Pardon the Garden

Confessions of a lazy wannabe homesteader

Spinner in training

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Whatever I do, he wants to do. I had been pressing some water out of a handspun yarn so it could dry before I knit it up, and he asked to spin some of his own yarn. I don’t want him messing with my wheel (too many moving parts for him to get hurt on right now), so I dug out my 3D printed spindle from TurtleMade and let him play. For the record, it took him all of about 2 seconds to figure out how to flick it and put twist into the fiber. Proud mama, right here. I can only hope he continues to love to make and do things with his hands.

Tour de Fleece and such

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Sunday, we spent a good portion of the day cleaning the house. Literally. When I put my new furniture out I realized how awful and dirty the siding and trim was, so I grabbed a bucket and some soap and scrubbed the whole thing down.

A smarter person would have just rented a power washer… I am not smart, sometimes.

But the porch looks a thousand times better and cleaner. I bought some lanterns at Joanns that were 70% off, and I think I’m going to hang them above the table to give some nice lighting once it starts getting darker earlier.

Tour de Fleece began on the 1st, and while I missed out on spinning on Saturday I’ve been making up for it the rest of the weekend. I finished a bobbin of some teal that was in progress on Sunday, and then Monday I spent part of my morning spinning the other half on the porch. I’m working on my long draw method to get faster singles. Normally I’ve been an inchworm, pulling small amounts of fiber out of the fluff inch by inch to keep my yarn somewhat consistent. But this puts a strain on my wrists and takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. The long draw thing lets me just kind of pull my whole arm backward and let the twisting single do a lot of the work. Much faster.

I probably won’t spin every single day of the tour, but I like that it gives me a push to use my wheel more. I’ve actually considered getting rid of my wheel – I messaged the girls in my knit group to see if anyone wanted to somewhat semi-permanently borrow it. The thing had sat for almost a year without being used and I saw no end to the perpetual fight with the kid over getting time to myself to use it. Thankfully, my lovely friends talked me out of it, and (also thankfully) I’ve tried to start forcing “me” time to spin. Now if I can just get someone to force me to knit the yarn I spin up… it’s all so pretty in the skein and no pattern ever seems worthy of it. Which is silly, of course, because #1, I can always make more yarn and #2, there will always be a better pattern to come along that I’ll later wish I had made and #3, life is too short to make things and then not enjoy them. So that’s the next thing I need to start working on.

The state of things

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I’m not getting enough progress done today to things I wanted to get done. My first vacation day since I switched jobs (I hit my 1 year anniversary on Monday, but wasn’t able to find time for a day off until today), and I spent the first half of my day cleaning and cleaning and cleaning before a contractor came over to look at a few things on the house. I might, just might be getting our icky bathroom redone… and a half bathroom put in on the 1st floor… and while here the contractor mentioned the possibility of an upstairs laundry, which would mean no longer needing to go all the way to the basement to do laundry. I’m so flipping excited I can hardly stand myself! I am sure, of course, that all of that is going to cost us a ridiculous amount of money and I’m absolutely certain that during all the construction I’ll wonder whether it’s worth it. But. BUT. We’ve been here 9 years and I’ve been cleaning a bathroom that we half-assed fixed up just enough to make it liveable until we got the money to redo it. It’s time. Past time, really.

Anyway, so this second half of my day has been centered on me time. Knitting a bit, spinning a bit, snacking on whatever I feel like (mostly Easter candy) and binge watching Girlboss on Netflix. Sure, I could be watching something more… refined. But after the last few weeks I’ve had, complete with screwing up BIG at work, something easy to consume that speaks to my rebellious/take-no-shit side was much needed.  So this is the state of things right now – some fiber on the wheel, and a sweater in the works. I knit for a few hours here, and spun for a few hours there. Nothing particularly hard or exciting, but the perfect comfort projects for a much needed day off with no one home.

And, no, that little sweater isn’t for the Little Mr, nor am I pregnant – it’s for the now 4 month old grandkid that I still haven’t knit for. I feel terrible that I haven’t managed to make anything for him, but every time I’ve tried either the pattern is too much to follow with a toddler to care for or the yarn doesn’t work out for it. Or, in the case of the quilt I had started a while back… I sewed the whole thing together wrong and it was far too much work to sit and rip out all the thread and re-sew.

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