Hat #2

I finished it tonight with about 8 inches left of the darker color. It's now been washed and will be added to my Dulaan pile once it's dry.

As soon as I was finished I went through the Dulaan stash and dug out 5 skeins of Tahki yarns - 3 of Donegal Tweed and two of a very similar, though less tweedy, variegated yarn in colors that are complementary to the Donegal Tweed. There should be enough here for a child's vest, so that's what I've cast on for.



The plan in my head is to do most of the body with lice patterning using the pinkish yarn, then some other patterning in the greenish-purplish yarn over the chest & shoulders.

An Afternoon's Labour

The weather was quite nice this afternoon, so I decided to try to tackle some of our overgrown front yard. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that our front yard is a very steep little hill. Once upon a time, the landladies had it well mulched and planted in daylilies. The daylilies are still there, but not so much with the mulch these days. Last summer it got very jungley, and the daylilies were practically choked out by grass and weeds and evil, evil, evil, evil bittersweet (I don't think I can, in fact, convey how awful this vine is. Anyone who promotes it, whether as an ornamental or for use in floral arrangements, should be dragged out and quartered, then shot in non-vital places, then cut into little pieces and burned, with their souls being sent to the deepest level of hell. They probably deserve worse, but I'm just soft that way.).

So after four hours of raking, and pulling, and digging, and throwing, and hauling, I had this to show for it:



Unfortunately, there's nothing in this photo that really gives a good sense of scale, but this pile probably contains at least a couple hundred pounds of yard waste. This represents about a third of our front yard. There's still the flattish (by which I mean "less steep") part, which needs to be prepared for two apple trees I've ordered and will be picking up in a month, and the western side of the yard, which is overgrown with rambling rose and staghorn sumac. It was all I could manage in one afternoon, though, and the effort has left me quite sore.

The Latest Word Around Town

Bray House, the oldest house in town - and, consequently, the oldest house in the state - was put on the auction block this past weekend. It sold for $1.8M, which is fairly average for the high end homes (i.e., much, much nicer than our house) around here. Rumor has it that the winning bidder was 80's pop star Daryl Hall. Coincidentally, the other half of Hall & Oates is also an alpaca breeder. So who knows, maybe we can get them to come sing Maneater to the 'pacas.