Mossy Cottage Knits

The Ultimate Long-Term Storage Solution

The last two Gratuitous Stories of the Day have been about things that have disappeared mysteriously which, in turn, reminded me of something that appeared mysteriously.

A few years ago, my sister sent me a birthday card filled sneakily and stealthily to the brim with confetti. (Har, har, har, big sister, har, har.) When I pulled the card out, needless to say, the Evil Confetti from Evil Sister went e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Months passed, during which K and I were forever stumbling across confetti in the strangest places. Indeed, one day, when I was taking a bath, a piece of confetti floated gently by me in the water. This led to great scratching of the head and furrowing of the brow because I was completely baffled as to where the confetti had come from. I was starkers, natch', and had been the entire time I was in the bathroom so it couldn't have fallen out of a pocket or a fold in my clothing. I wasn't reading so it couldn't have fallen out of a book. I hadn't brought my purse into the bathroom with me, so it couldn't have fallen out of my purse. Which led to the inevitable conclusion that, since the day of my birthday, lo, those many months before, I had been sporting it in a very—ahem—secure place on my person. One thing was certain—wherever it had been, it required full immersion in a tubful of water and lots of splashing and wallowing to dislodge. I leave the solving of this puzzle to your imagination.

Knitting Knews
This weekend, while 40-going-on-14-year-old K played her latest video game find, Dr. Muto, I got a few repeats of the Arboretum Sock done. Okay, okay—I'm not immune to the charms of video games. In fact, it was hard for me to tear my eyes away from the cyberdogs, cyber police officers, lakes of green goo, mutated monkeys, used and abused Gomer slave beings, hidden vials of life fluid, Splizz gun, exploding planets, and laser battles that are the essence of the Dr. Muto game. But I focused on my knitting enough to finish this much of the sock. This picture shows the sock pseudo-blocked with a few spritzes of water and then stuffed with scads of cardboard to better show the vine pattern.

Observations:

Because the Debbie Bliss DK is tighter spun than the Rowan DK, I now know that I shoulda cast on at least 64 stitches, but I'm going to stick to the 60 for now.

The size 2 needles are making a very tight fabric but for socks, the tighter, the better.

The messy transition from cuff to vine pattern makes me go cross-eyed. In retrospect, I should have done one row of all-knit or all-purl under the cuff to make it look more tailored.

The sock currently measures 5". Each repeat of the pattern measures about 3/4" so I'm going to do about two more and start the heel. I'm toying with the idea of continuing one-half of the leaf pattern down the foot of the sock, if I can figure out how to do it without ending up in the loony bin.

Dye Garden Dyegest
The Henry's Attic arrived, my first mail-order yarn! I'm constantly envying the photos on other blogs of great treasures that have arrived in the mail so, although this was just 560 yards of plain undyed yarn, what fun it was to to find my first Biq Squishy in my mailbox.

Although some people dress up their cats and dogs, we've decided to dress up our sunflowers. See?

Actually, we're trying to protect one sunflower head from the marauding sparrows and chickadees to see if we can get the seeds to mature so we can store them away for next year. It occurs to me that a squirrel can rip right through this bag like buddah but perhaps they'll focus on the other, more easily available sunflower heads long enough for the seeds to mature. Yeah, sure. Squirrels are so logical that way.

Posted by Ryan at September 29, 2003 10:18 AM