computer

My second oldest decided to build a computer.

He ordered all the parts (including the operating system) online. I was amazed at how quickly he was able to assemble it. He uses a tv set for the monitor.

November

just a few miscellaneous thoughts....

The garden did really well this year.  It took a while, but the peppers and broccoli finally started bearing.  I canned enough cucumber pickles to last a long time and also quite a bit of tomato sauce.  (The tomatoes won the battle over the cucumbers for control of the garden.  It was short lived though since I think we've had a light frost already.)  Next year I'll plant a different type of tomatoes.  These bore well and produced quite a bit of large fruit.  But they weren't as tasty.

I'm not doing Nerd Wars this time.  I figured that there was no way I'd have time to do a Nerd Wars that ended in December.  The last time I did one ending in December, I didn't feel like doing any knitting or crocheting for a month or two.

I've discovered that I really like geometric designs.  I'm still working on plans for a yoked sweater in mosaic knitting and decided to make a snowflake hat to see how it would turn out.  After a few tweaks, it turned out really well.  However, it doesn't look like snowflakes at all -- just diamonds and triangles.  (I'll post a pic when the hat is finished.)

And, here's the pic (a couple weeks later):



It's a little on the short side, so I'll be adding a misc design between the brim and the diamond pattern.

forgot to add....
In going through some old boxes, I found waterbed sheets from when the kids all had waterbeds.  I'm hoping to use them in making the first quilt I've ever attempted.  (I have sewn a backing on an old quilt before.)  The pattern is the upcoming one with the quiltvillechat Yahoo group.

August

My garden is doing really well -- at least as far as the tomatoes and cucumbers are concerned. They're fighting each other over control of the middle of the garden area. Luckily the peppers and broccoli are a bit away from the center area. The peppers aren't bearing much.  It's been relatively cool here.  So, maybe that's why the peppers aren't doing that well.  I've been able to have the windows open for days at a time this summer -- which is very unusual for this part of the country.


It looks as if we'll have some tomatoes in a few days. We're already getting a lot of cucumbers. I pickled and canned 14 pounds of them a couple days ago. (I'd never canned pickles before.)

And, we have a few ripe peaches:

I've been doing some mosaic knitting recently. My latest is a hat:

I'm using the hat as a swatch to try out a couple mosaic patterns in hopes of eventually designing a mosaic pullover sweater (for the next round of Nerd Wars on Ravelry).

May

After several almost cold days, it's warmed up with a vengeance.  Chicago had its first 90 degree day of the year this year.  We didn't get quite that high.

Yesterday, we got some tomatoes, broccoli  and a pepper plant.  It was too hot to plant them.  So, I planted them this morning.  For tomatoes, I looked for "short time to harvest" and found Celebrity and Parks Whopper -- both 65 days -- which may mean nothing here.  We got two of each, but a Celebrity had two plants in one pot.  So, there are now 3 Celebrities. I wasn't planning on getting any broccoli since they did so badly last year, but I couldn't resist the name Packman.  (We have a Ms PacMan in the basement and still enjoy playing it.)  With the newest pepper plant, we now have one each of Jalapeno, Habanero, and Giant Marconi.  (The last one is for me.)  The cucumbers are Boston Pickling.

I changed things around a little.  The cucumbers are where the tomatoes were last year.  The tomatoes are where the broccoli was last year.  And, the broccoli is where the Brussels sprouts were last year.




The lilac bushed are blooming (foreground).  And, the strawberry plants are in the right foreground.  I'll have to move them so they'll get water when I water the garden.  The plastic jugs have lilacs and Filbert nut trees from Arbor Day.  I'll move them from the garden when they get bigger.  That area of the garden also has some asparagus.  None of it is edible, but, at least, it came up.

We also took off about 5" of soil in the garden, put it where we're still trying to get grass to grow, and then added about 6 cu ft of peat moss to the garden.

Along with the fruit cocktail trees (which we've moved to their permanent locations -- one in front of the house, the other in back near the raspberry bush), we got some ground cherry and huckleberry seeds.  They're just in the seedling stage now.  I have no idea what they'll turn out like, buy my DH said his parents used to grow them.  They had a really big Iowa-style garden.  (It was just natural that they would.  They lived in Iowa.)

In knitting news, the last Nerd Wars tournament (Ravelry) has ended, and I didn't suffer from burn out like in the previous tournaments.  I've even started planning a couple of summer pullovers in Knit Picks CotLin.  Sign-ups for the next tournament start today.  (It's 3 months of tournament then 1 month off.)

first 80 degree day of the year

Maybe spring is finally here.  Today, I bought a jalapeno pepper plant, a giant Marconi one, and some Quinalt strawberry plants.  I planted the strawberries in a hanging basket.  Hopefully, that will keep the squirrels and chipmunks from eating them.  Of course, it does make it easier for the birds.



My fruit cocktail trees arrived in the mail a couple days ago.  They don't look like much.  Today, I replanted them, one in the front yard and the other in the back.  I have no idea how long it will be before they start producing the promised peaches, apricots, plums, and nectarines.

April

I thought I might be able to start working in the garden today. (It is spring.) But, I think I'll wait. It was snowing this morning. Spring is on its way, though. The daffodils are up (thought not ready to bloom yet).

I bought a couple multi-trees this spring -- mail order. They're part apricot, plum, nectarine, and peach -- all grafted onto the same tree trunk. It will be a while before they start bearing.  I love fresh vegetables and fruit.  They're so much tastier than store bought.  I hope my apple tree and peach tree do something this year and the tomatoes that I'm planning on planting will do better than last year.  Last year was pretty much a disaster for the garden.

After knitting mosaic stitch for the baby bonnet (in the last post - February), I've been wanting to knit something else using the same technique.

 

So, I designed this dishcloth -- Mosaic Diamonds --. Mosaic knitting is fun. One knits only one color at a time -- with a lot of slipped sts.  It gives some interesting looks.  It's stretchier than stranded knitting.

We all got new smart phones about a week and a half ago.  It was great of Sprint to have an after-hours class to teach us how to use the phones.  (One of the questions I asked in the class was how to answer the phone.  I found out what I was doing wrong.   lol   New technology makes some things easier and some harder.)

February

We had the first major snow of the season a couple of days ago. Here's a view of our back deck.



I've signed up for Nerd Wars on Ravelry again. The first month of the current tournament ends today. It's nice to knit or crochet some things that I probably wouldn't even have looked at if it weren't for the tournament. Here's a baby bonnet that I probably wouldn't have picked out if it weren't for the tournament. It's the first time I've done mosaic knitting. It took a while to figure out. But, after that it was really fun!



And, I've signed up to be the team blogger -- as if I ever was able to keep this blog up to date. lol

October

We had 213 Trick-or-Treaters come by the house Sunday afternoon -- the official time and day for Trick-or-Treating here.  That was less than the year before -- perhaps because the Bears were playing during the first hour of Trick-or-Treating??

The leaves have fallen from the trees.  And, we're waiting for the city to pick them up.



We had to move the leaves from one side of the driveway to the other yesterday.  The mailman wouldn't deliver mail with them so close to the mailbox that she couldn't put mail in the mailbox without getting out of the truck.  So, we were without mail for a couple days.  Yesterday, I spent an hour moving leaves from one side of the driveway to the another.  Then, after my DH got home from work, he spent 2 hours doing the same.  And, we got some mail today -- all junk mail.

What's almost worse is that most of the leaves weren't from our trees.  They were from our neighbors'.  We live on a circle.  So, one neighbor would move leaves from in front of his/her mailbox to the next one over and the next one would do the same.  If we had figured it out beforehand, we could have been raking leaves all along to the other side of the driveway instead of doing it all at the same time.  The city is also supposed to be picking up the leaves.  But, so far, they haven't been by yet.



And, of course, the Post Office didn't deliver something that had been overnighted to us on Monday.  We have to go to the Post Office to pick it up.

September

September is almost over, and I've been trying to post at least once per month...

The garden was a big disappointment this year.  I think the main problem was that the compost added at the beginning of the springs wasn't fully composted.  (I wasn't the one who did the composting.)  So, this fall I'm planning on adding extra leaves to the soil. Leaves tend to soften the soil. And, maybe if I add enough, I'll be able to grow some root crops.

I'm still working on dishcloths.  Here's my newest one, in Peaches & Creme Potpourri:


It's a clone of my sandbar pattern -- to make a pattern that will look better as a scarf and/or hat. Plus, the back looks almost as nice as the front -- which is good for a scarf.

August

This year has not been good for the garden.  We didn't get as many peas or pole beans as last year.  However, we are getting more tomatoes.  Homegrown tomatoes are so much better than anything one can get in the store.  The broccoli is starting to bear again.  So, maybe the fall will be better for broccoli than the spring was.  (It certainly can't be worse.)

We ended up getting only 2 peaches from our peach tree and zero apples from the apple tree.  But, as they are fond of saying here "wait till next year" -- though that applies more to baseball than crops.

I've signed up for one of Monika Eckert's mystery patterns.  This one is socks.  It's been quite a while since I've knit any socks.  I'm looking forward to it.  Plus, I've always enjoyed her patterns.  Otherwise, I've been keeping busy knitting scarf sets and also dishcloths -- among other things.

Woodstock, Illinois

We drove out to Woodstock yesterday.  We'd been there once before, but this time we brought a map.  We also watched the movie "Groundhog Day" the day before.  Woodstock was where that movie was filmed.  (And, we're glad we didn't make a special trip out to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. We would have been very disappointed that it didn't look like the movie.)



Here's where Phil stepped before stepping into the water (several days in a row).



Here's where the bed and breakfast that his character spent the night in. There are plaques all around the town telling what part that particular building played in the movie.

 
And, finally, since I was looking up info on the internet, I came across information about a shoe tree just a few miles from town.  We, of course, had to drive past it.

2013 calendar

a pleasant surprise....  One of my crochet patterns, a pansy motif, was chosen to be in a 2013 day-by-day crochet calendar (Accord Publishing, Ripley Designs).  And one of my knit patterns, cornstalk socks, was chosen to be in a 2013 day-by-day knitting calendar (same company).  :D

June

The garden is really growing but isn't producing much.   The broccoli has stopped producing for the summer.  The weather is just too hot now for it to.  But, I have hopes for more broccoli this fall.  One of the pepper plants has started producing.  But, neither the jalapeño or bell peppers have started to do anything yet.  The tomatoes are starting to remind me of a horror movie.  (They're really taking over.)  But, they don't have any tomatoes on them yet.  However, we have gotten some peas!  (I think the wrong kind of fertilizer was used -- one for vegetative growth instead of flower production.  I've planted things just as close in previous years.  And while I did have plants growing over each other, they at least did produce.  But, maybe it's just too early to expect anything yet.)




(We have a few peaches on the peach tree, but there aren't any apples on the apple tree.)

I've been knitting some dishcloths for a church bazaar this fall.  I wasn't sure about selling dishcloths from patterns available on the web.  So, I made up a couple patterns of my own.
The first is an acorn motif.  It turned out reversible with acorns on both sides.



The second is a wavy one that looks like sandbars to me:

May

The garden is doing well. At the end of last year, I had decided that I wasn't going to plant cucumbers ever again. (They more or less took over the garden plus the area surrounding the garden.)  But, one of the stores we went to was selling single cucumber plants.  So, I bought one, and we'll see what happens.

The broccoli is now bearing.  There's nothing like broccoli straight from the garden.  None of the other plants have started to bear yet.  The tomato plants are Rutger's, Early Girl, and Park's Whopper.  The cucumber is Boston.  The peppers are jalapeno, habanero, red salsa, and Early Bell.  There are also some Brussel sprouts, pole beans, and peas.  I still haven't been able to grow radishes here.  I planted some asparagus yesterday.  We'll have to see if it does anything.  (I've planted asparagus every year since we moved here and still have no asparagus plants growing.)

The peach tree has some peaches on it.  (I was worried that a frost after it blossomed might kill the fruit.)  We haven't been able to find any apples on our apple tree -- even though it bloomed.


We did a little sightseeing on Sunday.  Here is a picture of the outside of McDonald's #1 (in Des Plaines).  It's the first McDonald's opened by Ray Kroc.  (It wasn't open for visitors.)  We also went to Woodstock (where the film Groundhog Day was shot).  We'll have to watch the film again.  Nothing looked that familiar.
 
For Mother's Day, we went to the Volo Car Museum -- and enjoyed it immensely.  There's a lot there -- old cars, cars owned by celebrities, and cars used in movies.

April

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. ....

Here are a couple of pictures of the yard.  Here's the garden with wire fencing to hold up pole beans and peas.  This year I managed to find some broccoli!  Since the picture was taken, I've also planted a Rutger's tomato plant and an Early Girl tomato plant.  (Both have wire cages to hold them up.)  I've also planted a couple jalapeño pepper plants, a habanero pepper plant, a salsa pepper plant, and a regular bell pepper plant.... and also some Brussel sprouts.  (The jugs at the back of the garden are to protect a couple baby filbert nut trees from the squirrels and chipmunks.)  I haven't found any tabasco pepper plants.  The one we had last year produced fruit so hot that even my DH had trouble eating one.

We now have a couple lilac bushes behind the house as well plus some other assorted greenery.


Both the peach tree and the apple tree bloomed this year. This is the apple tree. So, hopefully, we'll get some apples this year.
 
And, we've finally taken down the evergreen at the corner of the house. Every time there was a heavy snow, it toppled over (twice) or had a long branch lean down under the weight of the snow (this past winter).

Nerd Wars - October

I'm officially participating in Nerd Wars 3. Here's my favorite project so far, a Spock hat:



It's modeled by my DS2. And, you may notice that my son has his left eyebrow raised -- just as Spock often did.  The black hat itself is the "hairline".

edited to add:  The hat was a hit as my DS2 helped hand out Halloween candy.  Several kids commented on the great werewolf ears.

I've also designed and knit a dishcloth representing a trans warp human, knit a Guinan hat (which I've donated as a chemo hat), and knit a 47"-long scarf.  I'm also almost finished with a tank top, B-licious.  Then all that's left to do is a colorwork project -- a hat and mittens to donate to a local school.



(The dishcloth may look more like a possum than a trans warp human.)

fall trees

The street in front of the house looks particularly nice this fall. And so, I decided to share a picture of it. (Also, I've posted so many pics of snow around the house that I thought it might be good to post a pic with no snow.)

We're getting our basement finished. Here's a picture of the basement with some of the framing done. And, you'll notice that's it pretty much empty except for the pool table that came with the house -- and for the part in the shadows that won't be refinished. They started work on Friday, September 30th. The first day was just to mark where walls would be and to start building the soffits. This picture is after they finished work on the next Monday. You can see where the walls will be. (More pics of the construction are here.)

Four socks

I'm happy.  I've accomplished one of the goals I had for the year -- to design 4 socks, one for each season. And, it turned out that all I had to do to get the last of the four done was to wait until it was almost autumn. The first of these is a pair of Christmas socks. They feature fir trees and icicles/sleigh bells and candy canes.  I made it for my DH as a Christmas present.

The hardest part of the socks was figuring out a way to get candy canes that looked halfway nice. I redid the back a few times until deciding to try various ideas out on a dishcloth. Here's the dishcloth:

The spring and summer socks came along pretty quickly. Here are the spring socks (with snowdrops on the front and a tulip cable on the back):

Here are the summer socks (with a rose trellis on front and an iris cable in back);

The hardest one was fall. I tried acorns, oak trees, sheaves of grain. But, they just didn't look right. Finally, I tried cornstalks, as they would look after the first frost.  (The idea for the picot cuff came from a lady from the Lilac Cottage knitting group.)

All the socks are toe up. Three have a yo-yo heel, and the fourth a Widdershins heel.

After sitting out the previous edition of Nerd Wars on Ravelry, I've decided to get involved again in the competition (which starts this next month).  I'm hoping to be on Team Enterprise again.

Finally, I'm still inundated with cucumbers from the garden.  I tried making bread rolls using chopped cucumbers and green onions.  My DH liked them, but I didn't.  The best I've managed to do is pickle them.

August garden

I think I shouldn't have fertilized the garden.  :)

The plants are taking over the yard.  The cucumber plants, which were so small a month ago, are now growing over the short wall onto the path and even over the tomato plants.  The tomato plants, which were supposed to be bush tomatoes, are growing over the side of the taller wall and onto the lawn -- until I move the vines back to the top of the wall.

I'm glad that I got tomato plants with a shorter yield time than last year.  We've already harvested about 20 nice large tomatoes -- which I've made tomato sauce from.  I added some giant marconi (sweet) peppers from the garden to the sauce -- and don't think I'll need to add much in the way of other seasonings.  The sauce is delicious!

I have no idea where the sweet potatoes are.  (They're covered by cucumber vines.)  But, the cucumber plants have yielded some nice, large, tasty cucumbers.  And, we've also been able to harvest some habanero and jalapeno peppers.  Plus, I evidently didn't do a good job cleaning the garden last year.  I've also been able to harvest some volunteer cherry tomatoes.

The peaches look ready to harvest.  :)  They've small.  But, the tree is still small.  I'm looking forward to seeing just how good those peaches taste.

wind storm

We had a big wind storm Monday morning. I hadn't heard or seen the wind blow so strongly since when I lived in Colorado. The storm lasted less than half an hour but did a lot of damage.

The wind blew over the top of one of our trees, a shagbark hickory. Luckily, the top of the tree blew away from the house -- damaging only another smaller tree.

We, along with most of the county, were without power all day Monday. Luckily, power was restored to our part of the neighborhood Tuesday morning. It was nice to have air conditioning again! Thankfully, a neighbor had a generator which we used a outlet from to keep our refrigerator going.

My DD had her own experience with the storm. She had just boarded a train to travel to work in Chicago when the storm hit. The wind shook the train back and forth while it was still in the station. Then they started their journey. A large tree fell on the tracks. The engineer put on the brakes to stop the train just in time. However, because of safety regulations, the train was limited to a speed of 10 mph for its entire trip to Chicago. She got to work about 5 1/2 hours late.