Last year I was busy helping to plan the wool festival and I didn't have time for gardening. I promised myself that this year I would make up for lost time. I was very proud to harvest my first asparagus this year. It was a small and very ceremonial harvest. We cut about 25 spears, but that just made it all the more exciting. I think eating it raw, in the field...during a light spring rain is one of the best ways to eat asparagus.
The garden hasn't been the only thing demanding my attention. Our boys are discovering more extreme and exotic ways of destroying our home. It feels liked they've got some top secret silent toy spraying gun. I turn my back and the living room is instantly coated in toys. I'm told that a some point I can expect them to pick up after themselves. I think those people are delusional. I have never met a tidy boy.
We had a lovely birthday party for our youngest. His birthday falls close to Easter and so we celebrated with an egg hunt. We did something similar last year and I think this may become an annual event. I made the cake with my mother. We were very proud of our efforts. The "rocks" are candy and the grass is dyed coconut. The little boys were suitably impressed. You can tell when children are in awe. They didn't even reach to stick their fingers in the frosting.
Right now, we're in the middle of a chicken pox epidemic. One of my boys is spotty and the other one has a high fever. In between looking longingly out the window at my garden and trying to coax the baby into eating, I've finally had a chance to think about knitting.
I'll admit that summer is never really a season that inspires me to pick up the needles. Gardening usually takes up what little time I have. When we go on vacation I usually pack a lot of projects and get very little knitting done. More often than not, I end up coming home with more yarn than I left with. Exotic yarn stores have a certain charm.
So, what brought knitting back into my consciousness? It was a fortuitous combination of events. The boys have been watching lots of movies. Every time I open the cabinet to turn on the DVD player I see all of my UFOs on the shelf below. Several of the movies that they like feature knitting; "Tangled", " Winnie the Pooh" and "Wallace and Gromit". On a side note, Gromit is probably my favorite TV knitter. He knits in bed. He knits over breakfast and he knits when he's stressed.
The event that got my knitterly attention happened while I was changing out the winter clothing for the summer clothing. I discovered that a few of my summer clothes had gone missing. My husband admitted that my favorite linen cardigan may have been given to charity sometime last fall. Ooops. He kindly suggested that I go and buy myself a whole new summer wardrobe. I'm not sure how much of this was kindness and how much of it was self preservation, but it was a smart move on his part. He found himself in the perfect storm of sick children, a hormonal wife, sleep deprivation and a missing cardigan and he weathered that storm with confidence and grace.
As I was perusing my favorite retail websites, I discovered that I am incapable of buying myself knitted cardigans. I'll happily accept them as gifts, and if I find a beautiful one on super sale I'll give in, but I'm very reluctant to buy something I could (in theory) make for myself.
I really need a summer cardigan. The evenings are cool here and we're planning at least one trip the the ocean this year. So, it's decided, I HAVE to finish up at least one or two summer cardigans. Here's the short list of possible candidates.
"Watershed" by Amy Swenson
"Lilas Cardigan" by Hilary Smith Callis
"Soay" by Gudrun Johnston
To finish up this mish-mash of a blog post I'm going to do a quick photo log of FOs. These are all projects that deserved blog posts, but it's been such a long time since I finished them that I don't think I could squeeze a real post out of any one of them.
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| A crochet cowl for Pauline. |
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| Little thrummed mittens for the baby |
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| A snake scarf |
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| Stranded mitten kit "Blue Hearts" |
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