Birthday Month and Beyond

 

I've written before about the dishcloth knit-a-long with Modern Daily Knitting, and I've made 3 1/2 by now.  The other day, I was folding laundry, and realized I needed some washcloths, too.  I went to the studio, looking for cotton yarn to use, and saw a warp I'd hand-dyed ages ago on a Tuesday Weavers' dye day, this hot pink...thing that was all carpet warp and not wide enough for anything.  Except maybe washcloths!

And Tootsie the 8-shaft was the first naked loom, so I pulled out Carole Strickler's book, knowing I wanted some kind of fancy twill.  I found one of the gamps done by the Boulder "Octagang" Group on pages 84-85, and modified it to use 120 ends, which is what I thought the warp had, but when I found out it only had 95 (95?), I added 12 more on either side of a solid pink, and then realized it was actually 24 on each side.  So I added more repeats.  Too much coffee?  Not enough?

It's almost threaded and will be pulled through using the trapeze.  Actual weaving will probably begin this afternoon.

And since I have missed posting a blog two Fridays in a row, I have a lot of catching up to do!  Friday the 29th, I flew to Nashville to spend my birthday with my son and his girlfriend.  The first night, Matt made pizza, actually eight pizzas!  He has a neat pizza oven on the back deck, and he makes his dough from scratch the day before to ferment nicely.  We had peach and feta, potato and olive, there was a sausage-y one, um, and there was beer, so I have forgotten the rest, but they were all delicious.

The next day was my birthday, but they had to work, so I borrowed a car and went in search of pastry, fabric and yarn.  If you're ever in Nashville, stop of Dozen, a bakery https://www.dozen-nashville.com/ .  Everything looks delicious, but I just got an almond croissant and a latte.  I ate the croissant--bad idea!--while driving to Textile, http://www.textilefabricstore.com/.  I brushed all the flakes of pastry off my outfit, and checked the mirror for leftovers on my chin before I went in.  The last time I was there, it was in a much bigger location, and I bought way too much.  They've down-sized, and I simply could not find anything I wanted!  I was very sad, because it was my birthday and I like to buy fabric on my birthday.  

So, I headed to Haus of Yarn.  https://www.hausofyarn.com/  Aaaahhh... yarn stores.  If only there were as many fabric stores as there are yarn stores, what a fabulous world this would be.  I was looking for yarn for a new sweater, worsted weight for Dijon Foret, by Carol Sunday.  I saw it on a podcast I just started watching, Green Bean Podcast.  Watch it!  She's so calm and sweet!  And I love her dog, Jack.  Anyway, I found the yarn, a lovely Alpaca blend in an extremely wearable denim color.  

I also bought a skein of some Malabrigo in an amazing purple-blue-navy combo, but they only had one skein.  And what's under that skein?  Some funky-weird shoes they had sitting around that they convinced me to take.

I brought lunch to Matt and Rachel-Kate to their new studio, https://www.rangerstitch.com/.

They do custom embroidery, and are always very busy.  It's a pretty amazing business, and you should really follow the link to see what kind of stuff they do!  Yes, I am a proud parent.

They took a break for lunch, then went back to work, while I went home to knit and rest.  Nashville traffic is nerve-wracking.

Indian buffet in the parking lot

That night, I made my birthday cake from a box mix!  Yes!  But it was one of those new Dolly Parton mixes and it was very nice.  Matt made pork roast and polenta, and we had a lovely evening.  

The next day, we hit the road.  First, we had Indian food from a store that only has its bakery open on Saturdays and Sundays. So delicious!  Then we hit the Latin farmers' market for cups of fruit.  

That night was fancy night out, when we ate at Locust, a modern restaurant https://www.locustnashville.com/.  Everything was delicious.  Yes, we ate a lot that day.

So the next day, we had cake for breakfast, had burgers for lunch, and oh!  Look what was next to the burger place!  A bead store!  Check out this aisle in the bead store.  Holy mole!  It was amazing.

That was followed by a pick-your-own peach orchard, but they couldn't let us pick.  We had to buy what they'd picked earlier in the day.  Which was fine, because it was hot that day.  And the peaches were perfect.

And that night, because there was still room, Matt made fried chicken.  So good!  He made an appetizer of cherry tomatoes and chilies from his garden, with flat bread, and some herbed olives...and then he made a peach tart.

So even though I'd lost about 8 pounds since retiring, it's all come back on board.  

But I've also finished some socks and a sweater!  You'll recognize the plain vanilla sweater, now finished and blocked and buttoned, though I do want to replace the top button with a special button that I can't find right now.  It can wait until October, I think.  And the socks were my travelling project that kept me company to and from Nashville and the times I wasn't eating.  

Well, if you're still with me, you deserve some cute, courtesy of Huck in a box.  I've got to go get back to that hot pink warp.  Talk to you next week!