Apples and Knitting

My Peonies are blooming. The flowers are HUGE. The one on the right does not have the typical Peony aroma. The darker one on the left does. It's making the whole house smell good.

While I was taking pics of them, I thought I'd show you the Honeycrisp baby apples. They're much easier to see now that they've gotten a little bigger.

There are more than I thought. Quite a few more. Here you can get an idea of size with my thumb and finger.

We had a real rip roaring thunder storm Tuesday evening with lots of wind and we didn't lose a single one of them. So they're on there nice and firm. I am so curious how big they will get. I was reading an article about how hard it has been for the apple industry to control the size of these apples. They are tending to grow very large. Too large for grocery stores for the most part. I expect they'll end up weeding them out of our shopping choices if they can't figure out how to fix that.

I stopped working on Margaret long enough to finish knitting the baby cardigan. It only took me a couple hours. I just need to block and put on the buttons.

I worked on it while at Rathdrum knitting on Tuesday. I finished it up before the meeting was over so I've started the first matching bootie. I didn't want to work on Margaret cuz I was mad at her. Well, really more at myself. I got to the end of the armhole shaping on the sleeve panel and counted the number of stitches. I was more than 30 sts short. I discovered I'd misread the increase instructions. I read to increase until there are 60 sts. What it actually said was "increase until there are 60 chart B sts". AAARRRGGHH! I had to rip all the way back to where I'd stopped doing the increases. 2 1/2 days of work, frogged. Urgh!!!!! I've worked like mad to get back to the start of the armhole shaping. I'm about 8 rows away from it.

Had a problem with my car yesterday. Coming home from Yarnies it started to make a horrible high pitched squeal so loud and high it pierced right through my brain. It sounded like the left rear tire. I checked it when I got home. It smelled hot, and the wheel was very hot. I told hubby about it and he said it sounded like a bad bearing.

I called Toyota and they had me come in this morning. I was also told by sweet hubby not to go over 45mph on my way there because doing so could cause the wheel to come off. I took all back roads to the Toyota dealer. They examined the ol' Camry. Turned out to be a totally different problem. The brake pad on that wheel was on crooked with lots of rust around it. It cost a small fortune to get it fixed, of course. They had to take it all apart to clean out the rust and debris and replace the pad and some other part.

While waiting for my car to get done my friend came and got me. We went to lunch with friends. An event we planned a month ago. We went  to Beverly's at the Coeur d'Alene Resort. I had an Asian Chicken salad that was absolutely delicious! After that I asked if they still do creme brule'. They do so I ordered it because there's just no point in going to Beverly's if I'm not going to have it. It was wonderful!

I ate every bit. Just as we were finished with lunch Toyota called to say my car was ready, so my friend took me back. When the morning started I thought I was going to miss that lunch, but thanks to my wonderful friends, it all worked out. Hurray!

Live long and prosper. \\//

Simple Womans Day Book June 24, 2019

The Simple Woman's Daybook June 24, 2019

Outside my window... It's dark because it's almost midnight as I write this.

I am thinking... about the coming weekend. It's going to be a busy one. I've got one nephew coming with his wife, kids, and "unknown number of teenagers" to visit for a couple nights. Another nephew and his significant other are moving out of their apartment  and all their things are going to be moved into our garage for storage (It's amazing how much stuff being stored in our garage doesn't belong to us). There's a family barbecue being planned, and then there's planning and getting ready to leave on a camping trip. We're leaving Tuesday, thankfully. All visitors will be gone by then.

I am thankful for... my Star Trek channel on Pandora. It's my favorite of all my channels. Besides playing Star Trek soundtracks, it also plays soundtracks from all kinds of other movies I like. Sometimes the music in a movie is just so magnificent. For instance the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away. The first time I heard the music played with the ending credits in that one, it brought me to tears it's so beautiful. Movie soundtracks are our generations Symphonies and Sonatas. There are some amazing composers doing work for movie soundtracks.

From the kitchen... it's quiet in there. The lights are off. It's been put to bed for the night.

I am wearing... bright berry colored knit pants and a striped t-shirt. It has green, blue, black, white, and purple stripes.

I am creating... not a whole lot, though there are lots of projects I should be working on and finishing. I have a singular focus, which is kind of unusual for me when it comes to crafting. It's all about Margaret Tudor for me. I've tried working on other things and then I start feeling guilty cuz I'm ignoring Margaret.

I am going...  camping. We're driving over to Whidbey Island in Washington and camping at Deception Pass State Park. It's been over 30 years since I've been there. We used to camp there a lot when I was a kid. In fact, we spent almost a whole summer there once while my dad worked on a construction job in Anacortes. I say almost cuz one day, after coming back from work for the day, he was running on one of the hiking trails with our dog and fell. Broke his ankle. That was the end of that trip. I have very very good memories from those summers though. So much fun there.

I am reading... some silly romance book I got on Amazon called Winter Nights: Ten Book Box Set. I got it for my Kindle for 99 cents, or something like that. I was going to link to it, but it's not on Amazon anymore. That's interesting. Hmmm... I'm not really enjoying it. I think I'll download my Jules Verne books and read them instead.

I am listening… nothing really. It's quiet in the house, except for the dryer working on a load of laundry. 

I am hoping… everything goes well for our coming camping trip.  I expect it's changed a lot at the park since the last time I was there.

Around the house... everybody but me is sleeping. So peaceful.

One of my favorite things... Peonies. They are so pretty and smell so good. Mine are blooming now.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Going many places this week. I've got knitting group at the Rathdrum Library tomorrow, for starters, On Thursday it's knitting group in Coeur d'Alene, Friday is lunch with some friends. There's grocery shopping, family barbecue, and a few other plans that don't immediately come to mind.

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing... My set up today while I was deck knitting. I've blown up the stitch pattern charts and I keep track of where I am with those little post it note flag thingies. I've got fancy plaid ones. They were in my Christmas stocking a couple years ago. Very handy.

If you want to join the Simple Woman's Daybook, click here.

Live long and prosper. \\//

Spring Blooms

Oh goodness! We're 2/3rds of the way through June already. The spring just zipped by! My yard was extra pretty this year. Everything bloomed spectacularly. I took a few pictures, and that's what's being posted today.

First of all, my baby flowering Crabapple out did herself. She likes being in a fenced yard where the moose can't chew her to bits. She was thick with flowers.

It's been awhile since she's bloomed, and the last time she did I could swear the flowers were white. So it was a surprise to find pale pink with dark edges on the petals.

When I bought the tree, it was mislabeled so I thought I was buying a regular dark pink Crabapple, making the color a surprise regardless. I didn't know Crabapples came in any other colors. Suddenly, I'm noticing all the white and pale pink Crabapple trees all over the place. The county is littered with them. They smelled wonderful.

My Honeycrisp Apple tree bloomed too, but it was only about 20 or so flowers toward the center of the tree. They were fairly large and pure white. I didn't take pics. Some of those flowers are now tiny little apples. We are actually going to have apples on that tree! I am SO EXCITED!

The flowering Cherry had a few blooms too. It hasn't recovered completely from the moose abuse, even though it's been 3 years. Poor thing. It's loaded with leaves though, and growing like crazy.

My French Lilac was gorgeous! Loaded with blooms this year. It's growing like crazy too.

There's a young Ponderosa Pine behind it that is sort of crowding it above so I'm going to be pruning some branches to give it more room to grow upward.

If you've never seen these in real life, the flowers are much larger than the standard lilacs, and it smells heavenly. We had a whole week of lilac perfume in the house while it bloomed.

My regular lilac bloomed as well. Last year we got a frost at the wrong time that killed its buds, so it was nice so see them this year. The bush itself needs some work. The snow sliding off the roof has done some damage. (Please ignore the weeds)

It's the more traditional lilac color.

Smells wonderful too.

I have future flowers coming. All my Peonies have big fat buds on them.

We have had wonderful weather since I last wrote. Many perfect sunshine days for sitting out on my deck and knitting. Some rain too, keeping things nice and fire resistant. Temps have ranged mostly in the upper 60's, low 70's, except last week which got up close to 90F. This week it's cooled off and we're getting 5 minute weather days. We had a rainbow yesterday afternoon.

We went camping last weekend at Heyburn which is on the south end of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and it was perfect weather. I enjoyed the whole weekend immensely. Forgot my camera though, which made me very angry with myself because there are lots of wild flowers there of which I wanted to take pictures.

Sweet hubby, Dan, and Sue went on a bike ride while there, so me and Ruth went into Plummer and visited the Warpath Smokeshop and Trading Post.

Plummer is about 5 miles from where we were camping on the Coeur d'Alene Indian tribes reservation.

The shop carries beads. The last time I was there (which we figured out had been 12 years) it did, anyway. Just a small selection of Czech opaque seed beads. Well, things have changed. They built a HUGE addition onto the back and it's chock full of beads.

I've never seen so many beads in just one place! It was awesome! I actually had a huge rush when I stepped in the door and first laid eyes on them. There must be every color of Czech 11 seed beads there. Thousands of hanks hanging in rainbow order on the walls! They had 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 20's too in round and charlottes. Tons of Toho seed beads in tubes lined one aisle. They had a wall full of fire polish crystals, and all kinds of things for making Native American regalia (They have stuff for making moccasins!!!). I had the biggest blast looking at everything. I spent money. Way too much. They have Native American themed fabric and I bought some cotton for a blouse. That store was the highlight of the trip for me.

I am still diligently working on Margaret Tudor. I've got all the body pieces done. I finished them last week. HURRAY!

I also knit the two sleeve rose panels already. While camping, I worked on the first side sleeve panel (there are 4). It's not been going so well because I keep goofing it up. It's pretty complicated. I've cast on 4 times for it now. I think I've finally got it figured out. Geez, I sure hope so. I do not want to start it a 5th time.

Well, that's my news for now. I haven't given up on the blog yet. Just been really busy, Here's a picture of Zoey, who is doing lots of running in the back yard and enjoying it.

Live long and Prosper. \\//