Peacock iridescence in veridical shadows,
Violet blooms spread to the noonday sun.
The world’s beauty is a swirl of color,
But in the flower’s center is bright stillness.

Lingering on the outside of our souls, there is shimmering beauty and fantastic movement.  It is only when we go to the center of our souls that we are in the eye of the storm, the still-point of existence.  Then all is brightness, energy condensed, unbearably strong and powerful, yet absorbed in supreme quietude.
Deng Ming~Dao

Sometimes I love the quietness of a summer day coming to a close.  The warm humid air and the quiet sounds of the birds getting ready to settle in for a summer night’s sleep.

Have a wonderful weekend!

my hat is off to the farmers of America.  They must be hardy inside and out to deal with disappointment they face regularly.

Ok……………….so remember in one of my posts where I mentioned my tomato leaves looking a bit thick and different?  My initial thought was some kind of bug, but no……it was the beginning of early blight.  Never having had blight in my garden before I missed the early signs and sadly lost my entire crop of tomatoes.  The unusually wet and cool summer had a lot to do with it, but next year I will make some big changes in my tomato beds starting with landscape fabric to keep the dirt backsplash to a minimum….it’s a learning process this gardening.

I wasn’t going to post about the tomato loss…..I figured the rest of the garden was doing well and I was fortunate for at least that…..and I hated to admit defeat.

………that was until this weekend and the next defeat or “fail” as my Wii raised children like to say happened.

This weekend the weather was the most perfect it has been all summer. Temps in the upper 70’s, sunny, no humidity and a warm wind.  Well that wind really picked up Friday night ……a lot.  I mean ALOT!

The picture above…………………..shows you what that wind did to my corn. Absolutely flattened it!  Holy crapola!

Ken was away visiting family in Pennsylvania this weekend so I didn’t have his shoulder to cry on or his extra arms to help me tie the stalks back up.  Yep, I was feeling sorry for myself indeedy!  Ok………..so it’s not the end of the world when you are a hobby gardener but I was pretty sad about it all the same.

I’ll tell you straight up I couldn’t even look at the garden.  Instead I turned to what I feel I do best….and makes me feel the best when I am finished.  I pulled out the dye pot to play with a new yarn I just got in. (Kashmir will be it’s name)

It’s a blend of Cashmere, merino and nylon at a true fingering weight.  Lighter than my sock yarn but a wee bit heavier than my lace yarn.

I was feeling a bit sad and lonely, missing Ken and missing my grrlfriends, so the colorway that I knew which would make me smile the most was of course Tupelo Honey. 

This colorway always makes me think of the sisterhood of the hive…..it’s a warm and fuzzy colorway.

I am really happy with this new yarn!  It’s incredibly soft and cushy, perfect for socks, shawls or scarves.  I will be dyeing up a bunch this week and plan to have some up in the shop by the end of the week. 🙂

So that in a nutshell is how my weekend went.   The garden stuff was wildly disappointing, but I can honestly say that with each one of these set backs I have learned SO much about how I will do things differently next year.  As a society today we are incredibly fortunate to have the resources from the internet right at our fingertips.

Oh………….and my beans are doing pretty darn good!

Onward we go and hopefully still smiling……………. 🙂

Imagination, song, the soaring spirit.
Separate them to know them as aspects of the whole,
Join them to know the mystery of totality.
Deng Ming~Dao

It’s no secret around here that my favorite color is green.  Even when I try to get shades of blue, somehow there is always just a little bit of green there.

This blue green yarn is Essence in the “Sea Dreams” colorway.  It too could be a bee blob…..hmmm

Another new colorway on tap is
“Prairie Grass” shown here in Opulence.

….and here in Harmony.

This deep bright shade of early spring grass brings a smile to my face each and every time I see it……

These yarns will be in the shop over the weekend.

                    ….and the teapot…..how could I not love it?

Terry alerted me when it appeared on Ebay knowing that I would just love it and I do!
Bunnies jumping in the greens on top of a very dear to my heart cashmere scarf….perfect!!

Last week on Neta the question was asked….”Where is your favorite place to fiber in the summer?”.  I honestly could say it’s in my own back yard.

This picture was taken from the chair that I will sit in after dinner with my feet up and a glass of chilled wine on the table.  It is here that I will sit and knit until the bugs chase me in.  It is here where I will watch the birds dig for their evening dinner and listen to the morning dove’s last song of the day.

It is from here that I will sit and look at the garden and contemplate what I might do differently next year, even though I am very pleased with what we have done this year.

 

It’s been a cooler, wet summer so far here in the northeast so the garden greens have really enjoyed a long, healthy season.  I have had plenty of lettuce to enjoy a daily salad and enough to share with visitors.

The herb bed has been plentiful with lots of yummy basil, dill and cilantro.

I was worried about the corn bed last week as it was weak and yellow looking, but with the addition of some Nitrogen it quickly greened up and started growing quickly.  The winter squash that shares the same bed has tripled with the extra nitrogen as well.

My tomato bed on the other hand has not been as productive and that is pretty much my own fault.

It is a huge jungle of beautiful leafy green, but not as much fruit as it should have and that would be because I underestimated how much they would grow and over planted my 2 beds. 

I have removed a few of the plants and I will heavily prune the remaining plants so that the sun can reach the fruit to ripen it.

 

So as I sit and listen to the birds, sip wine and contemplate the garden, I am moving along on my Bee Blob.

Here she is as she was a few days ago.  Ken being the ever joking guy that he he thinks he is said it would make a great boob warmer….ugh….guys!

 

Over the last few days she has grown….I love her cherry pinks and oranges….don’t you?

Pattern and creativity
Are the two poles of action.
Deng Ming~Dao

Many many years ago I took a quilting class.  Truly it was many years ago when I was pregnant with Ashley who is now 24. (eek)  I have been sewing since I took classes at 10 years old, so this wasn’t a scary venture for me….just another facet of sewing.

The class was a hand quilting class, which meant the entire quilt was pieced and quilted by hand.

One of the things my teacher was a stickler for was nice tight points. 

If you click on the star you will see that my points for the most part are neatly touching each other at their pointed ends.

Of course back then all of the pieces were hand traced and then hand cut with scissors…..a bit tedious for sure.

The class was an 8 week class and at the end of these 8 weeks, this is what I ended up with….my very first quilt.

One of the things I was most proud of was my hand quilting.  I really worked hard at getting those stitches both tiny and consistent.

Not bad for a first attempt if I say so myself.

Over the years I have put together a few small pieces, but nothing that really amounted to much. The knitting, spinning bug had bit me with a vengeance so the sewing ideas went to the bottom of the list…..and there they stayed until recently.

Back to the future………

Remember those Jelly Rolls that I showed you a while back…. well I attempted to put together a Jelly Girl quilt which is done entirely by machine.  Fast and easy peasy, so I thought.

Well, maybe not so…….

If you look closely at these 2 pictures you will see that the points at each join are incredibly sloppy.  At first I thought I could just live with them and use this as a machine sewing practice project…….but somehow I just can’t do that….which is strange if you know me, as I am not usually a perfectionist.  I will be taking these blocks out and redoing them….sigh.

If you re read the verse that I quoted from Deng Ming Dao, usually people who write patterns are perfectionists and those who create usually fly by the seats of their pants.  You know that left brain, right brain thing.  That’s not to say that pattern writers are not creative…..they are incredibly creative, but in a different way than say a painter would be.  I am usually that painter kind of a person, but when it comes to sewing, maybe that other side of my brain takes over…..hmmm.

Can you believe I am actually being monogamous in my knitting these days?  Moth is what I pick up every time I sit down.  The first part of the shawl is so easy to memorize and truly is a relaxing knit.

You can get a better idea of the color in this picture.

The colorway is Red Hot Chili Pepper and it has long been a favorite of mine in my palate of colorways.

Soft and understated in the skein but the autumnal colors just call out to me in the shawl, which of course makes it that much more enjoyable to knit.

~

One of the things that has made it so easy to stay committed to one project has been a new found interest in quilting.  Last week Terry and I met for lunch and an afternoon of shopping in my new favorite fabric store.

Can you see them….?  Click to see…….yes, those are bees!  How could I have possibly left this fabric behind?

 

   There is something in the wings though that will be fluttering by my desk soon….that will make it very hard to bee a one project woman.  I think I may have to put down moth for this one, but only this one and then it will be back to moth. 🙂

~

On the garden front, I have noticed over the last few days that my tomato leaves have had an unusual look to them.  At first I thought perhaps it was just my paranoid imagination, but alas I don't’ think so.

If you look very closely you will see what I think may be the culprit.  I will be making a trek over to Maine today to pick up some of this.

Anyone who thinks that gardening is easy hasn’t had a garden for too long….<grin>.  I am getting better at recognizing potential problems earlier while plants can still recover….at least I think I am… 😉

In summer this is what you would normally expect to see right?  Beautiful blue skies against a brilliant green grass and a swimming pool.

Unfortunately that has not been the case here in the Northeast this summer with all of the cool weather and rain.  Today’s sun and relative warmth has been a day to cherish for sure!  (yesterday Ken had to put a sump pump in the pool to get some of the rain water out.)

It was such an incredibly spectacular day that I decided to spend some time in the garden watching the plants smile and reach up towards the sun.  If you look closely you can see our very first baby tomato and cuke. 

We have had so much cold, rainy weather this summer it has really put us behind the eight ball in the garden growth department.  The lettuce however has been LOVING this weather.

One of my most favorite treats in the garden this year has been the Buttercrunch head lettuce.

It is such a tender yet crunchy lettuce.  It does not like the heat so I am not sure how much more we will have until late summer when we can plant again….but I am savoring every single bit of it.

 

Just the other day, Courtney and I went on our yearly strawberry picking trip and it was so blessed cold it felt like a late march morning, even though the sun WAS out. 

Poor Courtney in her little shorts and tank top outfit was freezing her butt off, but was a good trooper all the same. 

We managed to pick enough to freeze 12 pints of sugared strawberries all set for shortcake…….a huge batch for our 4th of July party and enough for this………

Yep, my favorite lettuce along with some sliced strawberries, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts and currents topped off with a light balsamic dressing……..yum!

 

            ~

The one good thing about the rain is it gives one an excuse to snuggle in with a cup of steaming coffee and some knitting.

With my Keukenhof soks finished I have started a few new projects.  On the needles now is the Wing of Moth pattern in Red Hot Chili Pepper. (wow…I need to fix that picture)  I may be one of the last ones to make this shawl, but I know I am going to love it.

I am also testing Anne’s Fruit of the Vine scarf pattern, using an angora/corriedale blend of handspun and it is scrumptious stuff for sure!

I purchased the roving from Chris…….and…………I think she may even have some left…..go get some before it’s all gone! 

Pattern: Keukenhof Soks
Yarn: Bambino
Colorway:  Pussywillow
Needles:  2.0 (for this yarn)

Up until now I have only used this yarn to make hand mitts. It wasn't until Anne used this yarn for her Keukenhof sok pattern that I really entertained using it for socks……but I am really glad that I did!
The fabric is very soft and lightweight which is nice for late spring, summer and early fall.  I am one of those people who does not do well wearing cotton socks.

It's either wool………..or sandals for this grrl!

It's been so darn rainy and cool here in the Northeast it will definitely give me a chance to see if wool and bamboo together are a good fit. 😉

One of the more challenging aspects of this pattern for me was the short row heel.  It’s one of the reasons why I have avoided toe up socks until now.

This time I went slow and steady with the wraps and by George I think I finally have it down!

All in all this was a fun pattern to knit.  Easy to memorize and the finished sock is a nice fitting one.  Thanks Anne!

Who knew I would love Jelly rolls so much?

Today as  I was munching on a fabulous salad with some fresh butterhead lettuce from my garden and listening to the soothing sounds of Cherish the Ladies while my stove was steaming with newly dyed yarn, I had a moment……a moment of feeling incredibly fortunate and thankful.

The days have been pretty rainy here, but I have been content to meander out to the garden after I have tended to the dogs early in the morning with my umbrella and clogs to make sure that everything out there has been ok.

From there it’s up to the barn to feed Daisy Jane and Beeatrice and to look at the progress Ken has been making on my studio.  Yes………it’s finally going to become a reality, but I will save that for another post.

After the animal and garden duties are finished it’s time for a cup of coffee, morning news and some knitting.

Most recently I have been plugging away on my Kuekenhof Soks done with my Bambino yarn.  Up until now I have only knit mitts with this yarn, but I really really love how it works up in a sock.  Perfect for spring, summer and autumn.

After the morning news program, I put my knitting away and get to work.  The dye pots are fired up along with my computer.  While I work at creating pedigrees for registered Cavaliers, I stir the pots and let the dogs in and out, all the time listening to the soft folk/celtic music that I love.

Yes…….I am incredibly fortunate that I get to do the things that I love most.