Category: Yarn

The Lazy Gardener

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May 2, 2006

7:47 pm

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A few months ago, K decided to plant some flowers in a patch of dirt in front of our house. So, we went to the home ‘n’ garden store, emphasis on the garden part. While K picked out flowers, I was enticed by the vegetables. I developed a grand plan to create a small vegetable garden in a patch in our backyard.

This patch:

We came home from the store, and I ripped out weeds and rocks and grass from the patch of dirt. I planted three kinds of tomato and six sugar snap pea seedlings, packed into the kind of topsoil that comes with plant food in it.

And then I pretty much forgot about it. Weeding? Watering? Fertilizing? Please. I have knitting to do. And some of the plants grew, while grass and weeds tried to make a comeback.

Today, I finally tried to clean up the garden a little bit. Imagine my surprise to discover, amongst the weeds, actual peapods!

And, hiding in the leaves, teeny tiny little baby tomatoes!

I picked five peapods. Despite the evidence that bugs got to a few of them, they were quite tasty.

In knitting news, it’s been a slow week. I had a Downtown Day for work, and I was all set up with my iPod and the second Jaywalker for a nice Metro ride. And then I woke up an hour late, and I had to drive downtown, and the only knitting I did was a round and a half during the break in my meeting. Hmph.

Jaywalkin’

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April 24, 2006

2:27 pm

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In the past week, I have knitted on a sock at a Weight Watchers meeting, at the West Hollywood SnB, at a meeting of my union, and in front of the television.  And I may be working on it at the library this afternoon, depending on how many people come for our monthly Craft Club.

Do I have pictures of the sock in any of these places?  Of course not.

I’ve been working on my very own pair of Jaywalkers, in a colorway of Regia Crazy Colors that’s sort of like a rainbow.  I started a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d be done with the pair by now, but I overestimated my ability to turn a heel.  I started out with the flap heel in the pattern, then hated the way it looked after I picked up the stitches around the gusset.  I ripped it out and tried to do a short-row heel, but I couldn’t quite understand the pictureless directions I was following, and I couldn’t find my copy of an Interweave Knits back issue that successfully guided me through short-row heel-making on a pair of baby socks, and I think I created a new type of heel.  One for people with REALLY wide, round heels.  So, I ripped that out, and that’s where it all went horribly wrong.  I ripped and ripped, and I couldn’t figure out where I was in the pattern.  And I ripped and ripped, and I couldn’t find where one round ended and another began.  I’m normally not bad at reading my knitting, but I was lost.  So, I ripped and ripped, and I eventually ended up two rounds past the end of the ribbing at the cuff.

That was Thursday night, at SnB.  I worked on it a little on Friday, my day off.  At Saturday’s union meeting, I got back up into the heel, which is once again a flap heel.  After gleaning some advice on picking up the gusset stitches off the Internet, I have a fairly decent turned heel, except for the glaring hole in one corner, which I am not ripping back to fix.  I’m not.  I refuse.  I will finish this sock and get on to its mate.  I just hope I finish the toe before I finish the skein, because I only have two skeins, and I’d hate to have to rip back AGAIN just to shorten the leg.

Although, come to think of it, I’d have a chance to fix that little gap….

Spring Knitty!

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April 16, 2006

8:35 pm

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The new Knitty is up, and, as usual, there are a bunch of gorgeous things!

Nautie is just the cutest little thing. I like UnGranny Smith a lot, although I’m not generally a big fan of the color green. And I think I’d want a substitute for the Lily Chin yarn anyway. Anatolia is lovely; I’m not sure how flattering it would look on me. Tendrils is lovely, even though the long drop-stitch scarf reminds me ever-so-slightly of Clapotis, probably because mine doesn’t curl like the original. And Reid is adorable. Have I mentioned we have a 4-year-old niece?

I usually like the Spring issue, since where I live, we don’t have winter. We barely have autumn. So, while I love soft, thick cabled wool sweaters, they’re not terribly practical. The spring and summer issues are when the cottons come out to play.