Recently I mentioned that I’m starting to knit a pair of socks. I bought a book recommended by the sock diva at the yarn shop where I work. In the book, the author includes instruction for a small basic sock that she teaches in a class, hence the name class sock. I decided it would be a good place to start before I set into the real thing. So with scrap yarn, I completed this sample. It went together fairly easily, even though I have a hole where the heel flap meets the sole (You can’t see this in the photo of course. It’s on the other side.) and I need some practice with the kitchener stitch which joins the top of the sock to the bottom at the toe. But I’m proud that I was able to fix a mistake I made in the ribbing and at least I have a pretty good idea what to expect when I knit the next one. I plan to use bamboo yarn in a variegated blue – so soft and supposed to be durable. I’ll post pix when I’m done.
Archive for October 1st, 2007
We’ve been saving some tasks for when we have help, you know, the young, strong type of help. Our son and his girlfriend arrived last weekend. The idea was to chip the large pile of branches from all the trees we took down. I called the rental place several days ahead as they had suggested. No chipper available. Someone had rented it for a month! We could maybe get it for the day James was supposed to leave. So on to plan B.
We had had our chain saw tuned up and ready to go so we could cut up all those tree trunks we saved into log lengths, ready for splitting so we wouldn’t have to buy firewood for next year. The saw lasted a half day before refusing to start again. We had no new spark plug on hand nor the right tools for even getting the plug out. I’ll be taking the saw to Rutland for more work. On to plan C.
The excavator had left us a nice big pile of top soil so we could make a raised bed vegetable garden. We fired up the tractor, attached the front end loader and scraped away the grass. Under that innocent layer of green lurked rocks – BIG rocks and lots of them. We spent a couple hours digging those out and made a good sized pile to the side. We had thought that we would use lumber to raise the bed, but after taking in the size of the rock pile, we decided that we could build the sides up with a rock wall. Yes, insanity had set in by now. While I started on laying the rocks, James began moving the dirt. By mid afternoon we had a lovely bed all ready for vegetable planting in the spring. Hooray, something went off without a hitch. And yes, 95% of those rocks came from that little 20’x30′ plot!
The next task was removing an old TV antenna from the roof. Now that we have a dish, we don’t need it anymore – it received all of 4 stations. James – such a good son – climbed up on the pointy peak and removed said antenna with the help of dad sending up encouragement and tools as needed. Another job completed.
But it wasn’t all work. We celebrated Roger’s birthday too and on Sunday we decided to try some geocacheing in the neighborhood. The first one was a multi-chache – a series of three. The first one leads you to the second which leads you to the third. We came close to giving up on the second one – we thought we had looked everywhere possible (hint: When this happens, switch looking to a different plane). But we eventually found them all – actually Ellie found them all, and she’s never been geocacheing before. We were struggling a little with learning how to use the new GPS unit – it’s tricky in the woods. We had the granddog with us, and after a little swim in the stream for her, we headed out to the second hunt for the day. This one took us to the top of Mt Okemo.
While we were up there we decided to climb the fire tower since it was a fabulous fall Vermont day. The view from the top was spectacular (yes, we could see Mt Washington) and well worth the trip. Oh, and did I mention that Ellie found this cache too? I think it was all the excellent directions we were giving her. Or maybe it was just her eagle eye.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about our construction. The painters are here as I type. They finally figured out how much acid to use to scarify the concrete so they could put down the epoxy based paint with some assurance that it would indeed stick. The third time was a charm, putting the acid down full strength instead of diluted like most of the instructions recommended. It’s going to look very nice but we have to wait for two coats and a long period of time before we can park on it. But, it’s been a year since we started this project. Another week or two won’t hurt.
The excavators are long gone having prepped the driveway for paving as their final task on the way out. To do that, we needed to empty the temporary garage we had erected in the driveway to house all the stuff we had stored in the horse barn that we took down for the new construction. Our son James lovingly dubbed it the ghetto garage but it served our purpose well, even in the snow. We offered it to our builder to house the sand he spreads in the winter and he came with his trailer to haul it away. Fortunately he only needed to go about 2.5 miles on our narrow dirt roads. He had one of his workers precede him down the hill since he was a pretty wide load. There’s not too much traffic on our road and he only met one car, which kindly pulled into a driveway to let him pass. What a sight he was and a good thing it wasn’t windy.
Mountain Vistas 