All this and tree trimming too.

No pictures of the naked Holly Tree's.

All that is left of two overgrown bushes are 12' sticks. They are now close to the height of the covered driveway as opposed to being about 10' above it. Hopefully the garden refuse truck will take everything in one trip. My arms, hands and feet, yes feet, may never be the same again. My feet hurt from standing on a ladder for two days and my arms and hands from squeezing together the biggest pair of pruning sheers in the world. But you have no idea how pleased I am with myself.

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Knitting update:

Bloomfield throw is coming along nicely. I'm now down to the repeat of the color blocks that I started with. The stripes look strange due to my camera being allergic to straight lines.

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Of course I had to play around with my yummy silk. Here's a tiny Navajo plied skein which I failed to measure.

But it was enough to knit up this 3'5" square swatch. I got a gauge that will give me 34 sts x 40 rows to a 4"square.

I'm going to ply some more using 3 singles together just to see how the colors will compare to the stripes caused by Navajo plying.

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Last weekend Cindy came to visit and amongst a whole lot of gorgeous dyeing she threw caution to the wind and squirted the colors directly into a (3) ball of Alpaca.

This is after nuking and a quick spin.


And this is the most incredible array of colors that could have come from just four dyes. I don't know if Cindy will ever get this lucky again but knowing her she will.

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I on the other hand, tried doing something similar and ended up with 1,900 grams of "THIS". The picture doesn't do it justice.........it's a whole lot uglier in real life! This wool started out as a bulky Aran knit cardigan that I bought for a couple of dollars. As I was ripping it out I saw that it was actually three strands of DK. The eyes and mouth in the pic' below are after I separated one small skein. That process didn't help the color as it became more insipid, especially when swatched. Anyway I've not given up.......there is such a thing as overdyeing. Suggestions welcome as to what colors would be best. I won't overdye until I've separated the rest of the bulky.


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This weekend I have Kathy visiting. I've no idea what we'll get into but needless to say it will involve all the above and more.

Happy playing ya'll