Molly Bee's Attic

It's bad, People. It's very, very bad. As you recall, I knit half a Fiddlehead Mitten (heretofore known as 'The Finorkin Fiddlehead Mittens') and decided that I needed to go up a needle size. I did and was very pleased with the results.  I knit the blue. Groovy. I even started to like the icord cast on. Then I knit the teal...Oooo! Nice transition.  Then I got to the sea glass green and the thumb and all of that jazz.  Still going really well... I switched to the purple heather....hmmmm, not wild about that but I'll keep going....Then I got to the fifth color, a darker purple, and knit all the way to the top decrease and look what happened. #1.  There are two colors of purple there and even though they don't look like it on the skein, they are too close in color to tell apart when knit side by side. #2.  All the blues together and then the purples looks ok when I laid the skeins out, but clearly it is too dorky to live in reality. So....sigh....look away,...

So Miss Nancy and I started our Fiddlehead Mitten Knit Along on Saturday last. I had a devil of a time getting the i-cord cast on even enough for my liking and then I started to put the thumb gusset on BOTH sides of the palm before I stopped myself after five rows, but otherwise the pattern was pretty straight forward. I am almost through the gusset. In fact I'm this far: Don't know why that's upside down and I don't really care... because as of tonight... it's all coming out! We talked about it this morning and both of us feel that since our stranded knitting is pretty tight, we'd better frog the whole works and go up a needle size or too-particularly since there is a liner mitten that has to go in there too. The plan is to go up two needles sizes on the outer, stranded, mitten but drop back, either one or two sizes down, for the inner liner which isn't stranded and therefore should be knit a bit looser. It's a good plan, but after ripping out a huge ...

We had a pretty relaxing weekend around here for a change. It was finally sunny again. My Knit Sisters came over on Friday night. We watched a Harry Potter movie, had warm apple dumplings and they commiserated with me about having to rip out 6 inches of the sweater front I was almost finished with. Le sigh. Saturday I did some spiffin' up in the nest which included cleaning out my bookshelves. Two huge bags are out the door!  A bag of knitting ones for the Knit Sisters and a bag of cookbooks for St. Vinnies! Ahhh... space!  My place will never be Zen, but I don't want it to turn into an episode of Hoarders either! I also started the Fiddlehead Mitten KAL with Nancy. I haven't done i-cord cast on before and I love the way it looks but it took a bit for it to click for me. But I've finally got one mitten on and about 8 rows of the palm! Today I had a barn shift. It was nice to see the gang again. Colder than heck though. Took a while for Anna to get up and going. S...

Nancy, a friend of mine from back in the day in Maine, and I are embarking on a Fiddlehead Mittens  Knit Along on Saturday. I haven't looked forward to a knitting project so much in quite a while. Nanc is taking a class at her local yarn store and sent me an email wishing that I still lived in Maine so I could go with her. I told her that I have had the pattern forever and would love to knit it along with her as she takes her classes. We'll chat about it and send progress photos online.  I've never done i-cord cast on so I may even learn something! (Won't Nancy's knitting teacher be surprised when she has to conferences me in by iPhone because I have questions! ) Here is my yarn: The ash grey is the background color the 5 skeins on the bottom are the accent colors and the two balls of purple are 100% baby alpaca for the lining. Sah-weet! The Countdown has begun!

So I went to the filling station this morning to get a cup of coffee. I do this a couple of times a week. They rotate flavors through but I almost always get hazelnut. For the last month or so though, there has been a wee sign on the hazelnut carafe that says try 'French Toast Muffin' .  I did and I LOVE it. It's very unique- way different than my normal hazelnut.   Sweet somehow. You can really taste the maple overtones. It quickly became my new favorite.  Today when I bought some, I used the last of the carafe so the following conversation with the F illing S tation L ady ensued: ME : I just maxed out your French Toast Muffin coffee. FSL : What? ME : I just used the last of the French Toast Muffin coffee. FSL : (blank look) ME : I just took the last cup of French Toast Muffin coffee (pointing to the carafe). FSL : Oh! You mean hazelnut! ME : (patiently) No, it's in the hazelnut carafe, but it says French Toast Muffin. FLS : No, the cof...

No farming this weekend. I was supposed to attend a horse class on Saturday afternoon but was ill and couldn't go so I haven't seen any of my babies since last Wed. and won't see them 'til THIS Wednesday!  It's still been a pretty full weekend even with not feeling well. I went to the dentist on Friday. I woke up Christmas morning missing a chunk of my bottom, front tooth. I'd already chipped the other one. I blame Santa. After eating all of those cookies year after year, his own chompers must be falling out by now.  But to steal them while you sleep seems a little extreme. In cahoots with the Tooth Fairy no doubt. So I went in and endured the 'all I want for Christmas is your two front teeth' jokes and got them fixed. $149!  Then I took Ben to the vet to get his nails trimmed and have someone look at his boo-boo ear. He is prone to ear infections in his left ear because of the way it's designed-not a lot of air circulates in there and it stays m...

Since it was Wednesday night, to the barn I took flight, To do chores in this cold winter season. Tonight there was a note, said,  'Put coats on the goats, To keep cute, fuzzy butts from a'freezin.' How hard could it be? There were just two, not three, That didn't have coats on already. The coats had  some straps and went over their backs. We just had to hold them real steady. It seemed easy enough, for these two were not gruff. The task should go smoother than butter. And the goats were both Billies so the belt for their bellies Wouldn't get all hung up on an udder. But the two it turns out, had heads filled with doubt 'Bout the statement they'd make, so important, To the llamas and mare and the other folks there, Should bright-hued winter coats, they be sportin'. So they dodged and they weaved, on the run they believed From our efforts to wrap up their torsos. But they were so wrong, because even head strong, WE were determined a...

As you all know from my yammering since July, Heartland Farm has become one of my favorite places to be.  The setting, the animals, the people, the work they do...all very soul restoring.  They have put together a heartwarming video of the highlights of 2011.  I encourage you to click on the link and watch it. It's about 4 minutes long. Please consider Heartland when you make your charitable contributions for 2012 so that they can continue this amazing work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7SCPcNrFPY

This morning at the farm, we took Anna and Cherish down to the big back pasture for the first time.  They had previously been in a small yard off the side of the barn that would shelter them a little better and confine them a bit while they healed and gained strength. It was a chore getting Anna, the mule, down to the new pasture. Sarah, the barn manager, led her, but as you can imagine Anna was more than a little scared and all kinds of excited to be in a new place and took poor Sarah 'off-roading' a couple of times before she finally went through the pasture gate. Cherish, the horse, is much more subdued than Anna. She's had a longer journey to get back to 'healthy' .  But even she stopped in her tracks a couple of times at the prospect of all of that wide open space, and had to be persuaded to move forward.  Once she got through the gate and saw all of the field grass she commenced munching and was happy as a clam to just amble about sampling the different plants...