Yes, the Olympics motivated this blog.

So let's try this blogging thing. I've resisted in the past, not sure if I was self-absorbed arrogant interesting enough to warrant blogging. Time will tell.




First, allow me to share our Olympic Knitting photos and other random things.

Here's my mountain colors (4/8's wool, color Wilderness) sweater, in this picture the back is at the armhole shaping section. I have since then finished and cast off, and am now working on the front --- as you can see, I had started the ribbing on that already.

The sunshine is muting the colors, they are really much richer. Can you tell that the varigations form a symmetric pattern along the bottom part above the ribbing? Then I changed to a new skein, since even within a dye-lot the hand painted yarn has significant variations. Skein 2 has more khaki and less symmetry. I switched to skein 3 at the armholes. Much more like skein 1, it nevertheless looks completely different, since there are fewer stitches per row, so the same symmetry does not appear. The overall effect is... I don't really know. Perhaps a little weird, but it is growing on me. I probably should have alternated skeins more often. My goal will be to make the front compatible, especially where skein 2 and the extra khaki/light green color appears.

Here's Zach's Olympic hat --- a sailor's watch cap in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. He has had some frustrations and ripped part of it a couple times, but is progressing. He is adamant about knitting (and purling) every stitch himself, I am not allowed to do any. But when there's a mistake, he has allowed (insisted even) that I do the ripping for him. The fabric is wonderfully soft and stretchy. Will make a super hat.


Note the crocuses in bloom, protected by the artistic chicken wire. Otherwise the crocuses would have been squirrel food months ago. All 50 or so of the crocus bulbs we planted in the yard have been dug up. Fortunately daffodils are poisonous, so the squirrels leave them alone. The big question for later in the spring, did I plant the yummy tulips deep enough? Tulips don't bloom around here for another couple more months, so will have to wait and see.



Today we produced 9.68 kW/h on our roof! The photo above was taken early in the morning. Most of the day the roof is fully in the sun. I still can't get over watching the meter running backwards. On average we consume about 18 kW/h per day in the winter, so producing half that is really cool. In the summer we average about 10 kW/h consumption, we ought to be producing way more than that. I ran the clothes dryer today during the sunshine and went out to look at the meter. Uhoh, it was going forward, really fast. Sure gave me a strong visual incentive for setting up an outdoor clothes line.