Not Quite 19

I had a very busy hand day. So hat number 19 will be finished in the morning. With my hands at a throbbing level of pain, I thought it best to stop for the night. I will put on gloves to keep my hands warm tonight. I know they will feel better by morning. So tomorrow you will get to see 2 hats.

I am over 2/3 of the way through cutting the 360 squares for my quilt project. Hum, I wonder if that is why my hands are extra sore? I am cutting the lining squares now. I will have enough scraps left over to make an artisy quilt. I can't wait to see how they both turn out.

I even had time to go drop things off at Goodwill today. It seems to me, that the cleaner and less cluttered the house gets, less stuff needs to be rehomed. I guess that is a good thing since I now have more creative time.

I am still waiting for Eric to go to sleep. Hopefully soon. I tnik I might just get to sleep before tomorrow.

18 and Visible Progress

Today I finished hat number 18. I also emptied a 2.5 gallon bag of yarn that was on top of the hat yarn storage box. That yarn is now in the working knitting bag. I also cut 50 more squares for the quilt.

It was a light laundry day, with only 2 loads. I even found time to go to two specialty stores. I used the 5 minute rule for house cleaning to get a little deep cleaning done too. So dispite Eric being up until 12:30 this morning I managed to get a lot done dispite my body hating me this morning.

17 and Awesome

Hat number 17 is now finished. Hats 18 and 19 have been cast on and are in progress. I used the bulk of my energy running errands this morning. I purchased 4 rotery cutter blades so when the new blade gets dull it will not halt progress on the quilt. I hope tommrow I can be more productive.

Hat 16 and More

Today I finished hat number 16. I will give a row count at the end of the month for the one million row challenge on Raverly. I also started cutting out blocks for my next quilt project. I only need to cut 360 squares before I start the sewing. I have 56 squares cut. Then my rotary cutter blade went dull. So I will get more blades tomorrow, then finish cutting the squares.

It's time to do more knitting now.

15 and More

I got to go watch Sue Houseman of Sewing with Sue give a talk today. If you ever have a chance to see her talk, it is a must do. She had lots of wonderful ideas. I will be trying some out soon.

Hat number 15 is done. Hats 16 and 17 have been cast on.

14

even with abad body day, I managed to get hat 14 finished tonight.

13

It' been a long day, but hat 13 is done.

12

Hat number 12.

11

A very long day. Our first rain of the summer was last night. A nice lighting storm. I finished hat 11 today.

10

The 10th hat of the month. Also a lot of sewing.

Cleaning

I spent most of the day cleaning. I did a little deep cleaning too. When I was too tired to do anything else I srarted sewing pillows for Eric. I have 2 out of the 5 that the program requested. To try to deter pillow theft this time in red permanent marker I wrote "Stolen from Eric K" on the pillows in spots where they can not be covered up. They only question remaining is how fast they will be stolen from Eric this time? On the knitting front I finshed hats 8 &9. Hats 10 & 11 are now cast on.

Record Breaking Heat

Today we broke a heat record set when my dad was a kid. It was 111f. I also caught up on sleep. Because of the heat I picked Eric up early from his program. We watched the movie Home, which Eric wants to watch again. i finished spinning one roving from www.intothewhirled.com and started the second one of the same color way.

After 2 hours of spinning, it was time to finish another hand knit hat. So far this month I have finished 7 hats with a goal of 31. Making one hand knit hat every day in July. This will accomplish 3 things. First making a small dent in my odd balls of yarn. Second making me happy and productive. Last but not least it will give 31 kids who would not have warm hats next wimter a warm hat. If I excede my goal it would be very nice, but I need to get to 31 first. As usual I have one cotton and one wool hat on the needles.

I Took Time Off Today

This last flare up just won't go away. So I took some extra rest time today. I spent the morning after dropping Eric off at his program with my feet up finishing hat number 4 for the month. I then cast on another cotton hat, so the knitting needles would not get lonely.

I did do a few chores but skipped the laundry because it was well over 100f by 10:30am. After lunch I started readimg a new book until I fell asleep. I woke up just intime to pick up Eric. I got my Tour de Fleece spinning in while we caught up on yesterdays concerts and fire works.

John was wonderful and brought home dinner. After dinner I finished hat number 5 for the month and cast on another wool hat. I am rather happy that i am knitting so many hats, but I swear the next person who was born in the snow belt that says "it's not cold enough for winter clothes in Arizona will be sent home at the first sign of snow..

Tour de Fleece 2017

My first spin of this years Tour de Fleece was 8 ounces of Superwash BFL dyed by Into The Whriled in 2012. I love the roving that they dye, so here is the link, www.intothewhirled.com. Yes i am stash busting for this years Tour de Fleece. I was trying to spin a fractial, I did not quite make it. Since it took almost an hour to skein and photograph, I am counting it towards the first 3 days os spinning.

Tinking

I have decided that it is a little bit more than silly to need a charity hat and a size one knitting needle. So I will be tinking the hat can and then use is in the Yarn double stranded in another charity hat.

Hats

In June I knit 17 hats for charity.

In The Blender

Eric had a rough night last night and I don't even remember what time that I got him settled down for the night.  All I know is that 6 am came much too quickly. Eric's bad night lasted for most of the day. So,Eric skipped his day program and helped me sort the double pointed knitting needles by size. I now can say that I know where most of my double pointed knitting needles are. I think that I can lose quite a few before I have to run out and buy replacements. Of course there is still the odd one floating around the house and a set with each hat knitting bag. I keep one bag for knitting animal fiber hats and one bag for plant based fiber hats. The are no bags for petroleum based fiber hats, as I feel that no one should be forced to wear clothing made from a non-renewable resource.

I think that I will be putting all my knitting accessories in one spot too. I have not decided what I will put all the accessories in yet. That and single pointed straight knitting needles will be done on Friday. I find it kinda of odd that after over 30 years of marriage that I am finally starting to understand my engineer's mind for organization and that sometimes less is more.

I usually do not run the washer and dryer after 100f, but I got a late start at  laundry today. Even though I was finished with the laundry by 10:30 am it was over 100f already. It did feel on the cooler side today at lunch time it felt a bit chilly at 105f with a light breeze after last weeks 115f and 116f days.

I also found time to start knitting a new wool hat tonight and am halfway through with it. I think that is is time to go do some reading.

Circular Knitting Needles

Today I started organizing my knitting needles starting with the circular needles. I had the knitting needles in 3 different areas. Hopefully having them in one spot will make things easier to find the right knitting needle when I need one for a project. They are also off my closet floor. The needles, are sorted from U.S. size 0 to size 50. They are also in a container that will not allow them to fall on the floor.  I really like the idea of my knitting needles not falling on the floor. Of course this does not include the knitting needles on projects. I must have a lot of projects on sizes, 6, 7, 8 and 11's.  Tomorrow I will work on the double point needles. I will save the straight knitting needles for Friday. As you can tell my deep cleaning has slowed down quite a bit, but I am down to the knitty gritty of the job so things are going much slower pace. 

I also managed to finish knitting 2 hats and casting another cotton hat on. I like to keep a cotton hat for knitting on the go and a wool hat to knit at home. I still need to cast on a wool hat. At a year post hand surgery I am still limited by my hands in how long I can knit each day, but at least I can knit again. 

107f

I have lost count of the days it has been over 105f in a row so far this summer. Yet I know that winter is coming and the knitting of children's hats and scarfs is on going, besides they don't sit in my lap as I knit.

I am really enjoying having a huge washing machine. I can wash most of Eric's clothes every other night as it has been too hot to run the machine during the day.

Still Hot at 116f

We are deep into a summer weather advisory here in Tucson, this just means that it will be over 110f. It also usually means that afternoon flights will be canceled in Phoenix and Tucson. I personally love this summer weather, but Eric on the other hand can not handle the heat. So he is going to program in the morning when it is still relatively cool like the 93f  drive time temperature today. By lunchtime when I pick him up it was 109f, a very warm temperature for Eric. When we got home we sat under the ceiling fan until I was cold.

As with yesterday I spent my time preparing fiber and knitting while we watched PBS kids all afternoon. As of now it is back down to 109f at dinner time. It is trying really hard to rain but I don't think we have enough humidity yet. A best we might get some lighting and thunder. By bedtime it will be cool enough to run the washer and dryer.

On a different note, this issue always seems to be coming around and just will not go away. I know that there are a whole lot of groups that like hand knit items to give away for their charity projects. They want a certain yarn or pattern used.  I think that this is a kind and wonderful jester. However, and this is a big however, I knit what I want in the fibers that I want. The Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank gets the bulk of my knitting, John and I are fine with this. I take care of children in my own community. Their students like my very colorful hats and scarfs, made with cotton, wool, nylon and alpaca.  I know that people that live in the snow belt will not agree that around 70f is cold enough to warrant giving the children winter clothing. Did I mention that it was 116f today? I do think that a 46 degree drop in temperature is enough to warrant the use of winter clothing. So as John put it so nicely at dinner tonight, "Knit what you want to knit, unless it is a paying job. Then they can have what they pay for," So before you badger me to knit for your group, please remember that I already have a group that I knit for.

What To Do When It's 115f Outside

Hats are my favorite thing to knit in summer. They are small . They don't sit on my lap. They are like M&M's, I just can't knit one. My goal was to knit a hat a day for the whole summer. Right now I am only knitting 5 hats per week. A little short of my goal. You do know that winter is coming and I won't look so silly then.