Friday Fun

I love Fridays. It means a weekend of being with friends, grilling out, and plenty of knitting and spinning time.

When I work up this morning, fog had rolled in and it was think. It did remind me of those times that you see the thick fog in horror movies, so of course I had to take a picture.
It did make driving a bit interesting to get to work this morning, but I did get to a point where it did clear out and sun started shining.

I spent a lot of time today working on the fan and Feather Comfort Shawl and definitely making progress, but since it doesn't seem much farther than yesterday, I think that I'll wait for more pictures of it until it's done or blocked. It will look much better at that point.

But to appease the need to see knitting pictures, I've been working on some pieces for Chris of Briar Rose Fibers. The first piece is the Boxleaf Triangle by Anne Hanson of Knitspot. Anne's patterns are my absolute favorite lace patterns ever!! If you have not looked at her patterns yet, I can't recommend them enough. The Boxleaf Triange is being knit up with Briar Rose Fiber Sea Pearl a lovely merino/tencel blend. Lovely to knit with.
The picture does not do the colors justice for how beautiful they are. The up close shot is a bit better.

The other piece that I'm working on for Chris is the Bricker Socks also by Anne Hanson.
It's a wonderfully quick knit. The yarn is Briar Rose Fiber Grandama's Blessing. It's 100% superwash merino in sportweight. Super soft.

There's a mini arboretum in the town where I work and the Catalpa tree was in bloom. I have never seen so many blooms on a Catalpa before. They look like mini orchids in clusters.
This is specifically the Catalpa speciosa. It's also known as the cigar tree.

But one of my most favorite imagine is the London Planetree growing over a small "lake" near where I live. It's beautiful and if you live near me, it's very recognizable.


Enjoy your Friday!

What A Difference A Rain Makes

It's really amazing what a good rain will do for the garden, but the cooler weather...come it's mid-June and we're only in the 70's in Illinois?! But still, the rain is good and bad to be honest. Too much and you end with sad waterlogged plants. I decided that this year I was going to plant a brandywine tomato....planted a dwarf variety last year and though it was good, it didn't produce really well. I think it was partly due to the weather. This year though, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

This first picture was taken on June 6th...

Now today is June 11th...and the tomato is already up over the top of the cage...

Yum! Fresh tomatoes...can't wait.

Okay...so this is my first time that I'm taking this whole blogging thing seriously. I've always thought about doing it in the past, but never was really motivated to due so. Trying to work on a 17" monster laptop with no desk and gets hot...well makes things really difficult. I really wanted to write more (I have this crazy idea about writing a gardening book), so I decided to try and encourage myself to do so. Well, I decided to purchase myself a cute little netbook specifically for that purpose. Oh, and you know how at the top it says Garden Knitter? Well you have the first half and the second half is in the same picture as the netbook.

It's so cute! Only 2.6 pounds and the battery is supposed to last 7 to 8 hours. I'll have to test that out and see.

The knitting in the picture is with my own handspun. It's blue face leicester from the the AllSpunUp spin along on Ravelry. AllSpunUp is my favorite indy dyer for spinning fiber. Definitely check out her shop. Oh and if you're wondering what Ravelry is...if your a spinner, knitter, crocheter...you need to check this out. It's an awesome site.

The pattern is the Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl and it's a free pattern. The link will take you to the Ravelry pattern page, so you need to be a member of Rav to see that link, but the pattern itself is available free online.

One of the other reasons that I wanted to start blogging was so that I would actually take pictures. I always forget my camera or I'm too busy knitting, spinning, etc. and never seem to have the time. So...I went on a picture taking spree before I started this post. All of the spinning fiber used to spin up the yarn was again from AllSpunUp.

First up we have a yummy yummy 60/40 merino/bamboo blend. It's lace weight, but don't have the yardage calculated (hey, maybe this blogging this will get me to start actually figuring out my yardage, crazy huh...)
Next we have a merino/silk blend...also very yummy.

Almost done...soft and squisy pure merino.


And last up is the current AllSpunUp Spin Along (that's on Rav in the AllSpunUp group) superwash merino. This drafts so smoothly it's unbelievable! Originally I was planning on a three ply and socks, but I typically let the fiber tell me what it wants to be, and it told me laceweight. Okay, so I'm on a lace weight kick, it makes the fiber last longer.
The spindle is from Jesh on Etsy.

Alright...one more thing before I call it a day. Don't want to overload my readers with too much. I also need to save stuff for the next post.
Whenever I read blogs I'm always kind of curious to see who is on the otherside of the computer. So, I decided that it was only fair to post a picture of myself as well. Can I tell you what a pain it is to try and take self potraits? I also don't photograph well, but in black and white it's not so bad.

Well...that's all for now, until the next time.