So many hobbies!

Spring planting

At this time of year, I kind of go a little crazy with plants and seeds.  I already have 5 chocolate peppers and 4 grape tomatoes that I started from seed.  After deciding I needed more peppers, my friend and I stopped at a little nursery and I bought more.  I now have a red bell pepper and a purple bell pepper to add to the list.  Also, a zuchini (actually 3 but 1 will be plenty) and, in the perennial category, an Iceland poppy.  The flower has a beautiful yellow-orange color.



My sister gave me a slicing tomato and two basils over the weekend to add to my growing - pun intended - list of veggie plants.  (Yes, I know the potting mix is dry.  I watered them right after I took this picture.)  So I have 7 peppers, 5 tomatoes, 2 basil and 1 zuchini.  So, do I plant green beans, too?  I think I'll have room for them.  I have one 3x3 raised beds that will house the zuchini, one 3x4 bed that will hold the tomatoes and some of the peppers.  There are 4 large pots for the rest of the peppers, 5 or so smaller pots for the beans and the two potato boxes that I'm thinking of using to grow black turtle beans.  If all grows well, that's lots of produce from one little garden. 

This weekend I'll be finishing up mulching the heck out of the rest of my flower garden.  I also need to clean up my raised beds and the pots for the veggies.  I'll be picking up some compost at Lowe's along with the mulch.  (Please let there be more of the mulch I need left at the store!)  I'm thinking I'll get my plants into the ground this weekend.  Get everything growing and producing.  The two peppers I bought have flower buds just waiting to pop.  Man, I love this time of year!

Do you put in a garden or plant up some pots on the porch?  What will you be growing this season? 

Sorry I've been gone

I spent the Memorial weekend at my sister's in Pennsylvania.  These pics are a pretty good summation of the weekend. 

My sister loves to garden.

This is Snookums.

She's been completely spoiled

and is a very happy kitty.

 

Sadly, Snooky's brother, Tuxedo, had to be put to sleep Thursday morning.  Tuxey had been sick for about a week and was very uncomfortable.  Going to PA, I was looking forward to seeing Tuxey as much as my sister.  He was a special boy.  I miss him.

With the exception of a little spinning, I spent most of the weekend working in my front garden.  I weeded Friday afternoon and Saturday, pulling out 4 garden refuse bags worth of weeds.  Friday I also bought 15 bags of mulch.  Saturday was the flower giveaway that my condo association does every year.  I got a flat of 1/2 Marigolds and 1/2 Snapdragons:

And a flower box kit for my front window:

Sunday, for about 4 hours, I mulched.  I'm terrible at taking care of my garden when it gets hot outside, which happens during Michigan summers.  The garden usually looks terrible; choked with weeds.  This year I thought I'd do a preemptive strike on the weeds.  So, I in the open areas of my garden, I laid down 4 layers of newpaper and covered that with 3 or so inches of mulch.

You can see some newspaper peeking out from the far side of the mulched area.  Oh, before I mulched, I planted the flowers I got Saturday:

I also planted the red Dianthus I bought during a quick run to Lowe's for potting mix for the flowerbox.  I have a gorgeous red lilly that I planted 2 years ago and some Correopsis that come back every year so that let me to planting a red/yellow color scheme.  You can't see them very well, but there are Snapdragons behind the Marigolds.  Hopefully, they'll be either red or yellow.

I didn't get the whole thing mulched because I ran out of newspaper, plus I need another 3 or 4 bags of mulch to finish it off.  The tricky part of future weeding will be around the plants since I couldn't easily get newspaper in there before the mulch went down.  We shall see later this summer how the weeding goes.

Still, it looks pretty good with its fresh coat of mulch.  I'll need more plants to fill in the holes once all the daffodils die back.  My neighbor gave me a volunteer Foxglove that you can see in the lower left corner of the picture above.  Now I just need more newspapers...

Batty

I felt the urge to make art batts tonight.  I have no idea what to do with them.

They sure are pretty.

What would you do with them?

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2013: The shopping

I bought way too much wool to spin but in my defense, it wasn't my fault.  I was seduced by the wool side.  First I was seduced by color, and cute colorway names:

The colorway on the left is called "Serenity," a reference to the now-sadly-cancelled TV show "Firefly."  The colorway on the right is called "Bigger on the Inside" referring to Doctor Who and the TARDIS.  How could I possibly turn down a Doctor Who colorway.  See?  Not.  My.  Fault.  The roving was dyed by Into the Whirled and I really want to hang out with those people.  How could you not have fun spending time with people who come up with colorways with names like "Captain Hotpants?"  (Again, a reference to "Firefly.")  I almost bought that one, too, but I managed to gulp a breath of air free of wool fumes and came to my senses... sort of.  I kind of bought 8 ounces in each colorway. 

The spindles are Bosworth spindles and I had absolutely planned on buying those.  The one on the left is a Moosie spindle.  Why is it called Moosie you ask?  Because the whorl is made from moose antler.  Yup, moose antler.  (In case you didn't know, moose shed their antlers every year, growing a new pair in the spring.)  The spindle on the right has a whorl made from Red Cedar.  Believe it or not, the spindle on the left weights more than the one on the right.

Again, not my fault, this one was truly evil and sucked me in with a glance.  Seriously, could YOU resist silk caps that look like this? 

This one did it with some amazing crimp and soft locks.  This is a bit over one pound of raw Corriedale wool.  I really wanted to come home with an entire colored Cormo fleece but that would have been completely insane so I settled for about a pound of raw wool to play with.  See, I was able to rise above the wool side on occasion.  I also came home with 8 ounces of white Cormo roving not pictured here because white roving isn't that exciting to look at and I didn't think I could properly photograph "soft."  It's virtually impossible for me to turn down anything Cormo.

Also purchased but not shown was the book "Knitting on the Edge" by Nicki Epstein (which I just saw was discount priced on Amazon and I paid full price... grrrr!),  a needle gauge/knitting gauge, a bar of wonderful lemon ginger soap and kitty snips.  Mine are in blue.

As if my vacation wasn't fabulous enough, I come home to find most of the flowering trees are in full bloom, including the Kwanzan Cherry in my front yard:

The individual blossoms are stunning:

Now if only I could figure out a way to work at home...

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2013

The Festival, as usual, was great!  The weather couldn't have been more perfect:  no warmer than 73F during the day with a nice breeze and low 40's at night so the sleeping was great.  It was a bit chilly getting out of bed in the morning but it was a small price to pay for such a great weekend.

This year was the 40th year of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  Those of us who were lucky enough to win a ribbon, got a special one that declared the 40th.

My skein won first place in the category:  100% wool prepared by spinner from raw wool - Medium plied yarn.  This was the yarn spun from the New Zealand Corriedale.

The day before we left, Sheri noticed there was a category for a group project.  I had spun the purple yarn above on my drop spindle a couple of years ago and gave it to Sheri for her birthday.  She, in turn, knitted it into a shawlette.  Our group project won first place.  Woot!

Sheri's knit bunny, destined for a baby soon to be born, won third place:

Most of my shopping time happened Saturday morning (purchases to be disclosed later this week).  Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday was spent spinning on my new Bosworth drop spindle.  I lucked out two days in a row and had some wandering musicians pull up some chairs in front of me and start playing:

Having some nice music to listen to while I spun was one of the high points of the weekends.

Our campsite on Friday.  Friday was our slow day:  all we had to do Friday was drop off our stuff for the skein and garment competition.  After that, we hung out at camp, Sheri knitting or crocheting and me carding the wool that I spun Saturday and Sunday at the Festival.

Another high point of the weekend was seeing a Pileated Woodpecker!  Don't let the picture on the link fool you, that bird was huge!  The adults can reach 19 inches in length and their wingspan can reach 30 inches.  I have to say, he (or she) was beautiful.  We saw him Sunday and again on Monday was we were striking camp.  It was a rare treat.

I had a blast as usual.  I just adore camping!  Our third partner in crime, Rhonda, couldn't join us this year.  She was waiting for lambs to be born and had a new granddaughter who's mom needed some help with the other little ones.  She was with us in spirit, though, through copious texting.  My next big event is the Michigan Fiber Festival in August.  I've already signed up for my classes.  Between now and then, however, there will be strawberry and blueberry picking, jam making, berry freezing, a crafting weekend and my birthday.  This is my favorite time of year!