YARN ALONG

The garden is FINISHED for the year! I went out and picked everything that was useable, we are to get our first frost tonight. I can’t remember a year in the garden where the growing season has lasted to the end of October. My garden did better this year during the months of September and October than July and August.

Strange year, but I am so grateful for the late autumn harvest. I have made salsa and sauce for the winter, we have eaten our share of kale, spinach, squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. This year was tough with the cold weather in May-July and wet too. One thing I love about gardening, hope is eternal…next year, always next year!

Knitting wise, I dumped Chai tea all over the brown Dealyn sweater. Broke the quart jar that the tea was in as well-in the knitting bag…ugh! Washed that up and now it is drying on the racks.

The yellow yarn-I over dyed again but it looks pretty yellow still to me. Oh well chemistry, love it or leave it. I will figure something for that yarn. 

And another Kumfy, in Rio undyed yarn. Love these baby knits.

Reading: The Yankee Way and Carrots Love Tomatoes {never too early to get started on the next garden:-)}

Joining up with Ginny for Yarn Along. Please join me.

Weekend

It has been a busy couple of days here at the Little House. First I had a huge scare that I ruined my laptop…ugh! I was oil pulling, ever heard of this ancient Indian practice? It is swishing oil in your mouth for 20 minutes everyday. I like to use coconut oil, doesn’t leave a weird aftertaste. While doing my oil pulling I was checking emails and all of a sudden I coughed, big time! Yup, I spit coconut oil all over my laptop…another big ugh! I quickly cleaned the laptop as well as I could and when I turned it back on-it worked. However the keys keep sticking a wee bit, though working. They loosen up the more I type, coconut oil stays in solid form at room temperatures, must be the cause of sticky keys.

Friday I was whipped, and got little done. Oh and it has been raining and cold around here-yeah and yeah again. So it was a great day to do nothing! A little sewing, a little knitting and a whole lot of napping!

Saturday was used to get laundry and some cleaning essentials done, you know…bathrooms, floors, dusting-the things that are not fun but need to be done. Then we headed up to Estes Park for a lovely dinner with some siblings of mine visiting here in Colorado.

Sunday, a day spent cooking for the week. I am going to try and only eat what I bring from home. Hospital cafeteria food is the worst! I think they make bad food to keep us needing a hospital. Good business idea for them, bad for my health, and me, not to mention the pocket book.

How was your weekend? Hope there was some time to get and enjoy some of autumn’s great colors.

THE LITTLE SWEATER FROM MONTANA AND WYOMING IN COLORADO

 Not sure what is going on but the fall weather, 

though beautiful has been on the warm side. Weirdest of all is the fall garden is doing better than the late August or early September garden. So good I decided to water again. By now the garden would normally be “put to bed” for the winter. We are still harvesting tomatoes, peppers and acorn squash…so, so good.

This cute little sweater has the most adorable buttons that I picked up at My SisterKnits. They have little greenish elephants on them, (be still my heart), and they are a perfect fit for the sweater that the yarn was bought in Montana and dyed with yellow tumbleweed flowers that Eric picked on the side of the road for me in Wyoming. What a big story for such a tiny sweater, a sweater with a history?

Being Wednesday- it is of course YARN ALONG.

Please join me over at smallthings and have a great day.

Handwork and Slowing Down

Dress for Caitlin

Quilt for Eileen

So much going on in this small head of mine and none of the goings on has to due with my paying job…thank goodness. No, what I have on the brain is quilts and small peoples’ knits. I have one blue quilt on the machine, two quilt tops almost done, and two other quilt tops ready to be quilted, not to mention the quilt that I have been hand quilting for the past 3 years…oh dear me, yes it is true! I know quilters that are big “goal setters” to get all their projects completed. I am not one of them. Goal setting to me is like, well work. I’m under daily deadlines at work and that screams stress to me. I have to set goals at work yearly and constantly check them, (at least I am suppose to check them several times a year). I quilt and knit for enjoyment, I want to savior each and every moment, every stitch, thinking about the person said quilt or knit is intended for. Setting goals around my favorite past time would just ruin the meditative value I experience doing the process. I don’t want to “produce”, I want to slow down and enjoy, value my time doing the “thing” I have a passion for. Surprisingly, the more I slow down, the more progress I make. When I am able to fully concentrate on the project at hand, so much more gets accomplish-funny how that works.

So I challenge you to slow down, breathe deeply-often, while sewing and enjoy the process.

Everything gets done that is supposed to get done.

AUTUMN THOUGHTS

Ah Friday how I welcome you each week, how I needed you this week.

It has been a week of little sleep since returning from Wisconsin, not sure of the why-too much on my mind, higher altitude or just me! But today, Friday, I thought I would sleep in till 6ish-this was not to be, at 0430 I am up starting laundry. So many things in my head to accomplish today knowing I may only get through a fourth of my list (if I’m lucky). Going into work this morning for a couple of hours to catch up puts a kink in the day too.

On the Friday list:

Laundry

3 hours work

Lunch with a friend

Repotting houseplants

Little housework

Sewing

The sewing is what I am most interested in! Finishing a dress for my daughter, only the sleeves are left, then…

Playing with some amazing fabric I picked up in Wisconsin! I have been dreaming of all my options using these fabrics, (perhaps this is the reason for my lack of sleep). 

Though the number one activity I want to spend time doing today is enjoying the amazing autumn we are experiencing here in Northern Colorado. Soon the blazing colors will be gone with the sounds and smells of fall, now is the time to be in the present moment of Falls Beauty. As I get older my wants are changing, no longer do I enjoy bringing things into my house but rather the enjoying what I have. The day-to-day gifts that are given to me-such as the fall colors!

SISTERS’ WEEKEND-WISCONSIN

Sisters’ Weekend was spent in Wyoming, Wisconsin, Iowa County. This one building town has a wee i complex with it’s name, but she makes up for her insecurity in her beauty. WOW, did we have a great time exploring several small towns, driving the really hilly countryside. All the trees, where did they come from? And the farms, so beautiful with their big red barns! We walked the roads, then climbed the hills, on the weekend we had to stay on MM's 1/4 mile drive with it’s steep hill due to hunting and all the gun fire. Ate the best hamburger in a corner bar. Do not ask it to be cooked any special way or you are showed the sign, “this is not Burger King! Your burger gets cooked how it gets cooked, no complaints or there is the door”. I guess you can say this to your customers when your burger was that good and smothered in Wisconsin cheese!

Visited 2 yarn stores where I like to buy yarn that is local. I am getting a bit of a collection of local yarn this year. The best was the Quilt Store that MM saved for last that first day, ( I went back for a second time 2 days later). Country Sampler in Spring Green, Wisc. was amazing. Truly, I have not been in a quilt store that  has amazed me in over ten years! Country Sampler is all reproduction fabrics and cross stitch samplers. The store is filled with amazing antiques and finished quilts! The thing that sent me over the top was fabric I had never seen before from companies I have never heard of. I bought yardage, a lot, like I had trouble getting everything in the suitcase. I was ready to leave my clothes in Wisconsin and travel home with fabric, yarn and  beeswax candles.

The candles were purchased at the farm where MM boards her Alpaca. That little guy is Larry, he is going to have a lot of work with the ladies when he gets older ;-)
I will have to have another post for this this trip.
It was so much fun and so much more to tell.

Yarn Along