Making apple crisp

First you peel the apples. 

Also, this time, I cooked up a bit of rhubarb,

but neglected to take a picture of it!

You mix the oats, brown sugar and butter.

Then, you take the apple peels out to the compost,

and stop to admire the flowers on the way. 

All this rain must be good for the flowers!

And maybe shoot a basket or two.

Then you put the oats on the apples and rhubarb and pop the whole thing in the oven.
The end.

It is almost the end of red month, and of Macro May! June will see lots of green, and you know I can do green! I'm looking forward to it. And looking forward to making these fruit skewers:

Arthur on his way to school

A bit of eccentricity does run in the family, I suppose.

Always proofread carefully

I put this photo up on Flickr as part of MacroMay and Project Spectrum, and it got picked up by the Daily Qi as their Photo of the Day!

It is immortalized there as an ornamental onion flower bug, because that's how I labeled it when I uploaded it to Flickr.

Bud! It's a bud, not a bug!

A new never-ending project

I have a plan. These slides are a wee few from the four moving boxes full of slide trays. These all have cardboard, rather than plastic, frames, and the pictures are all bluish. Seascapes, skies. So far I have Australia, New Zealand and Portugal.

 I also have a hole punch and some other odds and ends. Bits of white paper, jump rings from the bead store, lampshades from the thrift store, taken to bits.

Ayers Rock!

It will be a lamp! I have enough slides for, oh, 100 lamps, I figure... But let's get one done before we plan too far ahead.

It needs several more layers. I took great care to put the pictures landscape-portrait-landscape-portrait, but the people who put the slides in the frames took no particular care to make sure the writing was one way or the other, so sometimes it says Kodachrome at the top and sometimes the bottom! Of course, the pictures from Australia were taken years before... or maybe after... the ones from Portugal!

Let there be light.

A square for May

This is the first lacy square for the Block-A-Month afghan. I found it a bit weird; I wanted to SSK when the pattern wanted me to K2tog.

The skirt, the blanket, and the circle of life

The blanket is done, and in the hands of Nancy, who is getting on a plane tomorrow at noon. Silly me, I didn't take a picture before I gave it to her, but she took some, and she will send me one avec bébé when she gets back to where the bébé is.

The story begins... many years ago, when Nancy moved to New Zealand. Fast forward to a month or so ago, when her mother, here in Toronto, suddenly passed away. Nancy comes back from NZ and stays with my friends, her brother John and his wife Sally. (As opposed to my brother John and his wife Sally, not to mention my sister-in-law Nancy...) While she is here, she learns that her grandson is born in NZ and attempts to knit a blanket for him -- she in fact knit herself a lovely wool shawl with Manos, or something equally soft and beautifully dyed, and some curly green-gold bouclé stripes and fringe! It was just not quite right for a baby blanket, but it's a fine wrap for Grandma!

So, one day the knitters get together and Sally brings Nancy. Of course, when one entertains knitters, one has to do a bit of showing off, so I showed them the Felted Tweed Botticelli and my half-finished blanket and my cuff of a sock, and Nancy oohed and aahed over the blanket!

It was one of those first hot days (Hmph, not had many since then, either...) and we were sitting on the back deck, knitting and drinking sangria. Nancy had on a pair of trousers with a skirt on over top, and it was getting warm, so she stood up to take the skirt off, and I said, "That's a nice skirt," so she gave it to me! Just like that, said she had too much stuff to take home and I should have it. And it fit!

 So, a blanket for her grandbaby seemed a fitting return, and being a nutball obsessive, I hemmed and hawed a bit and then just figured out what to do, lickety split, and knit that damn 12 feet of edging and that slightly off-gauge square and everything, and got 'er done.

And! When I went around to give it to her just now, Sally was trying to encourage her to pack and she had "stuff" all over the front hall of the house, and made me try on her mother's wool winter coat, which fit like a dream and which I ended up bringing home with me! Because she couldn't fit everything in her bags, you know.

Phew! Now I shall attempt to clean up the house, because things have got a bit wild around here!

The blanket now

I'm beginning to believe it can be done. A bit more to knit, a bit left to sew on, and I'd like time to toss it in the wash, but that is optional, I suppose.

No time to blog

Halfway around, 2 days to go. Finger muscles sore! Trying not to think of sewing and ends and tidying joins ....

Almost done

This is the edging I have chosen for the cotton baby blanket. It is just garter stitch: increase for a few rows, then decrease again. I am doing it separately, then sewing it on, because that seemed simplest, rather than deal with cast-on edges and sideways edges and different gauges of stocking and garter! So.

I only have about 11 and a half feet to go, and I have 4 days! Ay ay ay.

Two quick pictures, or maybe more

Today we have for you a picture showing the perils of gauge! You would think that the 25th square, knit with the same size needles and the same yarn, would be the same size as the other 24....

But you see here the nice, neat tension of the right-hand square, and the loose, not so neat tension of the new square. Some might rip and redo, but I know that that square was made from three scraps of yarn; that I am now working to a deadline on this blanket; and that the square will just squish in the corner and no one will ever notice. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I can't explain the deadline bit just now, but all will be revealed in a week or so!

The second picture is of a small selection of our excess Allen keys. We got one with each Ikea bookshelf we've ever owned, I imagine. I saved a couple of each size, though why, I'm not sure, and here is the whole lot that I have declared extra:

Quite a lot, eh?

Stephen is out of town. Do you think he will ever notice if they just disappear? Will he, one day, wonder why we only have a dozen various Allen keys and not 47?

Happy Mother's Day

Wishing you all Amore, and a good lunch, too!

MM and PS

MM is Macro May, on Flickr.

I am finding this an interesting challenge, and find I am better at taking pictures of static things like a gate latch than plants or, heaven help us, animals!

Sunny weather is always helpful, too. Something that stays still in a sunny spot is just what I like!

PS is, of course, Project Spectrum. Today we have red from the bookshelves.

The cat's cradle book has seen a bit of use lately, but we are not experts. Much practice is needed. Perhaps we should buy a summer cottage if we want the kids to excel at this.

Debrett's is just a joke, really. While my friend was sorting books for a book sale, she came across it and recognized just the sort of silliness that we like around here. Too bad I am unlikely to ever have to address envelopes to archbishops and marquesses.

I must say I use the Scrabble dictionary a lot! Useful words include qi, za, xi and jo, just for starters. (Blogger's spell-checker only likes xi, by the way.) I have a sort-of-standing date to play Scrabble IRL once a week, but it's been a while since all the gang got together. And when the kids are off school in the summer it's almost impossible for everyone to have an afternoon free at the same time! Ah well. There's always Facebook Scrabble...

Colourful in the sun

The sun peeped out yesterday evening so I ran outside to take pictures of Botticelli! The back is progressing like anything! I have this idea that I hate stocking stitch, but it certainly does speed things up if you just knit one row and purl the next, I must say.

Red, Orange, Yellow(ish), Light Green, Dark Green and a row of Turquoise

When I got to the dark green, I swapped out the dark brown and replaced it with grey. Now I think about it, I could have done that with the red, as well. Not changing it now, though!

Ohh, those greens

I had to have a peek at some plants in the garden.

I took euonymus cuttings from a neighbour last year, and after a bit just jammed them in a hole in the ground and hoped for the best, and they seem to have rooted okay. New green leaves!

Then we have the weird alien thingmabobs, which are, in fact, fiddleheads from above.

This hint of spring reminds me of a funny thing I saw on Facebook:

INSTALLING SPRING…
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed….please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Season not found. Season “Spring” cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again.

May the fourth be with you

No good knitting comes to mind from the Star Wars movies. But it's fun to say, "May the Fourth be with you."

ETA: You can make this necklace out of tin foil!

Clarification, please

The Chia Pet has survived the winter and will soon be surrounded by baby cilantro plants, by the look of things. Very good, very good. Today, however, we are concerned with the red box beside him, containing tea -- special mountain grown tea from Taiwan, given to Stephen for his birthday recently.

I read the "directions" on the tin, and must share them.

1. A tea quantity, may depend on the person to like, the quantity soaks.
2. Soaks the tea set, uses the ceramic, the chinaware tea or the big tea cup, the drinking glass may.
3. With the mountain water seepage or pure water, the taste is good.

I assume this all means "pour boiling water over the tea leaves," but who can say for sure? And where does one find "mountain water seepage"?

Now, to vote! 

What to do in May

I don't think I ever made knitting goals for April. In fact, April just whipped by a bit fast and here we are in May! Arthur has only 6 weeks of school left! The garden has sprung into being without me digging out that wretched patch of grass properly! Aaaack!

Okay, so let's settle down with some knitting.

1. Felted Tweed Botticelli
2. May square
3. grey socks -- or perhaps start another plain pair of socks??
4. sew together that dang blanket. Actually, if I finish it soon, I might even have a baby to give it to! 

It is the start of a new Project Spectrum. I have not really participated in the last couple of years, but now we are back to a colour family a month, and I am keen. I took some pictures of my red/orange/brown Botticelli, but it is dreary outside and the flash pictures I took inside look awful. Never fear: I have some others for you.

The rusty orange yarn, mmm.

A shiny red apple, mmm.

Ick! Pretty colour, but do I really have to interact with them?

I have joined a group on Flickr to participate in MacroMay. It just means one takes pictures through the macro lens... So I took a few red ones, and a green one, too!