Tag: projects

Backyard project finished!

I’m happy to say that we are finally done with this backyard rehab project!

We are not yet done putting the sand away; when we are, this wheelbarrow will go away.

This project was paused for a while because filling the spaces between the stepping stones with sand wasn’t working. In some places the spaces were to big which made it unsteady to put one’s foot because the sand would shift. Finding bits of rock to put in the spaces was exhausting and was taking forever.

It turned out what we needed were pebbles to fill in the spaces.  And putting pebbles in the spaces was done in one two-hour work session.

We will need to plant things around the edges in the spring, and I have to figure out what those things will be, but the labor of placing stone has ended for now.

We will, however, continue to work for just a little longer. The spaces between the pavers from the fence are too big, so we need to pop those out and put them closer together. We can use the leftover stone as fill.

It’s good to have this project finished.

Dishcloth book finished!

I finished the knitting part of this dishcloth and then set it aside to do the weaving in of the ends later. In the intervening weeks I forgot that THIS WAS THE LAST DISHCLOTH IN THE BOOK!  All hail “Annie’s Choice,” which is the name of this pattern.

I used the yarn I got at SCRAP which cost me less than $2 and made multiple full-sized dishcloths. The regular skeins I’ve been using previously I can get two dishcloths, but only by shorting the boarder. This yarn is, however, acrylic and might not be as good for a dishcloth as cotton yarn would.

And here’s a nice photo of all the knitted dishcloths I had on hand. I’ve given many of them away.  I liked this book. It was fun to follow the instructions and have patterns emerge. It was very much like counted cross stitch.  I’m looking forward to my next book which will help me learn many different knitting stitches.

Dishcloth: Split Nine Patch

I’ve just spent a few minutes trying to find the split nine patches and I think I’ve got it. 

Wait, no, I don’t have it. I count six squares that are split, one square that is not, and two rectangles that are not split and not squares.  That does not to me say split nine patch.

I guess it does follow the pattern as seen on this website (that is full of clickbait ads) so I guess it’s a legit knitted interpretation of the split nine patch pattern.

Dishcloth: Windblown Square


I had become a little tired of my orange/green/blue yarn, so I branched out and bought this. When I got home, I discovered that this yarn comes in slightly smaller skeins. I will not be able to make two dishclothes per skein.  Grrr.

On the upside, I did restore the boarders to their former glory of seven rows. On the two-dishcloths-per-skein dishclothes they are only four rows.

Backyard: 3 tons of flagstone, placed

Here’s what three tons of flagstone looks like when it’s all stacked together.  I had a lot of anxiety around this part of the project. How much stone would it be? Would we successfully be able to keep all the cars from parking in front of the house during the delivery window? Would it completely exhaust me to do the moving of the stone?

And here’s what three tons of flagstone looks like when you place it in the backyard. And here I learned that irregular stone is just as annoying as regular stone. I thought this would be great because we didn’t have to spend so much time getting things straight and lined up properly. But instead, the slabs of stone don’t fit together nicely so there are a lot of gaps. I do like how it looks, though. and I think the color goes nicely with the house.

Thank goodness our friend Burt came and helped. It was a very big job.

Next one the list: we will fill in all those small holes with smaller rock and then fill in the spaces between with sand.

But immediately next we will go to the Kennedy School to soak in the soaking pool and then have dessert.  And then we will not do much for the rest of the day.

Backyard progress: adding the landscape cloth and edging

Memorial Day!  What a great day to get up early and put down the landscape cloth and edging!  And that’s what I did. (This picture also nicely shows off the asparagus.)

I love how tidy it looks! It’s so tidy looking that I’m a little sad it will be covered soon. And of course, it won’t stay that tidy forever, so it’s probably good I’m putting other stuff down.

I’m also a fan of the edging. That is the edging I wanted for the side yard project, but Lowes didn’t have enough last fall and wasn’t going to be getting more in until spring.

Backyard progress: the end of grading

When we finished the side yard, I had the happy thought that we wouldn’t have to do all the dreadful digging when we renovated the backyard. That wasn’t entirely true. The four inches of dirt we excavated from the side yard ended up in a pile in the backyard, and so we did dig for the back yard project. In this case, it was digging to move dirt around, which is slightly less taxing than excavating.

Here’s what things looked like early on. You can see the dirt mound at the apex of the yard. That had to be smoothed out. In grading the yard, we ended up adding dirt to the part of the yard nearest the house and taking it away from the part farthest from the house. The added dirt came from the mound. Plus, there was the excavating of asparagus roots. That was full-on hard digging.

But look!  We have finished. Matt stands where the mound used to be!

From the other end of the yard. You can see how we had to pile up the dirt near the point of our triangle in order to excavate it to the proper depth. You can also see the piece of plywood that served as our tamper. Plywood and body weight does the trick.

You can also see that the asparagus crowns have taken hold.

Here is our “mothership” stake. That was the stake most likely to not be disturbed, so we measured from it to find our proper grade.

I’m happy to have gotten through this phase of the project.