Wake Me Up

First song I hear on my running/biking playlist this summer.

It's impossible to feel lazy when I hear it.

Chocolate milk

Recent research has revealed that chocolate milk is the perfect recovery drink after exercising.

And it makes me feel like a kid.

Win-Win on all counts!

Worth getting up early

Last shot of sunshine on my early morning run, just before the rain started.

Flower shower

Running through the Carleton Arboretum,

 I came across a spot where it was snowing flowers.

Silent Auction

Every year, we have a silent auction at my hospital to benefit the local food shelf.  Last year I got a really sweet deal on a years worth of free range organic eggs, delivered right to my desk once a week.  Awesome.

I usually contribute a baby sweater.

This year, I've got a couple of different items.

A little pair of tiger baby socks.

A pair of Hippocampus mittens (my third pair - these are so much fun!)

In other news, spring has finally arrived in Northfield!  We still have piles of snow in the yard, but it reached 55 degrees today.

Paul joined me for a run, then we sat on the deck for our cool down.  Yup, he's wearing shorts on the 14th of March!  It's spring, I say, SPRING!

High Water

The Cannon River is running fast and high, nothing near the disastrous floods so many are stricken with, but still worth commenting on...

I run through the Carleton Arboretum. One of the paths I enjoy runs fairly close to the river.


This morning on my run, I came across a spot with its very own current!
The river was rushing through this area on its way to low ground.

The water came over my knees. It was go back, or go through.

We went through.




Rather, I went through, then went back for the dog and went through again.


I seem to have the only big black lab-cross that doesn't like water.

I took him off leash, thinking he would find his way across more easily without being tied.

So he stood back and watched. I could not verbally coax him across.



I went back, put him back on leash, and dragged him through.

Not sure what other breed he is, but obviously that breed doesn't like water!

(Cell phone pics - not so good, I know)

Return of the shoulder cat

Everyone wants to be a pirate...









I went to Shepherd's Harvest. I spun finn fleece with Carol Rhoades.

I went looking for a finn fleece at the show.

Too many choices overwhelmed me and I came away without any fleece.







But look what I found on Ebay!










A black finn fleece.








Look at that curl/crimp!


Let the washing begin!




May mileage: 8.2 miles today/55.1 this month. Best song today - Clem Snide's "I Love the Unknown" .

Sunday fun

Woke early, surfed the internets for awhile. When you have to be at work at 6 a.m., it's harder to sleep in on the weekends!

Out for another 7.3 mile run in the arb with the big dog while Paul tinkered on the jeep.

Then we headed up to Home Depot to look at new flooring. We're debating - hardwood vs. laminate. We found a laminate that we're pretty sure we can install ourselves, saving a ton of installation costs. I don't even think we'll kill each other! We brought home a few samples to consider.

We also fell in love with some SileStone countertop. (Let's see, would we be copying Coleen and Harlan TOO much? At least they have FABULOUS taste!)

I got quite a bit knitted on the Cobblestone for Paul sleeve on the trip to the Depot. It's good passenger knitting - around and around and around...










Once we got home, we had a look at a place we wanted to place a geocache. Then we jumped in the jeep and went for two geocaches just before sunset.








This is Heath Creek, on the St. Olaf campus wilderness area. Another area I'd never have gone into, except for geocaching!








We came back, just after sunset, settled in and started our Sunday night tradition. Start a fire; Cities97 acoustic sunset on the stereo; and popcorn, apples, cheese and wine for a grazing supper.

Knitting company

Sat this morning, in my favorite bedroom chair, snuggled up knitting and listening to Sound Opinions on my favorite radio station.

I did two more squares on the Rambling Rows Afghan. I believe this will be a popular afghan in our house.

Chip snuggled me up underneath the afghan.











After he left to see what the Girl of the House was doing, Georgie jumped up and took his place.








Then I headed out to the arb for a run. 7.3 miles. 42 degrees out. It drizzled on me the last mile or so.

Yes, a warm snuggly afghan will be a popular thing...

mix and match

My carry around project is the second pair of these dyed socks. I thought I had enough left-over blue/green/purple/teal yarn to make a short pair of socks for the Girl of the House.

I was rapidly approaching the turning of the heel when I realized I had enough for a nice foot, but no cuff.

After discussing it with GotH, we decided to make a yellow/orange foot and attach the blue/green/purple/teal yarn for the cuff. Slightly strange perhaps, time shall reveal how strange. She prefers the blues to the yellow.

So - you see the beginning of the yellow/orange foot.

In other areas, it has cooled beautifully here. A bit early for such cool weather, but I like it. I ran 7.3 miles last evening in a much faster time than usual - gotta be because it's so cool and bright. I listened to the soundtrack from "Rent" and the time just flew by. I've got 40 miles under my belt for September - maybe THIS will be the month I make my goal of an average of 3.5 miles/day.

A fairly productive day

I got up early this morning (my day off) and went out for a run before another day of rain began. 6.2 miles - I stayed on the roads today, the arboretum is way too muddy after all this rain.

Shopping and errands took the remainder of the morning.

This afternoon, between loads of laundry, I did manage to run satchel through the washer. It felted to a perfect size for our MacBook.

Now, it has to dry and be assembled. I'm looking forward to putting this to use!
In the fall of 2005, I went to SOAR in Park City, UT. One of the short workshops I attended was with Nancy Roberts, the brains behind Machine Knitting to Dye For.

Her nifty theory is that you work up stockinette swatches on the knitting machine, then dye them. You then ravel them, and have controlled striping yarn to make socks, hats, or whatever!

I have had these blanks in my stash for almost two years, and today was the day they cried loud enough for attention.

I didn't feel up to mixing my acid dyes (and all the protection needed), so I just used Wilton Cake Icing Dye. Nancy uses a stencil brush and "pounces" the dyes on, but I didn't have a brush, so I just splotched it on out of my little bottles. It didn't turn out as precise as it could have, but I'm pleased with the results.

Here they are post-microwaving. I've got enough for one pair of socks (the blue/greens). There may be enough of the yellow/red to make a shorter pair for the Girl of the House.

Now, I didn't clean my house (except to clear the counter for the dyeing), and I didn't make supper. But we have clean clothes, lots of food, and brightly colored yarn!




About supper: Everyday, the Girl of the House has one chore for certain - unload the dishwasher. Now, if you do this everyday of your life, you shouldn't need a reminder, right? Occasionally, if the dishwasher isn't unloaded by the time everyone is home for the evening, I just say to Paul "Where would you like to go to supper?" Off we go, leaving hungry child/children home to fend for themselves. After all, you can't cook supper if you don't have any dishes to cook in. It makes a pretty potent point (ooh, alliteration!), and the dishwasher gets unloaded regularly for awhile, sans reminders.

And a late happy fourth to YOU!

We had gorgeous fireworks here in town last evening. We sat in our little old topless yellow jeep wrangler, high on the hill above the fireworks, ate ice cream sandwiches, and enjoyed the heck out of ourselves.


We woke early (it WAS a weekday after all) and sat out on the deck, reading the morning paper, drinking coffee and admiring the morning.

I got a bit restless, and eyed some fiber that had been on the bobbin for about 3 years (REALLY!). It was the leftovers of some merino silk hand dyed with natural dyes that I bought at SOAR in 2003. I had plyed the rest up, and this little remainder was waiting for inspiration, I guess.

So, I plyed it up. You can see the twist that was set in after all those years on the bobbin!





Ah, looks better here, doesn't it. It had its little bath and a quick dry on the clothesline in the sun. 17 grams, 64 yards. Approx 1700 yards per pound. What I'll do with 64 yards, I don't know; but it makes a nice addition to the small skein pile.

And I feel like I accomplished something!





Then I took big dog and went for a run, before it got too hot. 7.5 miles. Didn't make my June goal of 3.5 miles/day - I'll try again this month!

Too hot, too busy...

We've been on the run lately. I was on call last weekend. I work in the OR of the local hospital, and every seventh weekend I'm on call for emergency surgeries from Friday afternoon til 7 Monday morning. These could be c-sections, appendectomies, bone fractures, and several other things. So I have to stick pretty close to home - my required response time to the hospital is 20 minutes. It was actually a pretty quiet weekend, I only had to go in to work once. Gotta love that!

Girl of the House (GotH) has us running during the weekday evenings. Soccer practice twice a week, and games twice a week. By the time we run all over, there only seems to be time for supper and then off to bed. Not much time for fiber...




Here's my Paisley Lace Shawl, waiting patiently in the basket. I have done a few more rows here and there. I finished the border, and now have to begin the picot bind-off. Probably won't get to it til Sunday evening, though!






It's been so hot here, upper 80s with dew points in the 60s. Terribly tropical for Minnesota! I haven't been running outside, and while I can do the treadmill, I really dislike it. So, between being on call, and the heat, I skipped a whole week. I did go for a run today after work. 6.3 miles, very slowly. Run 10 minutes, walk a minute - that was the only tolerable way in this heat. I think the dog didn't mind the walk breaks, either! 40.3 miles this month. Now my average is falling! Last week I had 34 miles for the month, so from almost 5 miles a day, I've fallen to less than 3. Gotta catch up!!!




It helps that I can run in the arb. Temp has to be 5 degrees cooler in there. Here's a picture of one of my paths. I took this in mid May - it's even greener now.










Little Chip continues to be a pretty good little guy. I think he is managing to train his people to let him out often enough - not many wet messy puppy accidents.

weekend stuff

I managed to get a few more ounces of the medium gray coopworth fleece carded over the weekend.

We had a big rainstorm late on Saturday afternoon so I just cozied in, listened to Prairie Home Companion and carded up a storm.

There is hope that I'll get this puppy done up yet this summer!




I knitted a few more inches on the Lorna's Laces socks. Inching toward the heel...















And I spun for a bit on my Lendrum saxony. I'm working on some silk caps I dyed in the microwave. One more time, this is fiber that I have no goal for, beyond the pleasure of spinning it. (Yeah, I need some more skeins sitting around the house in baskets...)





I did get in some exercise over the weekend. I even got in a run today after work. My favorite place to run is the Carleton College arboretum - right across the road from our house. I take the dog, tie his leash to my waist pack, and off we go. 7 miles today/21.2 miles this month thus far!

New cast

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Girl of the House had her long arm cast removed this week. Now she has this snazzy, tie dyed short arm cast! She's got a lot more mobility, and most importantly, she can play soccer again! Her team played their third game last evening, and she finally got to play. It has gore-tex padding so she can even swim in it. During school yesterday, they had the end of the year school patrol party at the pool. She pronounced this cast "very swimmable".









The other mama cat brought her kittens up to the steps to join the crowd. We now have ten kittens living under the steps!

Girl of the House is in charge of getting them socialized. They are all five weeks old now.

Nobody has names yet. We need to check out their personalities before they can be named.

Our favorite kitten came in to play. He was too busy to get any better picture than this one...









This kitten was easier to settle down to snuggle.










I had a May goal to run of an average of 3 miles a day. I fell short by a smidge. I made 90.2 miles. In June, I'd like to average 3.5 miles/day. No race goals this summer, just keeping active, you know? I'll keep a running total here.