Flowers for the counter

Sorry for the string of plant posts (usually I try to spice things up a bit more) but the plants keep being interesting whereas the sweater I’m knitting is just endless. Each row is at about 170 stitches right now, which takes me a good fraction of an hour. I have five rows left, finally, and then I can bind off, block it, and get a picture. (And then, of course, repeat the process for the second front.) Until then, though, the parade of plants continues. I cut a few sprigs from the flowering fruit tree by the back patio, and though I don’t think they’ll last for many days, the blooms are amazing in the sunlight.



Kevin was playing with his macro lens and I think the resulting photos are beautiful.



Fleeting but lovely.

Orange is so cheery

I seem to be on a green and orange kick this week.



The tulips are tomato colored, with irridescent orange edges. :-) I'm an enormous fan, and they counteract the crummy weather beautifully. Thank goodness for March tulips!



The sweater is my finished Pea Pod. I made the six month size sweater, and the 14½" hat. I love the orange shell buttons (Kevin does too!), and I expect that they’ll make me as happy next February as they do now. :-) I thought the hat as written kept looking way too short on babies’ heads, so I started the decreases at row 9 of the chart instead of row 3. I have no idea if the hat and sweater will fit at the same time – if not, at least it will be easy and quick to whip up a second hat.



And here’s the back:



This was such a great pattern, and I have fun memories of working on it – the Whistler trip, the Costa Rica trip, and sewing on the buttons right after we found out the baby’s gender: we’re having a boy! Any suggestions for boy baby knitting projects? I have a few rows left on the Baby Surprise Jacket, and then my queue is blank!

Farmers Market Flowers!

Now that we have the fruits and veggies from the CSA each week, I haven't been to the farmers' market once this summer. On the balance, I'm fine with that, but I do miss all of the flower vendors, and I've been wishing for sunflowers. I spent about five hours yesterday working on caulking the trim in the family room. As I worked, I listened to all of the cheers and honking for the Breast Cancer 3 Day Walk, which headed past the top of our street. As the day got late, I decided to run up the street to pick up white thread for Kevin's curtains and see all of the walkers (aka, do a little honking myself) – many of them get dressed up in things ranging from "outfits" to complete costumes. I actually found it quite emotional to see their progress – most of them are either survivors, or friends and family of people who have had cancer. I know several people this year with horrible, sad cancer stories, and this walk seems like such a brave and hopeful thing to go do (you can't walk without a hitting a minimum pledge – it's not little, and it's a big physical and time commitment), and at the same time each walker is so small in the face of the dollars and years that are required for improvements in care, let alone a cure. You see all of the PINK, and the friends, and the brave T-shirt slogans ("I had a war in my raq."), and it was a steady stream of women and supporting men and sons, but it still made me kind of teary to drive by. Very emotional and powerful.

On the way to the thread store, I drove by a woman with a tent selling flowers along the way, and I stopped and bought these.



They're so extravagant, and exactly what I've been feeling we were lacking. The right flowers to be summery, but heading into fall colors. Perfect. :-)

The weather has been cooperating with brilliant sunshine, so our kitchen was full of glowing flowers and bright sunlight all afternoon.



We've been hoping to replace the kitchen cabinets since we moved in. (We have a hole where a trash compactor used to go, and none of the current cabinets are adjustible, so they're a terrible use of space. We still have glasses in storage. Plus there's a mid-eighties-era microwave/oven that you can see in the photo above that would make an excellent pantry if we redid things.)

Do any of you live in Seattle or on the Eastside and have custom cabinetry recommendations? We'll definitely scope out the Lowes/Home Depot standard options, but we're hoping to keep the current Corian countertops and the kitchen as it is just doesn't fit the standard grid. Any thoughts (including keywords to search for online) would be awesome.

P.S. If you know an electrician, we're in the market for one of those, too. :-)

Rhododendrons on the counter

We have the prettiest pink mini rhododendron out in the backyard, and I couldn't resist cutting one of the blooms off the back and bringing it into the house.



It looks so pretty on the counter. A bit of spring to counteract all of the grim weather.

(Not to mention, a challenge for Kevin's new flower lens and detachable flash. As soon as I took my card out of his camera, he hurried off to get himself all set up. :-) Copycat.



His favourites are here.



Pretty.)

More Spring Updates

Our primroses on the kitchen counter continue to look so cheerful. They now have company in the blue pots on either side. Amanda and Brian left three quarters of a thing of garlic on the counter a month and a half ago. It's been sprouting, and I finally planted it last week. It’s VERY pleased to be in a pot. The shoots are all about three inches tall, and they seem to grow more every time I walk into the kitchen.



I’ve been checking on the crocuses each morning and most evenings to see if they’ve bloomed – it’s always such an all of a sudden thing with them. I can’t wait to see what color they turn out to be. That surprise seems a little bit ruined since there’s lavender, yellow, and purple crocus petal debris all around the bulbs. None of the remaining ones seem damaged, but I’ll have to be extra vigilant if I want to see them flower, I guess. I wonder which creature decided to attack?

The hydrangeas in the front yard were severely cut back during the pruning when Kevin’s family was here. I’ve been worried about them since it really does seem like a lot to recover from. I checked today, though, and it seems my fears were groundless since there are green buds everywhere. Yay!



There are two unidentified bushes in the backyard with very neat buds. Any ideas what this is?



Or this?



While we’re playing “name that plant”, the entire corner of front yard erupted in what looks like two sorts of bulb.



Here are the closeups (click on them for even bigger) – any ideas?

And finally, the holly tree is still, incongruously, covered in berries and looking very Christmassy. Right in front of it, though, is a bush positively covered in buds. I was puzzling over it when I finally found one that had actually bloomed! I know this flower!!



We have a forsythia!

A little jolt of color

This week’s batch of tulips sitting on the kitchen table looked totally spectacular as they caught the last of the morning sunlight.



I love that as all of the other flowers skyrocket in price on Valentines Day, tulips are still two bunches of five for $6. The long, cheap tulip season has to be one of my favourite things about the Pacific Northwest.

Sorry that it's been so long

Oh, man, I’m far behind. I got lulled by my lack of bloggable photos and didn’t post, and now all sorts of interesting things have happened: the start of (fantasy) football and the related knitting, the back deck gardening success, the baby born (and sweater, etc. revealed, finally), the quilt progress and regression…

Usually I cope with lack of posting by just putting up five posts in a night (RSS feeds be damned), but for some reason this all feels intermingled, so this will be the longest post ever. Sorry?

So first of all, I went to the Farmers’ market a week ago Saturday. My intention was to pick up flowers, peaches and veggies (all of which were accomplished with the typical farmers’ market glee), but there were a few fun additions. I ran into Pam from my knitting group at the skirt stall, fun. And then after I was done shopping, I returned to the booth and bought one! (My Christmas stocking had a bit of fun money in it, and though we’re a full ¾ of the year later, I found something great to use it on. :-) Nice! )



Here are the farmers market flowers with the front of Isabella. I’ve finally made it to the lace – the knitting is so, so much more interesting now. I’ve made quite a few more rows since this photo and they’ve just flown by. All of the football in the last week hasn’t hurt the progress!



The plants on the back deck have been entertaining. The tomatoes are going strong. I’ve picked five so far, and there are at least 10 more in various stages of ripening waiting in the wings. The beans keep appearing – every time I give up and expect the end, I see 7 more waiting to be picked. No complaints! Best snack ever.



The strawberries just started blooming again a few weeks ago, and the fruits are closer and closer to being ripe to pick. And, exciting to me, the poor pepper plant that got overrun by the beans, is actually making peppers regardless. How cool!! Definitely runty and late, but I’m just delighted by every sign of progress.



And finally, I’ve been working on the pine trees for the quilt. They’ve been weighing on me ( a classic case of unexecutable vision), and I finally charted and started to construct them last weekend. Here’s the result about a third of the way in…



Since then I’ve been finishing and ripping back squares without quite finishing anything. I LOVE the deep-dark pine tree colors up close, but against the lake and land business, they don’t really work. I’m struggling to come up with a reasonable solution… so far I’ve tried improving the tree/water contrast (helps, but not enough). Next up is mixing in more medium greens to go with the darks. I may have to switch to mountains and hills and then return to this – I love the squares but they just don’t fit the quilt.
I meant to write about the baby knitting as part of my catch-all post, but then realized that it would be easier to have my pattern notes separate. So, to be carried on in a later post… :-)

A muddle of Thursday things

We (and the Brown dinner crowd) just got back from the Harry Potter movie. The IMAX at the pacific science center hosted a "wells and spells" viewing -- a ticket got you into the science museum and movie, plus a(n adult) drink, they had snacks, and lots of attention to theme. I was very impressed at how many people showed up in hogwarts attire, including an extremely convincing snape. It made me wish I had a Weasley sweater, or at least a house scarf, at the ready. :-) And I call myself a knitter...

The movie itself annoyed me, but then again I never like movies based on books. Since I'd just reread 5 last weekend, I was particularly galled. That said, Luna was great, and the I'm fascinated (in a sort of horrified way due to Umbridge's outfits) how long it takes until the knit patterns based on the movie start appearing. I feel like they were catering to the knitters, in a way -- so many different sweaters, scarves, vests, dresses, and ponchos. It was also fun to get to wear the 3D glasses for a portion -- I think it added a lot.


And then we got home, and I was confronted, again, with a major disappointment of today:



Apparently Kevin's fancy camera was on some secret setting that makes everything glow in space -- the room was pretty dim, and I don't know why it didn't turn out. So, do you see the problem?

Here, try again with a (this time very dark and deep) picture taken by my camera:




The six new squares are bigger than the others. These are the first squares I've done in color pattern for the quilt (except for the purple/mountains, and I stopped a year ago on those because something had gone all wrong and I blocked out exactly what). I was trying to follow my pattern last night, and the things were way too big -- I was already up to the 5" strip, which is the largest, on the 16th block of the square, but each square should have 21 blocks. So I held the squares up to the ones I've already done, and they were exactly the same size, but missing five pieces. It took me ages, I kept recounting and remeasuring, but eventually I realized that all 55 squares I've done so far (including the 32 that I've already sewed together into a large block of sky) are all too small by four blocks (an inch of height and width). I've been ending up with 5x5 inch blocks, and I needed 6x6 blocks.

Once I made the first few, I just kept following the pattern.

This is demoralizing. I've been really excited by my piecing progress recently, and now I have tons more fabric to cut, strips to sew, blocks to iron, and before I can do most of it, I have to remove many, many yards of teensy machine-sewed seems. A major bummer. We're thinking of moving (a house?), and I need to have this done before we leave because it's a representation of where we live now (and the first place we've lived together). It's so important to me to "seal" its importance by seeing it here before we go. I'm already regrouping, but when I first realized the mistake, it was a blow.


On a much brighter and happier note, here are the flowers that Kevin brought home for my birthday!



I had a long and self-pitying post about how much I liked being 25 and why I wasn't ready to move on, but I scrapped it in favour of pretty closeup flower shots. :-) Here's the red:

One night of watching all of the backloaded Grey's Anatomy and 24, and I actually got a lot done on the Isabella tank. Enough, even to take a picture that isn't just a mad curl.



It's at the waist, now -- once I hit 6", I'll start increasing again. The knitting is shown to advantage with the Batchelor Party Tulips. Kevin went to Vegas this weekend with his fraternity. I came home to find that before he left, he went grocery shopping and bought tulips. :-) He's clearly with the program, and gets what makes me happy. :-) Nothing (and I'm being totally serious) better than $4 tulips.

Only three weeks till the wedding!

Knitting, flowers, spiders

I started working on Isabella (a new knitty pattern). The major draw was all of that stockinette, plus I have hopes (we'll see...) that it will be a perfect amount of yarn for the leaf green Jaeger Siena 4-ply that I bought on sale in New Hampshire last year. In any case, given the things to think about , and the buses (I've gotten back on the public transportation bandwagon), and the impending planes for the wedding and honeymoon, stockinette seems perfect. :-)

Despite many hours and many rows, at a gauge of 7 st/inch it doesn't really knit up all that quickly, so pictures so far are boring. The best I can do is show you it with the over-bright pansies, geraniums, and mystery pink flowers. :-)



The interesting part of that picture though, is the little dude that you can't see without the zoom. I discovered him a week ago when I was watering the planter and inadvertantly watered him. He was not pleased.



The best I can tell is that he's one of the 3000 species of the family Thomisidae. The common names are Flower Spiders or Crab Spiders. Both are apt, but the second one especially rings true -- when I first saw him, especially moving, he looks like something we'd discover in our tank at one in the morning.

The lavendar spots are especially cool. While I am *not* a spider fan, and he's big, he genuinely acts more scared of me than I am of him. He's always on or under the same bloom, and I'm getting used to him.

Knitting progress

Two plane flights, and I have two Fetchings just in need of thumbs and a side seam!



Don't they look festive with the sunflowers? After a weekend of clouds, the sun finally broke through this morning. Pretty!

P.S. No, your RSS feed didn't break. I just had a backup of posts awaiting pictures, and so I figured better to load them all at once than let April 2007 fade into oblivion. :-) Sorry for the delay!

Exhausted tulips

I came home from work today to find this vase of utterly exhausted tulips.



My favourite was the one that plunked its head down in the middle of the candle. :-) Sooo sleepy.

I cut them and gave them new water, and they look quite revived. :-)