How I spent my summer

The garden was half a success and half a dismal failure. Mostly due to the fact that I expected the compost I bought to be really fertile and I didn't add any fertilizer which turned out to be a big mistake. The success part was the zinnias and other flowers, but the veggies were pitiful, with the exception of the sweet potatoes. We're having some today with our dinner.

Next year, I will not have a backyard garden and will stick to just the front yard, where I only have to deal with one hose and not that much in the way of bugs, and other critters.

  

It was a difficult time dealing with Dave as he has declined, even with the help from Hospice, but now things have evened out a bit and I have new strategies as well as better drugs for him and I am coping much better. 

These are the handles to the stove which I have to hide so he can't turn on the burners, and then forget to turn them off. Mostly I have to pre-empt him from being in the kitchen, and that saves a lot of mess and dangers.

My neighbor's cat, Luna, comes to visit and I love having her. But I am sticking to my guns about no more pets after Chumley goes. 

I busied myself with church and lots of clothes sewing, and recently just got back to knitting. 

 

This is Potzblitz #5 and it is all made from scrap yarns. Most of which were my hand dyed sock yarn. 

After that I became interested in watching Youtube knitters and got the itch to do some fancy stitches. 

I was inspired by a small shawl called the Turtle Dove Shawl, which I loved but found it too small to be useful. So as is my wont, I devised a way to make it bigger and added a bunch of new stitch patterns to fill in the space. I learned a lot while making this shawl ... mostly how to read a chart. I have been knitting for 51 years and managed never to learn this important knitting 'language'. It was a struggle at first, but I was determined not to let it get the best of me. Eventually I actually bought some graph paper and wrote out the symbols for the stitches I would be using on a chart. Now I feel like I graduated!

Next I wanted to conquer another area that has been too scary to try. Lace stitches. There are lots of YouTube videos and written instructions to follow, as well as the charts, but nothing seemed to work for me until I discovered that I have been purling incorrectly all my life! Duh! It has to do with wrapping the yarn over the needle, not under it as I had been doing. It never mattered until I tried to do lace, where the increases and decreases are a major element of the designs.

I kept practicing the right way to purl until it became natural, which took DAYS to conquer, but now I have it down and the samples look the way they are supposed to look. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

On a personal note: as I watch my husband lose his memory, I wondered how much I might also be sliding downhill. I am 76, and I want to keep my wits about me as long as I can, so this challenge of learning new knitting techniques has shown me that I may still have mental acuity. Or at least determination. 





Another thing that happened this summer was that my car got stolen, right from my driveway, on a Sunday morning while I was at church! I walked to church as usual and on my way home I noticed that the driveway was vacant of my car. The nerve of some people!  

I called the police, my insurance company and my sister, of course, and then began shopping for a new car online. Well, I just assumed my car would never be found, or worse, found and destroyed, so why not get a replacement? Monday I had Enterprise pick me up and I drove to Carmax and bought a new car. Just like that. Then two days later the police knocked on my door at 4am, saying that they found my car! 

O dear. 

I really like my new car...a 2021 Hyundai IONIQ, another hybrid. So when the old Lexus was returned to me two weeks later, I just went online and got a quote from Carmax and drove it over and sold it to them. Now that's the way I like it. 

The perps were caught and two of the other 'victims' of car theft and I had to go to court to testify, but by then the one bad guy skipped bail and so we have to go back when they rearrest him. The other people lived in really nice neighborhoods, so it really doesn't matter where you live. If they wanna steal your car, they will. 

OK...I think that catches up the gist of how I spent my summer. We did get a bunch of nice rain from the remnants of Helene, but no flooding or other damage. Thank God for that.