Goal progress (subtle)

Gradual change is difficult for me. It's boring. Bore. Ing. One of our 2011 goals is to make the upstairs landing adorable. So, I'm painting it. It's boring. The landing connects with the hallway upstairs and down and we like it in a light color. But painting with light colors is BORING!

See! You can't even see the progress. Snooze!!

It's nothing like making a blue bedroom orange. Or taming a crazy pink guest room with a calming yellow. Or a turning a poop colored bathroom into fresh Irish spring green.

It's changing from beige to...greyish beige. Fortunately, the color change is more visible from some angles, or else I'd go batty. Bat. Tee. (New color on the right)

Also, it's making the current grimy walls all shiny and new. See all that muck on the lower part of the right wall:

That's not new gray paint or shadows. It's old, oily fingerprints. Eww.

In other goal-related news...I drove the truck back from town yesterday! I stalled a few times in the parking lot, and I kinda drive like a cautious old lady. But, I'm still driving.

My February project for the Self-Imposed Stash Club didn't work out. I had some very picky, lovely yarn that refuses to be anything right now but yarn. For March, the randomly chosen project was socks for Bill. This yarn is the very first I purchased at a yarn shop. Never knit with it because it's boring and Bill has very large feet. Nearly two months later, I'm about this far:

April is much more exciting. Another long-held yarn - my first Creatively Dyed yarn. It is becoming Aquaphobia (this is a Ravelry link, but I think common people can get there now?).


And, I'm spinning. I've moved from cheap merino I've dyed myself:


To a merino/raw silk blend dyed by people way better than me.

Shiny!

THIS!

Today was the sort of day for opening all the doors in the house and drying roving and sheets on rope strung between trees.


The sheets, you will note, are not flannel. This is a milestone. Also, the roving is green. I am craving some green. Fortunately, Mother Nature is obliging.



It was also the sort of day for having dinner outside. Homemade bread, local cheese and salami and the very, very last of the wine we brought back from New Zealand. Cards too. We always play cards when eating dinner at a picnic table. It's a thing. Should you ever eat dinner on our picnic table, expect to be presented with cards.



Today was also the sort of day for replacing fuel lines chewed on by red squirrels. Mmmm. Gasoline coated rubber is so delicious!

Daffodils and daft chickens

We have tons of daffodils that pop up in the center of our driveway loop. We don't take any care of them at all - they just grow in the spring and look lovely.


We think they might be pretty old. Have you ever seen ones with funny centers like this?


We also have some trouble-making chickens who have learned they can hop through the gate in our fence to access new parts of our yard...the grass always being greener and such. It wasn't so bad when they were just scratching around our compost pile, which is right near the fence, but now they are venturing over to the house.


Well within reach of the dog.


Fortunately, they know what a Ball jar full of chicken scratch looks like and we can lure them back to where they belong.

Scrappy yarn...

Now with pictures!

Stealing the idea from here, for the past few weeks I've been collecting the ends of yarn that I clip off my knitting. They are now ready for the birds:




We'll see how it goes.