Purling Oaks

Lightning bugs and owls....

......signal the end of a whirlwind weekend.  I was gathering the cats to come inside this evening and noticed very active lightning bugs and a very talkative owl.  The weekend was really too short and I'm almost too tired to blog about it.  Saturday was spent at my mom's place with my nephews for most of the day and Eric joined us at dinner after returning from visiting a friend.  The guys (DH, Hunter, Micah, and Micah's friend, Eric) repaired the Farm's sign. 

 

We had a yummy dinner of grilled venison haunch, salad with hot bacon dressing, and new potatoes.  Hunter made a delicious apple pie for dessert.

Today, we all gathered at Chez Purling Oaks and added some uncles, an aunt, a few cousins, and a few second cousins or first cousins once removed ..........depending on your generation. 

 

The weather was perfect....temperatures in the 70's, sunny, with light to medium breezes.  I am so happy that we could all be together today.  I love to have the house full of family... well, maybe not all the time but often enough.  I wish I could have had more time with everyone today.

Tomorrow, both DH and I need to be at work but we'll have Tuesday to spend with Eric, Micah, and Hunter on the last full day of their visit.

Soaked Saturday

I think Mother Nature likes balance but I wonder if she is working on balance somewhere else besides North America.  We've had probably over 4 inches of rain this week in Wisconsin, while my friends on the left coast are suffering with none.  Perhaps the balance is that we are all less than happy with the situation.

My brother and his sons are in Wisconsin for a quick visit so DH and I will be in the Fox Valley for a day then back home to host a small family gathering on Sunday.  I don't have much in the way of knitting content so I'll share a few other fun things.

I won Kim's contest and my loot winnings arrived this week.  I'm looking forward to knitting two socks on one needle.  Perhaps that will be the key to me having more socks.  :D  I'm really enjoying the sandwich cookbook.  I love old cookbooks and this one has a copyright of 1941, so it is older than I am.  I'm going to try a few of these recipes, especially the ones for fancy bread in the beginning.  Maybe not the prune bread though........

Here are the purchases I made a short while ago in Mayville at Loose Ends Yarn Shop.   All of my goodies were locally made.  Michele made the bag from upholstery book samples and adorned it with buttons  The yarn is handspun and is really a coral pink.  It changes in different lighting.  I don't know the yardage but I fell in love with it and had to have it.  The pin was also crafted in Wisconsin. 

Lucky

I'm so glad I blogged about heading to northwestern Wisconsin.  I got an email from kmkat saying she lived up in that part of the state, where was I heading?  The next day I read her reply and she is *so* near-by where I'm working and hoteling.  Our schedules had a convenient match-up and we met up Tuesday, after I was finished with work.  We originally were going to meet at 5 pm at the cool coffee shop/art gallery/etc store but they closed at 5 pm.  Hmmmm.  Never fear.........we are in Wisconsin.  We just walked down the block to the new sports-bar, each had a beer, and we knit and talked and had a very nice time.  

I could insert a photo here but I'm just going to link to this blog entry of Kathryn's because her photo is much more flattering to us both.  When you read her blog entry, you'll read  we found we have more in common than just knitting.   I did more frogging on my sock than knitting but Kathryn made great progress on a lovely bamboo yarn sweater.  Chance favored me this week with a meeting with Kathryn.  Lucky me!

Winners and the 300th post

The randomly selected (DH, paper slips, and a tupperware) winners are:  blogless Nicole, Julie, and Stacey!  Congratulations and thank you everyone for your great suggestions.  The redo of the studio is in the preliminary planning stages.  That is code for we are waiting for the general contractor's bid and the check from the insurance company.  I won't be able to avoid blogging about the basement re-do, so you will see, eventually, the final studio with all the suggestions taken to heart.

My 300th post finds me in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and thankful for high-speed Internet access.  All of Wisconsin is lovely and this area is no exception.  It is so green here and the traffic is certainly much lighter than around the southern part of the state.  So, even for a Monday after a week of vacation, I feel pretty good.

Thanks to everyone who reads this weblog and to all of you that comment.  I've been blogging for about one and a half years and it has really enriched my life.  I've found wonderful new friends through blogging and I've even gotten closer to members of my family that read the blog.  Thanks for enriching my life, you guys.

Contest call and vacation time sinks

How did it get to be Sunday all ready?! 

Have you entered the contest yet?  Or two more times?  If you haven't, all you have to do is comment on this post (or other recent post) as an easy way or go back to the contest announcement post if you have tips for making your studio or knitting or crafting area more comfortable and/or organized.  I'm giving away three prizes and you have to enter by midnight tonight to win!  Hurry!

On Thursday, I joined up with my DSIL and DMIL (surprise!) to visit Loose Ends Yarn Shop in Mayville.  It was a lovely drive from Oconomowoc.  We had a lovely visit at the shop.  It is very charming, has lots of great yarn, and is full of creative ideas.  Besides, Michele was very fun to talk with!   I know Anne and I will be back there!  I purchased a charming bag, a cool pin, and some handspun that I'll have to share with you later due to lazy blogger syndrome.

After the funeral in Omro, we spent the night at the cottage in Oshkosh and finished cleaning the basement on Friday morning.  Saturday was a bit lazy as I read a book and plurked.  There was a bit of laundry cleaned and dried, too.  Plurking is fun but I'm am going to have to be careful that it doesn't become a gargantuan timesink!  Gah!

Today will be spent trying to catch up with a few things before I start work again tomorrow.  I'm heading to northwestern Wisconsin tomorrow.  The drive is very nice and I'm looking forward to it as a nice way to start a Monday.  Especially after a vacation.  Have a great day everyone and remember to enter the contest today!

Some vacation pics

I don't have much in the way of new knitting or fibery things to share this morning.  I do have a few images to share, though.  One of my favorite weeds is Verbascum thapsus or Great Mullein.  We have a few growing in the moat (I'll explain the moat another time.) and I'm delighted.  I may be the only one that's delighted....DH is neutral.  *g*  I love the furriness of the silvery-green leaves, the rosette of the young plant, and the yellow flowers of the stalk of a more mature one. 

We had a visitor on the dining room window the other evening.

There was a surprise in the flower garden.  My hen and chicks plant is.....flowering. 

Wild, isn't it?  I hope it isn't an act of desperation.

I'm going on a little yarn shop trip today with my DSIL while my nephew Jack goes fishing with DH and my DBIL.  It will be a nice balance to the evening's event.

Have a Happy Fourth of July everyone, stay safe, and remember to enter the contest!

First weaving

Take two.  Typepad ate my first post but at least they were nice enough to leave me a comment form to complain on.  But, between then and now a weird thing happened that I'll share.

It started to rain this morning and I went out on the front porch to see if any of the cats wanted to come in.  Fuzzle and Blue were out there but not especially interested in coming in the house.  Both were on the porch waiting for the rain to stop before having more cat adventures, I presume.  Then, lightning struck.  I didn't see the bolt (Thank God!) but I had to cover my ears.  It must have struck just a few hundred yards away.  The cats both leaped and scrambled to get under the porch.  I was just stunned from the event.  I still feel stunned more than an hour and a half later.  I'm not physically damaged or anything....the lightning certainly didn't physically touch me.  Maybe the sound waves did?  Or a rush of adrenalin?  Fuzzle finally came out from under the porch a half hour later.  Blue didn't come out until DH came home an hour later.  Fuzzle dropped a few handfuls of fur.  I think I won't brush my hair for a while.....

Speaking of hair, somebody wants to see what I look like with my new haircut.  DH took these photos this morning (pre-rainstorm). 

No major change outside of the loss of several inches of length.  It was getting too long and definitely too long for a humid summer.  It wouldn't hold a style for more than an hour at the old length.  I'm still challenged by humid days but I don't feel quite so much like a bedraggled woman when it is 85% humidity.

I warped my rigid heddle loom yesterday for the first time with 8/4 cotton rug warp.  I used a 10-dent reed.  It took me about 3 hours using the direct warp method.  It should take less time for the next warp since I understand the method a bit now.

I even wove.  This is not the result I expected but it is interesting just the same.   I am changing the heddle to a 12-dent  to see what kind of fabric that will produce with this fiber.   Results sometime  this week, I hope. 

The general contractor is meeting with us this afternoon and tomorrow is a combination of fun family stuff in the morning and a funeral in the late afternoon/early evening.   My cousins' mother passed away on Sunday.  I wasn't very close to her but I am to my cousins. 

I think cats can read...

Look what my twin, the Marvelously Evil Stacey, sent me!  She's so creative.   I love the stitch markers!  They are very cool (or should I say hot?) and quite seasonal with the "bite me!" and the SOS08 markers.  Here's the whole package with the very clever handmade card and hollyhock seeds.  Thank you, Stacey!  I know exactly where I'm going to start a few this week. 

I think Black Dot can read.  She was VERY interested in Stacey's stitchmarkers.  And here is what she was trying to do to the black marker..........

It was a lovely day on Monday.  We had very low humidity, blue skies, and temperatures right around 80 degrees (F).  I made a bunch of calls and emails for the basement-related reconstruction, read through the great studio re-organization contest entries, and then ran errands and did some shopping in Madison in the afternoon.  When I returned home, I wandered around the yard, camera in hand, primarily to properly blog my Stacey-gift.  The cats were following me and DH as we discussed the chain-sawing of several large trees that fell in the recent storms.  Blue and White Dot were wrestling, as they do regularly, and I was able to capture the fun with the video feature on the little camera.  Watch for the hanks of fur on White Dot's paws.  Fuzzle enters into the video near the end to check out what the boys were up to.

Please enter the CONTEST!

Saturday surprise

For all my list-making, Saturday had a surprise waiting for me.  Early in the morning, DH walked out to the shed to find something and spied a red cherry on the drive, quite a ways from our "orchard."  He came back in with the news that the cherries were ripe.  If I were Martha Stewart, "watch for ripe cherries" would have been on my list and one of my minions would have picked them.  However, I'm not Martha.  So, I grabbed a bowl, found some shoes, and heading out the door to our cherry trees.  We have one mature tree and two just-planted-this-Spring trees.  All three had cherries!  I came back into the house with a bit over two quarts of harvested cherries.  It is nice to get some before the birds get the majority of the fruit. 

I pitted the cherries and contemplated what to make with them.  I love a pie but I think that will have to wait a week or two until my nephews arrive to help eat it.  Then I ran across this recipe and decided it would be perfect for Sunday's breakfast.

The Cherry Clafoutis was very good.  I had not made it before, and, frankly, I've never made a custard before either, but this was very simple.  I used two cups of pitted cherries in place of the plums referenced in the recipe I linked to.  Otherwise, I followed the instructions exactly.  (I skipped the rum.)  I used pitted cherries.  I don't care if the pits do add flavor, I like my teeth!

Remember to enter the contest!

Catching up, organizing, and a contest!

This morning's sock status report:  The fixation footies came with me to Chicago and are a little bit bigger.  I picked up the gusset stitches this morning because the train didn't have the lighting I needed with my eyes and this part-black yarn.  I picked up those stitches even before my morning caffeine.  Crazy.  I know the footies are not SOS08 material but I just wanted to finish them.  I am l looking forward to returning to the Magic FG socks that DO qualify for SOS.  I'll be using Cookie's Short-Row tutorial for the Magic FG sock heels.  Thanks, Cookie.

Today is the first day of vacation for me and the DH.  We had planned to stay around home even before the recent basement-changing events and that's what we are doing, outside of visiting with family in Wisconsin.  I'm looking forward to doing some finishing up and re-organizing.  We've just been so busy lately that things have been overlooked, put-off, and piled up.  Especially with *stuff* formerly located in the basement, now located scattered around the first floor.  Now there this time to get everything in reasonable order and it will make me feel good.  I just need a little time to get a list together of what all needs to be done.  (Too busy and distracted lately, for sure, to not have a list!)   Here are a few of the fun things:

• Knit socks
• Weave!!  I've had the rigid heddle loom set-up (not warped, Stacey,) for the longest time and now I can get the first project going. 
• Try to get a few buttons on the blog and generally spruce it up.
• and if time presents itself, sew and dye some yarn. 

• Oh, YEAH, and have a contest!  I am probably going to pass the 300 posts mark during this vacation.  To celebrate that and solicit some ideas from everyone, here's my plan:

I have an opportunity to redo the area that I call my studio because of the recent basement event (ahem).  I would like you to comment with ideas for me to consider for the new and improved space.  I would like to read about how you organize your stash or craft area.  Comment with ideas you've found that you think are cool or interesting for organizing or decorating the place that you have designated for knitting, weaving, needlecrafts, and/or other creative endeavors.  Book and website references are very welcome, too.  Even if you don't have an idea, comment to be included in the contest.  Comment on this post or any more recent posts with an idea for me until Sunday, July 6th at midnight.  You can submit any number of ideas or just plain comments for the contest, each a separate comment.  I'll count up to three entries per person.  One prize per person.  I'll choose three winners randomly from the comments.  Thanks in advance for all your ideas.  I'm looking forward to reading them.

ETA:  You don't need an idea to comment for the contest!