W.I.P. Wednesday (June 30th)

I can't believe that June has come to an end!  My vacation is flying by WAY too quickly!  I feel like I'm not getting much of anything accomplished; so that means that July is just going to have to be busy, busy, busy!

Today I have two projects on the needles that I need to make some progress with.  The first is the Reconstruction Sweater.  I have knit some on the body, but still have about 12 inches or more to go.  Can't decide if I want to add a few more stripes or not. My goal is to finish this one next week when my son gets back from the ex's and can try it on as I go.

I became so bored with working on this once I got to the "knit around for eternity" part of the pattern that I cast on for another top-down sweater, this time a cardigan for myself.  That makes--count them!-- 4 sweaters on the needles now.  However, since I am also writing this pattern, I can't give you much detail except that I have finished the yoke and have divided for the sleeves.  Besides, this one is top secret until it's finished.  The pattern will be for sale on Ravelry.  I am in L-O-V-E with the Naturally Caron SPA bamboo blend that I am using, though, and even though it's store bought and part acrylic and not a fancy-schmancy handspun, I will definitely be using it again. It has the most lovely drape.  So, all you get is a glimpse.  My goal with this one is to finish it by early next week.  Today is the first overcast, "cool" day we've had in about 2 months, maybe longer, so there will be knitting. 

And, yes, that is a giant Mason jar that I am using to keep my skein from wandering.  Does that make me a little too "country" or just creative?

Garden Tuesday

As I think I've mentioned before, we garden.  We garden year-round, actually.  Tuesday seems to be the day on my summer schedule when I do my garden maintenance.  So, here are some very green scenes from Garden Tuesday.  It's looking a little puny thanks to the absolute lack of rain at my house.

Some things are just sprouting for a second round--damned grasshoppers ate all of the beets and spinach!  But we have our first muscadine berries on the vine and that puny cucumber vine in the front of the pic is working on 13 more perfect-size for pickles cucumbers. We have 23 tomato plants that need to hurry up and grow something! Blueberries are in the back by the tomatoes, and there's this monster gourd vine that sprung up from nowhere growing behind the tomatoes and into the back yard.  Of course, when this plant was planted and coddled in the garden, it wouldn't grow jack.  Now I have three or four lovely gourds that could ultimately become little bird houses growing wild. The sweet potato vines that have taken over the garden had also better put out some awesome sweet potatoes--grew those from "seed" from last year's sweet potatoes. 

 

It was also a good day to harvest some herbs (rosemary, sage, oregano, and German thyme across the back of the pic).  No lemon thyme this year, and the lime basil is struggling,  The cinnamon basil and Thai basil are doing very well, though. In the front yard, the pineapple sage is going wild.  I might even, after planting #3, get some carrots.  Funny how one year you can grow more of something than you ever wanted to grow, like carrots, but the next year you have nothing.  Beets are sprouting, too.

 

The gardeniing "experts" all said that calendula, which is a lovely daisy-looking flower of many colors, told me that grasshoppers wouldn't come near the garden if it had calendula and cilantro growing throughout.  Uh, newsflash!  I killed 3 of those suckers in the calendula this morning!  My daughter and I harvested our first-ever crop of calendula seeds.  I know, they kind of look like a pile of worms, but I'm so excited!

A Simpler Time

Remember these?
 

My sister and I used to fight over who got to lick them and then put them in the book. 

My husband and daughter and I were perusing the local "antique" shops on Saturday--the kind where you walk in the door and the theme song to "Sanford & Son" pops into your head-- and I saw this little gem sitting in an open drawer of an old Singer iron foot-pedal sewing machine, the kind my grandma had in the back room that she used to make oodles of Barbie doll clothes, next to the loom where she made rag rugs, and I did a little dance of excitement when I saw it.  Of course my 6 year-old daughter asked what was wrong with me and my husband sort of pretended not to know me when I did a little scream of delight.  The point is that I was obviously reminded of a much simpler time, a time when grandma could send the 7 year-old down to the corner grocery store--the kind that had all of two registers (in case there was an afternoon rush) and a butcher's counter at the back because meat came wrapped in paper marked with that black oil pencil, not in a shrink-wrapped plastic--to get a carton of milk by her 7 year-old self.  And the ice cream truck was the ice cream truck where you spent your allowance or whatever you could pester grandma into giving you because the truck and its driver didn't make parents think of child predators.  Yeah.  What happened to that?