Long weekends,

are pretty much the best thing ever. Late summer ones are even better. You get to do things like process all the beans! This year I planted green beans (my favourite) and red runner beans. After a tough start due to cold weather and very hungry slugs, I am finally seeing some results.

Left to right we have Frenched blanched green beans, pre-blanched red runner beans, and larger (older) green beans just chopped & blanched. It was all I could do to not leap in and steam up the entire lot of Frenched beans and eat them with butter and salt. Soooo good that way.

I decided I was going to blanch the red runner beans and freeze them for use in soups/stews/etc later in the winter. See how pretty they are? All bright red and purple. Look at them after blanching:

They went all dusky purple. Nature is so weird!

Today I grated and froze between 8 and 10 pounds of zucchini for winter use. Also probably in soups & stews but possibly in muffins & breads. This week we’ll be buying canning jars and starting to process all the beets. Oh my, do we have beets. LOL

Finally, the most fun this weekend was had making tubey scarves on a friend’s circular sock knitting machine. This this is soooo cool! I took a couple videos:

and

Oh wait. And finally finally, I finished a pair of socks:

These poor things have been on the go forever. I’ve knit and ripped them 3 times before finally being reasonably content with this pattern. They will be nice and warm when winter comes again. Which seems so far away when I’m still having to put on sunscreen before I go out and work in the yard.

 

Oh hey, summer’s here!

It got hot here in the last week. Now, keep in mind, when I say hot I mean pacific north west hot, say 30 to 32 degrees. Also keep in mind that the minute the temperature goes above 28 degrees for more than a day my internal whine system goes into overdrive. This week is supposed to be cooler so hopefully I can stop driving the husband nuts with my constant, ‘It’s so hot! Why is it so hot? Make it cooler!’

The heat has also been really hard on our dog Stella. She’s epileptic and has always had a mild heart murmur. In the last week the murmur suddenly changed from a 1 to a 4 on a scale of 5. She’s having so much trouble breathing and doesn’t want to eat anything. The heat is making that worse for her too. She’ll go for an ultrasound this week to get a look at her heart and see if the problem is something that can be helped with medication. Fingers crossed!

And finally, the best part of summer? School is out and everyone is on holiday. You are almost guaranteed a seat on the train for your commute. Magic!

And we’re off!

Day one progress of my Ravellenics project. One chart repeat of 36 rows. My double handed knitting is getting a little bit faster as I do it more. Which is good, ’cause I got a lot of knitting to get done! This needs to be about 48 inches long when it’s done.

Hello, Sunday

Gearing up for the 2012 Ravellenics is in full swing.

Team Canada! FTW

Since the games are in London this year I went with as British a project as I could think of. I found a chart on Ravelry of the wallpaper from flat of in the new Sherlock Holmes series.

So far so good, right? So, I took the chart and did some swatching in the round:

So, a long, tubular, circular scarf is the plan. In 17 days. ‘Cause that’s totally doable, right?

The yarn? Best part! I’m using Sanguine Gryphon in Nekkid, as an homage this scene:

And a skein of gorgeous Grimpen Mire, Hound of the Baskerville’s tie in, that the lovely yarnpiggy gifted to me.

Perfection, no? Now I just have to wait for the 27th of July and the start of the games.

I know, I know. There’s no excuse for it really.

I’m going to blame twitter for killing my blogging mojo recently. But, if for no other reason, I need this blog to keep track of certain events in life just so that I can win arguments with my husband. I’m not even kidding. Recent examples? This is him:

No, we haven’t had Abbie that long!

No, we put the garden in x number of years ago.

No, we bought the house in 19xx

Wrong, wrong, wrong. All proven via the magic of the blog. So, without further ado. Here’s some eye candy until something important comes up that I think I’ll need to note down so I can be right in about 5 or 6 years. LOL

Summer is finally here!

Stella – still obsessing about having a ball thrown for her.

Knitting – still occurring on a fairly regular basis

Spinning – also still occurring

Oh, and as this is an Olympic year, there will be a Ravelym… no wait, that’s Ravellinics now. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, dontcha know. Anyway, I’m going to be captaining Team Canada to fibre gold again this year. Makes me so proud!

Spring, finally sprunging

After a fair number of weeks of rain we finally had a nice sunny weekend. Which of course meant a bit o’ gardening time.

And what better way to celebrate spring than to take a 16 year old futon frame and make it into an arbor for one of our vegetable gardens. Of course I totally forgot to take a before shot. Typical.

During:

A little more work and boom, it looked like this:

In total, we spent about $40. Only because we had to buy hinges & a latch for the gate.

Now, the beans are all planted, the garden is gated off from the wee heathen dogs, and we’re due to have a week of sunshine and warmth. Can’t.wait!

Gonna go put some aloe vera on my sun burn now.

Things, they been happening

I’ve been remiss in posting lately and now I have a backlog of stuff I want to show you and I don’t know which bits should just get cut and which shouldn’t and….BLARGH!

Anyway, let’s just start here, shall we?

I got a new tattoo. Before:

During:

After:

For you non-knitters out there, it’s the Kitchener stitch.

Via Wikipedia:

‘In addition to his military work, Lord Kitchener contributed to efforts on the home front. The knitted sock patterns of the day used a seam up the toe that could rub uncomfortably against the toes. Kitchener encouraged British and American women to knit for the war effort, and contributed a sock pattern featuring a new technique for a seamless join of the toe, still known as the Kitchener stitch.‘  

Even my mom likes it. Thanks mom! Dad? Totally not loving it.

Spring is officially rolling over to very early summer here as well. Yesterday was the first true bit of heavy labour in the veggie garden. Cleaned out all the detritus left from last year:

Turned all the soil, fertilized, and planted the start of this year’s crops.

Three kinds of beets, two kinds of carrots, scallions, turnips, radishes, and 145 storing onions. Nom, nom, nom. Then I sang the ‘Imma gonna eat you’ song to the onions. It was magical.

Today I am nursing a fantastic sunburn and some very sore muscles. LOL.