honkers pond recedes

I could write about the travails of owning a house near a non-tidal river. I could write about the knowledge I've acquired about pumping water out of a basement. But there are far worse scenarios in other households in our area due to the torrential rains we experienced last week in Long Island. Mine are tales of inconvenience not tragedy.



The river acquired some of our backyard a week ago, about 30 feet in beyond the bulkhead at the greatest point. Now it's about 10 feet away from being our backyard again. Last week I joked about our bulkhead looking like one of those endless pools in a resort, that was before the river rose another 8 inches or so totally obscuring any edge.

This morning the sun is out, the river is receding back over the bulkhead and the swans, geese, ducks and various other birds will have to find another shallow pond to frolic in. All have been entertaining but some are not as clean as others. Canadian geese, you know I'm talking about you!
When I tiptoed out there just now to shoot this preening swan I was able to snap a few pictures before he/she headed towards me thinking I had snacks to dispense. I don't feed intimidating waterfowl.









While learning too much about pumping water out of our basement and worrying about the drawbacks of houseboat life I did manage some knitting projects during the evenings. Look! New socks! Toe-up construction from a very precisely dyed skein of sock yarn from AlishaGoesAround. Here they are posing with their shoes.



It's Spring and time to be finished with those winter knitting projects! I'm working my way through them so I can start felting experiments. Water, soap, agitation---amazing what it can do to simply knit forms and wool fiber. Hope to have some to show soon.

post big snow

OK! As the official photographer of snow in our household I have these shots of the blizzard dump. I perhaps spent too much time in photoshop trying to figure out how to fill the empty spot, but the official photoshop user is busy shoveling my car out of the driveway.



Don't know what the news is saying but it looks like we got 20 inches or so easily. I like the big drifts coming off front gable---

big snow

I took before pictures of the pre-blizzard conditions here on Long Island at the 2:45 dog walk this afternoon. Things weren't looking bad at all, though the neighbors inflatable snowman was wavering in the wind.

But the 9:50pm dog walk was much different. Shivering dog under one arm and shovel under the other to create a pee path through the 10 inches of snow! That was fun.

We'll see what the conditions are tomorrow morning for the post blizzard pictures!

Is that better Sarah?

sat morning o'er the Peconic

Ah! The best time of day on our back deck, overlooking the quiet scene on the Peconic River, sun breaking through the oak branches, in my chartreuse flamingo print pj's, coffee (and camera) in hand...

Our goal this summer has been to make sure every paintable exterior surface is layered with a fresh coat of driftwood grey! I know, quite an inspiring color. I feel like we've been working on the Intrepid since June. So I'm savoring the last horizontal, ungrey surface before the painting maniac returns and the paint brushes come out.

Just enjoy your coffee on my deck---we have plenty of room for more tables and umbrellas on this soon-to-be all grey deck!

color bias

I have had strong opinions about color for as long as I can remember and for a long time, maybe even decades, I didn't like the color yellow. I was mostly affected by yellow flowering plants. I love greens, so when yellows go sulpher-y or go towards green, like the winter hazel or the ornamental grass hakenachloa, that's desirable.


Real yellow, nada. So when I started to add plants to our yard years ago I couldn't pick daffodils that were yellow. I went to great lengths to get all white ones. Or sunflowers. I got those small Italian white ones with the brown centers. So, you can imagine how the forsythia hedge at our curb has been an anathema for years. I didn't mind when the big truck that brought the concrete septic tank to the house several years ago damaged 3 or 4 while doing it's task! Really hated the ubiquitous yellow forsythia, for years! Be gone.

Maybe because this winter seemed longer, colder and grayer--- I was shocked one morning on the short drive home from treadmill punishment, that our block was suddenly ablaze with bloomin' yellow forsythia! Almost every yard has at least one forsythia bush. For the first time I didn't mind. I was delighted. Oh my gosh!


Poof! My yellow flora bias dissolved! No 12 step program or bias-removing chewing gum was required! I can't believe I'm admitting that I had this color bias aimed at innocent yellow flowering plants...but there you have it. I don't know why it unhappened but now I guess I can start to think about my aversion to pink stuff!

here, here...

Last Wednesday I intended to snap a picture of my Yarn Harlot desk calender, but I forgot, like I've forgotten to actually blog on too many days too. I uncovered my collection of favorite calender days that are intended to be pinned on my non-existent bulletin board and snapped it finally. I'm catching up with last week, now that tax preparation is over. I'll spare you the 'How creativity is undervalued in almost every aspect of life....' rant that was evoked when I turned to Wed March 18 on the calender.

A good thing that happened last week was the reappearance of my pearl earring! Lost one evening last Fall while I was walking the dog, we were sure it was a goner. Amazingly my husband found it lying there on the driveway having survived leaf raking, snow-shoveling and tire tracks all winter. Yey! Dennis!



I have been really productive since the last time I posted here. I just can't reveal some of the projects...gifts to be. I have a big pile of knitted things that need to be blocked when it gets warmer and things will dry faster. Some things are just not destined to be finished and I don't want it posted here where I'll be reminded that I didn't finish it. A few things are not identifiable yet...who knows what they'll be. Like this little marigold wanna be thingie.



or this ladybug stool cover...that is a joint project. I'm just not sure I like my part of the project and it remains on the hanger in an undetermined state.



I'm just glad it's Spring...which means the winter weather has to be on it's way out. Yes!

no signs of spring where the bison roam

I slipped on the ice last month and did some damage to my elbow, impairing my ability to make things temporarily. I had an appointment with an orthopaedic doctor today. In the examining room I was knitting away intensely and mouthing the instructions, k2,yo,k6, k2tog, when the doctor came in. After he prodded and twisted my arm he said "I really shouldn't encourage the knitting, but it seems to have helped the healing process and you probably wouldn't stop if I told you to anyway". Right! I like this guy...he get's it. The xrays show that I broke the radial head in my elbow almost a month ago. I'm sort of surprised. It's the first time I broke anything and I didn't get a cast! That was disappointing---if you've broken something you should really have a cast so you look like you attempted some daredevil feat or...something stupid. Okay, so the cast idea was stupid.

On the way home from the xray appointment, I drove the farmland route in case there was a sign of spring to shoot. Little activity at the farm stands, no snow, no nothing. So I turned on the road that passes by the pastures where the bison herds are. (Yes! On Long Island.) I should have taken a photo of the sign for the owner's restaurant that advertises bison meat. Owww! I grew up in the bisonless California suburbs and I'd rather not picture the pasture-to-plate process that makes bison burgers possible. I was thinking more along the lines of bison yarn, which probably doesn't involve death, I would hope. Bison "fiber" is used to make some exotic yarns...like Mooi. Wonder if this bison herd owner is utilizing their fiber? You know, to make Mooi?





I'll have to ask the local spinners if they know anything about the local bison herds fiber potential.

fuzzy red skinny pink

re: Pumpkin altar

The pumpkin altar worked its magic yesterday!

There is a lot of crown moulding and trim that needs to be painted in our house. I had primed the bedroom trim on Saturday. Everything was going relatively white yesterday morning until I finished a coat of white paint on the kitchen/dining area trim and realized that the Master Sander had not sanded the doorway to the bedroom where I needed to go next with my white paint brush. So I started looking for the rosey brown paint I bought a couple of years ago for my kitchen counter/table top. It was nowhere to be found. The Master Sander must have thrown it out during one of his purges of what he thinks are too many cans of paint. (Thanks dear.)

I looked through my paint swatch file for the original rosey brown color but was overcome with the impulse to paint it Benjamin Moore's Jack-o-Lantern orange! The table top in it's new cheeto-cheese puff-cheezit- glowing orange incarnation last night.



Explain that! Pretty sure it was the pumpkin altar that caused this!

Pumpkin Altar

Fall is the best season in my book.

Having grown up on the West Coast where the change of seasons is barely noticeable in some locations, I'm always amazed (and delighted) as each Fall unfolds and the trees put on their colorful show up and down the East Coast.

Here on Long Island it's all falling leaves now and hordes of people filling our rural roads in search of the perfect pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins in or buy dried cornstalks or hay bales.

I set up my own little pumpkin altar near my work table hoping that it will continue to inspire my future projects colorwise until the Christmas thing takes over.



Pumpkin season doesn't come to an end Friday on Halloween...there's still pumpkin pie season and well, it can last into December, though the leaves will be long gone. It might just be to much to ask of my pumpkin altar.

Is it foamy vs felt?

In a recent copy of Selvedge magazine there was an short article about Pia Wallen. I have liked her simple, sewn, industrial felt forms since I first saw them. It reminded me that her work inspired the "foamy" gift packages I've been sewing for a couple of years ago.

I was wrapping some mundane birthday presents for my husbands special day when I got the inspiration to sew the foamy sheets together to make a more interesting gift wrapping. I bought two packets of the large Foamy sheets and then just started zigzagging sheets together on my sewing machine, cutting edges with decorative scissors and folding and restitching to form large envelopes or this year, large bucket-y structures for more bulky gifts like sweatpants. Paper punches worked to create slots for ribbon threading....

I get such a good response to the foamy wrappers when I give a gift, that I thought maybe I should really figure out how to get better stitching results on my Bernina sewing machine. Using a regular foot or even a walking foot on my late model Bernina (1001) does not produce even stitches and it's difficult to feed under the presser foot. My local source for Bernina accessories suggested that I get a teflon coated foot or a roller foot which would cost $52 -$80. So I'm hoping to find an online source for this antique foot or maybe I should just convert to industrial felt? Hmmm. I'll attack both fronts.

Oh Yes! Happy New Year!

Since I'm into process and sharing process and January 1 has rolled by, it's okay to share a story about this year's holiday card-making.

For more than 16 Christmases my husband and I have made our holiday cards. Our friends and family tell us that they anticipate it's arrival and that it's collected by some.

It’s a collaborative project for us. Sometimes we work in a series. The year big Louie, a handsome 97 pound mixed breed rescue dog, came into our lives we started a family portrait series. The next year we continued the family portrait series including Louie's twin, Archie, a 14 pound tweener dachshund. (Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzennegger’s canine counterparts.)

This year as every year, we began the process on the eve of Thanksgiving, because the cook doesn’t have enough to do already, and that’s when panic is beginning to set in as the mailing date approaches. We started by taking pictures on a huge blue tarp on the back lawn. Our yard still had remnants of fall color and the temperature was 50-ish, snow was not in the forecast. Dressed in full winter regalia, down jackets, boots, hats and gloves for the shot, we each took our turn on the tarp demonstrating snow angels as the other one climbed the ladder with the camera. Archie and Louie had already been captured mid-snow angel a month before and archived. In between Thanksgiving preparations the work began on our respective computers to manipulate this snow angel imagery for the Holiday card. 36 hours later it still wasn’t gelling, it wasn't working at all. Set the pictures aside. Dump the snow angel idea altogether.

At this stage, and we usually have this stage, I turn to my stack of origami books for inspiration. As I opened the first book, it dawned on me that I could search online for any origami fold I could think of. I had an inkling of an alternative solution for the card, using an origami component and a card stock base like a series of cards we had produced years earlier. I wanted a fish fold and I found a great little video of a fish fold. Watched the video a few times with paper in hand and figured it could work. Dennis agreed and we started designing the fish paper and the card base.