll fill in the few gaps with something that will attract more hummingbirds or butterflies.  I also need to rehang a couple of hooks on the fence and deck posts so I can rehang the baskets that are supposed to be there.