Monthly Archives: May 2011

Laminaria Shawl

I’ve been wanting to tackle a big lace project lately, and an upcoming formal event seemed like the perfect occasion. As it would happen, I found a great black and white dress to wear, and I had some beautiful burgundy wool/silk fingering yarn to use. I decided on Laminaria (Ravelry Pattern Link), because I’ve had my eye on it recently and it matches my dress well.

Overall, I was really happy with this project – it’s by far my most challenging knit yet. I messed up the charts and had to frog so many times, but it was worth it in the end. I also ran out of yarn during the bind off, even after I frogged and re-knit the entire edging to conserve yarn. I eliminated the double YOs in conservation and ended up leaving those even after I finally purchased some yarn from another Raveler, as it is no longer available for purchase. Another major change that I made was using SSSKs instead of K3togs for all of the star stitches on the repeats before the center – a lot of other knitters have made this change, and it results in symmetric stars around the center.

Finally, here are some pictures before and after blocking!

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Squirrels!

It seemed so easy to finally keep the squirrels off of our bird feeder that I should have expected the worst. They’ve been digging in the garden for a while, but until recently, they hadn’t done too much damage. The other day though, I discovered that they had gotten to my tomatoes!

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I guess I don’t mind sharing as long as they don’t eat ALL of them, but I was disappointed that they got to a couple of the larger better boys, in addition to a few cherries.

It’s so big!

I had no idea that once cucumbers have started to grow, unlike my other crops, they grow amazingly fast.

Here’s my first cucumber from last week:

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And here it is after just one week:

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I can’t wait to cut it up with some of my tomatoes and eat a delicious salad! I could even add it to a bell pepper with some feta for a perfect Greek Salad with the Absolutely Fabulous Greek/House Dressing from allrecipes.com!

Picked Pepper, Baby Cucumbers, and Ripe Tomatoes

The garden has been busy this week, so I have lots of exciting updates!

First, Jake accidentally picked a jalapeno, so it’s ready to eat! I think it may go on our hamburgers for dinner tonight. 🙂

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Yesterday morning I went out to check the garden, as I do every day, and I found that one of the roma tomatoes had started to turn red! Today I went to check again, and it was much riper, plus some of the cherry tomatoes have ripened! I have just about enough to make some good pico de gallo, although my cilantro died and I have no onions – that can be fixed with a quick trip to the store though.

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And then finally I discovered that my cucumbers are starting to grow after weeks of flowering. Who has good pickle recipes?? 🙂

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Here are a few more pictures, just for fun:

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