Stress Relief Comes From the Repetitive Motion of Weaving

I'm no expert on tweed, but this Kathmandu Aran is delicious. 85% wool, 10% silk, 5% cashmere. Sorry Hila. (hee hee!) Green is such a tricky color to photograph, so take my word for it. The color is soft without being too minty or too sagey. I love it.


My future distowels! Again, the green doesn't look all that distinctive, and I am not sure about how they work together. (The green on the left is more sage/gray, the cones on the right are more mint).


After some tips from my pal Judy, I decided to have a go at the last bit of the gamp. The end is in sight!


It seems that way for my terrace, too. But of course, the end is never in sight for this project.


A week ago the drain outside (remember all the debris and equipment that was dumped for months on end?) finally flooded the terrace so badly it flooded right into our apartment. The floor is buckling along the whole length of our living room. They need to rip out our entire living room floor and glue on new wood, different floor from the other two rooms in our apartment, of course. And the broken window? Still not fixed.

We've called. We've been nice. We've been not nice. We have a number for a lawyer.

Have I mentioned that I'm pregnant and getting married in two months?

My Makeshift Terrace

Terrace issues? What terrace issues?


Embossed Leaves socks with Koigu in a dusty lavendar. I'll start them...after a nap...

Hooray!

A Need for Vacation

Knitting has been slow here at Annie's (more on that later). I still haven't finished that baby sweater but I am working on it. Sometimes. I was able to finish this little project for Project Knitaway. The challenge was to knit something using materials from the hardware store.


I feel kind of like a cop out for using fine cotton string, but atleast the outcome is something kind of different. I was inspired by the Paper Lantern pattern from AlterKnits by Leigh Radford. I modified the pattern using cotton string, size us6 needles and I kept everything garter stitch. I was worried that the light wouldn't show through enough so I added two sets of released yarnovers.

I really like the way it turned out! I could easily see making a string of these for my terrace.

My terrace. *sigh*

For those of you keeping up with the drama, our terrace is still not done. It has been 2 1/2 months and the workers have destroyed it. We have watched every other terrace be completed and ours was being used for storage.


A read through of our lease and we saw that we had to allow the landlord to perform maintenance on our terrace, but nowhere did it say that we pay rent for the landlord to use our space for storage. SO - a call to the project manager, he came and looked at the terrace and had the crap removed immediately. Yay! Our terrace now looks like this:


Well almost. As of today the shop vac and a couple of sanders were back. UGH. We are leaving for vacation on Monday and I can't wait. Hopefully the Fix-It Fairies will be by to not only finish the terrace, but to fix the window that the workers broke. (Hey, maybe they'll finish that baby sweater, too!)


I see an umbrella, sandy beach and blue water about 48 hours away. Om.....Om.....

A Bump in the Road

I don't feel like working on any of this stuff. Orangina, potentially too small. Trekking socks, not digging the pattern, think I need to go down in needle size or just plain knit. Calla Lily, I think I accidentally made the first sock too short in the foot. It was a different type of heel, so I am not sure how it is supposed to fit, and therefore, I may have cut it short. So do I make the second one short and leave it at that? Probably.

I have no idea what I want to knit. Thinking about starting some holiday gifts, though a couple of babies are coming very soon. Maybe it's this hot weather...


As for the terrace, I have no idea what is going on out there and I kinda like it that way!

My Yarn Garden Grows

One Calla Lily in full bloom!

Still growing...

*sigh*

I Want a Garden

Reverse-Bloom Flower Washcloths are done! These are a thank you gift for hunky boyfriend's mom and will go in the mail today. She would probably like the chenille version, but I don't have any cotton chenille. If she likes these, maybe I'll make more for Christmas... (I used Mission Falls cotton, us7 needles)


Still no flowers out on the terrace. Finally after 5 weeks of nothing, they chopped up part of the cement yesterday. Of course, they do this the day after we finally win the battle with the blocked door. Management told me that I could expect this project to be done in about a month from now, as long as it doesn't rain.

My Garden

Right now, my garden consists of this Reverse-Bloom Flower Washcloth from Weekend Knitting (Melanie Falick). Made from Mission Falls cotton in a deep pink color. Yep, that's my only garden because we are dealing with this:


Our building sent a note end of May saying that all terrace furniture must be off by May 31 so that terrace maitenance could take place. Over the summer. 6-8 weeks. More like 3-4 months. Or more. They even put a board over our door! With square footage being such a big deal in this city, we are very irritated that we are paying for space we can't use during the prime summer season. Yah yah yah, the terrace may be better after the work, but shouldn't we be compensated somewhere? Harumph. Not to mention that noise is unbelievably loud. It's a cheap building built in the late '60's and they didn't insulate the floors very well so basically you can hear a pen drop. (Seriously!) Imagine a jackhammer.

So why do we live here? Well, the terrace! It's nestled right in the trees and there is a water fountain below. It feels like a tree house. One more year or so and we hope to buy a place. With a huge *bleepin* terrace.