The Garden Today

Our first peonies have bloomed. They are red ones I traded a friend for a few years back. The plants are kinda spindly due to shade from the neighbour's trees against our mutual fence.

The blooms are even deeper in colour than this.

So pretty.

The delicate Siberian iris are also in bloom against the deck,

and beside the house (and gas meter).

The huge rust-coloured bearded irises also bloomed yesterday.

Skip grew these marigolds from seed. They are 'hardening off' ready to be planted. We hope our efforts to eliminate rabbits from our back yard have paid off because we'll be really pissed if they get chewed.

Coming soon?

Any day now.

Asiatic lilies.

Here is one of our patches of milkweed. I have started to check for eggs. Apparently a monarch will lay several dozen eggs in a short period of time. I hope to harvest many of them and nurture them through the larva and pupa stages into adulthood and then release them. This year's goal of at least 20 is twice last year's.

There is also a large patch of milkweed in an empty lot a couple of blocks away which I'll also be checking for eggs and/or larvae.

My latest Netflix binge-watching? Happy Valley. Season One with 6 episodes was gripping. Somewhat Fargo-esque in the sense of a crime that went really badly. Season Two seems to have started out similarly. Beware of social media!! Beware of roofies in your drink!!! Bottom line - don't have an affair!!!! It could be very injurious to your health. That's all I'm going to say on that.

First Escher II

The second Escher II sock is underway. Here's the first one knit with one of the balls of yarn from the sock block dyeing from the retreat a couple of weekends ago.

I should be able to start the second sock's heel in the same spot.

Escher is a very simple 12-row pattern. Basically it's 2 x 2 ribbing. After 5 rows of ribbing, one of the knit sts from the pair travels away from its mate to join with the nearest knit stitch in the adjacent pair of knit sts.  Then rib for 5 rows, then the knit sts move back to their original pairs.

It moves along pretty quickly. It is a unisex pattern that nicely hugs the leg, ankle and foot.

Button Sampler

I like the orderliness of cross-stitch. I used to do a lot of it but knitting took over as my number one passion. Every once and a while though, I like to 'cleanse my palate' with a quick and easy cross-stitch project.

I stitched this sampler over three evenings of binge-watching a Netflix series ("The Fall" if you really want to know).

I raided my button jar for the 15 small buttons. It will fit perfectly into a 5" x 7" frame and will hang in our guest room (Scooter's old room). Now I need to make myself affix the buttons, buy the frame, get it finished, and hang it.

Sunny Baby Blanket

I finished a baby blanket using Rowan Pure Wool Superwash DK yarn and the Sunny Baby Blanket pattern. Other than blocking photos, this is the only shot I got of it before sending it off to the grandma-to-be.

I added an extra 'square' and 'sash' for a total of 144 sts. After I had bound it off and blocked it, I noticed a dropped stitch in the garter stitch border. Thank goodness it was the top border and not the bottom one. I undid the bindoff, ripped back about 6 rows to the dropped stitch, picked it and all the other stitches up and reknit the rest of the border. Easy peasy.

Here's a better picture of Jodiep's blanket taken from her Ravelry page.

Photo - Jodiep

Lilacs and Other Delights in the Garden

I picked some more lilacs today.

This lilac bush was in our yard when we moved into this house 20 years ago. Skip transplanted it next to the deck. (rightmost shrub)

It provides a 'screen' from the neighbours behind us and a 'wall' for my outdoor office. The lilac bush to the right of it blooms a bit later and the blooms aren't as fragrant.

Skip loves this bugle week (ajuga). The colour is rich and it is an early bloom to the garden.  It puts out runners which would take over the garden if permitted. Once the blooms are done, I rip out lots of the runners where I want the other perennials to grow.

The bleeding hearts (dicentra) are the earliest blooms.

At this time of year, hostas are nice and compact. However they triple in size over the summer so we leave lots of room around them.

I bring a little of the outdoors in.

The peonies are getting ready to bloom. They'll be the next flowers brought indoors.

Green Swallowtail

I found this UFO the other day in a basket I hadn't looked into for a long time. I had finished the main part and was just starting the lacy border when I abandoned it. Thank goodness the sticky note on the chart hadn't moved and I was able to just pick it up and start knitting.

I did the nupps in the way recommended in the pattern (k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 in the same stitch, then purl the 5 sts together on the return row), and they worked just fine. There is another way to do them with a crochet hook all on the right side but I couldn't find the video to remind myself how to do it.

The first lace I ever knit was a red swallowtail shawl. I still used it all the time as it's light, warm, and fits into my coat pocket when not needed.

At that time, I found it to be quite a challenge. Now that I have lots more experience knitting lace, it was a fairly easy knit (in spite of the fact I let the green one languish for years before finishing it).

I did however, have one problem. I ran out of yarn before finishing the 'swallowtail' edging and had to bind off 5 rows early. I know I have an extra ball of yarn somewhere and will certainly unpick the bindoff and finish it properly when I do find it.

Finishing it before completing the last chart meant that I couldn't pull the swallowtail 'points' when I blocked it, ergo the straight edges.

But I still like the look and feel of it. This yarn Naturally Dawn 2-ply yarn is discontinued. The 50/50 wool/silk is lovely to work with and blocks very nicely.

This is the smaller version of the swallowtail where you begin the nupp-y lace after the 14th repeat of the main pattern. The larger version is done by starting the lace borders after 19 repeats of the main pattern. Unfortunately, the math doesn't work for fewer than 14 repeats or between 15 and 18 repeats.

An added benefit is I have now liberated another pair of 4mm tips and cable.

I recently discovered a crescent swallowtail modification with will be my next shawl project.

It's My Blogiversary!!

This Friday will mark the 9th anniversary of me nattering on about my life as a retiree and fanatical knitter, etc. and many of the things I do to occupy my time now that I am retired.

I never really expected to have a lot of followers. I was happy just to be recording the products of my many hours of knitting - the highs and the lows - as well as a lot of the other fun things I've been doing. In my head, I'm just chatting with someone who is interested in what I'm doing.

I now realize it is a pictorial chronicle of my last nine years and has been quite handy when I try to figure out what I did when or what I knit when. etc. The 'search this blog' feature at the right has come in handy more than once.

I have had some lulls in my blogging but never more than a couple of weeks. At other times I've done multiple posts in a day (like today) to keep up with what I've been doing.

I apologize to non-knitters who stumble onto this blog and hope the knitters aren't too bummed out when I do a lot of posts about birding, travel, and other non-knitting issues.

For those of you who read me regularly, I thank you and hope you've enjoyed the glimpse into my life that I am very grateful for. Skip and I know we are very fortunate to be enjoying relatively good health, a modest lifestyle, and the ability to still travel to places both near and far.

For those of you wondering what to do once you have retired, DO WHAT YOU LOVE! As much and as often as possible. Life is what you make of it. Enjoy!