Maine Winter 2012

All I can say is that this winter has been a good one for sure. We have spent this one at camp, have not burned one stick of hard wood, no big snow storms so far and love being here. I have wanted to live here year round since the first year we bought the place, 1997, but because of work and the fact we have to plow 5 1/2 miles to get to the highway, we have always gone back to town and spent the winters there. This winter has been a dream come true. I feared being snowed in and not being able to get back to the highway for weeks at a time! Not this year. We have not had any big snow storms to date but we have had rain. Lots of ice. I think the ice is scarier than the snow now that we have lived here. We waited 3 days for the men to get in touch with the people who do the winging back and sanding. Then they only sanded very lightly. We now have ice again due to the melting and refreezing the past 4 days. Predicting a heavy wet snow for Friday/Saturday. Hoping the men get off their butts and make the call so its sanded tomorrow. We will not be able to move the snow if there is no sand underneath. And thankful that we have studded snow tires on both vehicles! It has helped a lot on the ice when traveling to and from town for food. I also think that being a retired person now I fear a lot of things that 20 years ago would have just been a new adventure! I am so glad we took this adventure this winter!!!!! (I need to clarify that there are many people staying here year round now and we all have pickup trucks with plows...I made it sound like we are alone up here and we are not! We all work at the plowing each storm. )

This is the first year since the late 70's that we have not burned wood! The cost is so much more then expected, but the baseboard heat is worth every penny of it. We have been toasty warm and the temp is controlled in each room....nothing like at home with burning wood daily. Hubbys back injury has been the reason for the new furnace here at camp. I am pleased with it to say the least! At home we would burn about 5/6 cord of hard wood plus a 100 gallons of oil for the hot water tank. Here we are burning less than 90 gallons of propane every two weeks. The insulation has done its work too! We have what some call a crawl space under the camp, but it is a particle foundation on a floating slab. We had that heavily insulated this fall so this has helped with keeping the heating costs down. Since we have our water pipes and tanks underneath we had to heat it. (I am scared of the heat tape most people use on their pipes on trailers) So baseboard there with its own thermostat has really worked out wonderfully. No complaints in that department!

I have done a lot of knitting this winter, but not like I did years ago. My hands hurt now due to old age and I find my attention span on knitting is not like it was either. I love to knit but I find that I want to do something else a lot now. I have been good about finishing up each project before I start another one...no more 50+ WIPs laying around any more. LOL (Is that my old age telling me to make sure its done cause at this stage of the game I may not wake up to finish it?) LOL I do have a lot of yarn and patterns all bagged up and ready for me to knit. I like that part! I buy the yarn and pattern, photocopy the pattern so I can write on it as I knit the project, put it in a zippered bag that I have saved from purchases of sheets or something that is big enough to hold all the stuff and put it in my big covered plastic container! When did I become organized? I do not know! Hoping to start my DIL sweater soon. It will probable be a summer project...one when the black flies are out and I can't stand them and will spend the days inside till the heat kills them off!! Oh and fishing season this summer will take away from my knitting too. I love to take out my little row boat and row around the lake. And last year we bought kayaks...so that will be something that will take away from my knitting time too! Cant wait to head out with my girlfriends and paddle the rivers and lakes with them...and I might even invite Hubby to come with me! We shall see. He isn't a long distance paddler due to his back injury so we just go around the cove here..but when the girls call, I am off and paddling like I love to! Summer hurry up and get here please!

Hopefully I will post some pics in the next few days of my last pair of finished wool socks and the snowmen Hubby and I made while out on our daily walks! We even took one day to color them all with a spray bottle and food coloring! Life is good at Cedar Lake!

KNIT ON!

Knitting project

Well, I am knitting more wool socks. I am finally starting to see the end of my Bartlettyarns I have had for about 20 years. Leftovers from my yarn shop days. I will probably never use up all the rest of the yarns out there in the building. I try not to buy more, but as a knitter who is a yarnaholic I don't see that ever stopping. WIPs are many, but I have finished up quite a few being in the woods all winter this year. I do want to knit the sweater I purchased last summer when we went to Portland. Stopped at a lovely yarn shop in Freeport, Grace Robinsons, and purchased a pattern book that I had wanted to buy from that shop 3 years earlier but they wouldn't sell it to me unless I bought the yarn that the book used. Well this time they were very happy to sell me the book. It was the last one and was the display one. They sold it to me for half price! I did buy yarn from them but not the one the book called for. I got one that was one sale for 50% off! Made it in my price range.

Winter this year has not been a real Maine Winter. We had no -30F weeks at all this year. Very little snow too. Lots of rain and ice. Mud season will be early for sure this spring! This week has been very nice...sun, sun and more sun! We had some rain on Thursday, so on Friday, Saturday and Sunday when we went for our afternoon walk we made snowmen on the banks along the road. Sunday we sprayed them with colored water. LOL Green and purple snowmen! Life is good in the Maine woods!

KNIT ON!

Finished knitting the new foot on the cuffs tonight. As you can see, I didn't have enough of the burgundy color yarn to make them match! LOL Hubby thinks they are great. Nice to be able to reuse and save me the time of knitting cuffs too!

It took me an hour or so to cut back and get each sock on the needles. The socks had been washed many, many times over the last 5 or so years so they were a little felted. One sock was wore up a few rows higher than the other. Glad to be done with this project. Now to start something new. I know it will be another pair of socks, but I also want to knit something for my DIL. Have the pattern and yarn, now to stay of the computer and Facebook and I might get something done!

KNIT ON!

Wool Sock Project

Last night I decided to try and save a pair of wool socks that I had knit for my husband about 7 years ago. He had worn the heels out and was still wearing them and driving me nuts every time I saw his heels sticking out from them! lol So I cut the foot off and then worked it back to the ribbed cuff. I decided to add some rows to the cuff to make them longer, as over the years he has decided he likes them high! I kept thinking I should have just thrown them in the trash and started a brand new pair, but I really hate knitting the cuffs. (They seem to take the longest when knitting a pair of socks to me anyway!) As I worked to get the cuff to a place where the yarn was still thick I kept thinking, "Throw this away! Its going to take more time to do this then to knit them from scratch!" So after an hour or so I finally got all the needles on and the stitches counted and I found that it wasn't as bad as I thought! I am using Bartlettyarns wool that is leftover from a pair I just finished yesterday. These were knit from all leftover yarns when I was knitting the felted hats that were the rage years back. Well, I was knitting the heel and put them up for the night. This morning I noticed that my wooly nylon strand was not there...Dang cat chewed it off again..but she left the wool alone. What am I going to do with this cat? She has eaten all the strings off my blinds, so now we have cheap pull down shades. She gets into my sewing threads and eats those too! I have them in a case and she works at the cover till she gets it off and then eats the thread! lol

Hope you enjoy the photo of the socks. One is still "hole" lol

Hoping to finish up the first one tonight and starting the second one tomorrow. Weather is supposed to be very, very cold here in Maine for a few days so I am staying in and enjoying the heat in my home!

Camp For Sale At Cedar Lake, Maine

We have our camp for sale at Cedar Lake, which is located outside of the town of Millinocket in Maine. We are near Baxter State Park and Mount Katahdin.

In the past year we have added a lot of things, including a drilled well, a filtration system for it, a new metal roof, a new bedroom, a new state of the art computerized furnace (baseboard heat!)( and a new addition for the furnace), a new hot water system, new gas stove, hard wood floor, more insulation and other things. If you are interested in buying our home, you can contact me at 207.447.5794 or beaulierla@gmail.com

Asking price is $299,000.00. The camp sits on 1.75 acre of own land, 275 feet of shoreline with a beautiful sand beach. We have made this into a year round home. With the other landowners here, we plow the 7 miles of road to our camps. We have two bedrooms, a loft, a full bath, kitchen and living room, septic system, and our lake does not have the water level dropped as the others in the area do. The lake has white perch, salmon, trout, splake and other types of fish. We also have a backup generator installed for those days when the power is out so there is no lose of power here at all. It is a Generact system. We also have internet and phone service here now. It is a little piece of heaven. If you are looking for a beautiful place to rest and relax, this is the home for you! There is a huge deck on three sides of the camp too. We enjoy many afternoons on the deck watching the birds and animals or eating our BBQed lunches.

The master bedroom is 16' X 18', the second one is 16' X 10'. The building is 40' X 28', built in 1997. As I get the chance I will add more pictures for your viewing enjoyment! Oh, the lake is one mile by two miles...spring fed and very clear!

I will be adding more pictures as the seasons change.

This is knit from acrylic worsted weight yarn, Encore by Plymouth yarn. I bought the yarn from Rosemary's Gift & Yarn Shop
39 Roosevelt Trail, Windham, Maine 04062

Time!

I think it is time that I start to use this blog again. Living at the lake this winter and I have not done a lot of knitting, but I have made a dozen pair of worsted weight wool socks for hubby and friends...and I did knit one sweater for my Grandson Ben!
Winter has been very mild this year...no long term below zero weather at all, not much snow, but a lot of rain/ice. Very hard to plow when its icy underneath the snow that has fallen. Mud season will be here soon, so we will be moving back to town for a couple of months...will be nice to see people and go to the grocery store when something is needed instead of making a list to pick up when you go to town once a week. lol
Christmas was wonderful!!!! Sarah is 5 1/2 now and Ben is 3. Sarah was so excited this year...made Ben get into the experience too.
I will try to post some pictures of my socks and things...

KNIT ON!