Score! (Part Deux)

I started this post a week ago but was rudely interrupted when I happened to stop to check my e-mailbox. Lo and behold, my mailbox was empty. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Not even mail in the trash. Not.a.single.piece.of.email.

I couldn't imagine where my emails, received and sent, had gone, when they had been there only moments before I'd started this blog post.

I ran frantically to my iPad: no mail; I ran frantically to my iPhone: no mail. I hollered to Ken, who was upstairs at his computer in his study, and asked him if he was having a problem with his mail. Surely, I thought, this must be a temporary glitch at iCloud. It would be over soon, and I'd be able to check my mail. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply.

Ken said his email was fine. I explained that my email had suddenly, totally disappeared.

There was a bit of silence from Ken. Then he confessed he'd begun the process of emptying my old computer (iMac '08) so he could claim it as his own, replacing his iMac '06. You see, I just got a brand new computer (iMac '14) and he gets my hand-me-down.

It seems Ken had forgotten one teensy detail about emptying out my old computer:  WI-FI WAS ON!

If the computers, my iPad, my iPhone are connected to WiFi simultaneously, what major changes made to one..., are made to ALL. Hence my email was gone because Ken had not only put it into the trash on iMac '08, he'd EMPTIED THE TRASH.

I tried to remain calm and think this through.

Then I remembered: I'd purchased a new external hard drive, a cute little item not much larger than a pack of cigarettes, called "My Passport for Mac," just two days before purchasing my new computer.

I'd never had to retrieve anything from an external hard drive  before, but I figured I'd best learn to do so because this was a golden moment, if ever there was one.

I clicked the Time Machine icon at the top of my computer screen, found "Enter Time Machine," wondered if I dared step through this door into another dimension...but did so, and voila! There was a duplicate of the contents of my computer's internal hard drive. Phew.

I loaded the contents of the external hard drive into iMac '14, including my e-mail posts, and I was back in business. Best $139 I ever spent, that My Passport for Mac.

Moral of story: If you don't have your computer backed up with an external hard drive, you just might be playing with fire. (Or your spouse might be upstairs wiping your computer clean.)

(In fact, I was at the Apple Store just days before this incident, having a guy at the Genius Bar remove some junk from my computer, when the lady sitting next to me with an iMac was told grim news: Her hard drive had crashed and there was no way to retrieve what was on it. She hadn't back up any of it, unfortunately.)

But all of this isn't actually the topic of this post. Guess I got a little side-tracked.

Top photo: A scarf I completed last week. It's the Cat's Paw Scarf, free pattern on Ravelry. Double-click on that photo so you can totally enjoy what I'm about to point out. I didn't notice this until I'd finished the knitting, bound it off, soaked it in Eucalan, and blocked it: There's a major mistake in my knitting! It sticks out like a sore thumb, now that I've noticed it. Do you see it? Of course you do. I purled an entire row that I was supposed to knit.

I toyed with the idea of raveling back to the mistake and redoing it, but then I said, "Naw." I'll call it a  "design feature" and hope the person who receives it as a gift doesn't notice it.

The other two photos are of my great finds at Montsweag Flea Market, along with the table cloth which I wrote about earlier. The pitcher, a Watt Ware, was a mere $10. I collect Watt Ware but seldom find a bargain like this. A price tag of $50 or more, in fact, would not be unusual.

The cast iron Dutch oven, the one on the left, is my other Montsweag treasure. As you can see, I now have two cast iron Dutch ovens. I feel rich, I tell you. I've had my old one at least 40 years, and I absolutely love it.

Soon I plan to write a post about cooking with cast iron, so I won't say any more about this now. Stay tuned, though.

Score!

Ken and I had been waiting for the Montsweag Flea Market to open for this season. Since it opens Mother's Day Weekend, we decided we'd be there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on that Saturday.

But it rained that day. We didn't want to  browse in the rain, and we knew vendors wouldn't want to display their goods in the rain. We waited patiently for Sunday, Mother's Day itself. Although I've always said that Saturday's vendors have more interesting items than Sunday's, I was proven wrong this time.

Score #1: Beautiful hand-crocheted table cloth, large-table size, with only a few minor repairs needed. It was badly stained, so because I wasn't sure the stains could be removed, I talked the vendor down to $10 from $15. Once I got it home, I soaked it in OxyClean for an hour and it's now stain free!

I assured the vendor she had just sold the tablecloth to someone who would treasure it, and I wasn't kidding.

Anyone who knows me well knows I love needlework masterpieces. I appreciate the time and talent that goes into making something such as this.

I do a lot of needlework myself, but I've never made anything as grand as this. I have a great deal of respect for the creator of this work of art.

It now graces our dining room table, and I admire it several times a day.

I scored two other treasures at Montsweag that day: a cast-iron Dutch oven and a Watt Ware pitcher, $10 and $8 respectively.

Since I haven't taken photos of them yet, I'll save them for another post.

After leaving Montsweag with our treasures carefully tucked into the trunk of the car, we drove a short distance up the coast to Wiscasset.

We had lunch at Sarah's, a favorite spot when we're in the area.

We also checked out the growing line at Red's Eats across the street from Sarah's. That's Red's in this photo. It's a great place to go for a lobster roll, if you don't mind standing in a long line before being served.

We also drove down a side street in Wiscasset and spotted a mansion we'd never noticed before. I did a little googling of "Wiscasset mansions" when we got home and learned this is Castle Tucker, built in 1807. It's open for tours, so we'll no doubt check it out some time this summer.

So although we didn't visit Montsweag and Wiscasset on Saturday, we certainly found Sunday to be just as enjoyable.

Spring cleaning

I've said this before, and it's the truth: I was a much better housekeeper when I was working full time and barely had time to do anything other than lesson plans. Still, somehow, I managed to discipline myself to keep the house in neat order.

Now I'm retired, and have all the time in the world,…and my housework doesn't get done on a regular basis.

Oh, I scurry around and do some marathon cleaning just before company arrives, sure. But the twice-a-week, every-Thursday-and-Saturday-without-fail cleaning that I gave my house while being a teacher?

Nope. No way. Too many other things catch my interest, I guess. I finally have time to do the things I've always wanted to do, and cleaning house apparently isn't one of them.

Also, "back in the day," I was religious about starting my spring cleaning immediately after my school's February vacation and making darned sure the cleaning was completed by my school's April vacation. Year after year I followed this routine. I liked to have the spring cleaning completed before May arrived. May can be beautiful in Maine, and I like to spend my time outdoors if possible, not inside cleaning.

This year I started a little half-hearted spring cleaning in March. I wish I'd kept at it, because now Maine's glorious May weather has arrived,

and washing woodwork and windows, rearranging the pantry, taking down curtains and washing them,…simply don't appeal to me.

I'll get 'er done, I guess, one way or another. But I really want to be outside, weeding flower beds, removing last fall's leaves tangled in flower stalks, carrying garden decorations from over the garage to the flower garden.

(This morning I did manage to get this quilt washed and ready to put away. It's the last quilt I made, and it's entirely quilted by hand. I kept it in my quilt cupboard for years; then, this past fall, I asked myself what I'm saving it for?

We might as well enjoy it while we're still able to appreciate the work that goes into a handmade quilt. It certainly kept us warm on those cold nights this past winter.)

Maybe tomorrow I'll wash the bedroom curtains. Or maybe I won't.

Restless needles

I have to have a project on my knitting needles at all times. If I don't, I feel at loose ends. I like the security of knowing I can be knitting on something if I'm watching television or riding in the car.

Here are a few of my March-April projects.

The owl, a rather odd-looking specimen, I admit, is from Purl Bee. I chose the pattern because I like the criss-cross design in the owl's body.

On Christmas Eve we were at our friends' home, and a very pregnant guest mentioned that her baby's room would be decorated with owls. My ears perked up. I love an excuse to knit baby things, so I made a mental note to  knit an owl for the baby's room.

Here's the completed cardigan for little Phoebe. It's a size 3-4. I wrote about my problems with this pattern in an earlier post. The finished cardigan came out OK. I still need to find just the right button for it. I'm thinking something large and bling-y is in order. The pattern is Sirdar's #1401; the yarn is Sirdar Snuggly DK.

My eight-year-old great niece, Violet, mentioned in February that she desperately needed a pair of fingerless gloves. I almost weakened and gave her a rather fancy pair I'd made for someone else. Then I decided to make her a pair of plain ones using leftover sock yarn. It's not that I think Violet isn't worthy of a pair of fancy fingerless gloves, but she's eight. Eight-year-olds lose things. I'd share the pattern if I could find it. It's no doubt from Ravelry, where I find tons of excellent, mostly free, patterns. I noticed Violet was wearing her new gloves as she left our home on Easter Sunday.

Violet's mother Rachel and I are going to have a craft fair at a strawberry festival at the end of June. I've been making several strawberry-themed  things for the fair, the next two items among them.

At left is a knitted and felted purse. It sports a strawberry design on the front and a lining of strawberry-strewn cotton.

The strawberry hat is knitted in garter stitch with strawberry leaves and stem attached.

It'll be interesting to see if any of our craft items actually sell. I learned long ago that pricing handmade items is tricky. Either the buyer is insulted by the price, or the seller is. Most buyers don't place much value on handmade items, so it's ridiculous to put an accurate price on, say, the handbag above. If I followed the rule of thumb of pricing for  the handbag, I'd charge twice the price of the yarn plus the value of my time. Let's say the yarn was $8, so that times two is $16. Let's say I spent four hours knitting the handbag, another hour machine-felting it, an hour adding the lining, two hours knitting and felting the embellishments….that's 8 hours of my time. Let's say I feel $10 per hour is fair pay. That's $80 for my time, $16 for my materials….$96. Absolutely no one attending the strawberry festival will be willing to pay $96 for a hand knitted, felted, and embellished (AND lined) strawberry handbag. I can almost guarantee you that. I'll probably put a price of $30 on it, and I'll probably be bringing it back home with me at the end of the craft fair!

I like to keep a sock project on my needles at all times. That way, when I finish a bigger project and am in that between-projects zone, I can always pick up the socks and work on them. My one and only sock pattern is by Yankee Knitter. It's a great sock pattern, very well written. I love Yankee Knitter knitting patterns.

I started these socks last August and worked on them here and there over the next several months. In fact, I got sick and tired of them. But now they're done. DONE, I tell you. They'll make a nice addition to my drawer of wool socks, and wool socks are my sock of choice in the winter. They are so much warmer than cotton socks!

So that's what my needles and I have been up to.

Dabbling in cold porcelain

Our eight-year-old great niece, Violet, came for a two-night sleepover earlier this week, so she and I  got right to work on a new project: making cold porcelain.

Cold porcelain isn't actually porcelain. It's made of corn starch, white glue, a dab of Vaseline, and some water. (I add a few drops of tea tree oil to prevent the items we made from developing a mold or fungus.)

I found several recipes for cold porcelain on Pinterest while I was looking for recipes for homemade polymer clay. The two might be one and the same; I'm not sure.

I got the white glue at Dollar Tree, two 4-ounce bottles for, you guessed it, $1. I used maybe 1/4 box of corn starch. In other words, the cost for making cold porcelain is minimal.

Cold porcelain creations on Pinterest are much more detailed and complicated than those that Violet and I undertook. We're novices, though, and some of the Pinterest cold porcelain creators are artists, from the looks of things.

Violet sculpted a cat, a bird, and, of course, a violet blossom.

I used cookie cutters to make what will eventually become gift tags.

The porcelain takes 3-4 days to dry, so I'm just now putting layers of ModPodge on mine. Next I'll spray them with an acrylic sealer.

Maybe I'll mix up another batch of cold porcelain and branch out a bit with my creations. It's fun stuff to work with, and I'm sure the possible creations are almost limitless.

Honoring

On Tuesday morning, April 1, Ken and I left here bright and early for the 45-minute drive to Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth.

We were there to attend a ceremony to honor eight of Ken's ancestors: George Osborn, Sr., and his seven sons, all of whom served our country at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. George, Sr., joined the military two days after the first shots were fired in Lexington, MA, on April 19, 1775.

George Osborn's seven sons followed suit, the youngest being only eleven years old when he was assigned to a ship in the Massachusetts Navy.

That's quite a remarkable military record for any family, and when Ken's second-cousin Stephen uncovered this family history, he made arrangements to have the eight Osborns honored at the April 1, 2014 ceremony.

The day could not have been more beautiful in front of Portland Head Light at Fort Williams Park. Nor could it have been colder. A brisk wind blew off the ocean the entire time we were there.

There's Portland Head Light herself, looking stunning, as usual.

Five of George Osborn's descendants, including Ken, were presented with American flags as mementos of the Osborn family's service.

It was a beautiful ceremony and a humbling occasion. You can read more about it here.

Crying about it won't do any good

I could hardly wait to get started. The minute I saw the Sirdar 1401 long-sleeved baby cardigan on Knitting Paradise, I knew I had to make it. I promptly visited the Patternfish website, located the pattern, paid for it, downloaded it, and printed it. Now all I needed was the yarn.

On Sunday, as Ken and I were out and about, I casually suggested we might stop at Rosemary's Yarn Shop so I could purchase the necessary yarn.

That evening, with three skeins of Sirdar Snuggly DK yarn in my possession, I sat down to cast on.

I knitted and knitted. From Sunday night until Friday night I knitted. I saw the cardigan rapidly taking shape before my very eyes.

Then I came to a sentence that didn't make sense in the direction sheet. It told me to do something with my needles that would be totally impossible. My first thought was that the directions were wrong. My second thought was to tell the direction sheet to do something totally impossible with my needles. My third thought was that I'd made a mistake in my knitting.

I had, indeed, made a mistake, a huge mistake, way back at the near-beginning of the pattern. The photo above shows you where I am now, and I've been re-knitting like a woman possessed since Saturday morning, which was yesterday.

See the almost-rectangular section in the upper right? That's the only part I did NOT ravel. See the skein of yarn that has obviously been wound by hand? That's how much I still need to knit before I get back to where I was before discovering the ugly truth.

I'm convinced the cardigan will be adorable on little Phoebe, our friend's daughter, so I'm soldiering on.   I'll get it done, one way or another.

And speaking of knitting, here's a heart-warming story for you. It's about an obstetrician here in Maine  who knits for the babies he delivers.