gaysknits

sometimes things go wrong...

and they often do. the daughters surgery was not one of them...it went well. she is recovering, has some additional metal in her body  but is now not unlike humpty dumpty...put together again and the last i heard was complaining only about a sore throat. hope fully soon we will see her smile again.  while i'm on the subject of the daughter...let me clarify. between the two of us and i'm talking about the guy and i we have one daughter...his. we have one son in law also his and he belongs to the daughter. one son...mine. two grandchildren the youngladygrandaughter and the little guy both his and both belonging to the daughter and the son in law.  we have two dogs the german...mine and miss husky...his and none yet that are ours but that will most likely change at some point in the future but we are enjoying having only two because when miss philly...also mine...passed and we found ourselves suddenly able to travel and stay at hotels and beach houses with two dogs where we could not with three and we like that.  we have three grandpuppies one mine and she belongs to the son aka the original guy and two newer grandpuppies...his and they belong of course to the daughter and her crew.  we have never had all of them in the same room and quite frankly i am afraid that would go terribly wrong. just as some other things have gone wrong lately. like the zuchini bread. if you decide to bake  bread when you are very very tired and your memory cannot be counted on you may bake it for only half the time needed and just because it is a gorgeous brown on the outside that does not mean it not not a runny  mess on the inside. lesson learned. set the timer.  when you buy too many crickets at the pet store they will surely kill and eat each other so you will have many dead crickets to bury in the pet cemetarry and still not have fresh crickets for miss dragon to hunt.  when you have ripe raspberries on the bush and you don't pick them for a few days they will also die and you will get no more than that first bowl which were so delicious it made me want to cry especially because i want more and there are no more to have.  ditto with the sour cherries on the tree.  procrastination equals no cherry jam this year. 

   

as you can see...still no knitting.  i'm going to have to start knitting something wth this yarn or it will soon be covered with dust like the surface on which it sits.  i plan to be less tired over the weekend and  may have something to show for it next week...or not!  have a lovely weekend.  later...love   g

when left to my own devices...

or left unsupervised for too long i will simply wile away the hours doing absolutely nothing i can remember later or that i can attach any significance to.

i will drink beer and mess around with my computer. i will crop and adjust photographs that are perhaps better left alone and then i will type gaysknits all over them as if that has some significance to the picture i have just mangled so as to make it be a banner of sorts.  i feel the need for change.  it is august and i feel myself entering a gold phase,  maybe a brown phase or maybe it is just a fall  phase.  a phase full of fall like things like wood and knitting with yarns of gold and bronze and browns and maybe even some oranges and rust colors but i'd have to check the stash first before i make any commitments.  maybe it's all just wishful thinking.  close to the end of the summer i always seem to become nostalgic for fall. for fall leaves and fall breezes and fall light and cooler fall temperatures and outdoor fall yard work...you know raking leaves and splitting wood and picking pumpkins and squash.  perhaps this fall i will perfect my otherwise imperfect chain saw skills.  learn how use a chain saw without getting it stuck in the log.  perhaps i will start a compost pile again and now that some sun will be shining on my garden since the massive mulberry is gone i will have a lovely garden next year. maybe.  just maybe. for now i will continue to chill and drink beer and mess around with my blog. i was appealing to the blog gods or maybe it was just whining to the blog gods to relieve me of my burden of little squares and question marks and my pleas were heard and they were answered. who knew anyone was listening but since maybe someone is listening...let me put this out there...let me just say this...calling all goddesses and gods all priests and shamans all witches and wise ones and all those who have a direct line to those who watch over us...please send a little love and support and some energy this way if you have any to spare.  the daughter is having  surgery today and can always use another set of crossed fingers.  thanks and later...love   g

i'm not the only one...

who is down. down and out. down in the dumps. down about their knitting. down on blogging. just down. i haven't even been reading blogs. don't know why...can't say for certain. i used to get a lot out of the communities with which i interacted online.

the sexy knitters inspired me to knit and knit and knit some more. the self portrait challange inspired me to take photos and to try to take better ones. ravelry inspired me to organize and gave me a place to research knitting patterns and yarns and look for the perfect project. i cannot find any interest in any of the above these days. summer is usually such a fun time for me. i motorcycle, i kayak, i camp, i go to the beach, i garden a bit, i knit...always i knit.

this summer i have not done any of those things in large quantities. �i don't now what's up with that and i don't know why that is. it has been hot. the economy sucks. everything is more expensive than it used to be. people are desperate and demanding and unpleasant to deal with. employers have become unreasonable to a fault and the expectations placed on their employees are at a new and all time impossible high. the guy and i are exhausted with our lives this year.

our enclosed front porch was slated to be finished this summer but we started a repair job on the motorhome roof instead. the tree was felled and we are now cutting wood and bundling sticks instead of finishing the front porch or working on the motorhome roof repair...which if it doesn't get repaired eliminates a camping trip this summer.

i haven't found much time to knit in the evenings due to exhaustion and a strong desire to veg out. so i follow my best instincts and i do just that. i've perfected vegging out. every night last week rather than knit anything i wound yarn into balls instead. i have all my yarn wound into balls and have yet to start my latest project out of the yarn i wound.

the daughter and son in law built a beautiful pool and i have been in it exactly three times this summer. the daughter is in the hospital again with even more complications than at first revealed from her motorcycle accident and the guy is there with her tonight. he is worried about what is to be her second surgery. the kids are with relatives or friends or here with us and are in good hands but are not where they expected to be this summer and the son in law is running from hospital to work and back home collecting children and puppies and no one is swimming much.

tonite i decided to get up off my ass and take a few pics of my back yard. we thought we should document this whole ordeal so we remember never to do this again and if you say it looks like a wood pile i can only say this...it was a lot worse last week! now we have piles of this type of wood and piles of that type of wood but it used to be a big pile of broken tree. two days ago we decided to take down another damaged tree since we don't have enough to do already and i nearly broke my hand and the fence in the process and we managed to get two chain saws stuck in to different tree trunks and yet we still didn't kill each other

but rather we laughed ourselves silly! on the bright side we work well together. my second sleeve and my balls of yarn...that's all the knitting news i have. later...love g

was your friday night as exciting...

as mine?  i came home from work and went to the bank machine, the cricket store to buy crickets for the lizards dinner and to the grocery store to buy ice cream and while i was there some ground meat that was on sale and coffee..hey you gotta buy coffee when it's on sale or take out a loan...geez man!   i came home and made diner then i made two dozen meatballs for the freezer and a meatloaf for sandwiches and then the giant and i mean giant zuchinni that was given to me from a friends garden was staring at me on the kitchen counter and begging me to make use of it before she rotted away.  i personally think that a big giant zuchinni is about as useless an item as could be but zuchinni bread seemed like a good idea...the only good idea for a tough oversized vegetable like that.  so i made two loaves of the stuff from scratch and it is to die for.  i may not even be able to bring myself to share mostly because the guy and i will polish off those two loaves long before the weekend is over!    i know what you're thinking...the heat...the oven...bad combination and well that is all true but i persisted and i was rewarded with enough food to last a few days and i will not be doing anymore cooking for a while. well that's not really true  because i used only half of the damn endless zuchinni. more bread to come.  tomorrow we go to a peach festival so peach something to come too i am assuming.  this heat is a killer. i picked the perfect summer to cut off all my hair and that has been a good thing what with the fallen tree and all the wood cutting and twig bundling and etc etc etc going on here in the hot haziness of this summer. i look forward to the day when i can see the ground in my yard again but i fear all the grass that was once there is no longer and will have to be replanted.  have you ever tried planting grass in a yard that two dogs rule over?  not such an easy task.  anyway i miss my hair. i don't miss the heaviness of it on my head and i don't miss that it would have been so hot i would've fainted on a regular basis and i don't miss how it looked cause i was sick and tired of looking at it and got to the point where i didn't like the looks of it anyway.  i can't imagine why i miss my hair or what i miss about it but i think it's like forgetting a jacket at the baseball stadium or dropping your hat in the woods.  something is missing but you don't quite know what it is and you really don't need anything other than what you've got so how important can it be anyway but still something is missing...i'll leave you with that except to say the sexy knitters have voted and i must not be a sexy knitter anymore because once again i'm not playing...i'm sticking with my first two choices and this august i will continue to knit poppi from yarnplay/lisa shobhana and the burnished tunic from knitscene fall 2008/kat coyle.  call me a rebel...later...love   g

if a tree falls in the woods while you're at the mall...

and you don't hear it...does it make a sound?  the guy says yes. our neighbors as nice as they have tried to be finally got sick and damn tired of my mulberry tree making a mess of things on their house and yard and they hired a tree guy to trim the overhanging offending branch.  while the tree guy was at it the guy hired him to take down the whole fifty year old monstrosity of a tree. it's down...it's done...nothing left now but the clean up.  before you get all offended and whiney about cutting down a tree know this.  i am a tree person.  i plant at least 3  trees a year on my property because i'm building a forest but this tree was too much.  it was huge and it was messy and it was covered with ivy which was probably destined to kill it and then it would fall on the nice neighbors house and maybe kill them or one of their dogs...or more likely cause considerable damage. now there is peace in the neighborhood and every one is happy except me i hate having to clean all this up.  we aren't supposed to burn in this neighborhood but we have burned up some of the dead wood and branches and no one is really upset or offended except maybe me because i can't breath....that's why i have no wood burning fireplace in my house...the smell and smoke of burning wood does me in and i know this because our other neighbor has  a wood burning fireplace and all winter i smell his fire and it causes many bronchial spasms in my lungs. we've got wood coming out the wazoo over here now though and we haven't even taken down the trunk of the tree yet...not until we clean up the branches!  my plan is to split it, stack it and season it and offer it up to those souls who like their wood burning stoves and fireplaces and who don't have asthma and bronchial issues because of it.  except i will not offer it up to my other wood burning neigbor because he is just plain mean but if any one else is nice and is in need of some wood to burn next winter i'm your man.  i've got wood out the wazoo!

 

so what i've been doing instead of knitting and blogging is yard work, fence repair and clearing brush.  i did manage to knit some of poppy last nite.  i ripped out the short row sleeve caps three times and decided three times is the charm for me and i'll just knit them like i'm told to do.  the knitting rebel in me is exausted and has surrendered.  the sleeve caps were nice enough but too tight fitting uder the arm  so i'm almost up to my elbow in sleeve now.  i am knitting them separatley in the round from the cuff up and me likey!!!  i'm gonna have mad ends to weave in folks but i can't resist these random stripes.  they add a bit of interest for the knitter...that would be me...and stockinette becomes more fun to do and really this pattern is written by lisa shobhana so it is fitting that i should stripe this in this way. she is all about color and the random stripes and the use of different yarns combined  for the purpose of making it individual.  so here goes...this one is is for you and speaking of lisa check out the sexy knitters group on ravelry.  this months kal is designer based. we choose a designer and knit any of her designs.  lisa shobhana has been nominated and i have voted to agree with the nomination and as a bonus she is having a pattern sale now on her blog!!!  whoo hooo!  i have nominated kat coyle for her new sweater the burnished tunic and for her wonderful knitted skirts and lets not forget about this tulips. 

so go on over to the sexy knitters group on ravelry and check out the nominations even if you don't belong to the group you can at least show your support and agree with the nominations...the more who agree the better her chances of being chosen so let's try to get these gals into the mix over at the sexy knitters club.  we haven't knit any of their designs yet as a group and  i'd personally be happy to knit any of either of their designs...and as a matter of fact i will probably still be cutting wood when the time comes around and so i'll still be knitting poppy then too and for a change i'll fit right in and although i have finished kat's tulips and overdyed her a gorgeous "brown is the color of my german shorthair" brown  i have yet to find the time to model her and totake a pic of her in her final glory so i'll probably still be on that project too.  is that cheating? nah...i didn't think so either!  later...love   g