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Tamara and Bezzie came over on Saturday with the kids. The kids loved running up and down the stairs, having 3 floors to play on. I’m glad they all had fun. I had fun too….both Tamara and Bezzie brought their wheels and we spun for a couple of hours. When they left, I continued spinning and finished up the batts that I had started that morning.

Sunday I plied and I got approximately 420 yards of a wonderful superwash merino/seacell blend. The batts are handcarded, from Zero Markers.

Saturday, when doing my daily check on my plants, I snapped a picture of the jalepeno starting to sprout…..

Also, of the basil, growing out of control.

To remedy it growing out of control, I plucked a couple of the leaves (ok, more than a couple) and made pesto from it. I’m not participating in that eat locally thing, but everything in my meal was local. The pasta is distributed locally (NJ state anyway), and the corn on the cob from the local farmer’s market. It was my first time making pesto, and I think it came out really yummy.

…is my two front teeth, my two front teeth.

I apologize if that song gets stuck in your head…It’s been in mine since Friday, when the second front tooth came out while eating a bowl of cereal. We’ve been wiggling the heck out of it, trying to get it to come out and all it took was eating soggy cereal. Who knew.

I was still debating on whether to cast on for lace or a sweater, and a hank of Prism yarn jumped out at me from the stash and screamed lace. So I wound it up and cast on and completed the first clue of the Anniversary Mystery Shawl.

I don’t know if I like it yet, but the lace is soothing and just what I needed right now.

I have no knitting, but I will ask you guys to help me decide my next project. First, though, take a look at how my tomato plants are growing!

We went from this (taken on June 5th):

To this (taken last night, June 18th):

Holy cow! I can’t stop sniffing the plant every morning when I go check to see if they need watering. I also sniff them when I get home from work. And what’s funny is, I don’t really like tomatoes! Hubby and the kid do, and I thought having fresh tomatoes that I grew would be nice for them (especially with the salmonella tomatoes out there recently….). My other attempts at growing things are turning out well too. You can see them here. I especially love how the basil is growing….I can’t wait to use it in something!

As for the knitting…I’m torn between starting something for fall or something lacy. I have all the yarn to start this sweater that’s been in my to do list for a long time. On my to do list is also The Sampler Stole from A Gathering of Lace. I don’t have a specific yarn in mind for the stole, but I’ve got quite a number of lacy hanks that will do nicely. So friends, you choose. Leave me a comment on which you think I should start on and I’ll get cracking on the new project this weekend. (None of those links are Ravelry links, btw….)

Hope everyone had a nice quiet weekend. I had a fairly productive one. Finished up socks that shouldn’t have taken me as long as they did.

Finished up the lace curtains, had hubby drill holes to put up the curtain rods and installed them right away.

Went to KIP day with Bezzie and Chris in Basking Ridge, and had a blast. I may or may not have come home with a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy in Cocoa Kisses. I started a baby hat (Pixie hat from Simply Baby by Debbie Bliss; yarn is leftover KP Shine Sport in 3 colors) for a friend who’s having her 3rd baby, and finished it up yesterday, complete with pom pom.

We had a quiet day playing Rock Band at home for Father’s Day. When hubby took it all out of the box to set it up, the kid promptly took the box and played “aliens and spaceships”.

Somehow I thought they stopped playing with boxes when they were really little. The kid continued to play with the box the whole day. I found him reading in it in the middle of his bedroom just before bedtime last night.

I’ve got another free day this upcoming weekend. I’m thinking of sewing up some quilt blocks. If I cut them out a little at a time over the week, I can sew them up easily on the weekend. That is, unless my yarn shows up from Knit Picks for test knitting. Oh yeah…I forgot to mention I’m test knitting for Knit Picks. That’s how I’m funding Rhinebeck.

I am a city kid. Tried and true. I couldn’t grow anything green, even if it were a full time job and I got paid for it. I’ve lived in an apartment for pretty much my entire life, with no access to a backyard, windowsills for plants or any means for growing things. I killed a Chia pet for crying out loud. But, with the purchase of a house, and a yard and the desire to eat homegrown things, I’m attempting growing things. Bezzie is my inspiration. So, behold, my feeble attempts at growing things.

I bought one of those kids “grow tomatoes” kits. The kid had no interest, but they seem to be coming up nicely. I do need to know at what point I should transfer these little plants to a bigger pot, but for now, they’re cute:

Along the same lines of a kids tomato kit, came the “grow your own herbs” kit containing chives, basil, oregano and parsley. Who wouldn’t want to throw a couple basil leaves into their spaghetti sauce or make a pesto? The chives and basil are growing fairly nicely….

The oregano and parsley, not so well, but coming along. I was seriously worried about the parsley, but it just started to come up over the last couple of days.

But the biggest thrill was finding out that the apple tree has produced little knobs of “fruit”. There’s about half a dozen of them on the tree so far. I didn’t think that it was supposed to bear fruit, edible or not, til next year.

As for the knitting…..I whipped up this seed stitch scarf (ends still need weaving in) over the last week.

It’s made with 1 and a smidge balls of Artfibers Golden Chai (100% golden tussah silk) in color #40 using a size 9 needle. It’s long enough to wrap around my neck twice and still have the “tails” go down to my waist. Exactly how I like a scarf. I have one ball in a green colorway that will become the same thing. I love how the silk knits up and looks.

It’s supposed to be really nice out this weekend…..maybe some beach knitting is in order.

Hello from the NJ shore. We are all moved in and I finally have a few minutes to blog.

The move went well, as well as can be expected when your brother drops important bolts to your couch down an air vent in the floor. And when your husband loses the rental truck keys and has to call a locksmith to come out on a Sunday to make another one before returning the truck 5 hours late (luckily they didn’t charge us a late fee). The majority of the house is unpacked. It’s the little things, like, not having an organizational system in your walk in closet, or losing the screws to put together the dvd racks so the dvds can be unpacked (guess who lost the screws….), that have not yet been done. We’re slowly working on that, and it makes me happy to see one more empty box go into the garage for recycling every day.

Yesterday, I finally hauled myself over to Ikea and bought my craft room furniture. I put it all together last night, and started organizing. The yarn organization will take some time, but here is where it stands now:

The view from the doorway:

The opposite view:

My fiber stash found a new home in a chest of drawers that used to house my towels:

I chose this desk at Ikea (Mikael, corner workstation, if you really care) because it fits in the corner, and the desktop is big enough for me to have my sewing machine on it, as well as my laptop. If I need the sewing machine, I can switch places with the laptop. See it hiding there behind the laptop?

In between unpacking boxes and running errands, I have been knitting. I went to my first local knit night on Tuesday, and while they aren’t my usual crew of knitters (who can never be replaced), it was a nice group. I’m on the home stretch of that second sock, which you should see shortly, and I started a new project. It’s the Moss Grid Hand Towel from Mason-Dixon Knitting.

I am almost out of yarn, so this will have to go on the back burner until I can order another couple of skeins of Knit Picks Cotlin. There are other things I’m knitting or planning on knitting in the near future, but that will have to wait for another post….my laundry is ready to come out of the dryer.

What’s that? A sock? That *I* knit? No way.

My favorite part? The gusset decreases….

While running errands yesterday (Home Depot and Lowes, AGAIN), we took a few minutes to wander around Red Bank, where lo and behold there is a yarn store. Ok, so it was planned, on the way back from getting our new NJ library cards, but the stop before the home improvement stores. Hubby came in and told me that he and the kid were getting cheesesteaks down the block, what did I want? I told him that I was done browsing, fondling, checking out my new LYS and I would come with him. “You’re not buying anything? Are you sure?” Well, if you insist….this came home with me.

1 lovely hank of Schaefer Anne. Yum.

The blog is going to be quiet for a little bit. Moving day is in 6 days, and as of right now, we don’t have internet hooked up at the house, nor is it scheduled. But when we are back up and running, I will be a NJ resident and hopefully have lots to tell you. I’m off for the week after the moving date, and I’m planning on hitting some of the NJ yarn stores while the kid is in school and in between unpacking. Maybe I’ll even finish that other sock!

My family did the trek to NJ to the house this weekend. We had a small celebration for my brother’s birthday. My mom presented me with a big rubbermaid tub. Looks like your ordinary rubbermaid tub, yes?

Inside? A treasure trove of fabric scraps.

There’s a good deal of fat quarters, pieces left over from outfits she’s made (really, I don’t know WHAT she was thinking putting some of those fabrics together; I don’t care if it was the 80’s or not). But the first thing on top of the treasure trove of fabric scraps was this:

I went thru a phase in high school where I loved cows. Cow print, stuffed animals, contact paper to line my shelves…it was everywhere. I was obsessed. Mom said she had been making a quilt for me, and I don’t know if she gave up because it was so tedious or because I grew out of the phase. Whatever the case, it’s not finished, and I plan on finishing it. I’m not going to add more to it, just to the backing, binding and quilting. It’s 60″x60″ right now.

As for my own crafting? Firestarter sock #1 is on the gussets (toe up). The cables are not showing too well in the dark yarn, but I am really liking the pattern, so I’m forging on. I’ll probably do the pattern again in something lighter so that the cables really pop.

It took a lot longer than normal to do these socks.

Stats
Pattern: Slippery, Knitty Winter ‘07
Yarn: Online Supersocke 100, 2/3 of a ball
Needles: KP US1 Harmony DPNs
Mods: None
Start/Finish: March 18 - May 5, 2008

I’ve been trying to lengthen the amount of time I spend on a project because all my yarn has been packed and moved to the house already. I do have access to it, but it’s not in any sort of order all smooshed in a bunch of bags and boxes. When I was at the house this weekend, I grabbed a skein of yarn and wound it up to start a new sock, Firestarter. The yarn is Wollmeise Sockewolle in Zenzi. Mmmmmm.

Thank you for all the kind words on my great grandmother’s quilt. It’s been put away since I received it, and I look forward to finding the perfect spot for it in my house.

My Monday “make you laugh”…..As I was going thru things last night to pack, I came across a box of pictures. Check out yours truly at the age of 13 with lovely 1988 big hair….

Alas, the crafting has been far and few between for me. I did spin a little bit on the porch last weekend, but not enough of anything worth showing. My knitting has been a secret project, and won’t be shown til the person getting it has received it. BUT, I do have crafting worthwhile of showing. It isn’t mine though.

When I got married, I didn’t do the whole big wedding thing, as most of you may know. I hit a Vegas chapel on vacation and came back married. So we didn’t have showers or get gifts. I did however, get one gift, handed down to me. My great grandmother made this quilt for my grandmother for her wedding.

I love the pink of the fabric, the perfectness of the flowers:

I am in awe of the perfect hand stitching:

I am one of the lucky people that got to know my great grandmother. She passed away about 5 years ago, and I inherited her first thimble, given to her by HER grandfather….a solid gold thimble. The crafting runs in my genes.