I’ve decided to take a little “me” time! Today is a lovely, sunny day – breezes blowing, sun shining, moderate temperatures and it’s also SATURDAY! What does this lovely day find me doing first thing? I decided that TODAY is the day that I re-teach myself how to knit CABLE stitches! I should insert here that I haven’t knit cable stitches since I first taught myself when I was around 12 yrs. old. Have you ever had a time like that where you just decided NOW is the time I’m going to try this thing, attempt this new (or old) project? You might have attempted it many times before and failed, but RIGHT NOW you are going to give it another great effort and (perhaps) conquer it…that was this morning! Now that I’ve convinced myself that, indeed, I CAN knit cable (if I want to); I can put that to rest. Yes, I did accomplish three various cable patterns; now that I fully remember that it’s a real pain in the rear, I’m going to let that remain in my “I CAN do that!” file and get on with life.
It’s a glorious summer and I’ve pretty much let it slip by, being extra busy with graduation, driving my son back & forth to work, babysitting, etc. A few days ago I also decided that I WILL conquer the two bushes in front of our house which have grown to monumental capacity from lack of trimming. They used to be about 6 feet tall, nice rounded ‘ball-type’ of bushes (when I trimmed them). You could say I’ve really become lazy in my older age; or better put…I just didn’t trim them! There are several reasons, but the best one I can fall on at this time is: the clippers I used to use somehow got rusted (not naming any son’s names who might have left them outside…) and are virtually useless now. I decided, when asked what I wanted for my birthday this year, to go for new clippers and those long-handled branch trimmers. My loving family bought both, and nice leather gloves, also. Thursday found me eagerly clipping branch after branch of those bushes. Did I mention that they were severely overgrown? I guess, to put it more in clear terms, they were a good 12 feet tall! To further put this whole image in perspective, let’s just insert here that I’m 5 ft. 5 inches tall and no matter HOW much I tried to stretch on my tippy-toes, the tops of those bushes weren’t going to get any shorter! At the end of my energies what emerged (and remains, for now) are two big green orbs that look, with my best description, like basketballs with MOHAWKS! I mentioned to my husband that I was thinking of tackling them using a ladder when he calmly said: “Let ME handle the bushes!” (Does that mean he doesn’t TRUST me on a ladder???……..could be!)
Yesterday (Friday) found me in another of those “I need to DO something!” moods. Many little tasks were accomplished like sweeping the porch and outside walkway, trimming (actually ‘attacking’) another small bush that had gotten overgrown and was taking over the sidewalk approach to our porch door), laundry, and many other little chores like sewing on buttons, etc. Of the many “Hey! Pay attention to ME!” projects, one stood out: making covers for new pillows for our couch. Believe me, I’m no seamstress! Only the very rudimentary projects do I even attempt to tackle. I approach sewing with a engineer’s eye: “Let’s see…what angles does this have? How can I make what I envision in my head by using this tool called a sewing machine?” (Ever do that?) I can draw/paint/create on paper, thus my eye for sewing isn’t like, I’m sure, that of those who actually sew, I have to try to ‘make’ what I see in my head, by any means possible. That in mind, I managed to create four rather nice (I might say) pillow covers in a nice shade of dark, dusty blue. I suppose I should go back a bit, to about a month ago when oldest son said: “Hey, Mom-would you and Dad have any use for my old couch from my apartment? It’s still got lots of use in it and I’d hate to just trash it.” Our couch, at that time, had seen MUCH wear – three boys, many teens, many-MANY years of wear. It used to be this lovely cream-colored large sofa with two recliner ends. What was facing me when said son asked this question was a very raggedy (definitely NOT cream colored anymore) cat-scratched, broken down (one recliner no longer worked) mess of a couch. “Yes!” I said to son, and several evenings later he (and many of his friends) delivered his old couch and took away the tired excuse of a couch we had. Now we have a used ( but still in great condition) dusky blue large couch with wood trim. This couch, I should add, will swallow normal people! It’s one of those: “You sit in it, it totally engulfs you” couches! It’s great to sit or sleep on, but a real BEAR to get up off of! Anyway, now I have four new pillows to add a little flair to it. To add to that, middle son commented the other day: “Hey, Mom! Why don’t you add a little of your knitting to the pillows to make them more YOU?” Enough said – that got my creative juices flowing and now we have one, out of four, pillows with a medium blue knitted (in a lattice pattern) front. (I suppose I should add that when I mentioned the idea to my husband, his reply was: “TACKY!”) Think he was thinking those 60’s & 70’s crocheted pillows. These are just a square of knitting sewn onto the fronts of the pillows. Now that I’m ‘on-a-roll’, I’ve decided that the other three pillows are going to get ‘fronts’ too. On the back of our couch is a large “Americana” quilt in various colors. One of the prominent features on said quilt are several large stars; I’ve decided that one of the fronts is going to have a star. I’ve just learned how to knit raised patterns so one will have a heart (or, perhaps several hearts) and the last is another knit pattern in a blue-grey yarn (that’s the one I’m working on now in a pattern called “Twisted Textures”). So much for my couch/pillow project! (now you know more than you EVER wanted to know about my living room furniture and it’s accoutrements!)
I don’t know about you, but in my world I view Summer as a vast pallet of many projects just waiting for me to finish. This summer looms with things like: “make room in one of the two bedrooms for a crib”; “clean the porch and drag out the Little Tykes toys (for my grandson)”; “figure out where to put all the ’stuff/junk’ leftover from cleaning the bedroom/crib project”, etc. Somehow, each day I begin with thoughts of: “Maybe I’ll start doing X-project today!”, then life happens and it’s back to the drudgery of cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. and said project just fades into the background for another day. I’m trying, THIS SUMMER, to not let that happen! (by summer’s end, we’ll see just how much I actually managed to accomplish!)
Guess it’s time for me to wrap this one up and actually GET DOING! I was feeling a little down about not actually writing here lately and felt like it was ‘time’ to get something on this blog. Hope you have a great day and stop for awhile to enjoy this gorgeous summer!
Hugs;
Pammie
