Halfway Home

On several topics, actually.

All the stuff that the landscapers were going to take out is gone.

Great Big Empty

So the house landscaping project is halfway finished. I knew the beds were big, but WOW. There was a ton of plant life in there. I’ll try to get some other pics of just how huge those beds are. Landscape Dudes are coming back on Tuesday to put a much smaller quantity of new stuff in.

I’m also halfway through the Black Socks of Death.

Sock is Blacker/Darker Than It Appears

This was taken during the final “fitting” and have been deemed acceptable. Second sock has been cast on and will be knit furiously tomorrow. Until I run out of yarn. Another skein is on its way from OKC, since they were thankfully able to match the dye lot.

Note to Self: Make sure any future socks for the Hubster have lots and lots of yardage available. Yeek.

Oh yeah. Tomorrow. I’ll be spending the entire day on a golf course, working a hospital fundraiser tournament. This tournament, actually.

My mom is picking me up at the butt-crack of dawn, so I need to wind my backup sock and get ready for the AM, then off to bed. I’ll try to have a recap from today up soon, and I have a few weeks worth of YPF shot, so let’s hope I can be blogging pretty regularly. Have a great Monday!

It’s a Jungle Out There!

Especially when you’re talking about my yard. :-(

You see, the previous owners included an inhabitant with a green thumb who was reired (aka my Mother). So when we moved in, there were very large plantings across the front of the house that required a goodly chunk of maintenance and digging in the dirt. (there’s a “before” picture in this post. I don’t have a more recent one handy. Sorry!)

Last summer, my mom’s “housewarming” gift to us was to clear out some of the stuff in the yard. The Hubster and I are most certainly not green thumbs. I have enough quilting and knitting projects on my hands. I don’t have any interest in doing big-time yard work. Crap, we pay the kid next door to mow our lawn! And we all remember Leaf Wars 2007/8. ::shudder::

We never managed to get the landscaping finished last fall. The “why” is a long, annoying story. We were promised that we’d be “first on the list” come spring. When it got to be June and we still hadn’t heard from the guy, I called and got the “oh boy, rain has been killing us” story. Believable, but still annoying.

But at this very moment, 8:40 am on Thursday, July 17, I’m watching the landscaper’s crew unload in front of my house. They’re gonna turn this jungle


Into something that’s much more presentable (yes, he’s going to get rid of the now waist-high weeds) and low-maintenance. We’re keeping some of the stuff that will look pretty in the spring, but he’s going to trim that ginormous tree in front a little bit, move some of the existing greenery around, put some new easy-care stuff in, mulch and leave us with a yard that isn’t the skanky, un-maintained yarn on the street. Whew!

I’m looking forward to having this finished. If I can be efficient work-wise today, I can take tomorrow a little easy and really enjoy my weekend.

Oh, and the cleaning crew is coming to handle the inside today as well. It's a busy day here!

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Stuck

I showed you my Brooks Farm Riata vest yesterday.

That photo was taken pre-Hurricane Knitters. By the time I was done with the Hurricanes and came home and knit for a relatively short period of time … I’m now through two of the nine rows of button band, at which point all I have left is finishing work.

Hence, the problem.

I should have thought of this last Saturday when I was at Bloomin’ Yarns. I need buttons for this thing!

Speak up, Burghers! Where do YOU go when you need great buttons?

I can field trip on Friday. I do plan to check at Bloomin’ then possibly go down to Canonsburg and check out the Knit Shoppe and will probably swing by the J-store as well.

This problem needs to be solved pretty quickly. I don’t want to lose momentum on this project and the last thing on earth I need is another UFO!

In other news, I’m swatching this yarn


So I can knit the last architecture in New Pathways. WOOT!

Mom, Suzie and I checked out the Three Rivers Quilters quilt show today. I didn't take many pictures and none were particularly blogworthy. I must admit that I became quite spoiled going to Road to California and Glendale annually for the last seven years.

The good news is that we found multiple good shops that are between here and the Lake, mostly right off of I-79. I got two charm packs of 6” batik squares and a very reasonably priced kit for a cute Safari quilt.

Since the show was basically at South Side Works, we visited REI while we were in the neighborhood. I got a pair of fuzzy Merrells at a very good sale price, and I was weak and picked up another pair of the most comfortable sandals I have ever put on my feet (today, I got the Oak Tree Blue colorway. Already own Shirley Wedgewood).

It was a beautiful day and I didn’t go for a walk. Shame on me. Perhaps I’ll either do that tomorrow or Ill take a walk PLUS mow the lawn/leaf wrangle.

I love our trees, but damn, those leaves really kicked my ass this year.

Start talking buttons (please)!

WiP Wedneday: Vest!

Nope. Not a sock on a needle anywhere in the house! Instead …


It’s a side-to-side vest knit in the Brooks Farm Riata so recently featured right here on YPF. (color is much better on the YPF post)

You start with the left front. I’m a the increases point of the left armpit (about to start on the back). It’s going quickly.

Winding all of those KidSilk HellHaze kits for the Modern Quilt Wrap at Bloomin’ convinced me that I didn't really have a mohair sensitivity. I may have been wrong about that, since this project is making me the tiniest bit itchy if I work on it all night.

But it’s nice. And I like the colors. And if I’m going to go to MDSW, I should probably knit something from the yarn I got at my previous fiber festival, yes? (no, i haven't decided yet)

In other news, it may officially be spring.


Since my mom can’t really garden at her new house, she has an area in my backyard where she can still play in the dirt. She put in a bunch of bulbs last fall, and now whatever they are, they’re blooming


No, I have no idea what they are. Tulips, maybe? No clue. I have a black thumb.

Oh, and we’re officially first base again


The back corner of our house is first base for the “diamond” the boys next door use for their pick-up baseball games in the side yard.

In other news, yes, I deleted a comment from yesterday’s refrigerator post.

Yes, it was essentially an ode to an appliance that had been in this house for just about as long as I can remember. Yes, we will probably replace it. Eventually.

(rant warning)
And if you have a problem with that, I’m more than happy to talk with you about that.

But if you’re going to put an anonymous comment on my blog telling me that I’m killing the environment and that having a second freezer/fridge is irresponsible? I’m going to delete it. If you have something to say and you want me to take you seriously, SIGN YOUR DAMN NAME.

I found this particularly irritating/ironic because just last night I read a blog post that I thought was written on faulty principles and was making a point that I found offensive. But I decided that I didn’t want to get into a dialogue with the person who posted to their personal blog. That left me with two options: Leave an anonymous comment or keep my trap shut. Wanna guess which one I picked? That’s right. I took a deep breath, closed the window and let it go.

So if you have something to say to me, fire away. I can take it. I’m a pretty reasonable, rational person.

But don’t do it anonymously. That’s not cool.

< /rant >

And finally, isn’t it awfully cruel of the Pirates and Cubs to subject the fine folks of Pittsburgh to 27 innings of baseball over two games? Seriously.

Oh, and Melissa gets total credit for pointing this out, but how in the world has the Pittsburgh sports media not latched on to this movie in connection with our local baseball team? Really. It’s almost as easy as using “We Will” to mock the team, and it’s funnier with a catchy kid-friendly tune (Enter the site and skip the intro. It’s worth it.)

Ketchup and Catching Up

Well, I’m firmly ensconced at the Big Ketchup Bottle in the boring bits of work. At some point, I’ll be relieved from my phone-answering duties to get some dinner, but until then, I may as well catch up on recent events while waiting for the start of SNF.

If you’re here looking for my weekly Amazing Race recap, you’ll have to wait until I can watch it tomorrow. Hopefully by lunch-ish, eastern time.

Anyhoo, here’s the rest of our trip from last week.

Roaming Tigger, meet George Washington. General, meet RT:


That’s from the Welcome Center at Valley Forge. I would have liked to spent a tiny bit more time there, but we did the welcome video then hopped onto the 10-mile tour loop. They also have a walking/biking trail available to tour Valley Forge. That would have been awesome in better weather. They even have bike rental available. Lots of people were out walking or running on the path.

First stop was a replica of the barracks cabins that the Valley Forge soldiers built when they arrived at the encampment.


Of course, these cabins are of much higher quality than those constructed out of logs and clay by the men that had to live in them. Can’t have random structures falling on tourists now, can we?

One of the last stops was George Washington’s headquarters complex at Valley Forge. It’s the original house that was there when GW was, and there were two “docents” ready willing and able to answer our questions


We had lunch at the Washington Memorial Chapel, which was built in the very early 1900s. It was a nice enough structure, although the actual chapel was quite dark and a little bit … odd. But the gift shop was nice and lunch was adequate.

Since I totally missed Yarn Pr0n Friday, here’s the yarn I bought at almost 50% off at the Jinny Beyer Studio. It’s Elsebeth Lawold Classic AL


50% baby alpaca, 50% merino. 109 yards. Worsted weight. It’s more of a burgundy than this picture shows, but you know cameras and reds. I have 14 balls, which should be plenty to make a sweater. Eventually.

And why did I miss YPF? Well, I was done for the day after fighting the Battle of the Bulge in Leaf Wars 2007TM. I’ll have to go out and rake one more time, but this is what I accomplished on Friday mid-day.


Mt. Lebanon has leaf pick-up off the streets weekly. Front-yard leaves go out onto the street, backyard leaves go over or around the fence, over the hill into the woods. One more Leaf Wrangling day and I should be done for the fall.

OK. My relief should be here any minute, so I should get this posted. Hope you had a good weekend!

Cookies. Leaves. Deer Poop.

It has been a boring week so far here at chez DPUTiger.

Today, I baked cookies. All morning. A batch of chocolate chip and a batch of snickerdoodles. Mom needed cookies for some hospital thing. I like to bake, so I baked them for her.

The task actually came in handy when we were without electricity for 80 minutes this morning. I always do my chocolate chippers by hand in their entirety, and I already had the butter for the snickerdoodles out and softened, so I was the bulk of the way ready. I wound up having everything as far as I could go without electricity and all of my bowls covered in Press & Seal ready to go to my parents place when the lights came back on.

So that took until about noon.

Otherwise, I’ve been ticking things off of my to-do list. Mostly making appointments for various and assorted things. Some other stuff.

Yesterday, I raked leaves in the yard. I know I actually made progress, but it’s hard to tell for the most part. The “big leaf” trees are actually not in our yard. We have oaks in the yards on either side of us, though, so we get a good chunk of overflow.

photo downloaded from whitetails.com

The shocking thing about leaf-raking was the sheer quantity of deer poop in our yard. It’s just amazing! We’ve always had deer making their way through to the woods in back, but I don’t ever remember having this much deer poop in the yard. And we won’t even approach the topic of the chipmunk habitrails through the yard.

Tomorrow, I head down to West Virginia to see Sandy, so WiPs may have to wait until Thursday. Can’t wait to see Sandy and Deb. I miss my Los Angeles peeps terribly, so it will be awesome to get a mini-fix. RT and I will take pictures and we’ll check in tomorrow!