Monday, June 23, 2008

Harvesting yarn

I recently attended the University of Maine's annual yard sale where the facilities people sell all the stuff leftover from students' rooms (kinda creepy, yes), things forgotten and many things intentionally left behind. There were many, many pieces of clothing that were clearly discarded Halloween costumes, and various teeny-tiny sized garments that I imagine the owner no longer being able to fit into after gaining the Freshmen Fifteen, so rather than packing up those size zeroes she conveniently leaves them behind. I searched for sweaters made with fairly good shape yarn for harvesting and came up with a few good ones and some hats and scarves as well. After I unravel and wash the yarn who knows in what form they will live their second life. I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures, I'm no good with a camera, but I have since discovered that the manual for the camera is chock full of good information regarding how the camera actually works.



Thursday, June 12, 2008

Results of doing my (little) part

After being more conscientious about our electricity usage at home I just wanted to post that last month we reduced our KWH (kilowatt-hour) per day by 1.5 KWH or about $0.27 per day. From one year ago we are down 4 KWH and about $.69 a day. While that may not sound like a lot it is in black and white on my bill and the difference is only more motivation to keep on keepin' on.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Too much milk and two almost-done projects

I discovered on Monday that the milk we just bought was set to "expire" that day. I generally don't pay much attention to those dates, I mean if it smells fine and tastes fine...So what to do with a gallon of milk? I made corn chowder and biscuits for supper and rice pudding for dessert, that put a major dent in it. At work, in order to meet our Carbon Challenge we switched from a 5 day week to a 4 day week (4 10-hour days). So Monday, my day off this week, was a perfect day for solving the problem of too much milk. The English Teacher suggested I stay home everyday, when asked if he would subsidize this request he replied yes, as long as I cooked that well everyday. Oh, if only!

I am inches, no, millimeters away from finishing two projects. One is a navy blue polka-dotted dress (see pattern at right) and another is the Go-Go Garter Scarf from Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'N Bitch. I ignored the pattern's request to use purple, teal, and green (I think, I can't remember) colored yarns, and used pale blue, pink, and a cocoa colored organic cotton yarn. While working on it at the In-Laws house over Memorial Day weekend, my brother-in-law saw me knitting together the blue and pink and asked me if I was "expecting" (I am not). I don't outwardly look like I'm in a state of expectancy, so I guess he deduced that knitting=pregnancy or it was the baby blue and pink that threw him. Oh well! Hopefully I will be able to post the FO by this weekend.