Random Thursday

Halloween was a non-event at our house. We put up the Halloween village on the piano in the living room and put out a few mums and a fall flag on the front porch. We had no trick or treaters.  The only ones that enjoyed the screaming witch door bell were the grandchildren and the UPS man.

The Mexican sage is finally blooming, but we have had frost a few mornings this week which will shorten its blooming season.  The blooms will be enjoyed for as long as they are here. It is a little sad to see it go. It marks the end of fall, which is my favorite time of year.

Knitting: Fingerless mitts are finished. I modified the pattern accidentally.  I was knitting the Susie’s Reading Mitts on Lorna’s Laces Honor in the Goblin colorway. Everything was going well, until I got interrupted while knitting the lace at the top of the mitt. When I came back I assumed I knew where I was and stopped doing the lace and began the turning pattern. This made the mitts too tight when the picot edge was turned. Frog! but just the sewn edge. I decided to leave the edge bound off but not to turned with a picot edge. I repeated the mistake on the other mitt. They are warm and fit well. Guess I need to call it a design feature instead of a mistake. ;~)

Working on an Encompass scarf in black alpaca. Fun to knit, but I need to be uninterrupted to keep up with the charts. I have two skeins of the yarn. I hope that will make the scarf wide enough. We’ll see.

Dinner tonight uses up leftover baked chicken leg quarters. I put red inca quinoa, onions, a bag of cole slaw mix and chicken stock with some herbs in the crockpot, stirred well and added the chicken on the top. It has been cooking for half the day. The house smells wonderful! Hard to wait for Tom to come home to see if it taste as good as it smells.

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the scarf until dinner.

Fall Clean Up and Fix Up

After weeks and months of sweltering heat, the weather has finally changed to the 60s at night and the upper 80s during the day. Wonderful weather for getting the yard cleaned up.  

Tom raked up the pinestraw and cut the grass this morning. 

I cleaned the dead zinnias out of the raised beds and added more garden soil.

 Then it was time to plant the fall vegetables. Beets, carrots, peas, sugar snaps, broccoli, red and green cabbage and lettuce were planted. Even though, Tom thinks that vegetables are what you feed real food, I love them.  I also planted some snapdragons. This is our first attempt at a fall garden. We’ll see how it does. 

While clearing some random weeds out of some of the flower beds close to the house, I noticed that the gutters were filled with pinestraw. We got out the ladder and I climbed to the roof and cleared the gutters. Tom stayed on the ground. He doesn’t do heights and since I am on the Habitat roofing crew, I got the job. 

The roof over the garage was pretty clean with only a little debris in the gutters. The roof over the sunroom was another story. I removed almost a bale of pinestraw off the roof and out of the gutters. 

I did feel a little like a fiddler on the roof, but alas no fiddle!

I did notice an exposed nail while on the roof, so it was quickly nailed in and covered with silicone caulk. Should be good for another season. 

I noticed that the siding needs to be cleaned, but since our power washer died a slow death last year, it will have to wait until a new one is purchased. 

The yard looks pretty good considering neither of us are gardeners or have much interest in landscaping. 

Maybe now I can find some time for a little knitting.