I'm happy to report that my groove has returned. Or, at least, a groove. I've managed some decent productivity lately, and that is a good thing!
On the gardening front, we have garlic just about ready to be dug...this was a test bunch Kevin dug last night...
In all honestly, this garlic has nothing to do with my productivity, other than me saying to Kevin the other evening, "Isn't it about time to dig the garlic?" ;) As for the rest of the big garden, aside from the broccoli that the #@!$ ground hogs ate off, everything seems to be doing well! I got some peas, which is better than some years, and the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cukes and zucchini all have baby fruits on them. My salad garden is still producing some lettuce and onions, and the herbs are doing fine. Praying no Acts of God come and destroy things this year!
Where my efforts did go earlier this week were to this area of our yard...
This spot is at the back of our house, next to our porch. Of all the areas of our property, this has probably been the most neglected for the 17 years we've lived here. What this "before" picture does not show is all of the crap that had accumulated here over those years! Saturday night, I had the kids help me clear it out...lots of old lumber that had leaned up against the house, an old pool wall from when the kids were little was rolled up and sitting there, and lots of other weird, yucky detritus left over from various other projects. If it didn't have a home, it often got tossed there.
I make an effort to have the back porch be my "happy place" during the warm months. I like to sit here and have breakfast or coffee or journal or knit (or write in my blog, as I am now!). I decided, however, that the happy place would make me far happier if I was not looking at a garbage dump right next to me. So, getting the crap cleared away was a good first step. But on Sunday, Emma and I set to work taking it a bit further. We spent over four hours digging up close to 100 bricks that were embedded in that patch of ground (I think the previous owners used this spot to sit their garbage cans maybe?), and then we dug up all of that ratty ground cover & transplanted it to our front embankment, which is very rocky and the rain causes regular landslides to occur (hoping the ground cover takes root and helps stem that trend). Then we hit Lowe's for mulch and flowers, and behold...a truly happy, happy place!
It isn't perfect, but it's WAY better than it was! And it's pretty to look at now, too! The bonus was spending the day working with my 13-year-old daughter on this. She even told me she had fun helping me. Total bonus! :)
On the fiber front, I don't have any new knits to share right now, but I should have a new shawl finished up pretty soon, so stay tuned. I did, however, finish plying the never-ending fiber two nights ago!
Sorry for the crappy nighttime cell phone picture, but it's all I have at the moment. This is 654 yards of 3-ply fingering weight that I spun from 4 oz. of Tempted merino-silk in the Positivity colorway. It is destined to become a Citron shawl, which I will cast on as a reward for finishing a test knit project that I need to work on.
I am going to be taking part in Tour de Fleece again this year, though my chosen project is anything but exciting. Can't remember if I mentioned it here before or not, but when I showed my finished Caricia to my mother-in-law, her response was, "I want that!" Only she wants one in all white. I'm not sure she even cares if it is the same pattern. But she wants a lacy shawl, in all white. ALL WHITE. I cannot emphasize that enough. ALL WHITE.
There are two solid colors that I hate knitting: black and white. Black, because it is very hard to see the stitch definition, and white because...it is boringboringboring! Any solid runs the risk of boring me after a while, frankly, but white is just so...white. There is no color at all to keep things interesting! The fact that I'll be doing a lace pattern with it is all that will keep me from wanting to jab the knitting needles straight into my eyeballs, I promise you. But I digress (kind of). This tells you how much I like my mother-in-law that I am not only willing to knit a white shawl for her, but I'm going to spin the #@!$ fiber for it, too. I have a hard time finding pure white yarn that I like to work with, and for this kind of project, I have to like the yarn. It is imperative! The white fiber I'll be working with is the same BamHuey fiber I used for the Caricia yarn, only in its undyed form. (Thanks to Cheryl for being willing to sell it to me that way!) Six ounces of it. Yep. Check in with me at the end of TdF to see if I'm still sane. ;) (Though my sanity might be in question for even taking on this project!)
Should I survive the spinning of the white, I think I may move on to a stash of various natural colors of Icelandic wool I picked up at a fiber festival last year. I want to create a color-graded yarn that I will then knit into a (wait for it)...shawl. I know, who'da thunk it. Me, knit a shawl. LOL I don't yet know what pattern I'll use for this as-of-yet unspun fiber, but I can envision the general project in my head, looking soooo pretty going from the lightest shade at the top down to the darkest shade at the bottom. It's visions like this that make me giddy. I'm such a dork. ;)
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