It's Raining, It's Pouring!

Not quite the intro to August that I had hoped for but the break from watering constantly is welcome anyway. I’m sure it cuts down on the forest fire hazard too. It’s supposed to clear up and get warmer again over the next few days anyway which will be good for the garden after the deep watering. I’m sure I’ll be complaining of the heat again instead of how cold I am! I even had to put yet another blanket on the bed last night. I’m currently wearing 2 pairs of socks, long pants, and a fleece hoodie over a long-sleeved t-shirt but my hands are still cold. Time to get off my arse and into the attics again. That ought to warm me up.

Yesterday afternoon T-Man and I fixed the insulation and put up plastic sheeting in the two connecting north-side attic spaces. It’s all clean and empty so now I just have to dust off the stashes and put them back in. It was an awful job in an awkward space with the battery-powered stapler acting up. Once T lost his balance and fell back pulling off the whole plastic sheet that we’d just started putting up. He had a little temper tantrum all to himself and then we started again. One more space to go. It’s been a lot of extra work but at least I had everything sorted and binned properly last year when I did my stash inventories. The attics were clean and organised to begin with so it’s not like I had to do that part of the job as well. That was at least a full week per attic as opposed to just a few hours. And then I can get on with things.

One thing I want to get on with is I want to make a rag quilt for our bed and use up some fabrics from the stash. Having all the boxes out gives me a good chance to dig through them for potential quilt materials. Since I need such a big quilt (at least 90” X 90”) I might have to augment the fabrics by buying some. I don’t really have a lot that actually coordinates and I want to use a lot of hand-dyed just because I can. What I did find was two old flannelette sheets that were my mom’s to use for batting and an old cotton sheet in cream that can be overdyed. These were good quality at the time and are probably 30 years old! They’ll need to be washed before I start using them though because they smell musty and dusty. The benefit of the rag quilt is the speed at which it can be sewn together. I have infinite patience for a lot of things, but quilting isn’t one of them. Especially anything as large as this. Besides I’d like to sleep under this quilt this winter — not 5 years from now.

The only other projects I’m working on right now are the Purple Passion Socks, which kind of got lost in the piles of boxes in my studio, and the new Bronze Ribbon Scarf that I just started:


This is the really popular Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery that was in Knitty recently. I’m using Louet Euroflax fine/sport yarn in the colour Gypsy Bronze (2 plies grey, 1 ply dull red, one ply gold) and only 3 repeats of the pattern to make a narrower scarf. It’s still wider than my usual string-like scarves and hopefully will soften up and drape nicely after washing and drying. The pattern is quite easy to memorise and is very pretty in a geometric way. Me likey. But not the type of knitting I can do while reading. I also finished the A-Maizing Socks but I’ll post the details later.

Just in time for the beginning of the rains, T had to go clean out the downspouts and gutters that got clogged with stuff from the roofers. So did we get our new roof on at the right time or what? It was sunny and dry then but now the roof is getting a good testing out. No leaks. I would know because I’m right in under it shoveling stuff back in to the attic spaces. I can hear the rain pattering on the new shingles. Back to work.