The Thrifty Knitter

Finished: Laura’s Pygoras Natural-Dyed Local Merino Roving

Notes: Navajo plied

Still spinning: Laura’s Pygoras Natural-Dyed Local Merino Roving

Watching: Terminator Salvation + the first half of My Sister Eileen

Notes: I zapped some with the hair dryer, and while that does make it easier to spin, it’s impractical because it cools off too quickly and I’m not going to spin with a hair dryer in my lap.

Spinning: Laura’s Pygoras Natural-Dyed Local Merino Roving

Watching: Mad Men “The Wheel” + The Daily Show

Notes: Apparently I can only spin fine now. It’s a little irritating. I think I’ll Navajo ply this mess when it’s done. This roving still has a fair amount of lanolin, but it’s older, so it’s kind of sticky. Maybe I’ll hit it with a hair dryer before I spin the next round.

Future: Well, it’s nice and soft, but not a great color for me, so I should probably avoid a hat or cowl, though that’s where it would make the most sense. Or maybe it will ply up into a color I can wear. Or maybe I’ll find something compatible but better on me for a cushy cowl and ply them together. Or maybe I’ll make legwarmers.

Craftzine is hosting a That Girl KAL, yay! We’re getting started next week, and I’ll be posting variation ideas and casting on a version with collar and sleeve variations. I’m very excited–I haven’t do a KAL in ages, and this project works up quickly. If you want to join, cast on in ravelry:

Natalie’s even sending me an extra camera she has so I can get some decent photos! Yay! I have sent my very broken camera off to Sony, and hopefully they’ll call me next week and say, no problem! We’ll fix it right up for you, and for cheap! And not, sorry lady, you are horsefucked. What did you do, drop this thing and then throw it in a puddle? Sigh.

Speaking of technology, I finally replaced the dead hard drive on my iMac, thanks to the excellent instructions at ifixit.com. I’ve been booting from an external hard drive since it crashed, and I’m going to keep that setup intact in case of another epic failure. But I had pretty much a full day of updating software, re-installing everything, transferring files, etc. Which meant lots and lots and lots of waiting. I’m also thinking of breaking down and buying the Mac Box Set. I only want the software upgrade and I resent that they’re sticking me with all the other crap, but the price is down around $100 on Amazon, and that’s edging into my rationalization zone.

Happily, I have plenty of knitting to conquer while I watched the creeping status bar. I’m working on a Deep Fall submission and I’m very pleased with it. It’s a very simple but also very cute pattern I’ve been meaning to write forever.

And as soon as my new yarn shows up, I’ll be casting on a new variation of the That Girl! Cardi Jacket. More on that when my yarn arrives!

Oh! and Tour de Fleece! I’m a little behind, but the goal is to spin 30 minutes a day, anything I want. But bonus points for spinning last year’s Rhinebeck stash.

I’ve done a few more on the list…. I actually have some banana yarn that Ellen sent me. I should use that right away so I can check that one off, too. Hm. Maybe I’ll make a hair accessory with domino knitting and kill 3 with one rock…

Afghan/Blanket
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental Knitting
Designing knitted garments…im doing it now! or trying anyways
Cable stitch patterns
Lace patterns…hmm i think so!
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
American/English knitting
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn
Knitting with DPNs
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living (sort of…)
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting (who knows what this means?)
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self-patterning/self-striping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

As predicted, a good deal of hard labor and sweat worked wonders beating back the blahs.

Yesterday afternoon, after I was done whining, I hauled my sulky carcass out to the sheep shed and spent the afternoon finally mucking out the rest of the barn. I don’t even know how many wheelbarrows full of crap and rotted straw I carted out, but in the end, I had a nice, clean, compacted dirt floor again. I brought the chickens in with me to hunt grubs.  When I moved the big fan I keep in there for hot days, I discovered a multi-generational mouse family, which the chickens quickly dispatched. Yes, a chicken will swallow a mouse whole. Field mice are pretty small, though. They’re also pretty cute, with those oversized ears, so it was a little sad to watch them get gobbled up, but the chickens made it pretty snappy. And I had only to think of the mouse poop, disease potential, grain thieving, and the exponential consequences of a species with a 20-day gestation, to console myself.

Then the second round of shoveling began!

After much debate and research, I decided it would be crazy not to go ahead and install the Stable-Grid. I had been toying with putting in concrete and using the grid in the barn yard instead, but, all things considered, it seemed a little nuts to blow a couple hundred bucks and several more days of work (particularly when I’ve been mourning my lack of free time) for a dubious payoff.

Here’s what contributed to my decision:

Cost. $200 minimum just in concrete for a DIY job; $900 to hire someone. (Interestingly, adding the floor of the hay shelter–more than doubling the job–would only raise the price around $100, because then it would be worth trucking the concrete in instead of they guy mixing it himself. But either way, I don’t have an extra grand to drop.) Now, if you were starting from scratch, the grid was about the same per sf as DIY concrete, but I already had it on hand (a Christmas gift from my dad), as well as the sand–free leftovers from the ball field next door–and installation required no new tools and no real skill.

Inconvenience. I’d have to cordon off the animals while the concrete cured, pick up all the concrete, lug heavy bags, mix it in the wheelbarrow, etc. etc. If I decided to pony up for the contractor, or even if I could find someone willing to do it for half that, I’d still have to deal with the animals and work around their schedule. And I’ve got ants in my pants and there’s rain scheduled for the whole week.

Uncertainty over whether it’s even the best choice. The main reasons I flirted with concrete were better drainage, ease of cleaning, and reduction of vermin (field mice).  But the barns aren’t exactly mouse-tight, so they’d probably keep eating the food but just relocate their nests under the hay rack or water buckets, or in the hay shelter. And I read lots of arguments in favor of dirt floors on sanitation. With a dirt floor, urine just soaks into the ground, and poop filters down through the top layer of straw and mixes with the older straw to compost. Add the extra level of drainage of the Stable-Grid to keep the excess pee from accumulating, and you’ve got a recipe for some wholesome anerobic activity below and fresh bedding up top. I don’t understand why the ground underneath it all isn’t a horrible ammonia-sick mess, but it’s not. Something about the bacteria in the soil, I imagine. Plus it’s easier on their bodies than concrete, and warmer in the winter.

Time, Energy & Mess. From what I could tell, the Stable-Grid would be pretty quick and easy to install, and a lot easier on my body. I wouldn’t need water, the time or muscle to lift and mix concrete; and there would be no clean-up.

So here’s how it went. I would have photographed the whole process, but my backup camera is sad and I was fighting the falling darkness.

First I closed the gate so the sheep would be out of my hair. After I mucked out the barn, spread out a little gravel I had to even out the really low spots, then dumped in 6 or 7 wheelbarrows of sand. I spread it out with a manure fork and smoothed it with a spade, raising it as close as possible to the level of concrete from some of the posts that had been thrown up from several  years of freezes.

The grid is made of a rigid but not brittle plastic, sort of like the stuff milk crates are made of. Sturdy, but with a little give. The sides have little notches which let you lock them together in a sheet. The sides and bottom crosses anchor it well when you fill it with sand.

It comes in 1.5 x 2′ sheets, so figured out the best orientation for the grid, and started laying it down like tile, working out from a corner and snapping it together as I went. It was very easy to snap together. If you put a board underneath it and stepped lightly on the joints, it popped together securely–but was also easy to snap apart again if you made a mistake. There were a couple of posts I had to work around, so I just cut out sections where required with a hacksaw.

After it was all in place, I brought in another 4 wheelbarrows of sand and spread it out so it filled up all the little honeycomb cells. You don’t have to make your base absolutely level, because the sand sifts down and fills in gaps underneath, so it’s somewhat self-leveling, and flexible enough to handle a light wave, which I had under one particularly high concrete chunk on a post. Once full, it felt very stable and solid, but still comfortable to walk on. I think the grid absorbs impact well. I didn’t quite get finished before a downpour commenced and the sheep began griping enough for me to throw down some straw and let them back in.

This morning, I moved the straw aside and brought in one more wheelbarrow of sand to fill in any gaps I missed last night, and then I spread out the excess to allow for settling. You can see the grid here, before I spread out the last load of sand.

I had to move the straw around while I filled each quadrant, but it was no problem. In fact, the grid makes a nice, level surface that’s easy to scrape or sweep. I expected it to want to catch the manure fork, but that really wasn’t an issue. You can see I overfilled it a bit to allow for settling.

Spread out the straw and voila! Dry and snug as a bug!

The sheep were well pleased to come in out of the rain. Don’t ask me why they’re all Blair Witchy. Maybe they’re stuck up. Maybe they’re too lazy to turn around when they walk into the barn. Maybe they just like staring at the wall.

I also gridded the coop. I ordered the grid based on my memory of the measurements, not the actual measurements. But between underestimating the coop and overestimating the sheep shed, I had an almost perfect count–and an almost perfect fit! There’s a little 8″ gap in the coop, but I just bought a couple of 98¢ concrete pavers to do the job. The coop really doesn’t have the ideal layout. I keep experimenting, but I haven’t come up with a satisfying answer yet. The coop will also get  a nice layer of straw, but I was waiting until I installed those last two pavers.

All in all, I don’t think the whole process took more than 3 hours–less time than it took to muck out both houses. And that’s with wimpy me making a lot of wheelbarrow trips because I could only carry the thing about half-full of sand. If I were stronger or taller, it probably would have been faster–that was definitely the slowest part. I’ll report back next time I muck the barn out, but I’m very pleased with the installation ease of Stable-Grid, and its apparent stability and strength. And after a very soggy 4th of July, I can already see a difference in the dryness of the barn! Hurrah!

Free Pattern at Craftzine.com! I really like this little sweater! I can’t wait to finish the thing I’m making to submit to knitty fall so I can start a new one. Speaking of knitting, I never heard back about first fall. Is that good or bad?

I’m trying to remember how I lived before moving to the school. Did every single day of my life start and end with an unfinished list? I’m hormonal and thus feeling a little overwhelmed today.

Every morning I get up and look at my list and try to plan out the shape of my day. Every night, look again and see I’ve fallen short.

There’s always so fucking much to do, and it never ends, and I’m always broke.

I think this was also true in my previous life; it’s just that the same crap weighs more in the school, and I’m old now, with less energy. And I’m generally happier, which makes working to distraction much less appealing.

I know from experience that the only cure to angst in my pants is hard work and crazy productivity. While I know that crossing shit off my list is just a pointless nod to Sisyphus and that the list will just fill right back up again, there is some comfort in the crossing off.

Okay, enough whining. Time to jump in to several hours of hard labor, followed by a nice shower. Yay.

The good news is that I just turned in my extra cute summer cardi jacket pattern will be going live on Craftzine tomorrow. I’m really happy with it! It’s made of CotLin. It’s girly but not fussy, easy on the yarn, and I’m itching to make a bunch of variations.

The bad news is I had a very hard time getting decent pictures on my poor, decrepit, 1999 camera.

There’s other bad news, unrelated to the jacket, but I don’t want to talk about it because 1) it’s boring to anyone but me and Ron; 2) It’s my fault for taking people at their word instead of being totally cynical and suspicious (but I’m not really cool with treating everyone I encounter like they’re either stupid or lying); 3) It’s entirely beyond my control; and 4) I don’t want to start bawling again.  Which, it turns out, I am actually about to go do right now.

Also I have chigger bites and they suck.