Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I designed (hack, cough) this thing, this shawl-collared sweater, for myself years ago. Of course I did it all wrong. The body's too wide, the length is too short and that horridly wide v-neck is too wide and too deep! Hubby hates the colors. I'm not crazy about them either - I just used what I had - a bunch of Sandnesgarn Peer Gynt in navy, pea soup green and cream. It is only 1 of 2 DK wt sweaters I've ever knit. They take too long to do, so I don't do them. I've been wearing this inside the house (it doesn't get worn in public, egads, heavens no), but I decided last night that I should make it MORE wearable, even if it never does see the public.



So, I'm gonna rip out the cowl neck and put a deep-ish crossover ribbed edging in its place, which should bring that V up to modest levels.

And snip off the lower rib, rip it out and reknit it, from the body down, on less sts, so it doesn't flop about my body like it does now, AND whatever yarn is left over from the neck edge will be used to extend the lower rib as far as it will go. But this will have to wait for *free time*, so it may be awhile. before I get to it.

And I surprised myself. That leaf blower thing hubby got was actually a push style gas-powered leaf vac. He showed me how to pull start it (the hardest part for me!), how to rev it, tickle the carburetor (as he puts it!) and turn the thing off. C'est simple - I vacuumed up most of the driveway and parking areas (we have 2). It's a lot of pine needles and TINY leaves from the Honey Locust tree that's at the driveway edge, so I think I filled that bag about 8x and hubby filled it twice or so. That filled the tractor cart 5x, which hubby drove off to dump in the woods, and that's just the driveway, not any of the multitudinous lawn areas!

It only took a few hours, and was much easier than raking. Boy, we really coulda used this thing the entire 12 years we've been here, with me raking for days upon days upon days every spring and twice in the fall. Why now? Why couldn't the universe have provided this thing when we REALLY needed it - when my time was super crunched between B&B, 2 teenagers, restoration, gardening and designing? Heck if I know. Feels like a consolation prize!

I don't compost pine needles - they don't compost well and they're too acidic. And yes, Maus, I'm glad I don't live in a pine forest! Actually, it's one of the criteria we have for the next house - NO pine trees! Pine needles are also very slippery when wet and as it rains enough here, traction is an issue, so they stink for path material through the woods, they make it harder to get out of the driveway, and it's too easy to slip on them when they're on the grass if you're walking down even a slight slope, wet or dry!

There's tons of leaves to vac up soon enough, beginning tomorrow - and those go into the huge compost piles we have behind the garden. It helps if he mows over them first to shred them, then they break down faster. It's about 3 years from leaves to really good compost. But I don't think we'll be fussing about the composted leaf size this year, as we haven't the past 2 years, as WE WANT TO BE MOVED ALREADY. I'm NOT planning on a spring garden here as I haven't the past 2 years. I keep figuring that if I don't plan a garden, it means I have no stake in staying and the universe can hurry up and send us a buyer! hahahahaha. That plan hasn't worked so far, but I still won't get in it's way, regardless.
Onward.