Knittinggarden

First of all, let me apologize for being in a place where the sun is shining and there's barely a breeze, let alone a hurricane.  I pray for everyone in the storm's path and sincerely hope that it passes quickly and the damage isn't too severe. That being said, I wanted to share what I was treated to today.  I was sitting out in our little courtyard, where we have a few potted plants and a hummingbird feeder.  DH has set up a twig along the wall and the little birds like to perch there to be ready to defend the feeder.  I noticed a little hummingbird sitting there.  Then another came along and sat down beside the first.  From the markings, I assume that the first bird was female and the second was male.  They looked around for a couple of minutes.  Then another bird approached.  The male flew up to chase it away, then returned to the perch.  This happened a few more times.  Then the male began to hover over the female in ...

For those of you who are already in the thick of fall cold and storms, sorry.  For those of you who are enjoying extended fall colors and a nip in the air, I envy you. I left Seattle for the desert on October 9th.  We had had so much nice weather that the leaves hadn't changed yet and there hadn't been any rain or wind to knock the leaves off.  I was still cutting roses and picking grapes and raspberries.  I should have stayed a week longer, but who's to know? I arrived here to find temperatures in the high 90s and low 100s.  I wasn't impressed.  It was too darn hot! Just this week we've had morning temps in the high 50s and 60s and highs in the mid 80s.  Now we're talking.  Today is the first day that I think I won't demand AC on.  I shouldn't complain and I shouldn't say this out loud...but I want to see rain.  I'm sure when I get back home in mid November I'll see more than enough rain, so I'll just have to suck it up and enjoy th...

More plums (Italian prunes this time), raspberries, and one of the two kinds of grapes from the yard.  Will the harvest never end this year?  The cake is made with some of the plums and is ready for the oldest boy's birthday dinner tonight. The weather here in the Seattle area is unbelievably beautiful.  In fact, I'm thinking that a rainy day would be nice but the forecast just says sunny, sunny, sunny.  I think we must be in some parallel universe. In knitting news, I finished some socks.  These are basic, ribbed, self-striping socks with an afterthought heel.  The yarn is some I bought at the last Sock Summit from The Amy Lee Show .  I like the sparkle!

It was an intimate luncheon for 3000 people with some special entertainment.  The fundraiser was for Jay Inslee, who will hopefully be the next Governor of Washington.  In addition to President Clinton, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell spoke and some other notable locals also took the stage.  Musical entertainment was by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.  All in all, a fun and interesting afternoon. Tomorrow I get to see Huey Lewis and the News at an outdoor concert at a local winery.  A busy weekend for this little old knitter.

Never work on lace, even if it's in worsted weight yarn, after/while drinking a martini.  That's all I'm going to say about that.

I did nicely at the fair this year and I went to pick up my entries on Tuesday.  Each entry is returned with the judge's report and that can be pretty helpful.  Sometimes they give comments that really explain what could have been done better and I like it when they do that. Both of my shawls won blue ribbons and also best presentation ribbons that are "awarded at the judge's discretion to items of most lovely and eye catching appearance."  Cool!  I never actually thought about what I might do with my Pi shawl but I folded it in half and tried it on yesterday and it sits nicely on my shoulders.  Might be wearable on occasion.  Side note:  I like knitting shawls but rarely wear them.  Anyone else do that? This was the Gull Wings pattern in the Elizabeth Zimmermann anniversary shawl series by Mwaa Knit. The other shawl I entered was my Stephen West mystery knit Earth and Sky .  I mentioned before that I just grabbed this at the las...

We have some dwarf fruit trees in our yard and they usually have a moderate amount of fruit on them.  The cherry tree - birds eat them all; the pear tree - a few small pears that don't get ripe; the apple tree - if I don't put little socks on the apples they usually have apple maggots; the yellow plums - there's usually quite a few of those but they're small and don't get much attention; the little old Italian Prune tree - I love these and pick and eat as many as I can.  This year?  Lots of everything.  I've brought in some pears to try to ripen them up and picked some apples to see what shape they're in.  The Italian prunes aren't quite ripe, but it looks like I'll get some. The yellow plums are amazing.  There are so many plums on this little tree I don't know how it stands up.  I've been picking them and giving them away for a couple of weeks and today it still looked like no one had picked any.  So I found a local food bank to give a bu...

The Evergreen State Fair started yesterday here in Washington.  For the past few years (2 or 3?) I have entered knitting and spinning into the needle arts competition.  I love to go and look at everyone's work and it's cool to win ribbons, too.  Even though it's a point system like school (90% is blue ribbon, 80% is red, etc., so there might be a bunch of blue ribbons in your category) it's still very fun to see your work adorned with ribbons.  However, it's best to see your work adorned with "special" ribbons - the big, colorful rosettes - and I only have one of them, for "presentation".  And I don't know what that really means. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I drove out to the fairgrounds to turn in my entries.  I entered a Pi shawl made from Wollmeise lace and my Earth and Sky shawl, also made from Wollmeise, into the knitting category.  My plan always is to enter my sock yarn blanket and really wow them (big rosette, yeah!) but somehow ...

I know I've been MIA these last two months. and I'll have a lot to catch up on at some point.  Aside from the Tour de Fleece, which I participated in and spun every day during, my attention has been taken up with the wedding of the Princess.  Yes, my little girl was married last Sunday, July 29th.  It was a spectacular event down to the smallest detail and was amazingly beautiful and fun.  My introverted personality was tested as I had a houseful of people for ten days, hosted a rehearsal dinner for 40 or so people, and then hosted the wedding.  I was lucky enough to have great help and was able to enjoy myself all the way through to the "after party" planned by one of the bridesmaids that continued after the wedding at our house into the wee hours with many young people and a big bottle of tequila.  Who says knitters don't know how to have fun? Professional photos aren't available yet but a few of the kids have provided iPhone photos.  You can get a...

I've been working on spinning a braid of Juliespins Rambouillet for the last week or so and am really enjoying it.  In fact, I thought it was merino since it's so soft and lovely and drafts so beautifully.  I've never spun "Rambo" before but now will probably do so again.  The colorway is Stormy and the date on the tag is 6/09, so I've had it for awhile. As I was spinning along, I realized that all the projects I'm currently working on are being knit from my handspun.  I guess I've come a long way from a time when I decided I'd never be a spinner...how things change!  I thought it might be fun to document these three projects.  (Also, I'm still in the desert, where it's been about 114 degrees F the last couple of days, so I can't think of anything better to do than sit inside and knit, photograph knitting, and write about it.  When I do actually venture out to the pool and sit in the sun (or more likely, shade) I work on the s...

I am back in the desert, where it's unseasonably warm this year.  Last year I stayed home during May and it was cold and rainy in Seattle and very nice here.  So this year I decided to reverse that.  Of course it's sunny and lovely in Seattle and in the 100s here this time.  It's supposed to be down to 91 in a few days and I'm actually looking forward to that as a nice cool day! I arrived here on May 5th and got right back into my routine of going to the gym and sitting by the pool.  Yes, it's a tough life but someone's got to do it!  I finished my Professoressa Cardigan right before I came down and luckily didn't run out of yarn, so avoided cannibalizing my MIL's scarf that I retrieved from her just in case.  She was so nice about giving it back that I think I'll knit her a nice lacy scarf out of some Wollmeise as a reward.  I am happy with the way the sweater came out, but I won't be wearing it any time soon since it's fairly heavy even t...