Pages and Needles

 

I have started on a test knit for a sweet little shrug this week in size 24 months that Lisa designed.  I am using such soft yarn, Plymouth Yarns Bamtastic which is 60% bamboo/40% nylon.  It is knitting up really pretty!  I still need to weave in ends for the In Threes and decide whether I am satisfied with the little embroidery or not.  

I saw Where'd You Go, Bernadette on a few yarn along posts the past couple months and decided to put it on hold at the library.  Well, it came in last week and I've been really enjoying it.  I didn't even realize it was a book that poked fun at Seattle until I started reading it, and the stereotypes make me laugh.  Some of them are overblown but most of them are just slight exaggerations of things that actually occur, of people that actually exist, of priorities that people actually hold.  The nice thing is that I really care about the characters who are quirky, interesting, and lovable. I also just finished A Horse and His Boy tonight and will start in on The Magician's Nephew next. 

The weather is supposed to skyrocket to the upper 80's tomorrow, so the next few days will hold a lot of water play.  We have little arugula sprouts growing quickly, and a lot of spinach shoots popping up everywhere in neat little rows.  Every day I see another pea shoot appear and tonight I put our six tomato starts in the ground so they could get full advantage of the next few days of heat.  Radishes, lettuces, and carrots are making an appearance as well!  No sign of onions or beans yet but tomorrow I will look again, I expect to see the beans soon, and the pepper starts will be in the ground tomorrow if I have time...   Our raspberries are heavy with flowers so in the next week or two we'll be getting delicious little berries to enjoy, I think!  I can't wait to have fresh raspberries. 

Working on the garden is a really peaceful and happy mental place for me - I can go out there in short spurts through the day and do a little work and then go back to indoor chores.  The kids spend so much time outside now that the weather is nice that I can work in either place and hear and see them well.  Last year at this time I was on bed rest following Rosie's birth because of high blood pressure and couldn't do anything in the garden until probably midsummer. Jesse ended up deciding to plant a bunch of stuff anyway but the amount of energy I had overall was so low with a newborn and my own health concerns that it wasn't a place of retreat like it is for me now. 

I've been participating in the Yarn Along linkup for a year now - Here are my first two entries from this time last year!  It was one of the things each week I looked forward to last year while laying on the couch for 6 weeks waiting for my blood pressure to even out.