Hello everyone! I’d like to introduce you to Lucille:

Lucille says she is very happy to know you. Lucille has been an invaluable member of our family since we built our house in 1999. Lucille is awesome. She rocks. And she never leaves; no matter what song you get stuck in your head when you’re painting with her. We have even loaned Lucille out from time to time and everyone loves her. Lucille is from the house of Corona and we also have her little sister too, Lucille Junior.

Croppy asked if I had really painted my sample paints into those nice neat squares. I really did, but not all alone. Lucille Junior helped me with those. She makes following lines a breeze. Lucille is also the reason that when I paint near the ceiling and around doors and windows, I don’t have to tape. She makes cutting in a breeze. Using her to paint is way neater than using tape. (I am using tape to bisect the room, however, but I’m starting to wish I had just used Lucille as when I pull off the tape a blue mark is left behind plus you can feel a “seam.”)

(The above photo show the new green color on top. Today I painted the Rhubarb primer and tomorrow I hope to get 2 coats of of paint up so IHA can start the floor this weekend. Projects always take longer than you think they will, but we have to get Agent K back to her room asap so she can get a good night’s sleep.)

You know, I almost forgot about how Lucille got her name. If anyone out there also has children born in the 1990s you will remember the Winnie the Pooh TV series and all the videos that come along with that? Does anyone remember the one where Gopher got a new tool? I found this quote in Wikiquote:

• Pooh: This is your package, Gopher?
  Gopher: You bet your windbreaker, Pooh! Got it from “Tools-R-Us!” Gotta unwrap them just slow! (unwraps gift) Lucille! (from Shovel, Shovel, Toil and Trouble)
• Piglet: That’s great, Gopher, but shouldn’t you be doing something with Lucille, like, maybe, dig?
  Gopher: Why, Piglet! You’re 600% right! (from Shovel, Shovel, Toil and Trouble)

Gopher’s new tool was a shovel that he used to dig holes all over the One Hundred Acre Wood and he got a bit carried way as it was (which I think was the moral of the show – too much of a good thing is really not necessarily good.) In our case though, with our Lucille, you can just never get enough of her. If you have any painting coming up, I’d highly recommend that you also get a “Lucille.” (And don’t forget her grooming tool too – that his how she has stayed so neat and trim after all these painting jobs!)

We’ve been promising Agent K a room makeover for a few years now. I can’t remember when we started telling her we would do it, but it really has been for a while and she pretty much reminds us everyday if not twice a day so it is not like we can say we forgot or anything. When we built our house she was 5 so she had a fairy theme that looked like this:

It was very cute, but she did not stay 5 or even 6 for very long. We managed to hang onto the fairies though for a few more years and then last year, I took down most of the fairies and bought these circle things:

I do not recommend these circle things as they do not really stick very well, but maybe others have had better luck. For us, the edges curl and then they fall off. Anyway, her room really needs a fresh coat of paint and a new floor so we are going to go for it!

These are the colors we chose:

They even match her existing bedding and curtains. The red is called Rhubarb and it is going to go on the bottom. The green is called Potpourri Green and it will go on above the Rhubarb. The blue is called Passion Blue and it is going to be an accent color. I’m not sure if it will be a stripe or some other type of painted shapes. That inspiration hasn’t come yet. I’m also going to paint her bedframe and some other stuff with the Passion Blue. (Of course if we were just painting one light color like the green we could have gotten away with buying 2 gallons total, but instead we had to buy a gallon of deep base primer, a gallon of  Rhubarb, a gallon of Potpourri Green, a quart of Passion Blue in eggshell for the wall accents and a quart of Passion Blue in gloss for her bed frame.)

Oh and also, IHA is going to install a new floor. Her carpet has a couple holes from when she tried to blow dry her bathing suit and it is really buckled around the edges. Don’t ask me how a carpet can expand like that, but hers really seems to have grown. Very odd and it is starting to happen with some of our other carpets too. Neither IHA or I grew up in houses with wall to wall carpets so we don’t know about this expanding carpet phenomenon nor what to do about it, but in this case, we are just going to replace it.

I wonder how long this is all going to take…

It is very interesting, now that the agents like to take off with my camera, to see what photos I’m going to be uploading at the end of an event. In a way it is sort of cool because they take pictures of things I wouldn’t typically photograph myself. Sometimes they are very silly as Agent K likes to photodocument her feet extensively and sometimes they are very artsy like the dappled sun coming through the window on the Thanksgiving pies

or a red bowl of green gherkins

I think I have about 26 photos of Thanksgiving pie! I also have a whole series of them trying to get Grandma’s photo. Oh they try so hard, but she is a tricky one!

Overall, we had a very nice holiday. LFG and her husband were at their inlaws and I’m always a bit edgy when I have to holiday without her. For the last few Thanksgivings, our major blessing has been to have our dad with us. This year we were doubly blessed that both Mom and Dad were with us and in good health and spirits; for that I am ever so thankful.

This morning I woke with the start of a killer headache. I poured my coffee and walked over to my windows to zone out a bit while I woke up. As I started sipping, I noticed a grey thing down in the bushes. Without my glasses, it was just a big grey oval. Was it a bee’s nest? Why had I never noticed that? Was is a wicked fat squirrel? No, it is just too still. Off I went to find my binoculars. Guess what it was?

A Barred Owl! He (she?) was so cute. He was there for a couple hours after I first noticed him. All the agents got to see him (except IHA, he was at work). He would look this way and that and seemed to snooze from time to time. I sat with him for a long time while I was wishing my headache away.

Which brings me to tell you about my horrible night of sleep due to my horrible fight with my laundry. I think I am allergic to Tide with Fabreze. It has been going on for a few weeks now. It took me a while to realize what it was (and I’m still not 100% sure). I have to buy HE detergent and it isn’t always easy to find one that I want. My favorite is All Free and Clear HE but Walmart just stopped selling it and I can’t find it anywhere else so I have been using other things and I guess I got careless one day and Tide with Fabreze HE came home with me. Anyway whomever I see regularly knows that lately all I talk about is my laundry and how many times I have washed my sheets and clothes to try to get rid of the Tide! I tried Method Free and Clear HE and it didn’t seem to help too much so now I have moved on. I located some Seventh Generation Free and Clear HE at Walgreens so I think if I still have an allergic reaction after that, then I am hopeless. Does anyone happen to know a store that still carries All Free and Clear HE?

Today was a sort of up and down day with the girls (as always), but here is a moment in time when they were caught being good:

Well, I guess there is no time for a knitterly update now. I guess that will once again have to wait for another day.

I hope you all had nice Thanksgivings and the rest of your weekends are relaxing and full of crafting and shopping and whatever makes you happy. G’night:)

We made some progress last week in our attempt to have some afternoon sunshine at our house.  We had some more trees cut. Too bad we can’t figure out what to do about all those clouds!

Here is a before photo from the spring:

Here is an interim photo that shows some trees removed (also from the spring):

At the beginning of the school year, the trees had filled in so much over the summer, we couldn’t even see the girls standing out at the end of the driveway waiting for the bus!

Here is the photo from today:

We still have a few rather large Hemlocks left, but the really big scary hollow ones are gone.   The ones that you see in the middle will still block some afternoon sun, but they disguise a rather ugly telephone pole that sports a rather unattractive transformer so they have to stay.  I know many people are sad when trees are cut, but please remember that we still have plenty and the ones we cut were not very healthy and we needed more air circulation around our home as it is very prone to moss and mildew.  The little agents took it rather hard at first, but they discovered that they now have a whole new area in which to play and they have already built a fort out of leaves, branches, and moss.

I also had a great shot of them “caught being good” today but Agent K said that she didn’t want to be on my blog without her hair brushed so I will just have to tell you that they played a game of monopoly together while I mixed dyes and IHA worked.  It mostly went well though they were a little wild toward the end.

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend and I hope to have a knitting update soon!

Ok, well, we’ve been back for a few days, but you know, things happen like mountainous amounts of homework and stuff. The amount of homework these three agents have is just incredible. How many more years until they are out of school?

We really did go to Virginia though and while there we visited D.C. I even have a family photo to prove it.

I have a few more pictures of our trip in Flickr if you would like to see them. We stayed with Dave’s Aunt and Uncle who are fabulous hosts. Dave’s grandmother is recovering quite well from her stroke and she will be going to live with Dave’s Aunt and Uncle very shortly. Dave’s Uncle used to work in D.C. so he gave us a personalized tour. It was very cool. We were only there for an afternoon so it was rather a mini-tour, but we did get to have an actual tour of the Library of Congress which is an absolutely gorgeous building and we were blessed with a very knowledgeable and interesting docent.

As to knitting, I’m plugging away on my Black Rainbow Chevron Scarf. It is a great take-along project and although I’ve had to unknit from time to time it is mostly forward moving. I haven’t knit on Dark Victory in about a week so I hope to get back on track with that tonight. I’m at the point where I need to do chest increases and I can’t decide which side needs a m1 left and which one needs a m1 right. Hummm….

I finished Twilight last night. Such a fun book. To quote a friend, “It is like candy.” I put New Moon on hold today and before the library closed, it came in, they called me (all excited for me), and I went to get it so I have it here with me now. I’m all ready to start tonight! Whoo hooo! (It actually reminds me of the book I read last year around this time called Dead Until Dark without the “adult themes.” (I wrote about it too. If you click here and scroll down below the Christmas “boxes” you can read what I thought about it. Apparently that book had a lot of lines that cracked me up. The authors give the vampires different attributes and have some different twists in their stories, but both series are interesting and fun to read.)

Oh yeah, and the other exciting thing around here is that my Etsy shop was Esty Shop of the Day on the Lime and Violet Daily Chum Blog on some day last week and since then I can’t keep up with it! I have listed everything that I have dyed and I have dyed almost all the fibers I have. I’m just waiting for more dye and fiber to arrive. I need to mix new dyes anyway so that will give me something to do while I wait (dyes ship way faster than fiber for some reason). Cleaning jars and mixing dyes is not the fun part, but it must be done.

One of my goals for the month was to write more often. I would really like to post 3 or 4 entries each week and look at this, it is the 15th already and this is only my 3rd November post! I guess I better get knitting so I have more to write about…

Have a great evening!

…picked up the book Twilight while I was drinking my coffee and I. Can’t. Stop. Reading. It. It is seriously addictive. I’m having mega doses of guilt over this for many reasons though. First, I started readying Eat, Pray, Love weeks ago and I can’t seem to get through more than a chapter at a time. Second, I’m supposed to be packing for we are going away for a long weekend tomorrow. Third, if not packing, I should be getting ready to make dinner or some other way more useful household activity. I so rarely read in the daytime and it has been a long time since I’ve found myself with a book that I. Can’t. Put. Down.

So we are going to Virginia this weekend. I think the town is called Haymarket and it is near Washington, D.C. It is where Dave’s uncle lives and his grandmother, who is 95, is in rehab near him. She usually lives in CT, but she had a small stroke this summer while visiting Dave’s other uncle in Georgia. I think she is just in rehab for a couple more weeks, but she is probably not going to be back in CT for a long while. That’s the background story to our mini-vacation. We have Friday for driving down, Monday for driving back, Saturday for visiting his grandmother and going to D.C and Sunday for visiting with Dave’s family. It should be fun. I wish I could get myself to start packing. I wish I could read in the car, but I can’t because I get carsick but I can knit a bit on the highways.

This is what I have for my driving/weekend knitting:

Pattern: Ruffled Chevron Scarf

Yarn: Black Rainbow from Perchance to Knit (super-yummy, btw)

Thoughts: I think I like how this is coming out. I was going to make the Chevron Scarf from Last-minute Knitted Gifts but the pooling was atrocious. All the black was on one side of the scarf and the rainbow on the other. With this chevron pattern, the color repeats seem to be behaving themselves and they actually seem to be lining up in the same location each time they come around.

Here is a close-up:

So what do you think? Is this ok? Would the yarn look better with a stockinette based pattern? I have to say that this particular pattern has some benefits. First, since it is garter, there is no rolling, and second, there is only a 2 row repeat so either I’m on the row where things happen or the row that is knit. Very simple. So maybe I’ll just keep knitting. Really what is the worst that can happen? I might want to make something else and then I can just buy another skein, right?

So happy weekend everyone! I’m off to try to make dinner read, fold laundry read, pack read, and clean the kitchen read.

I’m writing this as I wait for my tea to steep. With such a pervasive chill in the air, today finally feels like true fall. I brought my laptop out to the table so I can sit in the flickering rays of the sun and sip my tea as I write my blog post. Ok, that is it, I was going to attempt to eloquently ease into my exciting news, but I can’t wait any longer to tell! (Please recite here, “Oh please, do tell.”) Well, if you insist on asking, I had a really cool “convo message” this morning through Etsy! I received an e-mail from Peachy from the Lime and Violet Daily Chum blog and Spincerely yours is going to be a featured shop “in the upcoming days!” Phew! I really have to get busy dyeing! I have a few things to list but I’m not doing such a great job of keeping up with my dyeing since the angle of the sun has made solar dyeing not a possibility in my yard. I’m even having a bit of difficulty finding sun to take photos! Please note all the leaves still on my trees:

I do get quite a bit of sun in through my windows, but it is dappled and moves quickly. What I’m currently doing is using my light box and moving throughout my rooms as the sun changes. Sometimes the sun is stronger near my dining table:

and sometimes the sun is stronger on the family room floor:

I think I’m going to have to start doing some research on lighting equipment to get me through the winter. It is just that I love using the sun as much as I can.

Here is a little glimpse of what I was photographing. Agent K insists that I dye with way too much brown so to prove her wrong, I did some roving with brighter colors:

I’ll be posting these to my etsy shop as soon as I come up with a good goddess name. Naming always seems to be my time suck on getting things online. I love researching the names, but sometimes I think I get carried away and spend far too much time at it. Agent B is my mythology girl. I keep buying up Greek Myth books for her to read in the hopes that one day I can show her a color and she can rapidly respond with an appropriate name and appropriate reasoning.

So 2 other fantastic things are going on around here too. First, we have a house full of freaking candy! This makes me fat, but puts the agents in a glorious after school stupor good mood.

The second thing is that my Winter 2007 Interweave Knits was sitting on my laptop when I got up this morning (I must have forgotten to get the mail yesterday and IHA probably brought it in early this morning, right? I mean it couldn’t have apparated there all by itself, could it?)

This issue has plenty of really fine patterns. They are all very practical and wearable. My favorite pattern is the Celtic Tote by Jennifer Tallapaneni. I love the way it is distressed. It is like the designer took Walnut Stain Distress Ink and ran it over the cable pattern. As a matter of fact, much of this issue is rather scrapbooky. I absolutely love page 55. First there is Eunny’s Ivy League Vest all cool and hip looking with its 2 color ribbing but also stamped in the top right corner, there is a funky swirl brush. I wonder whose design that is and if it is available to down load. I’m growing quite fond of that swirl. (If you are not a scrapbooker, here is an example of a swirl brush used in a scrapbook layout.) If anyone happens to see any credits for it as they are reading the magazine, please let me know…

Anyway, back to Knits. What else do I really like? Well, besides Celtic Tote and Ivy League Vest, I like Veronik Avery’s Colette Pullover. I don’t think I would ever make it, but I love looking at it. It reminds me of something from my childhood, though at this moment I still can’t place it. I also think that Sarah is really going to like this sweater, I’m actually quite curious about what other people think of it, so if you have an opinion, let me know. I also like Hana Jason’s Gathered Pullover and Lou Scheila’s Ruched Shell. I can see myself making either of these. My least favorite patterns are Forest Forbes Pullover, (mostly because I’m not a fan of bobbles and boat necks) and Puffed Wheat Pullover (same thing with the neck line — it is sort of a high boat neck and it also looks a little dated unless I have missed out on a new fashion trend, which is always a strong possiblity). As I look through this issue there just seems to be so much packed in! I also like the Kilm Gloves by Kristin Nicholas and the Subway Mittens by Colleen Meagher. That is a pretty cool concept having a pocket on one’s mittens!

Since I have started this post, I have steeped and drank my tea, thus I’m back to being quite chilly again. I also ran low on battery and had to move back to my quite unsunny office. I think these are all signs that I should get doing some other things now. Tomorrow is my second Saturday to work at the library. The first Saturday was rather fun, so I’m really looking forward to it. On Sunday, Agent J has two softball games an hour or more away in Tolland so she and IHA will be gone all day. I don’t think this is going to leave a lot of time for us to be together on our first full weekend after our anniversary. I also don’t think it is going to leave much time for us to get major projects done around our house. Maybe Agent K and I can pick out some paint colors for her room on Sunday…

Well, have a great weekend if I don’t get a chance to post again!