Garden, etc

Friday was the big Horticultural Arts Society sale and I got a ton of plants for my garden. The sale is the best, but you literally have to be one of the first people there, the pickins get slim!
I will post some pictures later, but I picked up:

An eggplant, Oriental Express variety
Mariachi Pepper, a medium hot pepper (depending on the weather)
Big Beef tomato
Brandywine tomato
Super Sweet (cherry)
Space Saver 100 (cherry)
Sweet baby girl (cherry)
Harvest raspberry bush

I also picked up a little grass plant and some ornamental kale for a planter out front.

Saturday we planted everything in the garden box, and I ended up buying dirt for the other half of the box. I have the pepper and eggplant, along with the big beef tomato on one side, with onion bordering the whole area, and new lettuce plantings interspersed.

The other side has the remaining 3 tomatoes with the same set up with the lettuce and the onion.

Bordering the box I planted some Marigold seeds, as those are supposed to help keep the critters away. The peas I planted are not doing good at all, I think something chomped em all. Perhaps I will replant some seeds this weekend.

The raspberry bush ended up along side the east fence of the yard, with plenty of room to grow. I hope it does well!

For the tomatoes and eggplant, we took the tomato cages and covered them with plastic sheeting, to protect the little guys from the cold nights and hail we get here often in the spring. Hopefully it will be enough shelter.

Otherwise I have not been knitting much. I've been experimenting with that loop-d-loop yarn, but I will probably get some progress done over the next few days.

Will post pics later!!

Irises

They are growing in the front!

Also today I found a little onion sprout. Huzzah!

Haul from Michael's

Do I have the best boss or what? I had my review a few days ago and one of the perks I received was a gift card to Michael's. Lord knows I've spent enough there in the past.

I did some research this morning and decided to try to find yarn for the Yosemite sweater. It looked like Caron Simply Soft would be a good substitute. Anyways, I went this morning to Michael's and they really didn't have a nice color selection of that Caron. But nestled right next to it was Red Heart, yes I said Red Heart, Soft Yarn. I compared the two and they felt almost exactly the same, and they had much better colors so I went ahead with that.

One day you will be a Yosemite sweater... This is the leaf colorway.

Then, Gretchen loaned me her Mason Dixon knitting book and I decided that it would be a good idea to get some dishcloth yarn for some of the projects in there.


I also found a knitting bag finally. I have been using a tote and it is really hard to dig through. I think its cute! It has lots of little pockets too.


And lastly I bought a blade for my rotary cutter. Those things are expensive.



Last night I sewed the lace edging to the top of Bella Paquita. I almost lost some of my provisional cast-on, the scrap wasn't long enough. At least I was able to salvage it.
Here is where I am now. One more section to go!!


Now I have to get some flower seeds in the ground and hope they grow...

We saw bighorn sheep!

Friday was a hiking day after work, we went up the Cutler trail and wore out Slammer. It was so pretty out, and everything is getting that "piney" smell of spring around here.

And then, since we have both been stressed out the last few weeks, we decided to get over to Buena Vista to visit the hot springs.

We decided to take Slammer with us too and we did a little hike on the Colorado trail, saw some mountain goats as well as big horns, which I've never seen either of. I was pretty excited! While we were in the hot springs, one was walking around the facility, it was pretty weird. He didn't seem to mind we were there.

Then I decided I had to visit the yarn shop in town, Serendipity. It is a really great shop, for anyone who is in the area. Lots of higher end yarn and a wide variety. It seems a lot of shops here in the Springs will stock lots of aran weight stuff, and have no sock yarn. Or they will do it the other way around. Anyways I picked up a few skeins of this Loop-d_loop Birch, to test out on socks. I think if I like it enough, I would love a sweater knit out of this stuff. Its a pretty brown with blue specks in it.




Anyways, yesterday was just a biking/knit group day. It was nice to go to the group, I hadn't gone in a while. I got lots of progress done on the lace border of Bella Paquita, I think I am up to 10 repeats now. I have to measure the neckline though, to make sure I don't make the edging too long. It seems lots of people had that problem on ravelry.
Here is what progress I had Friday afternoon:


Also I wanted to show off my awesome new bike jersey, its got cupcakes on it! Woo!


Also, loot from the Netherlands/Germany:

He brought me a baked pretzel, some local Coke (tastes much better than ours), Haribo Happy Cherries, 3 awesome candy bars, a box of chocolates, Dolphin water, Lays Cheese Onion chips, which now I wish they sold here, and some Eidelweiss flower seeds.

And a new clock for our bedroom, courtesy LL Bean.


And a hat for me made by my friend Naia who is moving soon :(. At least I can visit her, she's not going far.


I can't wait to finish Bella now!

Sexy Mama from Yarn Girl's Guide to Knits for All Seasons

Is it so horrible that I usually feature unblocked knits on this site?
I guess I am just too excited.





Sorry for the vertigo angles. I had to balance the camera on a bookshelf.
I finished up Sexy Mama last night and tried it on today. It fits perfectly! And the best is, its not scratchy. I was so excited to find a perfect cotton gauge yarn for this project in my stash. Remember, right now its ALL about the destashing. I think this is the first knit summer top that I will REALLY wear a lot. I feel comfortable, and I know that it is not see through like a lot of stockinette tops which is really reassuring. Those cables are really strategically placed.


I'm not a mama, but I feel sexy. I used just under 4 of my 5 skeins of Lang Fiorina. I HATED this yarn when I first got it years ago. It never worked, it split and it made my wrists hurt because there is practically no stretch in it. I guess I just had to find the right project, because my feelings have changed! I guess I will use the rest for a baby sweater or something!

You pick up stitches around the underarms and back to create that ribbing, but my bind off was a little too tight. For some reason it usually is on picked up stitches. I am unsure if I am going to redo it or not. I usually don't wear halter tops because of the slouchy back area. But so far the tightness of the bindoff is just enough to keep it in place, while still being able to move and breathe.

Thats what it looks like without the border. So weird, it looks like it wouldn't fit.

I am really proud of my seaming job on this one. Perhaps thats why I chose to not knit it in the round. I really need practice. Here are some close up shots of that. Every project I seem to get better.








I also have 2 sleeves and the top half of Bella Paquita done. I have to add on the lace to the top and then knit the bottom on to it. I think after that I'll be done.

Progress

Its cold outside now, at least for me, but I'm still truckin on that summer top!


I bet the weather will warm up just in time for work. Bleh.

Summer Top

I couldn't resist the wonderful weather's signals this week that I should knit a summer top. I was flipping through some of the books Lauren gave me and found "Sexy Mama", a summer halter top in "Yarn Girls Guide to Knits for All Seasons". I couldn't find any online links to this pattern, or errata. There is one glaringly obvious pattern mistake I'll note here, in case a super-new knitter wants to try it. Where it says
"Round 6: Same as round 1", it should read "Same as round 2". Eesh.

Here is the pattern and my progress side by side. It's knit flat, but you could easily change it to knit in the round probably. I am just too lazy and feel like reading the pattern and not thinking.



I forgot how much I like to knit cables.

NOM

I have been meaning to be more dutiful about taking photos of cooking stuff, but when you're in the heat of the moment, you just forget!

Anyways, some highlights of the last week or so:

I made some "Dixie Burgers", a garden burger recipe out of a moosewood cookbook. They were not very good, and fell apart too much. I think if I made them again I would add a better binder, and less onion.

We made some spice coated tilapia that was ok. I think we over-barbequed the fish. By the way, Penzey's Northwoods Seasoning makes EVERYTHING yummy.

We have made 2 batches of oatmeal raisin cookies out of the moosewood cookbook, but I have been adding half raisin and half choco chip, SO yummy.

I can't remember anything else, but a really yummy recipe I made yesterday was from a Cooking Light magazine, Polenta with Tomato-Braised Beans. Click for the recipe. This was really good, the polenta is smooth, the tomato bean mixture is just the right amount of tartness and flavor. I forgot to take photos, but managed some leftovers photos, sorry if they gross you out. I of course added parmesan to the dish.

The bean mixture.


Creamy polenta. MM.

Also yesterday I decided I had to make a bagel recipe that Jen alerted me to. You can find the recipe here. I only made a half batch, just in case. But they came out great!

Here is the shaped dough relaxing on the gross 50's counter.


All baked and shiny. We just had them plain. This morning I had one toasted with cream-cheese and it was excellent!

I can't help but think that the method of boiling the dough first would make them so moist and give them the nice chewy/crispy outer texture. Perhaps this is a method I need to revisit and adapt to making chewy soft pretzels (which never seems to work for me).

Growing stuff

I meant to go to my knitting group today, but instead I got a weird sunburn on my lower back and a lot of yard stuff accomplished. By the time I was done digging in the dirt, my hands were too dried out to want to TOUCH yarn. They are like sandpaper!

Anyways, it started innocently at Lowe's, looking for a few brackets. Lo and behold, they had grapevine starters! And also strawberry and onion sets! Woo! They also had some raspberry ones which I am interested in, but I'd rather have a more mature bush to start out with.

Anyways, we got the grapevine, onion and strawberry sets. Then we found dwarf early peach trees and decided we'd better get one of those too.
Heres some pics.


Itty peach tree. Its slightly crooked but should straighen up on its own soon.


This twiggy thing should be a grapevine. I actually noticed the back fence of our yard has some grapevine on it already, but they may not be edible grapes. The ones I bought are concord, mmm!

I also discovered a few bunches of chives growing!



Except that they are growing in a very strange spot, in the car parking area! The people who used to live here parked an old bus back there, I think its meant to be RV parking. Anyways, I'm not sure I'll be eating these because of where they are (chemical absorption). Maybe I can uproot them.


Mike also built up my raised bed for my veggies! It took forever to double dig the dirt and get all the grass roots and rocks out, but at least I'll have good dirt all the way down! I bought just one bag of compost today thinking that would be a good base layer, but this thing is going to hold a lot more than that. The nice thing is, if two halves are too much, I can just build up one side with dirt and use that.

We also went to Target yesterday to find a rug for the craft room. I swear, I think I'm going to have to knit one. They are all either too expensive or too ugly. Oh well. I did find a nice kitchen rug though, and it matches the paint scheme perfectly. I like to have something under my feet while I'm standing there cooking. Otherwise I get sore legs and feet!


We also went to Pueblo yesterday to do some biking and had lots of fun. The weather was perfect down there. We saw a few of the walking stick cacti flowering, and a few wildflowers. Afterward we tried hiking with Slammer at the Cutler trail, but it was getting late and very chilly so we turned after a half mile or so.

XL post

Whoops, I haven't blogged in awhile about the house. I guess I keep thinking "I'll just post all the photos when we are done." But the reality is, I have no idea when we will actually be at this "done" point. There is just lots of stuff to organize, and we keep getting sidetracked with new ideas. Not to mention all the stuff that isn't that fun, like gutters, pipes, etc.

Anyways here is what is going on.

Last weekend we went to Denver to the Container Store, since we could not find stuff down here that we liked. At least we didn't try hard enough, maybe.

I originally wanted some kind of very small drawer set for the bathroom to sit on the counter, but I saw these baskets (after not being able to find anything drawer-wise) and thought they might actually work.

They are woven out of newsprint!

Its in Chinese newspaper I think.

Baskets in use.


I found this garbage can there for pretty cheap. Its for the craft room. Its made by a designer we actually don't like. Don't tell Mike.

We also found these 2 bookcases, which are collapsible and stackable too. We decided to keep them apart for now.



They are slowly helping with our problems with the craftroom. It is just cluttered in there and needs some help! The other problem is, the room only has one outlet, which doesn't help much in terms of crafting. Sewing machines, computers, etc need outlets. Oh well, the powerstrip will have to do for now.


We also found a hamper, which works much better than the big laundry basket sitting in the middle of the bathroom.


Otherwise we have been picking stuff up here and there. Mike found the smaller cd rack at work, in the trash pile. It fits all our leftover cds perfectly!

He spent all last night alphabetizing them. Thats just the way we are.

I also found a nice canvas shower curtain at overstock.com. Its really colorful, but subdued which I like.



Please ignore ugly shower ring situation right now.

Mike also started digging his bike track in the yard last weekend. He has about a quarter of the yard, and it looks like it will be fun. Basically you roll through the thing, using your arms on the bumps and berms to gain speed and whatnot. Here are a load of pics of that.

Starting out:


Mostly dug up, just needs shaping and tamping down:

I desperately need a haircut.


Corner berm and intersection.




Overall view.

I also dug up a garden patch area. I need to dig deeper, but for now I had to break up tons of stubborn grass roots. I also accidentally hit a sprinkler head.


My gardening list includes (if I can find some of these things as transplants)
-2 varieties of tomato
-beans or peas (seed)
-some kind of onion/scallion/green onion
-garlic
-hot pepper
-fennel
-zucchini
-leaf lettuce (seed)

Thats it for this year. I don't want to go overboard and mess everything up. I think I need practice more than anything. I would like to have some solid crops! Besides those things anyways, I'm growing herbs indoors in the sunny kitchen window.

As far as non veggie matter, I am going to hunt for a summer and fall raspberry bush, grapes, and possibly gooseberries. For indoors I am going to try to find a meyer lemon tree and possibly a gardenia. Wish me luck!


I also noticed these sprouting up all over the front of the house yesterday. Anyone know what they are?
My neighbors daffodils are also in full swing!

Ok and lastly on to knitting. I finished the second sleeve of my sweater and cast on for the bottom half of the body last night. Its all ribbing or stockinette stitch so it should be relatively easy and fast.


Oh yea, I forgot about this thing too. I saw this bug perched on the window glass and he was so strange looking I had to get a picture.