Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Heat Is On!

 My Japanese indigo plants are thriving.  I have not picked any.  I am just going to baby them through the summer and hopefully they will reseed and flourish for next year.
 The mugwort and tansy plants are taller than me this year. 
 The catnip has exploded!  I am watering daily, but it is beginning to suffer some with the heat.  Noodles sits in the middle of the planter and eats.
 This is the hollyhock that is from seeds I brought from the b&b yard in Taos.  After spraying it with the stuff, it stabilized and is producing some beautiful flowers.
These were some plants I bought three years ago.  Last year they did bloom a few little flowers.  This is the year now that it is glorious.  Again, after spraying it I was able to save the poor little thing and it is blooming beautifully.  The color is a deeper maroon color than pics show.

I find it much too hot to mow carefully this time of year.  I have been using the riding mower in spurts.  I can't do it all at one time.  It is just too hot.  I did not trim or use the string trimmer last week.

Noodles and Patty are finding all the stick-tights that are coming with the weeds.  I pick them out as fast as I can.

I have wound down with the knitting.  I did finish the socks, and I am still knitting the lace scarf.  I picked up the UFO of a shawl that I put aside earlier on.  I also decided in the late evening while watching Netflix on t.v., I can do a few squares on my mitered square blanket.  I know I declared it "done" a long, long, long time ago, but I am going to do one more row while it is so hot.  Easy peasy knitting.

Of course, I am still spinning yarn.  I just completed a teeny skein of black alpaca.  It is so lovely.  Glossy and a true-black color.  I have decided to put some odds/ends together to make a small skein of something.  We will see if the colors look okay when spun.  Right now that is iffy when I look at the color mixtures.

I decided I could sew strips together to make a strip quilt, but that hasn't been going too well.  I keep getting distracted and I somehow got my strips twisted.  I had to rip out a seam and untwist, and that did me in. 

Otherwise I am reading a lot, and doing a whole lot of nothing.  This is typical for summer when the weather is awful. 

My friend SMH and I went out to eat last night to celebrate our birthdays.  We had a good meal, and enough food for us to eat today as well.  We had a good time, and it was fun! 

I need a little fun right now.  I have had one of my bouts of depression that hits me periodically.  I have to wallow around in it for a while, which does strain friendships some.  I call it going down into the well.  After moaning around for a while, I usually pull myself out and move on.  Thank goodness I never get bad enough to be concerned.  It is just a cyclical thing I have done all my life.

Have a good weekend.  July is upon us and we are moving into deep summertime.  So far I have only had to use the a/c during the heat of the day.  I can get by at night and early day without it.  July is a test of endurance.  There were times last year that the a/c stayed on 24/7.  It is usually the time of long siesta.  Do not move much or you sweat.  Then August is the hot, hot month.  Then it begins to wind down to Fall.  Aren't cycles wonderful!

Stay safe and cool wherever you are.   

Thursday, June 20, 2013

It's Almost Solstice!

I haven't dropped off the planet.  Although it is a pleasant thought to know we still have a planet left, the conspiracy stuff is flying too fast for me.  I am choosing to just ignore everyone that talks about it.

That means I do not listen to the news anymore.  I watch the weather, but why is another question.  It is hot, it is humid, and we have an occasional little shower that moves in.  Mother Earth is pissed off at humans right now, so just get used to it.

My teeny potato crop is almost ready for harvest.  I only had three plants this year.

I just finished winding the newest skein of handspun and it is in the bath relaxing.  Then she goes to the yarn blocker for drying.  Then suddenly there is a new skein of lovely Cormo wool and silk ready for someone to love her.  It is a pretty yellow that is soft and looks like lemon custard.

I have been in a funk for about a week.  Reading other peoples' blogs makes me realize that a lot of folks are in a funk right now.  I am having a hard time being motivated to do much.  I am reading a lot.  I am not watching t.v. in the evenings any more, but when I do sit down I turn on Netflix and knit.  I am bored with the knitting.  Another cyclical thing, I know.

Peach season is starting, so I am gorging on fresh peaches.  Somewhere along the way I get tired of eating so many and I put some up in the freezer.  There are some fruits that I just prefer to eat in season instead of eating in the winter.  One of them is peaches.  Around May I start thinking about peaches, and then June comes and there they are.  I think our local crops are going to be good this year with all the rain we had.  Watermelon is another fruit I prefer in season, and I prefer local melons. 

Nothing else of importance in my life at the moment.  I am just plugging along trying to get everything completed that I want to put in the show in October.  I am planning more yarn, but right now I am taking a little break.

Have a safe weekend.  Keep cool.

Monday, June 3, 2013

It Is Almost Summer!

I know it is so boring to just talk about the weather.  But this is the weirdest Spring ever in memory.
Of course, my memory is shorter these days.

Who would ever imagine that on June 2 in Arkansas that I would be wearing sweat pants and a long-sleeved shirt over my t-shirt?

At least today the sun in shining!  Wahoooo!  When I sit outside I can imagine that it is warmer and nice and pleasant.  When I get too hot, I stroll inside and cool off.  Almost summer!

I am having a hard time focusing on knitting.  I am doing too scarves and a pair of man socks.  That's it.  I dream of bigger and more complicated knits, but I am just not into it.

I have been spinning like a demon, though I have to get up and stretch periodically.  I am doing a coupla skeins of BFL that I am going to indigo dye.  The skeins spin fast and take forever to dry in the moisture-laden air we have.  But I can hardly wait to get a dyepot going.

On Facebook I saw the cutest hat pattern-Wolves Will Be Wolves.  According to the designer, you can put as many wolves in as you desire in the midst of the sheep.  A cute little stranded knit hat.

I also found a cute pattern for a cardigan that has a flared bottom and cables.  I like it a lot.  But since I am only in dreaming stage, I just wrote the name down.

My friend CJE is back from her trip in China.  They had a delay in Beijing that made her a little nervous.  Other than that it was the running from port to port in the airports trying to make planes.

She surprised me that she signed up to vend at the show in October.  I emailed the organizer and asked if we could have adjoining booths.  She had already planned it that way.  Isn't that a great thing!  She said it would be a shame to separate the two of us. 

If the yard dries a little more, I will mow tomorrow.  I think more rain is expected the latter part of the week.  Sigh!  Saturday the yard was floating, yesterday it was soppy, and today it is soggy.  So it is drying out little bit by little bit.

I had to spray my hollyhocks.  They all had some little bug eating them up.  I was afraid to spray, but I want to stop anything from eating the flowers.  The hummers and bees love the flowers. 

Well, time to put the clothes in the dryer.  I did grocery shopping early this am, and am almost through with laundry.  Then I can go back to spinning.  Yeah!  Who needs to do housework?

Have a great week.  Hope you aren't growing webs between your toes.