Sweaty Saturday

We've been in a serious drought here in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains this spring. This is not good for my lawn and gardens. We've also had remarkably low humidity--similar to that of Utah where I once lived. Low humidity has it's advantages because you don't *feel* the heat as much. But the rains finally came yesterday, and they brought the sauna with them. I just came back in the house for some air-conditioned relief after some serious sweating while planting my beautiful foxgloves into the flower bed just outside my bedroom window. They are just a glance away from the computer :-)


There were three big plants crammed into the single pot I purchased. I always look for such pots as they often provide the best value for the dollar. Armed with a serrated knife, I conducted surgery and soon had three beauties that I'm sure will be delighted at their newfound freedom. Surely plants, like people, love it when they are no longer crammed into too tight a space. I planted 2 outside my window before my energy gave out. I'm still debating where to plant the 3rd, but I suspect somewhere along the north fence will be nice. That's where I put the St. John's wort yesterday. The SJW promptly thanked me by popping open three fuzzy blooms.Oh my gosh they are so pretty! They look very similar to the ones I took pictures of in the high desert canyons of Utah and Wyoming.

Yesterday was still pretty rough in the aftermath of the migraine. But I did get back to my knitting. I decided to keep on knitting on the Alpine Scarf until I had enough of the lace pattern done to be able to fairly judge whether or not I needed to go up a needle size. Basically, I did this because I was too lazy to swatch with a 3.5mm needle and I didn't want to frog what I had already done, especially the carefully done crochet cast-on that would give me the perfect edge to my scarf. I'm halfway through the 1st repeat and am pretty pleased with how things look--maybe I made the right choice after all!

I also picked up the Bugs Shawl and knit 3 more rows. I love the yarn I'm using for this project, but gee, the dark blues and grays sure are hard on the eyes! I'm getting lots of practice making right and left twisting stitches (or 2 st. cables if you prefer). I discovered that the "bobbles" that I knit the other day were (as I suspected) not true bobbles, but were really nupps. I was watching an episode of "Knitty Gritty" on DIY and Lily Chin was demostrating different textured stitches. When she got to bobbles I watched carefully as she increased (as I had done), then turned the work and purled back, turned again and knit across,finally knitting all the sts. back into one st and leaving a nice raised "bobble". See, a knitter learns something new almost every day :-) Knit on!