Weedy

That's been the chore of choice this week -- weeding.  There were waist-high weeds in the "flowerbed" in the back yard, so the Emperor and I pulled them out on Friday.  Recent rain has made it pretty easy to do, so the hardest part about it all has been the heat and humidity.  We also had to chop down the giant sunflower as it had fallen over, brought down by its own weight.  There weren't any flowers on it -- just a ten-foot stalk.  There is still plenty of weeding to be done, but the yard doesn't look as much like a back pasture as it did.

Yesterday I decided that it was time to weed the front yard.  You could only see the weeds from up on the porch, but they have been driving me crazy nonetheless so I pulled most of them in one session.  The only reason I stopped was because it had become really, really hot and I was sweating so much I couldn't see any more.  In a few minutes, I'm going to go out and finish the chore, and figure out the next one.  It's supposed to get up to about a hundred degrees today but cooling tomorrow and next week, so this is more future-planning than a mode of attack for this afternoon.

Later... Nope, I didn't finish the weeding.  It became too hot to continue.

Meanwhile, the knitting keeps on happening.  I'm nearly finished with another dishcloth, and will probably make another one for the drawer before calling it good in the kitchen.  I also started a "Jazz Age Washcloth," a crocheted washcloth with a decidedly Art Deco flair.  I had a skein of Juniper Moon Farm's "Zooey Aran," a nice cotton linen blend yarn in a pale lavender that was calling to me, so I started it.  The pattern isn't hard once you get going, but for a while there I wondered why I was bothering with it.  Part of the problem is that the yarn I'm using is a bit splitty and was hard to work with at first.  I'm about halfway finished with the washcloth, which I plan to actually use in the bath.

Here you also see the lovely little yarn bowl that my friend E-- at the One Horse Popsicle Stand gave me for Christmas (we have our Christmas in July).  It's heavy and made to look like a whimsical sheep.  I'd never used a yarn bowl before, but now I'm hooked.

For years I've been admiring Knit Picks' "Cotlin" yarn, a cotton/linen blend that I thought might make a nice Stella cardigan (above), but I began re-thinking that idea because of how splitty my current yarn has been.  In reading the reviews on the KP site, however, I find that isn't a factor; the other knitters (and crocheters) mention the difference in color between what the site shows online and what comes in the mail, but nobody is mentioning splitty-ness.  My plan had been to make it in a very light neutral color and I'm actually not that fussy about what exact shade it would be.  Looking at the project now, for the first time in a couple of years, I'm thinking I'd probably skip the buttons and just do plain bands, and wear it open.  Not having buttons also means I won't be paralyzed for months while choosing buttons...

Yes, the Colt Cardigan is still in pieces in my knitting basket -- wait, no it's not, the pieces are in a drawer in the craft room.  I moved some things around in the craft room so I could use the chest of drawers for knitting needles, my bead boxes, and access to current projects.  But the cardigan is still in pieces, waiting to be sewn together and finished.  When I do finish it, I'll sit down and think about why this last bit has been such a mental chore, but for now, I think I'll put my jeans on and get out there and finish that weeding.