from a sweater to a pile to a blanket to a sweater

Where have I been you ask? At work and at work and at work. I have been coming home from work, stripping my dirty clothes off at the door, in the shower, a quick bite to eat, feed Louise......oh yeah, have to tell you about Thelma. Then to bed.....it was like that for about 3 weeks, but it's over now, the weather has turned and we are now in "just getting it over with" mode.
So, one morning Thelma had died during  the night, and I have no idea why. There were no signs the night before that anything was wrong, she seemed her usual self, was eating, but hadn't laid an egg for some time, I thought this was just because she as molting, I do think she was molting but chickens don't die from that, maybe it was a tough molt, I have no idea. There were no marks on her showing that something got her. It was rather sad finding her that way and I felt so bad for her faithful friend Louise who is now alone, well not totally alone.

 yup, that's Bobbi, the cat that doesn't live here and isn't a pet. When you come to my house this is what you see on my front step;

He may lift his head to see who is coming...or he may not.

He changes position once in a while, not sure who us feeding him...ok ok....sometimes I feed him, but not as much as his derriere is round. He is s big round lump of cuteness.

For the most part I am o with loosing Thelma, I am a farm girl and I know that is how it goes on a farm. I just would like to know what happened, it was no sudden. Louise will be with me for a few more weeks and then she will go back to the farm where she came from and if the rest of the flock will  welcome her back she will spend the winter there, if the flock will pick on her she will be butchered, and I am ok with that. I sure am still enjoying her, she is still laying me an egg everyday and I love hearing her clucking away in the back yard.

Remember me unraveling my favorite sweater? I had some problems....ok lots of problems, so I went to get some help and unraveled the whole thing, turns out the colorful flowers on it were small pieces of cut yarn, every piece was cut not dragged alone the back, which meant a whole pile of little 4 inches pieces of yarn....what to do with them, certainly not reusable. No...I didn't throw it out, you know me better than that, I could spin it together on my spinning wheel...maybe some day. For now it's tucked away safety in a closet, call it "sheep insulation". I ended up with grey, black and white yarn and after a trip to the yarn store I bought some yarn to put some color into the sweater, but wasn't too sure how to incorporate it into the pattern, I didn't want anything too complicated, something simple. Then one day as I saw my yarn sitting on a chair....yes my yarn sits on a chair in the living room so that I can look at it everyday....actually I almost never sit in the living room ....or sit at all, I saw my yarn and I saw something. Do you see it? Red, white, yellow, green. I think just blue is missing.

 I was reminded of the Hudson's Bay blanket. My colors are not as bright and I have grey as a background instead of white, but this was my inspiration. Stripes are easy, not complicated.

I want one of these really really badly now, I have visions/dreams/fantasies of making a quilt like this for my bed., an by now you know me and this is not going to go away soon. It's going to be in my head all winter. I want this. 

So I fired up the needles right away and soon discovered that I don't like knitting skinny stripes much, I don't like switching colors so much, and something weird always happens at the color change part, it's never a smooth switch a roo, so then it was decided that the sweater will have a green, a white, a red and a yellow stripe at the bottom, just above the ribbing and then the rest of it will be grey and the same stripping at the bottom of the sleeve just above the cuff ribbing. Then I had the green, white and red stripe done and I realized that that was the colors of the Mexican flag, it so happened that it was Independence Day in Mexico that day (September 16) and so I had Mexico on my mind all day...ok I have Mexico on my mind all day every day now...but much more on that day. Should I leave out the yellow and call it my "Mexico flag sweater"?

Add a yellow strip or not?

It is a beautiful yellow, perfect shade for the red and green. 

Not sure how to proceed, good thing it's Monday tomorrow morning and I have 89 other things to do this week and I can think on this for a bit.

Soon my work clothes will get put in their cozy Rubbermaid container and put in the shed for the winter. I won't miss them but I am always happy to see them again in the spring. 

Soon I will have eaten my garden, oh how I have enjoyed my garden vegetables. 

This week I will put my garden "to bed", last year I did it last minute and that really messed with my happiness as I was preparing to leave the country, this year I will get it done early, so to not jeopardize my happiness.

Here are some shots from my office before we put it all "to bed" as well.

It's golf art. I'm a geek that way.

I started this at the beginning of summer for my grandson's bedroom...finally finished. It was of course ordered by my daughter. The quote is from one of Robert Munch's books.