Before and After Demolition

I finished tearing apart the deck today!  I worked all morning, and most of the afternoon, and my muscles are protesting already.  But the deck is gone!  All except for one board that is trapped under that palm tree...

To refresh your memory(haha), here's the "before":

 And here's the after!

We still need to gather up all the boards and put them in the fire.  And we're planning on starting the new deck in the morning!  I'm pretty excited, can you tell?

We're going to get a new deck!

I told Hubby three years ago that I did not like the deck we had.  It's a strange shape, and has a lot of wasted space.  He vetoed the idea immediately, without even really looking at my suggestions.  Fine.  I'm adaptable.  I still hated the deck, and wished he'd let me build a new one, but I decided I could live with it.

♥

A few weeks ago, Hubby shot a skunk on the deck, and it crawled under it to die.  So it was stuck underneath somewhere, and we had no way to get it out without tearing up boards.  And our carpenter friend Kerry told Hubby he could build us a great deck for a pretty good price.....so Hubby agreed, and told me about the idea, as if he'd thought of it himself. (Can you just hear me rolling my eyes?)  Whatever.  As long as I get my new deck, I don't care who gets the credit for the idea.

♥

So yesterday, Kerry helped me locate the dead skunk by ripping up a few boards....

 And Hubby decided to participate in the project by tearing apart the first half of the deck himself.  Yeah, I was shocked.

 You'll notice that he didn't tear apart the step I had built a few months ago...

 And we put the wood in the fire!

Actually, that's only about half of the wood from the first half of the deck.  We'll burn the other half today, and hopefully get the other half of the deck demolished today too.

♥

I can hardly wait to get started building (with Kerry) on my new deck!  Woohoo!

A little knitting...

I mentioned in my previous post that I had bought a little bit of luxury yarns on my "day off".  Here's what I bought:

 I know it doesn't look like much, but it's good yarn, and good yarn is expensive.  The tonal pink on the left is ShiBui Sock yarn, 50 grams.  I'm hoping it's enough for what I bought it for.  It's for test-knitting a dear friend's pattern.  I'm so excited and hopeful for her.  Her design is beautiful, and really deserves to get published. ♥  The teal in the middle is Lacey Lamb, extrafine lambswool laceweight, about 100 grams.  It is incredibly soft!  I'm not sure what I'm going to make with it; maybe a cowl, or a scarf.  I just couldn't resist buying it, even though I didn't have a plan in place for it yet.  The gray on the right is Classic Elite Yarns Silky Alpaca Lace.  It feels really decadent.  I started knitting with it last night:

It's another cowl, same design as the burgundy one that I recently started.  But I started with fewer stitches this time.  I think that will work better.  If it does, I'm going to carefully frog the burgundy one and start over.  Anyway, this gray is going to really pop against my brown hair, much more than the burgundy one will.  I'm still searching for a name for this design.  For now I'm calling it "Waltzing" because it was inspired by "The Waltz" scarf.  But I'm changing several little things, and I'm beginning to think it needs a totally separate name.  Right now I'm leaning toward "Frost", unless that name is taken.  I love this color; it reminds me of my mom's hair, which is light gray, almost white, and just as soft and silky as this lovely alpaca/silk yarn.

Not knitting...

I haven't been knitting. *blush*  I've been working outside instead.  There's just something about Spring and Fall that make me want to be outside.  I've been helping a carpenter friend build a deck for my next-door neighbors.  It's almost halfway framed, and I'm planning on helping tomorrow afternoon, after church.  I didn't get to help today, except for unloading lumber from a truck.  I had my monthly "day off" today.  I went to one of the LYSs in my city, and bought just a little bit of luxury yarns.  Then I went to Walmart and treated myself, to two pairs of jeans that had never been worn by anyone else!  Haha...I usually shop at thrift shops, but I haven't been able to find any jeans lately that I liked and that fit, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay full-price($12 each).  I also got a very cool stepping-stone for my "shady spot" in the back yard.  Then I went to the garden center and bought 4 cubic yards(which amounts to a huge pile) of brown hardwood mulch for the same "shady spot" and other spots around the yard.  I spent hours this week, preparing the "shady spot".  I pulled up all the old landscape fabric, and killed all the weeds and ants that were under it.  I trimmed the trees shown in the picture below, and cut down two others.  Then I put the border pieces in place, and put down new landscape fabric.  And today, I got to put down the new mulch.  With help from Hubby, Angel and Princess.......

 And here's my very cool stepping stone...... I think you can guess what state I live in, if you didn't already know.  I'm also going to buy a very cool bench with a star on the backrest of it, and put it right back there against the fence.

And since we had plenty of mulch, we put some in the side yard, where I had previously laid stepping stones...

I'm pretty happy about how both areas turned out.  Now we're talking about tearing out our old(weirdly-shaped) deck, and building a new(rectangular) one...which I wanted to do three years ago, but Hubby vetoed.  It took a suggestion from our carpenter friend to convince him it was a good idea.  He(the carpenter) is my new best friend. ♥

Angel's birthday

Yesterday was Angel's birthday.  She's nine years old now.  I can hardly believe it.  They grow so quickly....

It was a fun day.  She went to breakfast with Daddy, and he gave her a pair of beautiful Black Hills Gold earrings.  Then we all went to Chuck E Cheese's for lunch, and had a lot of fun.  I gave Angel the shawl I made while we were on vacation, and a little wooden box for her knitting tools, and a bunch of stitch markers and such to keep in it.  Princess gave her a t-shirt from Mount Rushmore, and Kitty gave her a really pretty necklace from the thrift shop.  Angel helped make the cupcakes, and iced them herself.  So all in all, it was a good birthday.

I did a bunch of yardwork yesterday afternoon, and my muscles are still protesting today.  Now that we know we're not moving to Florida, we're going to fix up our yard and make it nicer.  We're going to trim trees, and sod the front yard, and mulch the shady area in the backyard, and create a stepping-stone path in the side yard, and plant shade-loving perennials in the stupid planting beds that are too close to the house to get enough sun for most plants, and build a little storage shed for the rakes and shovels and such.  And when I say "we" I mean mostly "I".  Which is just fine with me.  I like building stuff.  Other yardwork, not so much, but it's worth the effort, now that the weather is cool enough to do it.  The forcasted high for today is less than 80 degrees.  I love it.  It's sunny, but breezy and cool.  Fall is here!

Because I just don't have enough projects on my needles...

And because I got a swap package yesterday.....
This is the beginning of a laceweight cowl. I'm using the basic stitch pattern from "The Waltz" scarf, since I enjoyed making that scarf so much. The yarn is Cascade Alpaca Lace, colorway "Red", although it's actually more of a tonal burgundy. It's lovely yarn, and I just had to start knitting with it right away. I also got some of the new Knit Picks Capra (merino/cashmere) in the swap package, so I'm trying to decide what I want to make with it too. My friend Dawn really spoiled me!

Knitting up a storm...

Okay, I've finally got time to blog about my recent knitting projects! While on vacation I completed this baby blanket:

Here's a closeup of the lace pattern. I showed the blanket to my sister, asking whether she liked it, and her baby Evellyn grabbed it and claimed it as her own before Sara could say a word! I hadn't been able to decide on a name for this pattern before then, so its name is Evellyn Anne, after my little niece.
And here is Angel, modeling a shawl I made on vacation. She doesn't yet know that it's for her. I'm giving it to her for her birthday on Monday. She'll be nine years old.

And since we got home from vacation, I made these mitts! These are the samples I'll be sending to Knit Picks, as soon as I get some good pictures of them on someone's arms. The blue ones fit me, but I won't be modeling them because I have no fingernails right now(thanks to my nervousness over flying). I think I'll ask my neighbor to model them. Angel will model the red ones, once I get a chance to paint her nails.

And here is the beginning of my new Upstream scarf. The picture was taken a couple days ago. I've completed five repeats of the cable pattern now. The photo doesn't do the colors justice. There's much more variation in the blues, and a hint of green; it's a gorgeous colorway. This is also a sample for Knit Picks. I am very excited about the prospect of having two more patterns published.