This storm came through in so many bands, I'm sure that everyone will have different types of photos from how the precip came down before Valentine's day. For us it was mostly ice, and thankfully the ice has not damaged many trees, just decorated them with a beautiful crystal glaze.

Broadus took this picture of the willow. His photography is really improving. For a while he struggled to hold the camera steady while pressing the shutter, he seems to have mastered that. He accidentally got his wet glove on the lens- which added some foggy mystery to the willow shot.

The thorny multiflora brambles were disarmed.

Hammock strings.

A new hat for the baby. This design came from the "Knitter's Dozen" book. It's the Fini Blues pattern, which is shown in Brown and white in the book. I altered the pattern just a little because there were a few rows with huge floats that I didn't think would work for a baby. I really love the fancy braid break between the top and bottom of the hat. I am mulling over adding ear flaps to keep Angus from pulling the hat off- but so far, if I let him forget about the hat- he can be distracted with much more fun pursuits like kissing his cute little reflection.

Violinist

Astronomer

Photographer

Graphic Designer

Marathon Runner

Electrician

Child of God

Last week's steady rain is resulting in a slow rising Ohio river. Expected to crest at about 48 feet sometime tomorrow below the official flood stage... but well after it has swallowed our familiar riverfront park.

"Why does it only flood in Indiana?" my son asked.

"I assure you the river rises on both sides equally," I told him, "It's just that here- the banks on the Kentucky side are so steep, and we are on the flood plain, so we see more water here- but as you follow the river the floodplains switch sides."

This conversation gave me the opportunity to explain about the river's oxbows and how fertile floodplains are formed. I wanted to follow up our discussion with a good look at the elevations on a topographic map. Unfortunately I was not able to find a free map of the Ohio River basin, so we looked at the Aeriel photo on Google maps. The Aeriel photographs revealed much more than I expected because the patchwork of the farm fields of the floodplain stood in sharp contrast to the wooded hills with clefts of creeks which almost inevitably lay directly opposite.

The farmland lays on the inside of the curve of each oxbow. I found great beauty in the intricate levels of texture, color, land, water, straight and curvilinear, flat and jagged - all displayed like a rich textile, evidence of an ancient flow that carves and deposits the river silt. As we traced our way down the river from our town to Louisville- my son noticed a few dart shaped islands and I mentioned that sometimes in a slightly different situation, the curves of an oxbow become so exaggerated that they touch- cutting off an island and allowing the river to follow a new path. Just a little further on our aerial river trek we saw an amazing figure in the landscape- just across the river from Alton Indiana, can you see it?

If the path of the Ohio River interests you, I recommend this historical novel which is based on a true story which played out locally right along this river and along the backwaters. "Follow the River" By James Alexander Thom. It's the story of Mary Ingalls who was kidnapped from Virginia by Shawnee in 1755, escaped at Big Bone Lick Kentucky and was guided and tormented by the Ohio River as she used it to find her way home through the wilderness. Another suggestion if you like Historical Novels is "The Frontiersman" by Alan Eckert which details the life of Simon Kenton.

My AnySoldier Valentine

I don't have my camera with me today- so excuse the poor scan of my own little gourd valentine. The scan couldn't get it all sharp because of the convex surface. It's woodburned with a light stain of red and blue color. It says "American Hero" and I really like the lettering because it reminds me of the Declaration of Independence. It's about 4 inches across.

It's still January- but I was thinking about Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day in the service specifically. I thought how hard it must be to keep connections with your loved ones when you are so far away and the everyday grind must be so difficult. Since I learned about Anysoldier.com I have been trying to send care packages, postcards and letters of support when I can, and I encourage everyone else to do so as well.

The most recent package I made up consists of a Valentine's craft project. I cut some heart shaped blanks from some hardshell gourds using a craftsman mini tool. The convex surface of the gourd makes a very pleasing curved shape that really gives each one a unique appearance. There is one group of soldiers I know of who have a woodburning tool, so I am just going to send them the gourd blanks. The package going to Ramadi is also going to have some purple and pink satin ribbon- some dimensional fabric paint- sandpaper, and some tiny self stick paper roses (I figure that they will want to pretty up the valentines they send home) It's probably not much, but I hope that spending a few hours crafting a little trinket like this will help lighten the heart of some dad to think of the smile on his little girl's face when she gets it.

If doing something like this interests you, please go the the AnySoldier website and spend some time reading the updates from overseas. You will quickly get a feel for the types of things that the troops are in need of... but beyond snack-food and hygiene supplies- what they need the most is the knowledge that they are loved, supported, remembered and appreciated by those of us at home. The postage on a letter or package is the same as sending a letter to the next town over. You can put your support on a bumper sticker... but you can also put it in a package and send it to them directly.

Flying Chance won his race last week by so far he looks like he is all alone in this racetrack finish line photo. We were invited up to the track by his owner to enjoy a pre-race barbecue and a night out at the track. Boy did this horse deliver! Afterwards we went down to get in the picture at the winner's circle- John and I are in the back row standing next to the guy with the beard.

I finished the socks last week with little to no fanfare. I’m really not happy with them. I guess the gauge is too loose because they are not warm and they feel rough to stand on, like net. I used size twos as suggested on the ball band- but I think from now on I am going to knit all my socks with incredibly tight gauge.

Beyond the breezy texture of the knitting, the pooling really threw me for a loop. I thought it was fun on the first sock and anticipated more of the same for the second sock. Unfortunately the second ball of yarn had a very different pattern randomly developing in the colored plies and the large sections of solid red simply weren’t there. The second sock did wind up with a pooled pattern but it was very subtle- there are bands of marled rows alternating with bands of solid color rows red and purple. Because I planned to wear these with clogs- I switched back to my remaining first ball for the heel and ankle to at least get a little cohesion- so this is the end result.

As I lost enthusiasm for the socks I realized that this wonderful yarn had just been misapplied in the project and I decided to try it out on the Diamond Head hat pattern by David Xenakis from the “Knitter’s Dozen” hats book.

Sure enough the nature of the yarn really shines when knit into tiny facets of this diamond design. Can you believe this is the same yarn as the socks!?

It is a very fiddly project and there are so many ends to weave. As I worked on it I kept thinking that a person with forethought could avoid most of the end weaving if they began the project with seven bobbins of yarn and didn’t break the yarn at the tip of each diamond… well… next time, if there ever is a next time. This design seems more reasonable for crochet than knitting but I am enjoying it… let’s see if I can still say that after I weave in all the ends!

This pattern was written and charted for people who would turn the work- since no row was longer than 22 stitches I used an unconventional (although not unheard of) method of knitting without turning. I made two little videos to demonstrate.

In this video I knit short rows without turning the work over by alternating between knitting english and continental style with the yarn always held in my right hand.

In this video I knit in the continental style without turning, this time I change yarn hands when I change directions.

Guess what I forgot to do when I turned the heel. That's right, forgot to add that nifty little reinforcing thread.

As for the pooling, I kept thinking I was going to have an increased number of stitches at the turn- forgetting that the short row geometry adds distance without adding stitch numbers.




And look at that, the pooling didn't shatter- it just keeps spiraling around until, mysteriously it decided to switch direction up here near the top of the leg.

I am a little bit concerned about getting a real soft stretchy bind off. I think I will try the "Russian Bind Off" which I found on in this very informative listing of Laurie B's Toes and Heels.

This yarn is starting to pool a bit as the foot takes shape. This is not a self striping yarn- the patterns are coming from a very shallow angle of stacked color. The pure red sections of the yarn are only about 7 inches long. I don't mind the pooling at this point- but I imagine that when I get to the heel and the leg this striped effect will be broken up into a homogeneous mix. I think if I was doing a sock pattern which had a knit texture- I might be annoyed by the dominant pooling effect.

I gave a friend some sock yarn for Christmas (and bought myself some too!) The sales girl assured me that one large ball of the gift yarn would complete a pair of socks. I feel a little wary and didn't want my friend to have any more sock knitting frustrations (I won't elaborate... but let's just say that she deserves to have a nice trouble free knit by now) So upon gifting I suggested that we use her scale and my ball winder to split the ball in half and she knit the socks from the toe up till she runs out of yarn. She's game- but neither of us have done toe up socks- so it will be a learning experience for the two of us.

Beth, from Crafty Canines Stuck on Socks suggested that I try the classic toe up pattern from Wendy Johnson. Last night I tried my first provisional cast on and it was pretty fun to unzip that cast on chain. I'm still not the most secure short row knitter, but the miters of the toe seem to have fallen into place and the foot is getting right going now. I had to rework my stitch counts a little because I'm only getting 6 stitches to an inch on these size 2 needles.

The yarn is Lang Yarns "Ja Woll" and it came with a nifty little spool of single play thread... duh... I was thinking it was for finishing, forgetting that socks really don't have finishing- so why would they have that in the package!? Silly me- it's a strand of reinforcing thread, and I didn't figure that out till just now- so I guess one toe is not going to have reinforcing- but both heels will.



There is some really bright news on the farm- our hens have started laying again. It was so hard to even use store bought eggs when we are so spoiled on farm eggs. The baby managed to get on the table today and knock a few fresh eggs together- since they were cracked already I thought I'd open them onto a plate and show a color comparison between two of our eggs and an egg from a factory farm. Not only are these farm eggs coming from happy pastured poultry, providing a much more beautiful food - they are lower in calories, lower in the bad cholesterol and higher in omega 3 fatty acids than eggs from battery hens. If the visible evidence right on this plate here is not enough - read this great article from Mother Earth News. Here is a chart which shows the nutrients of eggs compared- so why does the American Egg Board say that “The nutrient content of eggs is not affected by whether hens are raised free-range or in floor or cage operations."

Here is the picture which almost didn't happen. In the first week of December I took the baby to the doctor for his one year well baby check. The baby is thriving and healthy, but I was fighting a mean sinus infection. We joined John for lunch and then took him back to work.

I sat for several minutes in the mall parking lot and tried to muster the courage to get all three kids out of the truck and into the core of the mall for a photo and visit with Santa. I could barely breathe and the thought of the task was almost too much- but I pulled it together and decided that there are some things you just have to do- so we went for it... only to be turned away from the back of the long line because Santa was going to lunch. This event seemed to set the tone for the rest of the month of December.

Near the end of the month John suggested that we give it one more try and he would meet me after work and provide the moral support and whatever else it took to get these kids onto Santa's lap. I didn't manage to get out of the house on time, so John had to kill an hour waiting for us before we all went into the mall together. This time when we got to the amazingly short line to see Santa- we were greeted by a lady with a clipboard and an imposing tower of stacking beepers. What a brilliant merchandising concept- allow people to wander around the mall shopping rather than spend time not shopping on the Santa line. Only thing was, the "wait" was an unusually round number- two hours. Hmmm.... who came up with this one? Poor John, to think he had just spent the past hour waiting for us in the parking lot.

We got to test out the new food court, complete with it's uncleanable glass tabletops, lousy acoustics, strangely malfunctioning modern toileting systems and creepy claustrophobic safe room style nursing closet. (I think we will have to revisit this allocated nursing room topic again.)

At least when we finally got to visit Santa, Angus didn't cry, he was very interested in looking at Santa and they could barely get him to break his focus to look around at the camera.

This curtain was my Christmas gift to Fiona. It's about $50 worth of materials and 6 hours of labor, I got the fabrics on sale- and I'm very happy with the finished result, much nicer than any of the other "indoor play tent" arrangements I have seen in catalogs. It was a trick to tailor it because I had to factor for the slope of the ceiling when I did the scallops up at the top. I also was doing all the work in secret and away from our home... so that was the biggest hurdle. Big thanks go out to my friends who helped with babysitting! Does anyone know if there is a proper name for this type of curtain/headboard arrangement?

I try so hard to keep my blog positive that the setbacks of late have left me with a bad case of writer's block. I can't figure a way past this hurdle other than stright over it and I'll be damned if I am going to let the problems of jobs poorly started take the blog out as well- so here goes. It turns out that the contractor we were working with was no good on many levels. Beyond that discovery, we lost our weather or hope of finding anyone else who could do a proper job, what needs to be done - it simply isn't possible to do what needs to happen in freezing or unpredictable weather. We had to face the facts that this job was not going to get done this year, so we wrapped it up... literally.

I hope my friends understand that my Holiday Greeting is not a joke about Jesus, it's a joke on me... because I had really hoped on decorating the cabin with some classic porch lights and a wreath on the door with white candles in the new windows... you can close your eyes and imagine it for me can't you?

Oh, and while you have your eyes closed, you may want to keep them closed and not scroll further if you don't want to see a picture of me skinning a deer. This deer was a gift from John's boss. We skinned it and quartered it at his hunting farm in Kentucky. After we brought it home John did all the hard work of the finish butchering in the kitchen while I went out shopping. We haven't had steaks for a while and boy the were delicious- John is really quite a chef!

Also discovered in the mantle was this small metal object. It appears to be brass and has two sets of lines scribed around it. It is shaped very much like a pen nib, but the metal is very heavy and it's much larger than any nib I have seen.There is no split at the tip to allow ink to flow. Any ideas as to what it might be?

The mantle comes off.


Here is a detail of the mystery sticks... knitting?

This is the Warner's Safe Yeast ad from the flipside.



Log joists under the house.

Today was heavy steady rain so the outside progress on the chimney was held up a little, but John had taken the day off work and was going to make the most of it. The guys just moved inside and made some amazing progress on the interior fireplace. There was a layer of brick which was laid right on top of the floor- that and the old mantle were removed- and a hole cut in the floor so that we could pour a proper slab for a hearth- and when we finish the hearth- it will be level with the floor- opening up a lot more options for that floor space. Cutting a hole in the floor gave us a great view of the joists under the cabin which look to be in great condition.

In the process of removing the mantle, John found some crumbly brown paper which he quickly passed off to me and got back to business. One little booklet was folded in thirds and the paper is very damaged from... (what eats away old paper? termites?) The booklet is stapled along the binding and I am afraid to open it and break all the pages. ...part of it I can read a list of maladies... some other scraps of paper he handed me actually fit in the same image, a beautiful although only partial, full color image of a ...(play twilight zone theme here)... a mother, by a fireplace... with her baby learning to walk!


Here are the three pieces, details in the scene: herbs hanging above the fireplace, a gun over the mantle, hat and coat hung on the wall, a cup and cream pitcher on the table and a third figure seated at the table, this figure appears to be wearing a white ruffled bonnet visible right at the edge of the window frame. There are three thin sticks on the table which I can not identify... but I think they might be knitting needles!!

On the flipside of this page is an ad for Warner's Safe Yeast which has testimonials from around the country and the date July 12, 1887 included (gotta love it when they just give you a date like that!)

Well, I was going to post some more pictures but that's not going well. More later!

The stone (from Kentucky) is washed prior to cutting.

The hole.

This is the back of the unfinished chimney as it was when it was covered with siding many years ago.

The chimney after only one day.

The chimney at the end of the second day.

(Angus chose this week to walk!)

Yeah big boy!

Finally finished! The shoulders of this sweater are pure fun. They have a very native dancer type of feel to them, like eagle wings. A tiny hint of Egypt and a tiny bit o' rasta. The color shading of the yoke bands shade around from front to back.. The center of the back starts with yellow, the arms have red- and the front is blue. I think the climbing ring of yellow adds a little extra visual movement to the entire design.


I love to see his cute face in the middle of that sunburst!

This little sweater for Angus is turning into a very elaborate project. It started in linen stitch with some inexpensive acrylic "Crayon" yarn. Shortly after the lower edge took shape- the yarn began to pool in the most amazing way- like a giant sunset across the back. I fell in love with this unintentional design element and began to try to think of ways to build on it.

I knew the pooling pattern could not survive the arm join, so I decided to switch to a stranded knitting yoke in black and crayon- maybe thinking back to those crayon scratch off art projects from elementary school. I quit with the linen stitch and started knitting a pattern in the varigated yarn with stockinette- but the darkest purple color was just losing it against the black and the patterns would not stand up if they continued being broken by sections of purple popping in here and there in varigate yarn fashion. Ripped that out and back to the armjoin row.

Next game plan was to simplify the design to vertical bars of color between black bars- but rather than allow the rainbow to trace out horizontally- I was going to force each strand of spectrum to shade upward in a straight line by using an intarsia type technique.

I wound off my yarn around some chairs and cut lengths carefully so that the colors shaded in a way that reflected the pooling colors of the lower torso. 25 strands of yarn + one black. I had difficulty at first figuring out how to manage these pieces, (first with 25 little cardboard bobbins- that was a nightmare.) I began to think a simple braid would avoid tangles and then it struck me that if I chained the hank from the tail in- I could feed out new yarn as I needed it by unchaining from the top.

This is not true intarsia because the black strands behind the colored bars- the colored bars are only twisted in once each row- so the colored bar is attached- but slightly able to slide on the strands holding it. I will have to see after blocking if this is an interesting or problematic feature- the ability of the colored bars to curl in on themselves vertically without having to shoulder the stretch of the garment which is bourne entirely by the black stranding- gives the colored sections a little puff.

I'm not working from a pattern and I hope that I can decrease through the shoulders in a harmonious way right up to the neck.

Yesterday, among other things- Phil pulled my giant rock out of the ground with his machine. I found this rock buried in mud years ago and all I knew was that it was big. (Rocks like this are very unusual for our farm)

I am hoping that we can use this rock for our front step.

I asked Broadus to take a photograph of the rock being sure to include something for a size reference. I love the resulting photo (notice the teeny tiny horses in the scene) Speck assumes the "Lion King" pose.