Sunday

Today's yarnbomb:

Is it a Black-eyed Susan? Is it a sunflower? You be the judge. 

I received my first shipment of Imperfect Foods. It's a company that sells foods that the grocery store rejects (too small, weird shape, etc...). It cuts down on food waste, and sells perfectly good food at a good price. Your shipment can be customized before delivery, which is weekly. You can even cancel a shipment if you're not going to be home, or for whatever reason.

This was my first shipment: little peaches, grapefruits, apples, onions, a huge sweet potato, a wonderful watermelon(which was so red and sweet and now is almost gone), a small cheese sampler, a head of butter lettuce(which made it to the fridge before this picture) and a pound of grass-fed ground beef.

All under $30.00. There were 3 things on my list that they could not add at the last minute, but they emailed me and told me.

This is all in all a great company!

The False Indigo outside my kitchen window is blooming, and that makes me smile. 

Also, the Spiderwort is starting to bloom.

Hope you all are having a great weekend. Here in Maryland, it is marvelous weather!

I will leave you with photos of my little chicken family. I inherited a few little treasures from my Grandmother. This one is one of my favorites. 

So tiny and cute. I have no idea where they were made, or where my Grandmother got them. But they are truly treasured.

Friday

It's been a while. I have taken a break from the yarn bomb tree. I have a piece in progress, and will probably post it tomorrow after I figure out what I'm going to do. 

It's been a busy week. First, our refrigerator died. It isn't that old, but apparently there's a class action suit against LG for this model. It is discontinued, and has problems with the compressor. So, we bought a new Samsung one, which was delivered yesterday. 

We also had some branches taken down from a very large maple tree. The branches were starting to look like they would probably come down in a good wind or ice storm. So, we had them taken down.

You can see two of the cut points above. We also had two dead trees taken down. The company was very professional and unbelievably fast. It was all done in about an hour! Everything was either put in a chipper, or hauled off. 

To those of you who said that basil is hardy and mine would come back after a cold night, you were right! This is starting to thrive again.

My rose bush is starting to droop with weight, so I relieved it of some of the blooms. Aren't they lovely? I think that this is their best year. And my father's prism captured the morning sun to give a cheery spectrum effect. 

After a few false starts (translation: No mojo, kept messing up and ripping out) I am finally getting somewhere with my shawl.

This gradient is going to look perfect, I think. 

Have a great weekend! 

Thursday

Today's yarn bomb: A bit of red fringe. 

I am awaiting some yarn in the mail. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday, according to tracking. Hopefully, it will arrive today. Inexpensive but brightly colored.

We scored two bottles of this liquid gold from our local organic market. Sign of the times.

Started a crescent shaped shawl with the yarns that I showed you in the last post. Pattern is 4-Ever in Blue Jeans. It's got a lot of mosaic knitting in it. I'm hoping that the other yarn shows well through this one. Here it is wound up:

I will leave you with this good advice from my garden:

And some more from my kitchen:

I hope that you can do both today! See you tomorrow---Friday!!

Tuesday

I have gone back to my first love...knitting. Here's today's yarn bomb:

Another honeycomb pattern made from leftover Cascade 220 from my stash. 

I received my last shipment of yarn bought at the Maryland Sheep and Wool (virtual) Festival. These skeins are from Fiber Optic. Colorways are Orchard and Ivy League. I plan on a 2 color shawl for these two beauties. They scream Autumn to me.

The Orchard one on the bottom is a gradient yarn. Goes from gold to deep red. And it's mostly merino with 10% cashmere. It's a lovely yarn. The Ivy League (green) is 100% merino. I think that they will work nicely together. Now, to find a pattern...

I had a wonderful surprise this morning! When we ventured out on our walk with Reggie this morning, I spied a decorated rock at the base of our mailbox post. Someone left it there! It gave me a smile to think that someone thought to do this.

It has a round glass piece in the middle, surrounded by colorful cut glass pieces that look like petals. Very pretty!

Have a good evening!

Monday

First, the yarn bombs from the last two days. I went to the dark side....I went onto YouTube and taught myself to crochet a single crochet stitch. Many (five) decades have passed since my young girl years of crocheting. It came back pretty quickly.

Today, I added a ruffle. I don't know what I was doing, really. I just winged it.

So, it's not really the dark side. Just not knitting. It is just as relaxing and new and different.

Finished the wild and crazy socks last night and they are currently blocking.

This morning, a picture showed up on my Facebook feed that my daughter took seven years ago today. It was a Pileated Woodpecker. I mentioned that I haven't seen this bird in my yard since. After our walk later in the morning, I came home and was shocked and surprised to see a welcome visitor! So, I guess May 18th is the day that the Pileated Woodpecker comes to my yard! Every seven years!

He stuck around for me to grab the camera, and didn't seem shy at all! This really made my day.

Such a big beautiful bird. I really hope that he doesn't wait another seven years to return.

Now, some beauty from my yard:

A little bit of Georgia O'Keefe vibe.

And our gorgeous rose bush is about to burst with lots of these.

See you tomorrow!

Friday

I Made a quick butterfly for the tree today. Just kind of slapped it together and put it up with clear thumb tacks. That's the beauty of yarnbombing. From the road, you don't see the little imperfections.

I'm running out of brightly colored yarn. I ordered some more inexpensive colors from Knitpicks. Hope it comes pretty soon.

I finished Sunday Swing sock number one. I'm going great guns, as my mother used to say. 

Such color in this yarn! 

And I kind of like how it knit up. I was afraid that it would have too much pooling, but it just kind of did whatever it wanted. I am curious if sock #2 will knit up the same.

Today I made more crackers. The only thing that I did differently from the original recipe was to add 1/4 cup of flax seed. Here's the link to the recipe:

EASY HOMEMADE CRACKERS

If you don't want to read all the yadda-yadda-yadda, just click at the top of the site where it says "Jump to recipe".

Celery report: I started another one, and this on seems so much healthier. I'm going to wait a little while before planting this time.

Have a good night. Here comes the weekend!

Wednesday

Today, I took a break from yarnbombing. I'll pick it up again tomorrow when I feel more creative. I never know what I'm going to put on the tree until I sit down to knit it. I may look on YouTube for help with stitches, but I never use a pattern.

Today's knitting was taken from a pattern. After seeing Dee's beautiful sock yesterday, I decided to start my own pair of Sunday Swing Socks (found on Knitty). 

The pattern seems to be a little lost on the blue side, but comes through nicely on the greenish side. Either way, they are a fun knit. I'm sure that the pattern will be more pronounced once blocked. Yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock in colorway Hobbit Garden. This yarn company has always been one of my top favorites. I am getting a bit of pooling, but I don't care. The colors are gorgeous.

I planted the fence planters today. Soon, the plants will get big enough to completely hide the green plastic.

I'll leave you with this cute little beauty. This moth landed this evening on my green glass decorative garden spike. I thought that it was so pretty! Love the orange "bloomers". I had to look it up-

It's an Eight-Spotted Forester Moth.

Have a good evening!

Tuesday

Today is a very small yarnbomb. But I'll show you how much the tree is getting covered.

I had mentioned previously that I ordered seeds online and a starter planter to grow some coleus plants for my fence planters. They are less than hearty.

Yeah....not really ready for a planter. Not to mention that I planted over 20, and 6 came up. I'll keep these going, and put them somewhere else. In the meantime, I will use the plants that we bought today at the garden center..

Now these are ready for prime time!

My basil that I bought a few weeks ago endured a night of temps in the 30's. It didn't quite get down to freezing, but it was enough to do some damage. What do you think? Will my basil make it?

Should I do anything for it? Pick off the damaged leaves? I just don't know. Suggestions welcome!

See you tomorrow.

Monday

Two days got by me without a blog post. Here's some yarn bombing. One has a little ruffle, one is some stripes by the Happy sign.

I made some sourdough crackers on Sunday. I didn't have any whole wheat four, so I added some ground flax seed and I added some Italian herbs. Brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt

When I was growing up in the suburbs outside of Baltimore, we had a neighbor who had a small garden with a gate on the side of the house by our property. Years went by, and the house was sold. My father still lived there in the 90's, and I tried to keep his property cleaned up. One day I was trimming the bushes, and found this horse's head in the ivy. I knew immediately that it used to reside on a post on the gate next door. Because the son of the family ended up being my brother's best friend, I saw him now and then. I told him that I had the horse, and if he wanted it, I'd get it to him. He said no, keep it.

So yesterday, the husband finally attached it to its permanent home on our back fence. I've had it for years, but I never really gave it a home until now. I think that it looks perfect where it is, and the shape that it's in.

Hope you all had a good weekend.