Wordless Saturday

Where are the brakes?

I had good intentions of posting on a weekly basis.

Then life happened.

Life has included planned doctor appointments, chauffeuring a Boy Scout selling popcorn around (Thanks, dh! You grabbed the chauffeur cap tonight), school, and general household stuff.

Household stuff is usually knitting around here, but this year it happens to have PUMPKINS in it as well. And not just any pumpkins, but rouge Rouge Vif d'Etampes. Rogue pumpkins, because they are the Wrong Color. They're supposed to be a brilliant red, but they are instead a rather wimpy salmon color - greatly improved to orange by digital photography. This 22-lb pumpkin has been reduced to 12 pints of pumpkin puree, and the seeds from it are drying over the stove, perhaps to be roasted tomorrow.

Today's mail was delightful. Three letters came from our insurance company, telling us coverage was extended for another 6 months (whee), something had been denied due to bad paperwork (bad, bad, paperwork), and that they had paid for a few medical services. Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing that needed my attention.

But then ... there was a BOX and a padded ENVELOPE! The box contained goodies from Elann for me and dd. I can now get my not-Niebling blocked! (Yup, I finished it. One month. And it's going to be purty.) The boxy you see is a very odd size, but it had to be in order to contain the blocking wires. And 21 skeins of yarn (for dd. She has big eyes when it comes to projects, and this one is going to be delicious when it's finished. But it's for her.) The envelope contained my new eyeglasses, which are very long overdue. For the past 2-3 years, my left lens has been clouded. Now I have a pair with unclouded lenses! I can hardly wait to sit and knit with clear vision.

Finished Object: Morning Glory Mittens (twined), by Beth Brown-Reinsel. A delightful knit, marred only by the knitter's failure to put the thumb for the medium mitten in the proper spot for the medium thumb. The failure was discovered while knitting the second mitten, and was rectified by practically knitting a 3rd mitten (since the mitten needed to be frogged to 2 rows past the cuff).

Current WIP: Delfts Blauw (in Cincinnati Bengals colors, which do happen to be rather popular this time of year, despite the team's abject performance on the football field which has led to a complete lack of any discussion of the team's post season prospects, and even their current prospects) by Nancy Marchant.

Bandit

I'm not talking about a stash bandit here. This is one of the things that happened to us over the summer. Meet Bandit, a 'small dog', who entered our family in June. Our resident dog (Terry) was not pleased to be sharing his house with another dog, and for a few days I wasn't sure the first week would end with two live dogs and one sane me. Forty-eight hours of total and utter pandemonium, lunging, and non-stop barking (on the part of the resident dog) ended with a truce, and I'm thinking before we get too far into winter that Bandit is going to be the next best thing to an electric blanket, so far as Terry is concerned.

Another thing that happened to us this summer was a grandmother giving four cans of paint to her granddaughter as a birthday present. And when life gives you paint cans (in your choice of color!), you have your mom paint. And so I painted. And painted. And painted. The other two walls are solid - teal and tangerine. No one has called the room 'boring and dull' lately. It's even clean, thanks to a week of post-painting destashing.

And a Sad Event

I learned that my Niebling isn't a Niebling. It's a Duchrow. That means that after I finish it, I should probably go knit a real Niebling.