Out and About

Here's my progress on the Kevät sweater.

Kevät means "Spring" in Finnish, but I doubt I'll "finish" it before Summer, as that season will soon be here. If it doesn't look as if I've made much progress this week  it's because I ended up frogging eight rounds. I found out when communicating with my DIL who is making the same sweater that there was supposed to be a repeat of Rounds 1-14, as plainly indicated on the chart...in red. (See photo)

If you can't see the red line between Rounds 14 and 15 on the chart, it's because I printed the instructions in B&W. Here's how it's supposed to look.

I've been having a difficult time reading the chart anyway, because the background for the chart is so dark. Now I've enlarged the chart and printed it again, with the line for the repeats filled in. Fortunately, the top part of the chart starts out the same as the repeated section, so I didn't have more rounds to frog. Now I'm almost back to where I started.

It has been a busy week, with the camping trip to Suttle Lake. We had a good time, although it was very cold at night. We have two new batteries now, so we were able to run the heater as needed during the night.

We took the dog stroller around the lake when we hiked the trail. It's about 3 1/2 miles. Rocky walked nearly 2 1/4 miles of it, although broken up by a couple of periods of riding in the stroller.

Imagine our surprise when we notice another stroller coming towards us! As they got closer, we saw that the stroller also held a dog. We had a nice chat with the dog's two-leggeds.

We returned home on Thursday and spent a couple of days unloading the trailer and doing laundry.

Most of Saturday afternoon was taken up repairing the gate to our backyard. DH needed someone to hold the gate upright while he reinstalled the bolts, which didn't want to go through all three holes...because they weren't lined up properly. It was difficult to line them up, because we couldn't see the hole in the post between the two pieces of wood. Eventually it worked, but it was a very tedious process.

We have ordered a daybed and a smaller table for my workroom, so it can double as a guest room, besides being a cozy place to work. The mattress pads have already arrived.

Sunday WE WENT TO A REAL IN-PERSON PARTY!!!! It was an end-of-the-year get-together. It was for the choir members and their spouses. It's strange to have a party to celebrate the end of a year like the one we have had. There were people I had only met during Zoom sessions and others I hadn't seen at all for a year. Everyone was vaccinated, and it was outdoors, so it was very safe. Our hosts both sing in the choir. The husband has a Finnish Goshawk, which he brought out to show off. He uses his bird to hunt rabbits, but since the bird only weighs about 1 1/2 lbs, he doesn't bring back the local rabbits, which are 7-8 lbs. each. He just tags them and flies off, sort of like keeping score or like the falconer's version of catch-and-release. This was the only photo I took during the delightful afternoon and evening.

Our peonies are blooming. We brought this one inside to keep us company.

Where's my blog: As you may know, the entity that notifies people when a blog they follow posts will discontinue notifications in July. This motivated me to link my blog to Bloglovin', as I did some time ago with The Doll's Storybook. If you are following my blog want to continue following after July, I recommend you go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still the Kevät sweater (see above), the Brioche Shawl Feathers shawl and the new dish mat.

What's on my sewing machine: Waiting.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No more progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: "Best Buds." Billy and Emil are best friends, but they enjoy the company of the girls, too.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer on Chirp. While we were camping, we also listened to one episode of The Cisco Kid, complete with commercials from back when we were kids. Just downloaded The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, a new author for me, from Audible.

What's in my wine glass: Radford Dale Nudity 2018 Syrah Voor Paardeberg with no added sulfites, very nice!

What's my tip of the week: A basil plant prefers 80-90ºF, some direct sun every day and standing water around the roots to be fully happy, but as long as the temperature doesn't go below 50ºF or the plant is put into an insulated bag or box or covered up with a blanket (with something holding the blanket away from the leaves), it will survive.

Where's my book: Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook is available from Amazon worldwide. Also available from BookBaby, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. Royalties go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. The three stories in the book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. The stories (and links to them) are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Life in the Steekhouse

Vroni’s “Lavender Fields” sweater is done.

It can be worn as a pullover or as a cardigan. The yarn is Knit Picks Palette.

Friends on Ravelry were clamoring for the pattern, which encouraged me to get it ready for publication as a free download. I had a great test knitter who talked me into making an entire chart for the body and one for the sleeves. Another friend suggested Stitch Fiddle, a free program (unless you add some bells and whistles). I found it to be very helpful. I came up with this, which is pretty much the entire body with the center steek sts and armhole steek border sts marked.

You may remember that last week, I tried the larger, green, sweater on Carter, the My Sibling/My Pal doll, and Janet’s Molly, an American Girl doll. It was pretty tight on both of them. That led me to design a new version with a bigger body but pretty much otherwise the same. I’m making it in blues for Carter to model, and  eventually it will go to Zachary Jr., hopefully in time for DGS1’s birthday next month. Here are the colors I’m using:

In the meantime, Carter is modeling a sweater for Zachary Jr., also in blues, for another Debonair Designs KAL, this one for boy dolls. (No steeks involved in this one.)

With thicker yarn, it went pretty fast. It's Knit Picks Wool of the Andes sport yarn.

You also may remember that Dolly got her ears pierced. (Yes, I know! They’re just stick-on.) Gabi and Vroni decided they wanted some rhinestone ear studs, too.

Vroni's holding her hair up, so you can see the stud in her ear. Gabi has taken to wearing a ribbon in her hair to show off her ears. 

Thursday’s Common Threads was cancelled, not because of snow, but because the only two people (besides me) left in town were taking a quilting class that morning at one of the quilt shops in Salt Lake City. I should be able to make it to Vintage Stitchers this week and hope to be sewing binding on the Kaleidoscope quilt.

The big event in my personal life was receiving the results from genetic testing on my brother through ancestry.com's program. We had my brother tested is because my results would only show my mother’s ancestry, which I had already had done through National Geographic. My brother and I have the same parents (so I’m told and have no reason to doubt), so his ancestry is the same as mine.

Most of it was similar to my mother’s result, with some percentages going up or down a little bit. It was appropriate that I got the results on St. Paddy’s Day, because I found out that I’m...29% Irish! I treated myself to a Guinness, served in a German beer glass. (The "Budweiser" on the glass is no relation to the American brewery. This was a Czech brand available in Germany, and we bought the glass in Frankfurt when we were there years ago.) We had vegetarian chili for supper, appropriate, I think, for a multi-cultural family.

Here’s the bulk of my genetic background: 34% English, Scottish or Welsh; 29% Irish, 23% Western European (probably German, based on family lore), 5% Scandinavian (not including Finnish), then a total of 7% made up of Finnish/Russian, Eastern European, Italian/Greek and less than 1% from the Iberian Peninsula. No Asian, Polynesian or Native American. (DH is 6% Native American, so that will have to suffice. I’ve been calling him “Sitting Bull.” You can probably figure that one out.) They present it like this, and then you click on the various ethnic groups to get more information:

The most interesting revelation, however, was that I’m 2% Senegal African. Given that my family lived in the deep South during slave days and kept slaves, the ancestor from Senegal was almost certainly an African slave. How my family members who lived at that time managed to hide a mixed-race child in a fairly patrician Southern family is beyond me. I sense a story there. I’m guessing they hid the baby, who must have appeared white, in an otherwise white family. It had to be on my father’s side, because it didn’t show up in my original results with only my mother’s DNA. For a person raised in the deep South in the early 20th Century, my father was pretty open-minded, but I still think he would have been shocked to learn he was 4% “negro,” as he would have said. I’m wondering how many Caucasian southerners have African blood and don’t know it. It’s interesting to ponder.

The snow is melting in our neck of the woods. We needed to get the pups out on Saturday for a run on the trails, though. They need more than just the walk around the block. Sunday we had the opera and Monday we were supposed to get either rain or snow, so it was “now or never” on Saturday. 

As usual, Dusty ran about four times the distance we covered, but Rocky surprised us by running back and forth a bit, too. He’s been on thyroid medication for nearly a month. We sort of feel as if there is a difference in his energy level. He get rechecked at the vet’s later today.

DH talked me into substituting YakTrax for my snowshoes for our "hike." Bad mistake. They’re great for keeping you from slipping on ice, but they don’t prevent post-holing (where your foot breaks through the surface of the snow and your leg goes down a few inches or up to your knee). I need to hang a tag on my YakTrax in case I’m tempted to do that again: “Save these for when you take that last, long trip across the snow.”

What's on my needles: Zachary Jr.’s “Blue Horizon” sweater.

What's on my Featherweight: Binding for Kaleidoscope quilt while waiting for next batch of steeks for “Zachary’s Blue Horizon” sweater.

What's on my loom: I still haven’t started anything with the leftover warp. Maybe if I gave my loom a name, I’d feel guilty.

What's on my wheel: Stanzi is covered up in the corner. I’m ashamed to be so neglectful.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished listening to Lies, Damned Lies, and History by Jodi Taylor. Now reading The Professor by Robert Bailey. On the Kindle app, I’m still reading Dying to Read, The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1.

What's in my wine glass: Lindeman’s Cawarra Shiraz-Cabernet, 2014 vintage.

What's my tip of the week: Have scraps of yarn or thin strips of cloth too small to use? Put them out on the deck or the rail, especially if you have a birdfeeder. If it isn’t nesting season where you are (and you live in the Northern Hemisphere), it soon will be. Birds will be looking for nesting materials, and fluffy little bits are just the ticket.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.