How Our Garden's Growing

Durwood's brother sent us a Smilebox which is a fun, free way to make slideshows and share them with your friends and family. RJ and I trade them quite often. I thought you might like to see the latest one. Click the "play" button in the middle and enjoy! (There's a yellow button in the lower right corner to slow it down if you need it, and it opens in a separate window so you can just close it when it starts over.) Sorry that some of the pictures are repeats from the previous post, but RJ doesn't read the knitting blog. Go figure.

Digital slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Now I Remember Why I Like Ankle Socks

Last night I finished Cartoons Sock #1 and I really like it. Really really really. I was convinced that doing the "purl when ready" technique had de-emphasized the color I wanted to highlight but when I took pictures of the foot of the sock (since I didn't purl on the bottom of the foot), well, there wasn't much difference.



I'm half-tempted to make the second sock black with Cartoons colored cuff, heel and toe, but there'd be no color changes to purl... hey, I can pick another color to purl, that'd look cool. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I am a genius.





I remembered that next Sunday is International Knit in Public Day so I'll need to have something fairly simple to knit, so I went down and got out some Cascade Fixation and cast on an ankle sock. That's when I remembered why I like Ankle Socks--you knit 14 rows of cuff and go right into the heel flap. No long leg to slog down, just a nice tidy 14-row cuff, one knit row, and zoom, right into the heel flap. I think I'll canvas the yarn shops tomorrow to see if I can pick up some other colors of Fixation to make more single socks. We all know how I like mismatched socks.




Look how pretty the honeysuckle is! I'd include a photo of the female hummingbird who visits many times a day but neither Durwood or I am fast enough to catch her.











Below the honeysuckle are the peonies and bleeding hearts, and under the kitchen window are the ferns. I love the ferns.





















Mr. Downy Woodpecker hung on the side of the peanut feeder yesterday when a hawk landed on the fence. He held so still that Durwood managed to take his picture, they're usually so skittish all you can say about the pictures we get is "there used to be a woodpecker here." Not very impressive.











And a bumblebee sat on the patio for such a long time that a picture of it had to be taken and, if it was worth taking a picture of, it's worth blogging. Don't you feel lucky?

Heel, Turn, and Gusset

Yarn took a back seat this past weekend to writing, but I did get the flap done, the heel turned, and the gusset picked up and decreased on Cartoons Sock 1. The "purl when ready" isn't quite as interesting or consistent on the top of the foot as it was on the leg, but I will say that I haven't slipped up and purled on the part of the sock I'll be walking on. So far. I'm really liking how the black cuff, heel, and (eventually) toe look with the bright colors of the sock.

~~~~~

P.S. The colors aren't right in this picture; they are right in the one in the previous post. Just thought you'd like to know.

Here's A Little Yarn Hors d'Oeuvre

I confess, I haven't been knitting much this week. I spent all my energy being excited about being asked to write an article about The Clearing for Door County Living magazine, getting ready to go up there for a night to gather the info I needed to write it, and being up there gathering the info, etc. I got smart yesterday (for once) and didn't force myself to stay up there staring at my blank laptop screen. I acknowledged my "process" (pretentious enough for ya?) and came home to go to knitting and sleep on it. I finally came to accept that I need to mull the info over, that there seems to be some separate space in my brain where stories and such things go to arrange themselves for a while before I am able to put them down. I sat down at the laptop after lunch and grumbled my way through transcribing my notes, and by the time a couple hours had passed, I had the beginnings of an article. I typed and cut and pasted, printed it out to read through, got Durwood's feedback, and rewrote. I took a "weeding" break to deal with the invaders in the asparagus patch and that break helped too. Now that supper's over and the day's nearly done, I've gone over it another time, made a few more changes, and added my sources at the end. I'll let it cook overnight, revisit it, have my neighbor and writing friend, Jenny, give it the once over, but I think it might be done. I'll let it sit another day and do the final rewrite on Monday so that I can have it to the editor on time. ** I need to insert a disclaimer here: I can't often poop out a finished article so quickly. This one is short and about something I'm passionate on and know a lot about. Don't be too impressed, only a little.


This is the newly renovated Root Cellar at The Clearing. They turned it into a bathroom. It's what I wrote about.






Oh, the yarn. Like I said, I went to Friday Night Knitting last night and I worked on my Cartoons socks. I got to the heel and made some progress on it. I'm really liking how this is turning out. I just have to make sure to remember not to put the purl strips on the bottom of the foot. Ouch.

Creative But Not Yarn-y

I've been working on creative things the last couple days but more "playing outside in the dirt" creative than "sitting in the air-conditioned house writing and knitting" creative, because it's been uber-hot and humid so it'd be silly to stay indoors where it's comfortable, right? Tuesday's usually my day off so I spend it zooming around accomplishing things I don't do on work days.



Last week the Brute Squad enlarged our patio and I got around to prettying it up last weekend. It's just lovely and so much roomier.

Then yesterday Durwood and I went to Stein's to buy plants for our garden. He picked out 6 different tomato plants (6 is much more reasonable number of plants for my one Tomato Boy than the 7-9 he usually finagles me into buying), and I chose a third blueberry bush, 2 bell pepper plants, and 3 tiny celery plants. We collaborated on picking out "something viney" to grow on the fence in back of the garden. This year's winner is patty pan squash. We waited until nearly sundown to go out into the hot but finally shady backyard, get it all into the ground, and watered in. The only thing I want to add is a row of red and golden beets. Maybe on the weekend I'll get to it.

You can't imagine how glorious it smells when I'm sitting on the patio these days. The lilies of the valley are in bloom and the little wrens are busy making a nest in the birdhouse with the flamingo on it. I have a lovely, Durwood-made birdhouse hanging on the fence and a crab-faced one with a convenient hooked side for cleaning further down the fence, and where do the wrens nest? In the on-close-out, mainly decorative birdhouse I got from JoAnn's three years ago only because it had a pink (now greatly faded) bird on it, that's where. But we do enjoy listening to the babies cheep for worms and bugs and watching the mama and papa wrens zooming back and forth with food.

Cool!

Friday night I cast on the cuff of my next sock in Knit Picks Stroll Kettle Dyed in the Soot (discontinued, but it's black, there's always black) colorway. Funny how much skinnier US3s feel than 4s and how much thinner this yarn is. 6 ply vs 4 ply maybe? Sport vs. fingering, that I know for sure. Anyway, I finished the 2" of cuff yesterday and moved into the leg of the sock using Knit Picks Stroll in the Cartoons colorway. I also decided to use the "purl when ready" technique that I read about in the Big Book of Socks. You use it with short-repeat variegated yarn, pick one color, and when it shows up on your needle (NOT in the working yarn) you purl it. Naturally, I chose the red. When I got to the red stitches on the needles I purled them; there were more than I anticipated so the purl segments are long, more than a needle's worth, at first I wasn't sure if I liked it but now that I'm into it I'm liking it. Alot. It looks cool. What do you think?

Escape to Door Co.

I kidnapped a friend this morning and forced her to go with me to Door Co. to walk the trails of my favorite place. She'd never been to The Clearing so I had fun showing her things that I forget to notice.
























I bought yarn. One skein. It's Trekking 6 Ply in the Sunset Multi colorway. More socks!






On the way home we stopped for ice cream, chocolate ice cream. It was a perfect day.