Wildlife Wars

The netting barrier that we put up to foil the raccoons worked for only one night! By the next night they were back:

Curses!! They must have climbed over the railing from the top of the barbeque below. So now we are trying this:

The spigot has to be put inside the pot and this board on top. With the Auk looking very grumpily on guard! The board is too heavy for a raccoon to move. Every morning Thom has to remove it, fish out the bamboo spout and put the board aside. Every evening before bedtime, he does the reverse. Boring! But sadly necessary. You never know when those bandits are going to show up. They’ll leave things alone for weeks and then…bam! Could be worse I suppose. It could be deer! Or bears. And someone spotted a bobcat in nearby Burnaby recently. Gotta love living with the wildlife.

Anyway, in crafty news I’ve finished my Rainbow Dark Cardi and I love it! It’s still waiting on Thom to finish a toggle button before the big reveal. Meanwhile, here’s an illustration of what I was talking about with the cuffs. When casting on 4 stitches for the i-cord bind-off, I merely forgot to move those stitches back to the left-hand needle before beginning. So instead they were left to knit at the end instead:

So I bound them off and tucked them underneath the beginning. It actually looks quite nice I think:

Of course I had to deliberately make the same mistake on the second cuff! It took less yarn than I thought to make this sweater so now I have 400 metres of this yarn left. And I don’t want to waste all that prep and spinning! I think I know what I can do with it but I need to spin some contrasting yarn first to have enough for my plan. More on that later.

But first, I started something else. After my Buonasera Tunic (which showed up prominently in the photo of the Annual Woolie Wash from the other day) I still had plenty of that navy blue Italian noil silk left on the cone. I also had this pattern:

This is the Ophicleide Cardigan by Kamicha. She has sadly discontinued her free pattern though I luckily snagged it before she did. I’m getting a little larger gauge but to compensate I’m making a size smaller (91 cm). Not sure how long I’ll make it but I kind of like the little puff sleeves. Do I have a fondness for these top-down open-front cardigans lately or what? I spent some time re-charting the yoke pattern for myself because I found the original kind of hard to decipher from my printout. Her symbols are somewhat unfamiliar and the image isn’t high enough resolution to see well. It all became much clearer in my mind as I worked it out. I also tend to use a cable needle for the crosses even when everyone else is trying to avoid them. I’m more proficient and actually faster with a cable needle than without.

Naturally I had to look up the unfamiliar title: Ophicleide (pronounced something like “offa-clyde”) and found that it’s an antique brass instrument, the successor of the serpent and the ancestor of the tuba and euphonium. Lovely bass tones! I’m sure the designer was inspired by the brass-coloured yarn she chose for her sweater. Mine is not going to evoke the same musical romance but never mind.

In weaving news, I’ve wound 3/4 of the warp for the waffle weave towels. I’m not working very quickly obviously but progress is being made which is good. Some of the skills are starting to come back to me after such a long time/no weave! The last thing I did was my bedroom curtains back in 2012 and that was the first woven project in many years. I’ve been telling everyone that I will weave more but still got sidetracked with other things. I’m trying to rectify that by starting with one little project. Hopefully more will follow.

More soonest! I’m off to go wind the last part of the warp.

And New Errors Created

“Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.” - William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Apparently I can’t count to 5. I thought I had all the 8 Hearts knitted yesterday and could go on to stuffing them preparatory to fulling the lot today. Unfortunately I managed to make 3 of them smaller than they should be by leaving out 2 rows of the centre section. Pitooey. Now I have to keep knitting for awhile longer. It might help if I actually paid attention to what I was knitting. Maybe.

While I was screwing up my hearts, I was also screwing up my guild’s website. I somehow managed to break the file uploading feature on it a couple of months ago and our admin couldn’t fix it. Finally my friend, neighbour, fellow Raveler and Computer Wiz Extraordinaire Lauren had time to check it out. She fixed it within 5 minutes so I cheerfully went home and uploaded another file to test. All was fine. Then yesterday I started to upload another file and poof! Messed it all up again. A whimpering email to Lauren and she fixed it yet again. At least now we know what the problem is so hopefully we can do something about it. Meanwhile I’m not touching it! I think I have whatever is the opposite to the Midas Touch with that website. (Leaden Touch?) I did warn the guild I know just enough to be dangerous. You can bet we’ll be discussing this at the executive meeting this evening.

So back to the 8 Hearts for a moment. I’ve decided how to bead it now. It came to me when I was going back to sleep last night after getting up for a potty break. Amazing how the best ideas come when you’re almost asleep but not quite! It entails stringing and some 2-needle couching and hopefully will go relatively quickly when I get to it. I still have 2.5 hearts left to re-knit. And I’ve been very good and not even touched any other knitting. Even though the Unmentionables are yelling at me, the Hepburn Cardi is whining in its basket and the Maizy socks that I started (when I shouldn’t have) are patiently waiting to come with me to the meeting tonight. They know they’re the only portable project at the moment so they’re the obvious choice for travel knitting.

BTW I need a name for those socks. How about the A-Maizing Socks? The pattern I started with (and sized down slightly) is the Ridges & Ribs Socks by Dave of Criminyjickets. I’m liking how it looks:


Though there’s only an inch of one sock so far since I’m not allowed to work on it until the hearts are done. Or redone. It’s not a hard pattern and I like the firm twisted single rib that keeps a multicoloured yarn from being boring. It’s formed by a double-yarn-over knit st that then has one loop dropped and the remaining elongated st slipped as if to knit for 3 rows which twists it nicely. The Maizy yarn is a bit squeaky and splitty to knit with but the resulting texture is soft and stretchy. It’s going ok as long as I pay a bit of attention so that I don’t miss a ply with my needle and remember to slip k-wise which is hard for some reason. Some people have said they don’t like corn fibre because of the alleged plastic-y feel (which to me feels more like scrooped silk) but I don’t find it objectionable. Then again I can’t dye it with anything I have available to me so I’d better like the colour the way it is. No do-overs there.

I’ll leave you with a photo of my most not-favourite wild animal visitor:


Don’t be fooled by that cute face and fuzzy tail! This is one of the Evil Rodents who give me no end of grief. Notice how he/she is under my bird feeder eating the dropped seeds that might otherwise have gone to the sparrows or juncos. One has even managed to climb that slippery metal pole and leave bite marks in my plastic feeder too. We coated the pole with hot pepper sauce which foiled them for awhile until it rained and washed it off. Luckily most of the squirrels can’t or won’t climb the pole. Just my walnut and hazelnut trees (where they eat all the nuts), my house (where they tried to make a nest under the eves), my garage (easier access to the walnut tree), — you see where this is going. Anybody got a way to sue squirrels for ruined outdoor Christmas lights? They thought they were eating my rhododendron buds but got a bit of a surprise. Didn’t stop them from making mincemeat out of the lights first though. Slow learners? Too bad they were LCD lights and the current wasn’t enough to zap them! Grumble. Grumble.

Random Wednesday

You know those people who have certain days for certain things on their blog? Well I’m not one of them because I just can’t be that organised. And then there’s the ones who can keep on topic. Not me. I’m all over the map with whatever interests me at the moment. I don’t even always have photos to get your attention. Nevertheless there must be a few of you who faithfully slog through my ramblings (flittings?), probably skipping merrily over the boring bits. You don’t comment much but I know you’re out there because I get a weekly traffic report from Sitemeter! Handy that.

So have you seen the photos on Flickr from Yarn Harlot’s Inexplicable Knitter Behaviour Toronto photo-scavenger hunt? Some of them are very good and some are amusing. I watched all of them as a slide show while starting on the second leg of the Unmentionables. Here’s the first leg and why I love the Denise needle set:

I just popped on a joining piece and another cable and slid the stitches on hold over. Then stuck stoppers on the ends and put the tips back on the original cable all ready to start the second leg. I put the crotch stitches on its own holder. Easy-peasy.

No other knitting has gotten done recently. I was too busy washing 4 loads of laundry, cooking a huge pot of soup, changing the bed sheets and chopping that darned rhubarb. I’m still not down to the bottom of the now-yellow-blotched bucket. (Rhubarb stains plastic. Who knew? You should see my vinyl gloves too. Makes me glad I'm wearing them.) It’s much more work than I expected though it’s easier to chop than the madder was. There seems to be more of it somehow even though it filled the same bucket. It might have helped if I hadn’t already chopped all the veggies and ham for the soup pot. My neck with it’s degenerative disks doesn’t allow too much pressing downward without lots of breaks in between sessions. I certainly don’t want to lose feeling in another finger (one is too many already) so I’m rather careful about this.

You’d think I’d be tempted to work on the Circus Blanket again with the lovely early morning sun shining on it. But no. Maybe later today.

The sun coming in does make me inordinately happy all the same. I mostly don’t mind the rain and I have to say the giant snowflakes and hail and thunder and lightning we’ve had recently were kind of exciting in their own way. But you can’t beat early spring sunshine for cheerfulness.

Question to Ponder:

Why does it creep me out to hear folks refer to their pet dog or cat as if they were a child? Saying “you’re just Momma’s baby girl” in a high squeaky voice to a dog is icky, people. And what’s worse is when they carry them around in snugglies and push them in strollers and let them sleep in their bed with them under the covers. Ewww. There are so many neglected and abused children in this world. Why are there more pampered pets than loved and cared for children? Is it because pets are always dependant on you and love you anyway, no matter what? Whereas children grow up and have their own lives and forget to call you unless they want something. But that’s the whole point of parenting, to help a human become an independent responsible adult. And then there’s all the folks in the world who don’t have adequate food when most of our pet animals are eating very well indeed.

Don’t get me wrong — I love animals. Even ones that other people don’t like, such as snakes and lizards and spiders and crows. And I’m not denigrating pets. I have had lots of them in my life (along with the kids). Everything from fish and a turtle to rats and angora rabbits and right now it’s the geriatric mom and daughter cats. And though they sleep on my bed in the daytime, they have their own bed at night downstairs with the door shut. I like my privacy and only share my bed with my spouse, thankyouverymuch. Pets are companions and entertainment but they’re not child-substitutes. Are they going to look after you when you’re old and infirm? Of course not. You’re going to look after them when they’re old. And I’d love to know what happens to all those plastic bags of crap in the landfill. At least they could use biodegradable bags. Now all you pet lovers are going to send me hate messages, aren’t you? G’wan, I can take it.

This animal is not a pet but a pest. Can you tell who visited my water garden again this morning? Across the deck:

And down the stairs. At least he (or she?) didn’t knock the spout and The Auk into the water this time. How come I never get to catch the sneaky critter in the act? Just the evidence after the fact.