One Day Short of A Month!

I did it!  I finished my Umaro and I love it. It took a day less than a month, and according to my Knit Companion app, it also took 48 hours and 18 seconds of knitting. I am not so OCD or whatever that I would normally even know this, but the app tracks the time that the app is open, which it always was while I was working on this because the pattern was charted.

Before soaking.

Based on a conversation another knitter had with the owner of Apple Yarns, who recommended wet-blocking the blanket, I soaked this:

Heavy, sodden blanket

Heavy, sodden towels

What happens when a knitted wool blanket gets soaked?  It GROWS! It is now 46" x 77".

I didn't think to measure it before soaking, but it wasn't nearly this large. It grew about a foot in width and more than that in length.

I have the ceiling fan going overhead and I hope that will help it dry before the Rapture. I'd like to have a chance to gift it or use it.

Internet!

Make up your mind. You put these on the same page. What's a reader, looking for non-professional advice, to do???

Completely unrelated:

Umaro by Brooklyn Tweed, knit from Cascade Yarns Lana Grande 6043

I have finished five of six repeats on this blanket and I am now officially tired of knitting it. I WILL finish it this week so that I can STOP working on it.

I do love it though.

Random Stuff

as if I don't always just post random stuff.

This is the BEST chocolate milk on the ENTIRE PLANET!!!

I have no relationship with whoever makes this, but yuuuuummmmm....It is really rich. I found it at Fresh Market and I haven't seen it anywhere else yet. If you can find some, buy it!   Drink it!   Buy some more! 

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I found this headline online and I think the writer could have worded it differently:

Huh?

I do realize what it intends to communicate, but there must have been a better way to say it. 

And a favorite of mine---there was a headline that was purportedly in a NY paper when Ike Turner died: Ike Beats Tina to Death. I suspect that the writer was snickering when he wrote that, and then the copy editor snickered and let it go to print. 

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For something else totally random, one of my pet peeves, and I realize I might be almost alone (click for CBS opinion) in this, is the response "No problem" when someone says "Thank you."

Last year when I was in the UK, I thought that, of course, people there would say "You're welcome." They are so very polite on all of those PBS dramas, you know?

But at a tea shop when I thanked the server for my tea and scone, she replied.......


"Not a bother."


More polite? Less polite? I don't know. 

I give up!

And you are very welcome.

(I can't go cold turkey.)

The Truth

On Friday I went to my dermatologist appointment and I was numbed, sliced and diced, cauterized, gooped up, bandaged up, and I'm a thing of beauty, I tell ya.

As the doctor went to open the door to leave, she turned, studied me for a moment and then asked:  Have you ever had any injections?

And I thought: Well, rats, she thinks I need WORK.

Then I thought: Wait, she had to ASK if I have had injections. That means I look ok and she didn't know if it was because I had HAD work or because yay me I look ok without any work. (I most certainly have not had work; I'm a coward. Things can go wrong, y'all.)

I think that this is the truth of anti-aging procedures:

From the New Yorker

So, no thanks to any "work" or "injections."

Umaro

Knitting this goes pretty quickly until my thumb starts to hurt from the super bulky yarn and the size 15 needles. I think they are the largest I have ever used but in spite of them, I am really enjoying this project. Good thing since the yarn I ordered to make a second one arrived the other day.

Nail polish bottle for scale, 'cause I'm a pro!

I have now finished three of the six repeats.

Yay me!!!

Will I See Dead People?

Sweet Baby Cheeses, I hope not!

Today I used an organic fertilizer on my daffodils. 

Possibly legal organic stuff...or possibly...someone's family?

Now, I am not accusing E.B. Stone of anything; I'm sure he is a very nice man who would not do anything icky or illegal, but I have seen human cremains and they do look a lot like this. Actually, pretty much exactly like this:

Hello?  

Mr. Stone's fertilizer is a very fine powder containing different sized chunks of .....???? I know what organic means and I think that this fertilizer could qualify in any number of ways, most of them legal, but also, possibly including having come from a crematorium. Not that I'm accusing Mr. Stone of anything...wrong?

If I "grow" anyone in my yard, I'll run and scream and then let you know.


To continue on to my main topic, I have a lot of work to do this year because my perennial garden has been ignored and neglected the past couple of years. I do, however, have an excuse which is also an explanation. 

Last spring, I spent a month in LA hanging out with   shopping with   going to the beach with helping younger daughter recover from her surgery for an acoustic neuroma (benign brain tumor). So no work done.  

What about the OTHER months in the spring? you ask.  

Well, just hush. I think it might have rained a lot or something.

The spring before that, I broke my wrist and needed surgery to repair it. No yard work (or knitting) for me.

The fall before that? I broke both bones in my ankle and couldn't do much of anything for months because of the &*()_^&*#^ brace/cast I had to hobble around in.

SO, not my fault. DH does the heavy-lifting macho type stuff. I do the maintenance; I have a lot to catch up on.

But the only help I need from my so-called organic fertilizer is to make my plants grow. MY PLANTS GROW. No one nothing else.

Lilacs!!!

I have my very own lilacs to cut!

They aren't like the gorgeous, lush lilacs that grow in the north, but they are still pretty great. 

And I have azaleas, and soon will have roses and peonies. In a month or so.

I love spring in the south.

Ah-choo!!!