Category: gardening

grooo-oow

The garden is growing really well these days! I’m sure it could be hotter, weather-wise, for the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant – but I love this cooler weather.

Garden overview, June 12:

The cucumber is climbing! We got exactly 1 cucumber last year, but I have high hopes for this one.

The sweet cherry peppers are flowering…

..and little ones are appearing!

The zucchini also failed rather spectacularly last year, but this year we have 130L tubs to grow in! Pretty flower with a tiny zucchini behind it.

We have two types of Asian eggplant growing – white and magenta. I also sowed some radishes in there to make the most of the space.

The peas are giant, and just started flowering.

A new variety of tomato for me this year – Riesenstraube. Looking good, nice and bushy.

The bigger tomatoes are flowering too!

The indoor herbs are doing well too, though the lettuce was over-seeded and got all leggy. This morning I harvested what there was, took out the stems, and re-seeded more thinly for a new crop.

In crafting news, I finally finished this guy – and one row of my Superhero alphabet.

And I started a new summery shrug, out of madelinetosh pashmina. I had to take the weekend off to rest my arm, but I’m hoping to get lots done this week.

June 16, 2014
This and That in the Sunshine

I haven’t much knitting to show you – I have so much secret deadline stuff on my plate! I did finish my new shawl design out of 1 skein of Wollmeise Twin, and I love it. The pattern will be out as part of a small collection, hopefully next month.

I like to keep my knitting to the work day if I can, and do other things at night like sewing – but lately playing Minecraft has been taking over the evenings! That game is a total time suck, and we’re only playing on the PS3 where the world is limited. So I haven’t been hand quilting much, but seeing the rolled up quilt on the back of the couch makes me happy anyway. It looks like knitting!

We spent a good amount of time this weekend on the porch, tidying, mixing soil and compost, and planting out some of my giant tomato “seedlings”. Dale’s been playing with my camera, and he took some good shots. It’s really nice having the documentation of how things progress out there.

Shelling peas – we won’t get a ton of them, but I like the way they look. Plus nothing beats eating fresh peas right out of the garden.

Basil in with a tomato – the variety is Italian Large Leaf. I also have some Purple Opal basil that hasn’t come up yet.

I need some better plant labels.

Tomatoes, left to right: Ivory Pear, Matt’s Wild Cherry, Eva Purple Ball, Black Cherry. The two on the right are these ones, they must be relieved to be out of those yogurt containers! I have four more tomato plants in the process of hardening off. We’re definitely going to need a few more bins to plant in, a few more tomato cages, and more plastic netting to keep the squirrels out.

May 27, 2014
Oh, Brother

Meet my new sewing machine!

It’s a really inexpensive Brother XL2800. I agonized over what machine to get, but in the end I just went with something easy that’ll get the job done. I haven’t sewn much with it yet, but so far it seems just fine – smooth, tension takes adjustments well, good selection of stitches (that I’ll probably never use!). I cut and sewed up another Wiksten tank muslin, which went just fine. Ah, the speed and ease of a machine!

It’s a bit too tight across the bust, unfortunately, even without a bra and before the neck and armhole bindings. So, I won’t be finishing this one, but at least I know that I need to cut a larger size or use a different fabric. I rarely buy or wear woven fabric tops anyway, so I think next I’ll try one in a jersey. Just need to pick up some ballpoint needles first!

I don’t have a lot of time to spend tinkering with sewing right now anyway, because I have waaaaay too many knitting projects to work on, and yarn on the way for more! Some have external deadlines, but mostly I’ve just got a bad case of startitis.

Socks that Rock in Neptune.

A big mess on my desk!

Garden update – the front window is FULL of plants (check out the tomatoes on the right, they got huge so fast). I want to believe the chance of frost is past now, but who knows with this winter. I’ll wait till our safe planting date of May 24 before I even think about moving stuff outside. I’m in the process of hardening off most of the tomato plants now, giving them some outdoor sun and wind time so they can get used to it.

The peas are finally up, after being planted outside over 2 weeks ago. They’re so cute!

May 14, 2014