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May 20, 2005

Gateway to paradise

After years of futile searching at the back of my Gramma's wardrobe, I finally found the gateway to Narnia when I was least expecting it.

There's a yarn store about a 20 minute walk from my house that I've been going to for a while now; it's very small and doesn't really carry anything but the most ordinary of yarns. Some time last year a new yarn shop opened up two blocks away from it, and I've been avoiding visiting this new shop, partly because I really like the lady who runs the old shop and partly because the new shop has the words "designer yarns" on its sign, and designer is a code word for expensive (and I'm poor). Well, yesterday I went over to the old yarn shop to pick up a few things, only to find that she's closed up until the 24th for vacation. Hmmph. So I went into the new store.

Well. I never thought you could get this stuff here, all the fabulous yarns that I see my internet buddies using but have never tried myself because I live in a dickwater that doesn't have nice things. This store has bamboo yarn. It has Cashmerino. It has Rowan, and omigosh all the Rowan BOOKS! It has Noro. It has Manos (I didn't go near the Manos, I knew better). It has sock yarn that is not acrylic. Really, really nice sock yarn, like the stuff I drool over on other people's weblogs (I promise I won't buy any not-acrylic-sock-yarn until I've finished up my butt-ugly Kroy Pom Squad socks, otherwise they'll never get finished). I limited myself to some Jo Sharp dk tweed (not an impulse buy, but one of the possibilities I was considering for my fall Knitty submission) and two skeins of Noro Kureyon (colourway 52) with which I immediately cast on for another boobholder.

Two skeins won't be enough, of course. Guess I'll have to go back. How have I been knitting for fifteen years and never tried this yarn before? All the magic hidden colours! The texture! I'm beside myself with exclamation points, somebody do something.

The one weird thing about this oh-so-wonderful shop: I told the lady I needed double pointed needles in size 5mm and 6mm. She didn't have those sizes, but offered me 5.5mm. Huh? Even Peter, who cares nothing about knitting, knows enough about gauge to scoff at this.

On the gardening front, some friends of ours are taking out part of their garden and putting in grass, so last night we went over and filled our van with plants. For now I've put them all into the back yard where the pool was, because we're not going to do anything out front until we have a planting plan. Here's a partial list of what our friends gave us:

-columbine (several colours, both native and non-native types, so some can go in the front yard)
-two kinds of artemisia
-two kinds of daisies
-echinacea
-spider wort, both green and purple varieties
-more hostas, because you can never have too many hostas, especially the fat chartreuse ones
-yarrow, which I always get mixed up with tansy, and it looks exactly like the thing we already had that I've been thinking was tansy, so I guess we have lots of yarrow now and no tansy after all
-sweet woodruff (how I love that stuff; I want a bed of it big enough to lie in)
-oregano, tagging along with one of the columbines
-something called "blue-eyed grass" that sounded kind of cool
-hens and chicks, the silliest garden plant ever. These will come in handy if we can ever get the 5-pin bowling balls we need to make our bowling ball rock garden. Won't that be a beautiful thing?
-the little tiny sedum that looks all wormy, which I'm also picturing spilling over lovely swirly bowling balls.
-coral bells (purple leaves); this is nice because I gave mine to Peter's mom, but I really like them
And I forget what else, but several other wonderful things. Pat, what else did you give us?

My other big summer project:

These are the stairs to our attic. See all the crud on them? Here's a better look.

The attic isn't finished, but will someday be my studio. There is still a ton of Barbage up there that I haven't had the heart to tackle yet, although I have taken many, many garbage bags of crapola out already. I've got some of my studio furniture up here, and a lot of my tools and stuff in boxes. Last year we had a new roof put on, and they had to tear all the way back to the original cedar and put new plywood down. This means that the entire attic, all my stuff and also all of the previous owner's shit and garbage, was covered in a layer of thick black dirt and chunks of hundred-year-old wood. And this summer I have to clean it all up. And I want to get up there soon; the wood I need for the woodcut I want to start working on is up there, buried in the black stuff, and I have to get it out.

Rest assured that I will likely be showing progress pictures of the attic cleaning, because that's the kind of geek I am. I know, all y'all can't wait to see it. I said "all y'all"! Was that a correct usage? I'm trying to figure out whether the difference between "all y'all" and "all a y'alls" is a regional thing or a usage thing before I get to Georgia, so I don't mess up with the local lingo and embarrass myself. (Hah! Y'all know I'll be listening to Neil Young and the Rheostatics constantly while in Georgia in an attempt to retain my Canadian accent against the power of the insidious drawl).

Here's a close up of the peeling paint on the stairway wall:

I love textures like this. I think I'm just going to sand all the big chunks off and leave it this way.

Posted by jodi at May 20, 2005 04:03 PM | categories:  projects : sticks and string

Comments

Posted by: mrspilkington at May 20, 2005 04:47 PM

Posted by: caro at May 20, 2005 05:19 PM

Posted by: Merouda at May 20, 2005 05:46 PM

Posted by: Lisa at May 20, 2005 06:05 PM

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Posted by: Christiane at May 23, 2005 08:53 AM

Posted by: Lisa at May 25, 2005 03:30 PM

Posted by: goddess_o_craft at May 26, 2005 11:18 AM