AGAIN???

I have been chugging away at joining the hairpin lace. It is tedious. Not quite as bad as seaming up knitting, but still.....

In other news, I went out to admire my basil, as it is finally getting big enough to admire and saw this:

I didn't see the culprit, but I am willing to be it is a repeat of last year's earwig buffet. This summer has been every bit as rainy and damp as last year's and htat is exactly what mucnched up my plants last year. Bastards.

I potted up some new seeds inside today as a failsafe and am going to try to save the outdoor plant using an organic remedy that a lady on Ravelry said worked for her-take a cheap plastic container like the kind you get sour cream in, poke a few holes in the lid and then put in a mix of half soy sauce and half vegetable oil. Apparently the earwigs like that better and climb in andcan't climb out. Now, to find a plastic tub....

ciao

Other "Creative" Endeavours

Occasionally I branch out of the usual knitting and sewing creative acts. This is what I did last weekend:

Yup, I gardened. Pulled a ton of grass out of this flowerbed. It was turning to turf! Gave myself sore muscles weeding that all out. Then I planted my standby-marigolds. This bed faces south, gets full sun until about 7pm and is dirt I have added over the years over top of sand. Which means very fast drainage. I need a plant that can survive those conditions and my black thumb. Or perhaps I should say lazy thumb. Every year I tell myself that I will weed regularly etc. That lasts about a month. . Then I pretty much ignore the flowers till the fall when it's time to clean up the flowerbed. I do occasional half-hearted weeding.

That means I need tough plants that can stand the conditions and neglect. Hence, marigolds. which I also like, so it's all good.

What have you planted?

Springlike

Since my knitting was not attracting me, I decided to repot a couple of houseplants. They were decidedly sad looking. When I checked them out, the prayer plants (also called marantas, I believe) had sent up new shoots! So I figured spring must be near and repotted the shoots and chopped off the ugly leaves. I had another plant that I have no idea what it is (the middle one in the pic below)that was growing roots out the bottom of it's pot, so it got a new home too.

The plant update isn't much of a post, so how about a vignette starring Raven?

ciao

In Other News...

Lately around here it's been all-sock, all-the-time. I did take a break or two though. mostly to clear my head when I got confused. I tend to overthink things and when I take a break it sorts itself out in my head. Anyhoo....

My tomato plants were looking pretty wild.

So I trimmed 'em down a bit.

And I found:
Baby tomatoes! Always exciting to find the first ones.

Slogging along

I am slogging along on the black lacy shrug. Seems like it never ends. I knit, knit and knit, count stitches..yup still too many, must continue to decrease. Sigh. Although at least I am AT the decreases!

On to something I was quite excited to see.....plants! Up until a couple of weeks ago, we were still getting the odd frost warning. So I didn't want to plant my herbs outside until all chances of frost were gone. So last Monday, I finally did the deed and stuck some seeds in pots. This morning I went out to water 'em and Lo! Behold!

Basil!
Thyme!

Alas, no oregano yet......Ah well, 2 for 3 ain't bad.

I'm off to slog, er, knit some more.

Ciao