theknittyvritti

the reveal

It's hard to tell wnhat's going on in the garden until summer really gets under way, so every year there's a suspenseful month waiting to see if I've made any progress on getting it to look the way I imagine it might. This year I've made progress, no doubt, although somehoe I can't stop looking at that bare little corner up front and asking myself why I just haven't filled it in...maybe next week.
A bit like this sweater, Drops pattern 129-3 (free and totally worth it). While it didn't take a whole year to find out, I really had no idea whether I would like it, and luckily, I love it.

There was just so much suspense...the new shape....which now that I've got it, I'd like to have in as many colors and fabrics as I can make.

And the fabric...linen is such a mystery. How does it go from that scratchy stiff stuff to such drapy luxury in the time it takes for a wash and dry cycle? Magic.

Like those flowers, coming back year after year just because they want to. Happy summer everyone.

happy mudder's day

 

Hightest and I travelled to the Land of Cleves this weekend to put in a garden for our mudder, er I mean mother. 

 
Before we could start, we had to do a massive clean-up. I got there after Hightest, but she said that it was pretty scary the first day, and the evidence is in these bags....fifteen of them.

 
 I got here in time for the fun...shopping for plants,

 
And putting them in the ground.

Tomorrow's big adventure? Knitting road trip. Hightest and I take to the highway on our trip back to New York. Between us, we've five projects. One of mine is almost finished, I'll show you next week.

I hope we don't fight too much about whose turn it is to drive. It's been a long time since we had a good knock-down drag-out about who does what, at least thirty years.

And our mudder won't be along to send us to our rooms. It could get ugly.

distractions

I have failed. The Louisa Harding cardigan is not finished, and three weeks are up.

There have just been too many distractions. My garden is coming along better than it has before, and there have been flowers to gaze at,

 

and to cut,

and gaze at. But the biggest distraction this week was this,

As Hightest says (I turned her on to it), "thanks for the tendonitis". A mere ninety nine cent iphone app, but pricelss in it's time-suck value. I played a little too much this week, and I've no sweater to show for it. Maybe next week.....

work in progress

 
This is a small area of garden that feels a bit more like a finished object than a work in progress. Although a few of the plants have to grow a bit more, and there is a tiny area that is still unplanted, I like what is happening here. Color, mass and bloom times are all working together in a way that most of my garden areas do not.

I'm tempted to say that this section is finished, but gardening, like life, is not so static.  Just as you think you've gotten things lined up, something comes and upsets the order of things. Although I long for symmetry, order and harmony, my garden, like my life, is a precarious balance between equanimity and upset. I don't alway know what will happen when I bring something into my garden or my life...whether it will be enhanced or disrupted. Sometimes the only way to know is to see. Luckily, these plants which I bought earlier this month have brought me pleasure. I hope that the rest of the summer's additions will be as felicitous.

 

I have high hopes for this sweater. It may not be hubris to say that it could be finished in three weeks. The yarn and pattern seem perfect for one another. The knitting is going so quickly that it is like watching time-lapse photography. If this one is anything like life, there must be a catch......

nose to the grindstone

 

I thought I'd better start this off with something unequivocally pretty. My garden beds develop slowly because I want to design them aesthetically without understanding much about garden design. I do get these patches of things that are exactly what I want, at least for a few weeks. This purple on purple patch is one of those things. Garden design seems even more challenging than knit project design, since it is a moving target. At least with a sweater you don't have to worry about what it will be doing in three weeks. Presumable, the same thing it's doing now. Ahem....there are times when we wish this was not the case....more below....

 

When your sister gives you permission to post a photo like this, you put it up before she changes her mind. I was going to let the veg garden lie fallow this year, but Hightest convinced me to co-op grow it with her. And she promised her labor, and so it was on. Both Hightest and Operations Man are very good workers. They can attack a physical task with a kind of focus that I both envy and exploit. On a good day, I can be brought along and really put out as well, but just as often, I find myself drifting off and being pulled back when they realize I have been pulling the same weed for ten minutes. They know me well enough to know that I have probably been fantasizing about my alternate life as an Irish potato farmer (it's not always princesses with me). I don't think this is something that is easily changed......I have tried.

 

And so to the knitting. I've taken up the Pintuck Tee again. And I've been thinking about recent laments from Princesspea and SweetP as I try to soldier on in the face of what seems to be a hopeless situation. Somehow, I don't believe that this project (blobject?) will ever be wearable. It's not the pattern, which is both ingenious and fun, but this damn Louet Euroflax yarn. Why did I buy three projects worth? It's stiff and lumpy and while the colors are beautiful, I'm having trouble believeing that multiple rides in my dryer are going to relax this stuff into a beautful piece of textile as suggested. We shall see. In the meantime, I am trying to take inspiration from Hightest and Op's Man, and power through this thing without running off to get lost in my pattern books and fantasies of the next project.

waiting

There's a lot of room for a lot of plants in this garden. Every year we buy some, but after eight years, we are not even close to being done. I accept the fact that we are not willing to break the bank buying huge, mature specimens, so that we can have the easy gratification of seeing them in their full glory immediately after we've planted them. Which means that I have been waiting. 

The lilacs were one of the first plants we bought. When we bought them, they were in bloom. New to gardening, I didn't understand how plants are forced into bloom before they're shipped to the nursery, and I assumed that we would enjoy beautiful flowers the following years as well. We got one flower the following year. Once I realized that the lilacs were in the wrong place, I resigned myself to waiting a year, maybe two, before they would bloom after the stress of re-planting. That was four years ago. Each year, I eagerly await the first signs of life on the lilac bushes, and each year, I am disappointed, no, slightly crushed, to see that there are no flowers.

I had no reason to hope, but this year, it looks like I am wrong to be so cautious about my desire. Waiting is like that. While you are waiting, you must manage desire. You can distract yourself, try harder to do better without necessarily knowing what you are doing wrong, or abandon all hope. I've done them all, but in the end, waiting is just waiting. Life requires that we get good at it, and gardening teaches it.

 

That is, unless you are the Yarn Eater, who spends most of the day waiting for dinner, often like this, and is naturally good at it.

patience is an (overrated) virtue

This is "Blue Billow".

We tend to buy our plants small, and then we have to wait for them to mature into what we have envisioned at the time of purchase. This year, after four years, these hydrangeas actually lived up to the fantasy. The gaps between them are finally filled in. Now I can address the piece of ground behind them. I'm planning on picking up a bunch of day lilies once they go on sale--which should be in just about a month after their season passes.

Vegetables are somewhat more gratifying for the impulsive. Just a few weeks in the ground, and these Cherokee Purples are already showing their stuff. Makes me drool.

But gloves are really a treat if you've a need for immediate gratification (and who doesn't). In a matter of days, voila, half a glove. If life doesn't make any unanticipated demands on me, I should have a glove by Friday....and a tomato by August.

rose fever

I am truly, madly, deeply in love with roses, so June is one of my favorite months. All through June, my roses bloom. I spend quite a bit of time with my nose stuck in a rose, or cutting roses and putting them in little vases all over the house. I don't know what the pink rose is---it's a climber that was here before  we got here. The dark red rose is called a Tradescent rose. It's one of the David Austin roses, and it's been happily living in my yard for the last ten years. David Austin roses are my absolute favorites. They are English roses, most of them wonderfully scented and repeat blooming, giving pleasure through the whole summer, even after the spectacular displays of June are over.

Here they are with one of my "me me me" projects, the pin-tuck tee. I guess you can see why I was attracted to this yarn. Good color for a rose, no?

This edge was so simple that I didn't report on it--it's a braided twist, three purls and one knit tbl, repeat, repeat, repeat, etc.  I should mention that this project is on a little bit of a problem alert. When the yarn came, a note explaining that Louet Euroflex linen is not meant for stockinette stitch was enclosed. I had seen a large swatch of it in stockinette at a store, and it looked fine to me, but it is a little difficult to keep tension with it, and I wonder how the project will look when finished. I'm determined to keep going and hope for the best, because I really love the combination of this pattern and this yarn.