A Story of Olde

Listening to:  Jayhawks She Walks in So Many Ways

Lots to talk about... let's see where to start.

My daughter and her husband sold their house in Springfield and have bought a house close to the farm.  It's a sweet little house in a lovely spot with a view that is just spectacular.  It isn't very old, but for some reason there has been NO landscaping done. All the better, she can do whatever she wants! Nice to be able to start with a clean slate.

A few weeks ago I had a little cold, maybe some sinus, which caused me to cough.  And cough and cough.  Like cough-my-socks-up.  Finally went to the doctor after pulling a muscle in my gut from crouping so hard.  They found fluid in my right lung and diagnosed pneumonia.  I took a round of antibiotics, and felt so much better that I went out and rode my bike.  Bad idea. Now the cough is back.  So I have continued to work from the apartment and do quiet, sedate things.  I've gotten quite a bit of knitting done on a large project.  It is Norma from Knitty in Ultra Alpaca Tonal in the color Agua.  The pattern is well-written, and once you figure out where you're going, it's one of those patterns you don't have to keep looking at the chart to follow.

When I first started spinning, my yarn was pretty wonky.  I did some natural and also a bit of hand-dyed blue, and even though they were not top quality smooth yarns, I wanted to make SOMEthing from them.  So I crocheted blue daisies and went around them with the natural, joined them for a pillow top, and there it sat for over a year.  Finally I put it all together with some gorgeous navy batik fabric and tacked the pillow top to muslin.  This picture is on the sofa, but the colors are perfect on my bed.  I really like the way it turned out, even with the very rough yarns.

This evening I also finished plying two spools of singles.  They are from a Frabjous Fibers BFL roving in the color Swamp Thing.  I didn't do anything special in the way of working with the color flow, just pulled off lengths and spun.  The colors turned out quite nicely even though the lighting is bad in this shot, and I have two good hanks of a DK to worsted weight, about 7 ounces. 

The special part of this is the niddy-noddy that I have it wound on, so I get to tell a story here.  When I was in 3rd grade, Dad bought an old upright piano and Mom proceeded to teach me to play.  Eventually I took lessons from a lady in town.  That old piano went through several moves, and ended up in the garage of my parents new home.  I would practice year round out there, running out with mittens in the dead of winter to play one or two songs, then back inside to warm up my fingers.  Or sweating buckets in the summer playing and singing my lungs out.  The bench served as an extra refrigerator when the temps were freezing out, so big pots of leftover half frozen chili or ham and beans could be found out there waiting for the next meal.  Anyway, the piano was just shot, and it was time for it to die.  But not without a little dignity.  My dad is very good with wood, and he preserved parts of that old piano for me in unique ways.  He made two niddy-noddies for me from parts of the piano.  The shaft of one is made from the dowel that connects the foot pedal to the damper board (or whatever it's called), and the ends are made from other parts of the 'piano guts.' 

That's it for tonight.  Time to settle back with a little glass of wine and X Files on netflix!