Stuff Happens, But Slowly.

[akirlu]

So much stuff to do, so little progress. Even now I wouldn't claim to be 100% recovered from the stupid flu. So between sudden collapsizes due to lurgi, Bloody Damned Heat, neck- and eye-strain problems, a temporary addiction to Bejeweled Blitz, and catching up with everything that didn't get done while I was prostrate with the lurgi, it feels like I haven't accomplished anything at all for weeks and weeks. As often happens, this feeling is more feeling than reality. As the pictures document, I have done stuff. Just not very fast.

I finally finished framing the "Orange Blossom" print we bought at a gallery in Spokane . . . last summer on our road trip. And hung it too. Art framed and hung within a year of purchase. Yep. I'm a speed demon, me.

I also found and applied the hanging hardware to be able to hang the smaller version of my favorite Steinlen cat. Only took me a year and a half to hang that one. As you can see, I'm still working on getting some actual curtains hung in the bedroom. Don't ask me how long I've had the fabric for that project. (Long enough to change my mind and decide to use if for kitchen curtains and seat pads instead. ObMoan: Not that I've made those, either.)

I've been eking out little bits of work in the garden. A bit of weeding here, a discrete organic pesticide purchase there. Nothing major, though Hal continues to do battle with the prodigal lawn. I've been managing to bring in at least a weekly bouquet from the garden. Bearded iris make perfectly fine cut flowers, as it turns out. For a while I was bringing in pilfered lilacs, now we're on to the "Peace" roses. Peace has run amok in the driveway strip, putting out the most crazy profusion of heady, fragrant, pink-edged golden flowers. Like the lilacs, they make the whole house fragrant when you bring them in. I love having flowers with scent. The pity is that the one bush is really awful with black spot this year. Small wonder since I never got around to pruning over the winter, and it's been such a wet spring. Thus I bought a bottle of Neem II over the weekend in hopes that it will help, otherwise that bush goes under the spade. Meanwhile the various pink roses I put in myself up against the fence are looking hardy and green and ready for anything. It pays to plant not-yellow roses, it seems. I hadn't realized the flowers on the little pink climber would be so small though.

On Friday I had a major stash-expanding experience at St. Vincent de Paul. They had a bunch of yarn going for $5 and $6 per bag of like skeins bundled together. Among the bags I found three containing these same-dye-lot dark rose Rowan pure worsted-weight wool, for $5 per bag. Total of 14 skeins for $15 -- so a little over a dollar per skein for yarn that normally costs over $5 per skein in the shop. I believe I see a dark rose sweater, or possibly a cabled cardigan, in my future.

I've also made a bit of progress on the boucle yarn sweater I'm 'designing' -- which is to say that I'm knitting without a pattern again. We'll see how well that goes, since I didn't have the sense to make any notes.

But the big accomplishment over the weekend was completely rearranging my home office so that the work table is in a sensible place and the file cabinet is right by my desk. I'm hoping that with the room laid out in a coherent way (coherent, at least, so long as one doesn't need working wall heat), I'll be able to take a whack at some more of my pending projects. Because there is always more stuff to do.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Wow, the Peace blooms are spectacular. So's the Rowan. :-)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they're huge, too. I'm a bit sad that the one bush is going very nearly all at once, because I had hoped to be able to spin out the crop over a few more weeks, and I don't think they'll last that long. But it's an amazing show while it lasts.

And yeah, the Rowan. Golly, what an insane haul. They had other tempty stuff, including some purple mohair, but I Had To Stop.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Don't fear the reaper! Just plant other colors! Seriously, yellow roses, and those with yellow in them, tend to be the most susceptible to black spot. Absolutely all of the Not Yellow roses in our yard are fine, and throw off any black spot incursions handily, despite some of them being quite close to the four yellow-pink roses that came with the house. And even among the yellow-pinks, only one seems to be really badly off -- the rest will be fine with a bit of judicious leaf-pinching. It's only the yellowest of the bunch that I'm worried about. So don't let fear deprive you; the scent alone is worth the candle.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

The lilacs made me gasp! I do love and miss them. I have warm climate lilac and I appreciate what it manages to do, but it's pretty pathetic, really.

Those Peace roses are gorgeous. Actually, they're more salmon & gold than I think of Peace being, though a web search shows a lot with similar coloration. I finally gave up on my Peace bush last winter. It was always a disappointment because it wasn't fragrant as it ought to be (a substandard strain got propagated, I suppose). Plus I had planted Peace and Double Delight too close to each other, and of the two, DD had a lot more going for it. So out went Peace.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

When the lilacs are at their peak, the whole neighborhood smells of them. I'm so glad to be back living someplace where lilacs and peonies and lily-of-the-valley are commonplaces, instead of rare exotics. Our own lilac is actually pretty small, but next door has several mature ones and this year next door is owned by the bank, so I did a bit of rogue pruning.

The color on the Peace (or perhaps I should call it Probable Peace, for none of our bushes was tagged) seems to vary from year to year, or even one bloom to the next in the same summer. I think the photo makes them look salmony than they are in life, but for sure you get more and less pink from one time to the next, and deeper or lighter yellow. I presume its a micronutrient thing, and I really should oughtta feed my roses.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Lovely, lovely Peace roses. And I am crazy about all the paint colors in your house. Will you come down here and help me choose for mine? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

My Queen of Sweden is absolutely bug- and disease-free, the white Margaret Merrill next to it has blackspot, and the pink Texas rose (I forget the name) next to that has rust. All in the same six foot bed. *scratches head*

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Naturally, I would love to tell you what colors to paint your rooms. But it won't be quick, and I reserve the right to change my mind several times.

I was ambivalent as hell about the green in the living room when it first went up -- it's got way more yellow in it than I ever thought from the sample chip -- but I've decided I like it now. Whether it's a warm green or not turns out to vary quite a lot with the light. And the yellow in the bedroom was pretty well ghastly under compact fluorescent light, so eventually we went back to incandescent bulbs in the ceiling fixture. I don't use the ceiling light that much anyway. Or so I tell myself. Now I'm waffling about the bathroom color I've been pondering for yonks. Is that saffrony, russetty orange going to be too loud in strong sunlight? Should I go with a nice soothing light sage instead? Or will that bring out the godawful linoleum too sharply? Oh, the agony of indecision.

So, on the whole, you may not want my help after all. At least, I can pretty well guarantee my "help" will not speed up your process any...

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I already know I want to paint the front room a sort of Moroccan red, and the middle room a sandy tone, and my bedroom should be a deep Caribbean blue with chocolate and white. Wait, wrong house. The bedroom will almost certainly be a soft green, more blue than yellow.

So you just need to help me figure out which red is Moroccan, and which sandy tone is not too dark or too landlord-y. Easy!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Moroccan red!

Well, that should chop several months off the process, then. Next time I'm in the Bay Area we should definitely plan an expotition to some paint stores. I always like playing with paint chips, and unlike many brightly colored pleasures, they're free!

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I love the yarn in the last picture. It's absolutely gorgeous.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't normally buy synthetic fiber yarns, but I so thoroughly fell for this colorway that I bought enough (I hope!) for a sweater. The color shifts are mesmerizing.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I think most of what you've been doing is what I'd call "puttering" -- and which (at least for me) seems to be about the best way to accomplish a lot of small but needed and rewarding things.

Yup, bearded Iris (especially the most fragrant of them) do well as cut flowers, and may be even better if you can master the Japanese technique of wrapping the almost-ready-to-open buds in a roll of crushed tissue-paper before arranging them. If you time everything just right, then you can remove the tissue and the buds will open (in the course of five or ten minutes) as you watch them.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Cool trick with the irises! I mostly brought in a stem because it had bent and fallen over anyway. I figured it was no loss if it wilted in place, but in fact all the buds opened, in their time.

Yes, puttering is a good way to make all sorts of incremental progress, but it doesn't get the house painted...

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Your hanging and flowers are lovely. Don't mind me, I've several cat prints, cat originals I need to frame and put in my bedroom - it's been years mostly. But I'm finally getting them all in one place to do the work!