Shoal Bay Slouch - Part 1, Preparation

Now that fall has arrived and since I Still Need a Hat, I decided to peruse my stash. I played with a couple choices and eventually settled on this:

The yarn is somewhat thick-and-thin and has a fine strand in tan that's twisted together with a much thicker variegated strand. I have 4 skeins - 2 with lighter toned variegated yarn and 2 with darker toned variegated yarn - and I have no idea where or when I may have acquired this yarn.

Reading the label, the yarn is called "Montreux", it's 77% wool and 23% acrylic and it's made by Southern Cross Yarns. The skeins are 50 g (81.5 m), recommended needle size is 5.50 mm with a gauge of 16 st = 10 cm. (5.50 mm = US 9. 10 cm ≈ 4 in.)

Since I'm planning to make a hat, I'll need double-pointed needles and 16-in circular needles. Yeah, if I need to, I can make this work with a pair of circulars instead of the DPs and the 16-inch circs, but using 2 circs to knit round isn't my preferred method ... yet. (I've changed my mind on things like this in the past and fully expect to do it again.) I have DPs and 16-inch circs in size 6 (4.25 mm), so that's where I'll start my swatching.

I played with a few pattern stitches, but soon decided to let the yarn be the focus. I tried a welt stitch in the darker yarn - to give it a bit of texture ...

Summer Heatwave - Lopez Style

It started on Friday with a forecast high of 78°. Before that, I don't think we'd broken 70°. OK, I'm sure that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure doesn't seem like we've spent much time in the 70s this summer. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I actually lit a fire in the wood stove. That's the only heat source we use in the big room (aka the "nave") and it was 65° when I got up that morning. I was cold, it was rainy and the forecast was for more of the same with a high of 60° - so I wasn't going to get any help from the sun.

I haven't built a fire since then, but we haven't had any really hot days either. We'd been told by the previous owners (Mike & Jen) that the place really never got hot inside. I thought I'd monitor what happened during out little Lopez heat wave.

Here we are on Friday morning at about 7:30 am with a nave temperature of 65°. (Yep, that's right, with absolutely no air-conditioning the inside temperature on the morning of August 3rd was 65°.)

The (Mostly) Complete Loft

The bedroom furniture has arrived!!

In our entire adult lives, neither Bill nor I have had real bedroom furniture. We decided it was time. So, we sold off the old stuff and for about a month, slept on a mattress was on the floor and kept our clothes in plastic bins.

But no more! Now, the view up the stairs looks like this.

So Where Is Old Grace Church?

Humphrey Head or, to be more precise, Lower Humphrey Head.

Here's a map of Lopez Island, with Humphrey Head circled.

The Rest of the House

While the kitchen was wonderful ("Kitchen Tour"), the rest of the house was a move-in-mess, to one degree or another.

The stairs in the back corner of the kitchen go up to the sleeping loft.

Kitchen Tour

By mid-April, Bill and I were sleeping and eating at the new house and going back to the old house to work on getting it ready to hand off to the new owner. While we are living with moving mess in the rest of the house (to one degree or another), the kitchen is pristine. This was Bill's plan all along. He wanted a "sanctuary" from the rest of the mess: a room that was complete and beautiful where he could escape from the moving chaos.

To me, this is the essence of that sanctuary.

Kitchen Update - Part 5 (The End)

[Last of the re-dated Kitchen Update posts.]

After tearing out half the kitchen, opening the wall and moving electrical and plumbing, putting the wall back together and painting (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, aka "How Painting is Like Knitting"), it was finally time to build the washer/dryer closet.

I only have a couple "in progress" photos. Here, Bill's built the top and the side and I've started preparing to paint.