This and That (Gardening and Knitting)

I have been a “really bad rose momma,” as I told my sister lately. I have about 90 roses in the ground, and another 15 (I hope!) in pots. Knitting has just about consumed me, and I haven’t pruned, fertilized, or watered (well, I DO water the ones in the pots) for two years. You can get away with that here (coast of southern Oregon) for just so long.

This is “Princess Louise”, a sempervirens from “Jacques” France, 1829. It is a once bloomer, right about NOW. The plant itself is about 10 years old, and was actively cultivated for 5 of those years. It is on a fence on the property, bordered by very tall firs trees, limiting it’s sun after about 2 PM. I no longer do anything for it, it covers about 30 feet of the fence and is about 5 feet high. My mother’s name was Louise, my sister and thought this would be a suitable memorial. Apparently so.

And I am doing just fine with the blanket. Funny how doing a lot of knitting frees one to “just do it”. I wasn’t pleased with the resultant difference in width and length, with the inner doily as a starter pattern, it ended up just 12 sts difference.

I just spent some time elongating two sides of the blanket in a lovely lace pattern from Barbara Walker “Madeira Lace” from the first treasury, but added an additional K1 in the pattern . Worked swell.

And the vegetable garden, which I started in an area that had been a garden two years ago, is doing just fine. I simply could not get behind rototilling, so I have done this “modified” lasagne method. I dug holes just big enough for the plants and then mulched like crazy . I did do some real weed pulling for planting carrots, radishes and the like, but it was a small enough area I could handle it. (And actually DID it!). For a dog guard, I found this cool “insulation netting” at the hardware store, if they WANTED to run thru it and break it, they could, but it is a real visual border.

Of course ALL the zucchini plants I started came up, and I could not kill any of them. Watch out for me on your doorstep at night!

Little knitting

Found this on Ravelry this morning. Good fast project, I can use leftover alpaca from previous cardigans, shawls and scarves I have knit. Started it right off:



Smarty pants that I am, I decided to use a modified applied I cord method on the the edge stitches, but am knitting them on as I go, with a width of 3 stitches on each side. I forgot that this really ends up being essentially all slipstitched every other row, so now the middle section with the argyle features is really "poofing" up. I will have to decide what to do, it is sorta interesting.
The other day I saw another item on Ravelry , and was inspired. So - I spent some time with my Walker books, found a suitable lace edging altered it a bit and graphed it:


I used the "Double Edging" on page 375 of her second book, got rid of the middle and smaller lace section and decreased repetions to 24 from 30 to make the actual design a comfortable "scarf" size. I also added my favoirte "YO, K2tog" loopy edge to each right side.

I had to change some of the K2togs to SSK to make the scarf lie flatter and have more of an equal pattern on both sides. And, as indicated by the two pink lines in the middle of the pattern, I decided to have a gradation of triangle sizes (1 small, 3 middle sized), though to the main part will be all large size. Easy pattern to get in the swing of. The yarn is heavenly, "Mountain Goat" by Mountain Colors out of Corvallis MT. It is a 100 gm. skein of "Winter Sky" in a worsted wt. I am using size 8 needles and plan to use the whole thing!

















The color is absolutely fabulous, and the slight sheen from the mohair seems to deepen the depth of the colors.

Here is a pair of pre-felting "Felted Clogs", lying atop the wonderful suede I bought on eBay for soles. It is wonderful heavy suede, all one needs is the patience to punch the holes. I have made many many pairs of these clogs, and the suede bottoms really do make them more functional. These are you the Mensa scholarship auction in May.
But I am happiest that I am gradually cutting down my spinning stash. And using the old Ashford with the bulky head. I really tried to use my Schacht Matchless to spin bulky yarn, but the Ashford is simply easier, with much less frustration. For all the bobbins/whorls I own for the Matchless, it really seems (for me) to have a limited range of yarns spun to my satisfaction.

I am still alive, still knitting!

Waiting for a new faster Internet connection to be installed, we will be geting "Wild Blue" satellite soon, should be about 10 times faster. With this dial-up, we are getting left in the dust and composing for the blog is getting slower.
But I have been busy:

The two shawls went to my two
Aunts in South Dakota. The giant slippers still need to be felted, as does the hat for my uncle Rudy that ended up WAY too big! The skeins of yarn are dyes with mushrooms, cedar bark, and alder berries.

And I can't move the pictures around to save my soul for some reason!

Diva is doing better all the time, but still gets limpy when we push her too hard.

Ravelry is keeping me way too busy as well, what a cool cool site!

OOh OOh But there is still more!

I am currently participating in MS3. I love it and am totally inspired by it. I have purchased Melanie's Hanami and plan to spin my own yarn. I have about 15 pounds of merino in the grease that was brought home for me from Australia by Marguerite, a fellow nurse, about 15 years ago. She was a particularly ballsy, if uninformed, person and went directly to the exporter at the wharf. She told him what she wanted and he apparently was so blown away that he let her select whatever. She didn't have a clue about fleeces, but brought me home lovely stuff. Contrary to what you might read, it cleans up really nicely even now, no "hardening" of the grease. So - I washed the locks individually today and they have turned out quite nicely. I plan to blend this with cashmere raw fleece I bought years ago to spin, inspired by a garter stitch crayon colored scarf at a Maiden Lane boutique in San Francisco. (Well, THAT never happened.) And I plan to include some cultivated silk top and one ounce of a merino-silk-angora roving my sister bought for me from Woodland Woolworks years ago (what was I supposed to do with that?)
I have spun a sample, space dyed it and knit it up. A little too pink for me - I want more white spaces! This is supposed to commemorate cherry blossoms and I plan to give it to my dear cousin who works at the FAA in Washington!
And now about my carder - it is a Clemes and Clemes. Well worn, I have used it for everything from lincoln and adult mohair to the aforementioned merino, as well as for silk and angora. With careful determination, you can card ANYTHING!
Tomorrow about fine tuning my wheel!