Woah. It’s been a week since I put anything out here. I guess this week hasn’t been very interesting.
No, that’s not completely accurate. I’ve been too busy to pull out the computer and type something, and it’s just too much of a pain to type anything of any length on the tablet. Dinners this week have been either really boring or intended for recipe posts that have yet to be written. And I finished no knitting, though I did get a bunch done on a shawl for work and some significant progress designing a shawl from scratch.
This week, I finally got my rear in gear to start some seeds for the garden! I’m only a couple of weeks “late” on some of the flowers that should have been started 10-12 weeks before planned planting out. (I’m in zone 6a; average last frost is early- to mid-May; typical planting date is last weekend or so of May.)
Monday I pulled out a starting tray, watered the peat pucks, and grabbed my big ol’ box of seed packets. I started Fountain Lobelia, Shasta Daisy, Gloriosa Daisy, mini sweet peppers, mixed bell peppers, Jalapeños, Impala (cayenne) peppers, Habaneros, Black Beauty eggplants, and a few Black Magic Kale. Yes, I know I could plant kale en situ right now, but I still have to build the beds and fill them, and I’m not sure if I want to put the kale in one of the existing beds in the front of the house. When I checked the moisture on the pucks today, the kale had already germinated!
There have been flurries in the air intermittently all day today. And it’s cold enough that I don’t want to go outside to plant some of the perennials and summer bulbs that could go in now. Maybe Monday/Tuesday, if the air temp is better and it’s not so soggy out.
Knitting-wise, I’m working on the Lilla shawl from Berroco, intended as a class in June on knit-on edgings. For class, we’ll work edging onto a swatch-sized piece because I know there’s no way that people would come to class with a huge piece of knit done already. It’s a simple-enough piece, though I’m still working on the body so I can’t speak about how the border will actually work up yet. We don’t carry the recommended yarn at work, so I’m using a lovely apple green shade of Berroco Ultra Alpaca.
The original design is going fairly well. Last week at work we took delivery of some gorgeous hand-dyed linen blend yarn from Interlacements. It’s not expensive, on a yard by yard basis. But the hanks are quite large. I wanted to create something original that would use a single hank but be compelling enough to make people crave the yarn. The tricky part is designing it to be interesting to look at and to knit without being so fussy or difficult-looking that our customers won’t even be willing to attempt it. That’s a fine line to walk.
The eyelet work I’m using (more solid fabric than holes, so I don’t consider it lace) is basic enough, primarily diagonal lines. But I’m changing directions and adding secondary rows of eyelets, so there’s a sense of motion and curve. The pattern evolves, and will have beads added in the last section to give the outer edge some weight.
Enough of my brain dump. I’m off to edit a couple of pictures and put together a recipe post.
InTheMitten 