Fixing Stuff, Knitting, Four O'clocks Again

First we fixed the water heater: drain, rinse out a couple of inches of accumulated lime bits, replace both elements.

And we fixed the ceiling fan: unplug, take down, order part, put back up, take down again when part shows up, remove light switch, replace with new switch, put back up again.

(If you need weird little odds and ends of electronic and mechanical parts, like little fuses and ceiling fan light switches, I found our Zing Ear ZE-109 at Ken's Electronics.)

Monday I wished I could use my fixing-stuff skills on Blogger, which gave me a 502 error both trying to read and trying to post.

Instead I knitted sock cuffs on the Fizzy socks.

I finally remembered, from looking at other pairs of TLC Baby yarn socks, that I don't really like how it looks when I knit the spiral ribbing into diamonds. So I stuck to plain old V's and A's this time.

I showed the child these socks and said, "Look, it has the colors of the rainbow sherbet you like." Child: "But no orange." Me: "Yes, it has the orange, but when it's next to the raspberry color it's hard to see." (Child takes a closer look in case Mom is snowing him.) "It does. Rainbow sherbet socks!)

Another thing I did yesterday was to replant the four-o'clock roots back in the ground, since I noticed a couple coming up from seed where I grew them last year.

Last fall when I dug them they looked like this.

Over the winter sitting in their open plastic bag on the cold concrete floor, the pieces of stem I left on dried up and fell off, and now they look like this.

The color of the buds tells me a little about the flower color. Pinkish buds will usually have the bright pink flowers. Green buds will have white or yellow flowers. I had at least one root with both a pink bud and a green bud. And sometimes they arbitrarily change colors towards the end of the season.

The last thing I did was go through my knitting project cart. Hm. I guess I have to update my knitting needle inventory -- I think I have three 5-needle sets of 4-0 knitting needles now, enough to knit socks on if I should take the notion!