Monthly Archives: November 2011

A hippo and a fish story

Posted on by
3

I made three of Rebecca Danger’s Harriet the Haberdashery Hippos for our three granddaughters a couple of months ago. 

The twins weren’t as smitten with their finished hippos as I had hoped but our 2-year old granddaughter loved hers.  (Remember her age.  It’s important for the fish story.)  She received the hippo this weekend.  Her brother, our 6-year old grandson, also loved it and asked me to make one for him. 

Caron Simply Soft

His will be made from the blueberry – second from the left though it’s not quite that intense.  Both legs and a third of the body are done.

Now for the fish story…

As you may recall in my previous post, we cleaned the 75-gallon aquarium Friday morning.  It’s a 2-3 hour process but very necessary.  The water usually stays clear from one cleaning to the next but not so this time.   Mr. Aitch called me at work and asked if I noticed the aquarium.  Negative.  I overslept and didn’t have time for breakfast let alone notice the aquarium.  He said it was cloudy.  Very cloudy.  Hmmm.  That’s unusual.

He opened the cabinet under the aquarium that houses the filtering system and reservoir that flows into the aquarium and discovered why the water was cloudy. 

A disposable diaper was in the reservoir.  Guess whose?

I left work early afternoon to come home and help clean the tank again.  (We didn’t have any other filters as we used the last ones on Friday.  They have been ordered.)  Since tropical fish are sensitive to abrupt changes, it is not good to replace more than half the water at any one time so we took out about half the water and put clean water back in.  We only found one dead fish.

The water is still pretty cloudy but the remaining fish don’t seem to be as stressed as they were before the partial water change.  Once the new filters arrive, we’ll repeat the process and change the filters, too.  It will take several weeks of partial water and filter changes to get the water clean and clear again.

Yet another reason why I hate disposable diapers.

Miscellaneous

Posted on by
4

A BIG thank you to all the veterans for making it possible for us to pursue our lifestyle.  Without your dedication and service to our great country our lives would be very different.

Knitting:  I decided to knit fingerless mitts for office gifts this year to match the hats I gave last year.

Office hats

I still have yarn leftover so it won’t be a problem of matching dye lots.  These will be very basic using 2-3 colors in some simple striping.  It’s only four pair and I don’t have to buy more yarn.  I needed size 6 double point needles for this pattern and looked high and low for them.  I knew I had two sets but could not find them.

So I used my 40% off coupon at Joann’s yesterday and bought 2 sets of 4 needles.  Guess what I found when I was searching for the leftover yarn for the mitts?  They were in the bag with the Fetching mitts I made, ripped apart and restarted last winter.  They’re almost finished.

Oh, well.  It would cost more in gas to drive back and return them.  Besides, can one really have too many sets of size 6 double point needles?  Don’t answer that.

I really wanted to show you my progress on the Garter Stitch bag I started when I went to Vegas as well as the Linen Stitch Scarf.  No pictures of those today.  Plus there are some finished projects to show but that will have to wait until I can get the camera, knitting and daylight all together at the same time.

Cleaning: I was off for Veteran’s Day and I started cleaning the house as soon as I got up this morning.  Our son and family are coming for the weekend and the house needed some tidying up.  And the big aquarium needed a partial water change.  Mr. Aitch does everything else with the 5 aquariums we have but he needs my assistance to do the big tank.  That took about an hour.  Lunch, a quick trip to the market, more cleaning, dinner, and I finally got to sit down to knit around 8:30 this evening.  Too dark to photograph knitting.

Future dinner:  While I was fixing dinner tonight, I spied these two turkeys running around our back yard.

Each stood about 36 inches tall.  They were “talking” to each other then something spooked them and they flew away.  Maybe one of them will end up on my table for Thanksgiving …

Missing

Posted on by
3

When we got back from our trip last week, I ended up with some bug and was down and out for a few days.  I was too sick to knit so I didn’t miss my knitting notions bag until the other night when I needed my snips to cut some yarn.

I didn’t need the bag while we was away but had it in the front pocket of our suitcase.  Or at least that’s where I put it before we checked our luggage.

The small zippered bag (former life as a glasses case) held my crochet hooks, yarn snips, all my stitch markers, stitch holders, yarn needles, tape measure, kitchener stitch directions and some other miscellaneous things.

I don’t remember unpacking it but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t unpack it.  And if I did, I don’t know where it is or why it’s not with my other knitting things.

Please St. Anthony come around for there is something that can’t be found.