Green weekend

"Some weekends are grey, some weekends are mean, this one had plants, and so was green."  

Coffeeboy and I spent this past weekend getting the garden, in various permutations, going. When we moved here, we didn't think we'd garden much. After all, we don't own the land outside our condo, but we figured we could put in a few plants, just a few. Then the college where Coffeeboy works started a community garden and we got a 4x20 plot of land to use. Now it looks like we'll be gardening more food than ever!

First, of course, was the very exciting Asheville Herb Festival. We'd had a poster on our fridge about this for the past month, and knew we wanted to go there to stock up on our favorite flavorings. I was hoping to score some soap and maybe some interesting lavendar products, but we ended up with only an hour at the festival, barely enough time to scope out the growing (as opposed to turned-into-products) herbs we wanted.

As you can see, we had quite a loot! In addition to chives and lemon thyme which we picked up at a small local plant sale, at the herb festival we found, as you can see above, plenty more to flavor our lives with. 

The festival itself was tons of fun, with dozens of herb vendors, colorful signs, and interesting varieties.  After the festival, Coffeboy and I headed to Asheville where we had a beer at Jack of the Wood Pub followed by a lovely dinner at the all-vegetarian/vegan restaurant The Laughing Seed.  Of course, it wouldn't be a spring night in Asheville without a drumming session going on in Pritchard Circle, so we stopped to watch young hippies and old hippies groovin' together to what's always a really amazing impromptu performance, and of course, to watch the tourists watching the action, too. I didn't have my camera then, so I couldn't take pictures (oh well!). 

Saturday afternoon we planted the herbs in their containers: 

In order from the back, the plants are: 

Back row: chocolate mint, placeholder plant, spearmint

Middle row: chamomile, a petunia, lemon balm

Front row: thyme, sage, oregano, lemon thyme

Round container on left: lavendar

Middle round container: cilantro, parsley

Round container on right: regular basil, cinnamon/Thai basil, chives

We'd decided to plant the herbs in containers so as to have more room in the ground for vegetables - and because I liked the idea of framing our little back patio area with herbs. This, to me, seemed like just the thing to do with such a little patio: make it smell really, really, great, and be useful, too!

Yesterday, we planted our veggie garden. We put in several varieties of tomatoes, saving two for the community garden and planting five by our house, to the right of the air conditioning unit. To the left, we planted four peppers, green and purple bell, and left of that, four Japanese eggplants. As you can see, there's still a lot of room to grow where the black anti-weed cover is. We're going to put in beets, spinach, and parsnips there, and also some of those over at the college garden.

(You can see the plants better in the bigger images at Flickr!)

Finally, just because they're cute, pictures of the cats: Juniper (the Sock-Lord, apparently, who loves handknit socks as well as her daddy's smelly, just-gardened-in socks as well) and Magellan (curled up on my desk chair):

In the next post, I promise I'll have some fibery goodness - a finished object, and a new sweater-in-progress made of the to-die-for Malabrigo! 

Waiting patiently for fall

I've been waiting for a day like this. Cool breeze, sunny, blue sky, a few leaves dropping and dancing down from the trees. Fall is really here! This week, we baked acorn squash and stuffed it with a rice/almond/parmesan cheese mixture, and we also baked a pumpkin and chocolate chip cake. They were supposed to be bars, but it came out more like cake - very tasty!

This week I finished one knit, came close to finishing another, and started one more. I couldn't help but take pictures on what turns out to be our new, giant mum, just now showing its color. Here's a new sock, the Mock Cable Wave sock from Favorite Socks. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in the Tuscany colorway - and yes, it's another holiday knit.



The Garter Rib socks have just one portion of a toe to go; I expect I'll finish those later tonight.



And finally, the Irish Hiking Scarf, done minus the blocking and weaving in of ends:



Pattern: Irish Hiking Scarf
Yarn: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran, color #416, 2 balls
Needles: Size 8 (ie, treetrunks!)
Reflections: This was a destash project. If it weren't, I probably wouldn't have chosen such a scratchy yarn! I'm hoping it'll soften up once I block it, closer to the actual holiday season. For now, I have enough yarn left to make a hat-brim, with a coordinating yarn for the body of a hat. One holiday present done, several to go! Ho ho ho!

(By the way, I think I'm in love with that giant, beautiful plant.)

While patience has brought me fall and finished objects, it hasn't brought yarn. All week, I've been assiduously checking The Loopy Ewe, waiting for what they call a "sneak-up."* While a sneak-up came, it didn't bring with it the yarn I've been coveting! So I checked the website even more obsessively. Maybe there'd be another sneak-up? No. Sheri's blog now says that they waited-for yarn will be up the week after next! Since I don't even know whether or not they'll have the desired colorway this time around, I feel a bit silly doing all this waiting. I mean really, just how obsessed can one really get about yarn? ... I'm not actually sure I want that question answered about myself. Because then I'd be even more scared than I already am about this particular obsession!

Tomorrow, Coffeeboy and I are going hiking way up on the Parkway, to see if the leaves a couple thousand feet farther up are turning more than the leaves at 2,200 feet. Either way, I'm sure I'll have pretty pictures to show you for next week!

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*This isn't meant as a criticism of The Loopy Ewe. I've used them before and have been very pleased with their services. I realize (mostly) that yarn store owners have lives outside their stores... but that hasn't stopped me from being obsessed!

Getting a garden going

Classes are over for the year! While I'm pleased to have more time for my own work, I was a bit sad that it was my last class that I'd be TAing at my school. When next I teach a class, it's likely it'll be my own class, not one I'm TA-ing for, which is a scary thought indeed.

This weekend, rather than go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival like, oh, some huge, gigantic number of knitters out there, I stayed home and worked on my paper before and after working in the garden for a bit of hands-on, home-grown sun-and-garden therapy. "We're getting back in touch with the sources of production from which we've been alienated," I believe Coffeeboy said, sounding uncharacteristically Marxist. I was merely waving the hoe around, deciding whether or not to quote Edwin Markham's poem "The Man With the Hoe."

The lilac bush is blooming (and it smells wonderful, but I can't put that online), and it's a sunny day, so I thought I'd show you a picture of the lilac shawl I started a while ago. Don't they go well together?



Seriously, though, I'm hoping I'll have enoug yarn to make it long enough. I'm almost at the end of ball one out of two, and it's barely 2 feet long! I'm assuming some good old blocking will help once it's all knit up.

We've had a lovely weekend here in NJ, so Coffeeboy and I planted our garden. Yes, we decided to go ahead and do it even though we're moving halfway through the summer. It'll be hard to pick up and leave our plants behind, though, especially when we're not sure what the next person who lives here will do. Will they garden? Or will they just let everything rot and turn into a nasty mess? Will they enjoy the bulbs that, unless we bring them with us, will be sleeping through the summer? We decided, though, that we'll get some edible enjoyment out of the plants, and that we should go ahead and plant anyways.

Those milk cartons (the things that look like bulky white plants) are keeping our pepper plants warm while the weather is in its early spring state. It's cool at night, and peppers don't really like that. If only the milk cartons didn't blow all over the yard during the dark hours, though! It kind of defeats the purpose!


Here we have an early tomato plant on the left, and on the right, some beans and peas. Yum!

We've also planted eggplant and summer and zucchini squash, plus some canning and salad cucumbers. In front of the beans we planted some old scallion seeds and some lettuce seeds, but those haven't shown their little green heads yet, and they might not - we kind of decided not to add nice compost to the soil, which means the soil there is, um, rather hard indeed, and probably difficult for a small green thing to press through.

If you have a garden, what are you planting this year?

Why hello there!

Hi everyone... It's been a long time, but I'm still here! I can't really believe it's been so long. I've been, let's see, trying to keep my head above water for my class, work on my lit review, figure out a dissertation, thinking about moving. The usual. Somewhere in there I stopped feeling like blogging. I think it's because I don't really know what to say about, say, the family gathering in Florida that followed immediately on the one to Colorado. Or about my weekends. Usually they're not all that exciting: maybe I'll get together with some friends, usually Coffeeboy and I spend a night in watching something on the TV. Often I'll be doing schoolwork during the day. It doesn't exactly make for exciting Monday-morning reports about my weekend, but maybe people enjoy those posts? Or they're a necessary part of the blogging ritual?

Needless to say, though, I've been knitting, and I have a finished shawl!

Pattern: Kiri
Yarn: K-P Shadow in "Jewel"
Needles: Size 5
Time: March 18-April 22 (not at all bad!)
Size: 25x51 before blocking; 30x60 after blocking.

I got to wear Kiri to my subfield's party this afternoon, and it received many compliments. I finished it last night and blocked it overnight, in time to wear today. Thankfully the weather's been just right for a new shawl! I also got to use the new shawl clasp Coffeeboy gave me a while ago; it works very well to hold the shawl on. This was a very fast knit, with an easily memorizable pattern. Highly recommended!

It's finally spring, and our garden is in full daffodil form. We've also started thinking about spring vegetables!

Despite the nice weather, though, I'm spending my days in the library or in other places conducive to studying, trying to figure out what I'm going to write my dissertation on. I thought I had some ideas, but right now they're, shall we say, on hold. I just have to assume that one day, as I keep working though stuff, things will fall into place.