A few hours ago this was a pile of tangled blue wool - now it is a ball of yarn.

This yarn is leftover from a hat I made for my brother last Christmas. Shortly (hours) after I finished the hat Abby discovered the ball of yarn and was able to play with it for, oh, about 30 seconds ...

Both Rob and I took turns trying to gently tease the knot apart. It was impressive. The yarn was originally wound into a centre pull ball and Abby had used all of her instinctual "pull the innards out" abilities to dissect it. We've discovered since then that hand wound balls last (slightly) longer during an encounter with Abby. Eventually we'd both given up on untangling the mess and it had sat in Rob's office for a while and then in my sewing room for another while.

I've been doing some rearranging and rediscovered the pile of blue. It's not really suitable for knitting anymore - between us and Abby the yarn is quite worn and slightly felted in places - but I thought it would make good ties for a quilt. It was going to be easier to store as several little balls so I started working at it again and found myself enjoying the challenge of trying to untangle the mass.

It turns out the trick is to not look for ends. Just unwind different loops from each other and gradually things start to make sense. Instead of several little balls I ended up with one big one - even easier to store. Now I can't wait to unite it with some fabric and batting and create something to keep us warm this winter.

We've been busy. After a trip out to the nursery and another to Canadian Tire we spent most of last night and this afternoon playing with plants and dirt.


I've got boxes of flowers along our front deck. My sister, Jane, and I grew the sweet peas and morning glories from seed and then picked up a few more plants to fill things out.


Rob put together our new lawn mower and cleaned up our front lawn. It still needs a good drink but looks so much tidier. That's got to be the fastest possible way to get rid of dandelions.


Two big half barrels (in an awesome yellow) are now hanging out next to the tomatoes Jane gave me. In a few weeks they'll start to show the tops of carrots.


Abby stayed outside with us the whole time we were working. She had a lot of fun chasing bugs and chewing the assembly instructions for the lawn mower but got pretty hot being in the sun for so long.


We were feeling the heat too so, along with an ice cube for Abby, I got some lemonade and cherries out of the fridge. We enjoyed them while admiring our handiwork.

Yesterday marks our first anniversary in this house. It's incredible to think we have been here a whole year. It feel so different now that it did when we moved in.

Oh ... and I got some yarn ... from the nursery.

Yep. I was walking around looking for someone to tell us what the tree we were looking at was, turned a corner in the shop and discovered a nice little display of Knit Picks yarns and needles and some good looking knitting books. It's just to the right of the seed potatoes.

I wanted to get some - to show support for their endeavour you know - and saw the basket of pima cotton at the bottom of the display. The blue and green were so nice and summery and I instantly thought of the Classic Washcloth in The Knitter's Book of Yarn. I scrounged up some needles and cast-on after dinner.


It's so soft!

I got some fun mail on Friday. A box arrived from Lettuce Knit in Toronto full of beautiful yarn. It's Cascade 220 Heather in Whiskey (8013) and it is going to become a Cobblestone sweater for Rob. It is unbelievably soft (softer than the solids even) and a beautiful changeable grey-brown colour that should show off nicely in the texture of a garter stitch. I've been wanting to make this sweater ever since the pattern came out. It's so simple, with just the right amount of detail for a men's sweater.

I'm going to start swatching tonight - hopefully I have all the needles I'll need and won't have to wait for any new ones to arrive (there are rummers of a yarn shop opening here but for now I still have to get everything through the mail). I can't wait to be working on this.