Year of Projects: Week 42

      It's been a little bit since I posted.  I've actually not knit anything in the last 4 weeks.  I'm not sure if it was the weather or strange planetary stuff leading up to the eclipse, but I was really depressed and mopey.  As soon as the eclipse happened on Monday I felt instantly better.  I normally don't subscribe to any of that type of thinking, but I can't deny it was really noticeable for me.  So what have I done in the last few weeks.  I started one final project for Mal March, but still haven't finished it, nor taken pictures of it.  I started a Sunset Hat with Rios left overs.  I ran out of the English Rose scrap I was using up.  I have another full skein of English Rose, but it needs to be wound and I haven't taken the time to do that yet.  We had Easter dinner at our house so I moved all my project bags from the love seat to my craft closet and I haven't brought anything back out yet.

I dyed some yarn for Easter.  I didn't have the energy to dye eggs with the kids, so I went straight to yarn this year.  I used up the very last bit of Fisherman's wool I had and two more skeins from my mystery bag of yarn.  

I used Wilton's Gels exclusively this year.  I normally supplement the egg tablets with the gel, but I didn't want to dig out the easter egg stuff.  I keep the Wiltons in the pantry in the kitchen.  I love how bright and saturated everything came out.  I have one more skein left in my mystery wool bag.  It's fairly large so I think I want to attempt a gradient.

We had the eclipse on Monday.  We were in the path of the 100% totality.  The news organizations hyped it up like crazy.  It was expected that "thousands" of people would travel here to see it.  Traffic was going to be a nightmare, there was supposed to be food shortages.  Schools had the day off, Fort Drum let out early, we didn't have a surgery schedule that day.  It was a bit over the top if you ask me.  Most of upstate NY wound up clouded over.  It was cloudy here in Carthage.  I stayed in the lab so all my co-workers could go out and see it.  I saw plenty of pictures and video afterward, so I don't feel like I missed anything by staying inside and doing a little work.  We didn't get an influx of people and traffic was fine.  There are local businesses complaining of losing money now since they didn't get as much out of town customers as was predicted.  

This past Wednesday, on my day off, I met two of my Aunts at my Grandmothers house.  We're starting the lengthy clean out process.  I got to have first dibs on her yarn stash.  To say she had a large yarn stash would be an understatement.  She had totes of yarn in multiple areas of the house.  I very much cherry picked and I still took an entire tote of yarn for myself.  We stacked everything along the kitchen wall once we were done.  I wish I would have taken a picture it was at least 12 totes.  There is fabric and a ton more craft supplies to go through.  I've entered the circular needles and all the yarn into my Ravelry.  I'm trying to be better about documenting all of it as I get it.  The last time I was given a chunk of someone's "estate" I wasn't so good about entering it into Ravelry.  Some of what I claimed was yarn I had bought for her originally.  She tended to hold onto nice stuff and not use it.  She liked her acrylic and that's fine.  It was a little tricky going through everything because she didn't keep ball bands on anything.  I tried to look at everything fairly closely to determine what it was, but with the amount it just wasn't possible.  I took a few things that didn't have any markings and based on put up and feel I successfully snagged some wool blend yarns.  (I did some burn tests once I got home and was entering into Ravelry.)  She also had a few magazine subscriptions, so I took all of the knitting magazines.  She had crochet and quilting magazines too.  I entered those into my library already.  All of the magazines were published after I started knitting in 2010, so it was fun to look back at the pattern styles and yarn advertisements.  A little sad too since there were ads from Classic Elite and Shibui in a couple of them.  (Although Shibui has been picked up by MadTosh now.)  One of the magazines was an Interweave from 2007, I was floored when I leafed through that one.  It's got the original publishing of the pattern Koolhaas by Jared Flood in it.  That pattern has been in my queue for ages, but I haven't purchased it yet since its $13.  Well, I own it now.  I also received back a shawl I made for her and several dishcloths I gifted her.

Lacy Zig Zag Shawl I made her in 2014

The weather here has still been all over the place.  It warmed up and rained so the grass has greened up and all the spring flowers are blooming.  My day lilies grew a couple inches.  It will still be a month, at least though, til we can plant anything outside in our "garden".  We're going to do a container garden again this year.  We have gotten a whole bunch of seeds, which we should be starting inside soon if we want to harvest anything before the snow comes back.

I made a new batch of soup earlier in the week.  Ham and bean with leftover ham from Easter.  I used dried beans which I've never done before.  I didn't really use a recipe.  I just threw in a bunch of vegies from the fridge that needed to be used up, chicken broth, soaked beans and the ham.  It turned out quite good, so it's something I'll be making again for sure.

I think that's about it for me.  I'm hoping to get my knitting mojo back here soon.  I want to finish the Holden shawl I started before June and April is already half over.  Time has been flying by it seems.  Alrighty, its time to go make dinner.  Until later.  Happy Crafting.

-Q