Ramblings ♥

To start with, I have been shamefully neglectful lately, not just about writing in my blog, but I haven’t been commenting on any either.  In case you are wondering I have been quietly watching.  That is just the kind of place I have been in lately.

This was my view of the sunset from my front porch a couple weeks ago.  Beautiful isn’t it?  We are having somewhat of a debate if we should cut down that willow tree right now.  Looking at this picture I think I have just made up my mind up, it’s staying!

Aren’t these the prettiest little leaves?  The previous owners of our house were quite old and weren’t able to keep up with all the yard work, and I thought I was going to have to dig this shrub up, there was so much dead wood.  But me and a pair of pruning shears persevered and after cutting away about twice as much as was left I saved it! It looks so happy now :)

I built up the rock wall around my flower bed, got rid of a few plants and added a few.

Grape Hyacinths… Sylas loves to pull these apart.  Well he loves to pull any flower apart really, but these are especially fun!  I do try to keep him out of the flowerbeds and am teaching him not to touch the flowers, but it is an uphill road.

My Bleeding Heart is going to bloom soon! This is one of my favorite flowers, and I have 3 plants now!

Tulips in my backyard flowerbed.  They are all yellow and blooming except for one lonely red tulip which you can see is still a bud.  I am amazed that these have escaped the deer, I guess Ariel is earning her dog food.

The cherry trees have just starting to bloom, it is only three more weeks until the Blossom Festival here.  Here’s a fun fact: The main industries of the Creston Valley include agriculture, forestry and Kokanee beer. lol.

Also, the gnomes have come out of hibernation.  This little fellow lives in my willow tree.  If I could live in any kind of tree I think it would be a weeping willow. What about you?

Wow.  I really am rambling today.  And I know what you are thinking, this is supposed to be a craft blog, not a gardening blog.  But truth be told, I have been so busy with yard work that I haven’t had much time for craftiness.

I bought a new sewing desk and a big plastic set of drawers to store yarn in so I can get my sewing/crafting/laundry room in order and be somewhat more productive, but it takes time.

I did finish up my Granny Zig-Zag Scarf and I am quite pleased with it.  It makes me think of lilacs. Here it is!

We just got a new picnic table and I ended up with stain for it that I really didn’t want, I just wasn’t paying attention in the store. I do have to say it is great for photographing though!

This turned out to be about seven feet long!  It is cosy, but since spring has finally decided to arrive I think it is just going to have to look pretty until next fall when it can start being useful.

Attempt at an action shot.  I hate pictures of me though so I cropped most of it out and this is all you get.

Well that is enough for today I suppose… Right now it is absolutely gorgeous out here, but it was so yucky this morning that we lit our woodstove!  What’s the weather like where you are?

In A Spin…..

Block 20

Spring is here :) Everything is turning green.  There is buds on all the trees and bushes.  Jason is “twiddling” with the lawnmower, trying to get it to work again after he took it all apart.  I don’t think that twiddling is the right word for whatever it is that he is doing… but I just smiled and nodded at that.

I started some seeds and 4 of them have actually sprouted so far! And my trays are all covered with mold….. But Google told me that if it is green mold then it is really just algae, which won’t hurt the plants at all, and you just need to let them have more air and less water.  So it wasn’t quite the disaster that I thought.  I am starting a few more things next week, hopefully it won’t happen again.  I read that if you sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on your soil just after you plant the seeds it prevents mold from growing.  Does anyone out there grow their own vegetables from seed? And if so, do you have any advice for me?

Block 21

I have been doing lots of crocheting and knitting lately, but I am finding that I really miss sewing.  I starting working on a gigantic colored pencil holder yesterday that will hang on the wall and hold 350 pencils and I was *sew* happy to be sewing anything…even just straight lines.  It was great, and lame joke…I know.   Part of the reason that I haven’t been sewing is that my sewing room, which is also my laundry room, is also a catchall room for everything that I don’t know quite where to put and you can barely walk through it, never mind trying to sit down at the table and sew.  It is so bad that over Easter I had to hang a door curtain so that no one could see in there.  Hmmm…. I need to organize.

Block 22

I hated making this block.  I have no more to say about it.

I have also been working on a scarf with the yarn I got from a swap.  It is almost finished, just a few more rows and then ends and ends and ends to weave it.  Here is my supervisor making sure that my work has all been done correctly :)

Have a great day!!

Photographic proof that Easter did, in fact, occur.

Hello World!  Nothing crafty today, just a quick peek at my weekend :)

 Here is the break down of my Easter.

Friday – Worked 2 till 10.

Saturday – Barbeque with the family, got spectacularly drunk.

Sunday – Was hung over, did Easter stuff.

Monday – Worked 6 till 2.

So not so much of a long weekend for me, but I did take some pictures.

Saturday was just beautiful, we spend an hour or so at the park before family dinner, and we had lots of fun.

Sunday was fun too, Easter egg hunt first thing in the morning, decorating eggs and then off to Jasons uncles house for brunch.  Then we hung out around the house for a while and went for a quick drive down to the States for some groceries.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Wanna Pop a Wheelie?

Here is your warning in advance: I found it really hard to photograph this blanket.

Here it is! My dirtbike wheel blanket for my nephew to be, which I have now named the Wheelie Blanket.  I am really pleased with how it turned out, and I am thinking about making a tutorial for the block for my own reference more than anything, but if someone decided to make one, that would be cool too.

The finished blanket measures about 48″ x 48″

I used 4 skeins of Lion Brand Amaze in Glacier Bay, 1 skein of Bernat Baby One Pound in White and 1 skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Soft White….because I ran out of the other white before I was finished the border….

My brother-in-law and his fiancée are coming into town today for Easter, so I can give it to them in person instead of having to mail it.  I really hope that they love it.

On a side note, if my neighbors happened to be looking out their window they were probably thinking I was insane…tromping around the yard in my pajamas with and old headboard and taking pictures of a blanket.

Ariel just thinks that she is not even going to look at me until I put that blanket down on the ground for her to lay on.

This picture really shows how my whites didn’t match, so I had to crochet them in stripes to kind of make them blend a bit.  That totally looks like it was done like that on purpose…right?

Anyways, that is my Wheelie Blanket in all its full glory, except not, because the colors are so much more bright and pretty in real life, I could just not make my camera see that.

Both the boys got a haircut the other day, well all three I should say because Jason got one too.  I cried a bit inside, I really like their long hair, but that is one thing that me and Jason will never agree on.

I Knit A Sweater!

I am feeling quite proud of myself! And Raiden loves it! This was another test knit and I am really happy that I did it.  I like this pattern so much that I am thinking about casting on another one for Sylas right away.  The only thing is that I am not sure if I got the button placement quite right, or else it needs a snap or something in the space between the top button and the first button spike.  It gapes a little bit.

He is really not too pleased about posing for these pictures, all he really wants to do is drive around in his John Deere Gator.  Just seconds before I took this picture his little brother almost drove it into the ditch and he figured that he needed to take over.

We have been working like crazy around the house.  Raking, pruning, weeding, burning, tilling, planning, and we have finally unpacked a bunch of stuff from the garage that should have been  brought into the house a long time ago.

All we really have left to do is deal with our vegetable garden….which we may be somewhat avoiding.  We probably won’t get to it next weekend, since it is Easter and all, but the weekend after I hope.  We just picked up a bunch of seed starter trays so we can start growing tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, and I don’t know what else.  We also would like to find time to have a garage sale at some point.

I think one of my favorite parts of this sweater is the mismatched buttons.  When Raiden told me that he wanted to use this as a work sweater I cringed, and then decided that there was know way I was going out to buy buttons for it, so he gets what he gets.

Tomorrow I have to start washing a bunch of the stuff that we unpacked, it is pretty musty.  Any big plans??

Once again the boys are in bed and I have a bit of time to myself until Jason comes home from work, so here I am!  Too bad I couldn’t get this nice little time frame to myself every night,  but I think I might run out of things to say.  Today is Jasons last day of work, break up starts tomorrow, so I have 2 months or so of bossing him around over stuff I want done around the house.  First off we need to get our yard in shape for Easter.  When we bought this place we absolutely loved the yard and all the trees, but we didn’t think of all the raking that would be involved.  It was July, what can I say? So when fall came we were completely unprepared.  Now all the snow is melted and we can see the leaves again :S So we need to get to work and get that cleaned up so we can have our first easter egg hunt here.

We also need to get our garden ready to plant.  And at some point I will need to attempt to trim some fruit trees.  Another thing we love about our yard is all the wonderful fruit it provides us.  But now I really need to educate myself about fruit.  We have apples, cherries, plums, pears, raspberries, blackberries red and black currants and a huge strawberry patch, and I really don’t know how to maintain any of it.  Oh well, I suppose I will learn.  That is what the internet is for, and I saw that our community college offers a short course on the care and maintenance of different fruit trees that grow in the valley, that might be something that I have to look into.

Anyways….on to the fun stuff!

I am very pleased to present you with my mandala, painted canvas and all.  Looking at this picture I think my backdrop could have done with a bit more blending, but it really doesnt look quite so blotchy in real life. I wanted something that would really make the colors of the mandala pop, and I think that red-orange-yellow really does the trick. It now has a happy home hanging on my bedroom wall, but no picture of that because I have the ugliest bedroom ever.  Seriously.  Think wood panneling, floral wallpaper accents and scallopped wooden trim. Ugh.

I haven’t been the greatest about updating my In A Spin lately, but here are the last 3 blocks.

Block 17

Block 18

Block 19

Well… my knitting is calling me, so have a great night!

 

 

Cupcakes are Yummy

Well it is 8:30 here, and I have an hour or so to myself, which is nice. The boys are in bed, or in their bedroom at least, I can still hear them playing, and Jason doesn’t get home from work for another hour and a half.

Today was fun, the whole afternoon was just me, Raiden and Sylas, which doesn’t happen that often anymore.

We baked cupcakes. Actually I baked cupcakes while they cleaned the beaters and taste tested everything for me. Which is a very important job.

They turned our quite yummy.  I used a new recipe for the frosting, Perfect Cupcake Frosting and Filling, which can be found here, and it made the most delicious, fluffy frosting.  I will definatly be using this recipe again.  After all their taste testing the boys still had room for a cupcake when they were all done.

No complaints from these two.

After cupcakes we did some painting.

The boys added another layer to their stepping stool that they have been working on for a while. I think I am going to put a coat of sealer on that tonight and call it done.  I painted a canvas that will be the frame for my Overlay Mandala, but more about that another day :) And don’t worry, that paint is non-toxic.

After painting it was bathtime…that is just the way that things always seem to progress, and then I sat down and worked on the cardigan that I am knitting for Raiden.  Thats right…I am knitting a cardigan.

This is another pattern test, I am seriously addicted to doing them. I really need to make myself stop for a while though, I have yarn for about 3 planned projects that I would like to get started.

So my day ended with cuddling on the couch watching Rango, and here I am now, enjoying a few precious moments of alone time.

What did you do today?