QUIET WEEKEND

It's been a quiet few days around here - blessedly so.  I love the long Thanksgiving weekend - it's sights and sounds and quiet tempo.  Oh, and the smells - the aroma of the turkey carcass boiling down with fresh herbs - the extra casserole of cornbread stuffing baking in a dish filled with water - the corn chowder coming to a simmer - its shrimp and crab swirling in the cream.  We've been eating a lot of really excellent homemade food.  


Can-Do-Guy installed a woodstove in the barn while I sewed the binding on my daughter's new comforter.  He also installed motion detector lights on the potting shed so that, in his words, when I pull into the darkened drive, the lights will come on like a prison yard and I may be blinded!  Enough so that I could possibly drive THROUGH the potting shed!  He's funny.  I'll take my chances, thank you.  It's been a struggle these last few weeks of daylight savings time - we have no street lights on our country road and when I tell you that it's dark out there, believe me, it is PITCH BLACK!  It's not the two-legged intruder that I fear in the dark - it's more the four legged, black and white striped one that I have no interest in stumbling over!!!


There was blocking ...

Love that picot edge, but this sweater is SMALL - although the photo makes it appear huge. The front bands need to be knitted and applied after blocking occurs, and according to my calculations - it will end up being somewhere between a small and a medium.  Neither of those sizes describe me.   Someone is going to receive a really pretty holiday gift this year!  But I'd like one for myself, so I cast on Briar Rose's 'Fourth of July' and combined that with a few silk noro skeins - I'm liking this creation A LOT...

I try not to gush when describing Chris's fibers, but really - if you haven't had the pleasure of her dye pot and lovely fiber, well, you NEED to score some - you'll never regret it, not ever.  I can hardly wait to finish this knit so that I can hurry over to the Anne Hanson 'Hillflowers' shawl that I have on the needles in Briar Rose's  'Grandmother's Blessing'.  I know that once I finish this shawl it will become an extremely functional part of my wardrobe.  I'm thinking about wearing it to bed.

I've started to pull out the Christmas decorations.  I like this gourd-made-into-a-night-light very much.  It serves two purposes - one is to get the holiday juices flowing, the other  - a bit more diabolical.....


The Can-Do-Guy and I have some issues.  I want you to look at the backdrop of the image above.  Notice the plaster and lathe (complete with horsehair which you may or may not see).  THREE years ago in February, on the coldest damn night of the year, I came home to find Can-Do-Guy's work crew SHOVELING the plaster walls of my hallway out the front door.  I shit kid you not!!!!  To say that I was alarmed would be putting it lightly.  I asked - why?  He replied that the 180 year plaster walls had the consistency of cheesecake and that they HAD TO GO!  Ok.


But as I mentioned - it's been nearly three long years, three long years WITHOUT CEILINGS AND WALLS IN THE HALLWAY.   When are they coming back?   Every time I bring this up, a fight ensues.  I am lost.  I have no idea how to steer this train wreck back on track - and I would appreciate any and all comments - does anyone out there have a tried and true formula for getting home improvement projects up and running?