Herding Bunnies

Well, that’s a couple of weeks that have gone by very quickly. Between working, gardening, and hockey playoffs blogging just didn’t get done.

I have been knitting. I have been gardening. I have been enjoying the companionship of neighbours who’ve just moved out. I have been busy. Today, though, I intend to (sort of) take it easy.

The Queen Silvia shawl/stole is seeing good progress. I’ve completed 12 repeats (as of last weekend), with another 8 repeats to knit before picking up stitches all the way around for the border. In the picture, I’ve loosely pinned the shawl out on a sheet so the nupps and the design are easier to see. Once fully blocked, this is going to be one beautiful shawl!

I just realized that I haven’t blogged about this project yet. This is the Queen Silvia shawl from Nancy Bush’s exquisite book “Knitted Lace of Estonia”. I’m working it in Jamieson & Smith’s 2 ply Shetland Supreme on 3.25 mm needles. The yarn, incidentally, is the one I had ordered for the Shetland Christening Dress that wasn’t white enough. For this project, it’s perfect! And, I should add, it’s a wonderful yarn to knit with.

I’ve found that after a couple of repeats, the pattern is an easy one to read and it’s working up fairly quickly. As always, with nupps, the secret to working them is to knit them loosely, very loosely. I’ve seen Ravelry projects where knitters have decided to use beads because they didn’t like making the nupps, but they truly are not difficult to do if you keep them loose.

Gardening. *big sigh* Yes, we’ve been gardening. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a garden. I’m a little disappointed. My seeds just didn’t start off as well as I had hoped they would. In all fairness, some of them were about 3 or 4 years old but even the seeds purchased this year just seem really slow to germinate.

I planted sweet peas under my kitchen window… an entire packet. One seed came up. Just one! I planted lettuce in the same bed. Nothing came up. Not a single plant. I had lettuce in starter pots. They came up and I put them in the garden last weekend. They don’t look like they’ll make it.

On the other hand, the basil that I started indoors and put in the ground last weekend is looking good and beginning to take off. The radishes and green onions are coming up and looking good. My little herb garden is thriving and I’ve already been trimming back the parsley and drying it.

Out in the big garden, the beans are looking good and the corn’s already up. A tomato, given to me by a co-worker, has numerous tomatoes just waiting to ripen. The strawberries are turning red finally, but the ones I’ve tried just don’t have the intense flavour they normally do. The weather’s just been too cold and the lack of sunshine has inhibited the sugars in the fruit.

We do know that everything is about three weeks behind this year. Even at the college (where John works as a gardener), everything is way behind compared to last year. He keeps a journal there; it’s interesting to look back and compare one year to the last.

And finally, today is World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIP Day). Our little Sit & Stitch group will be meeting at our usual location, but sitting out on the patio this time. I will not be among them. I will be going for my walk this morning (bought some running shoes this week… finally) and this afternoon, I will be herding bunnies here in the house. Dust bunnies, that is. They’ve taken over and we need the space!