Saltwater Purls

Brother and sister

We often get asked how Finlay gets on with his sister. Mostly he ignores her as she is no help in getting into mischief...otherwise he is very sweet, though a little rough. Here is mostly informs us that the toys are 'For Adelaide' and he names the beasts 'Elephant, duck, rabbit'....the rhino throws him a little.

Digging Up Some Good Dirt

When you last saw the vege garden it was too BIG. I took one layer of boards off and it looked much better. Next we had to fill it with dirt....a dirty job but someone had to do it. Finally the fun part...planting veges! We have such a short growing season that I like to start with plants where possible. I do have some bean, corn and squash seeds planted, otherwise you are looking at basil, thyme, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, red cabbage, crinkly lettucs and a miniture pear tree.

Finlay was extremely helpful and had a lot of opinions on the dirt

Finally I wanted to show you this part of the backyard when we moved in...

Sleeve Island

Sleeve island, sleeve island

What a wonderful place to be

The beaches are the colour of peaches

There by a turqouise sea, oh my

Under a blue, blue sky

Pretty in Pink

Adelaide has recieved her share of gifts as well. I wanted to blog abut two special ones. Great Grandma Cathy made her a quilt. Great Grandma Cathy does a lot of machine embroidery and our house is adorned with a lot of her work....so Adelaide very lucky to recieve this....each square is adorned with a different embroidery (my favourite is the footprint...but being a photographer on the run these days did not take a picture of it).

And my friend Marie knit Adelaide a sweet bonnet in delicious Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. Perfect for May showers....

hmmmmm...pretty

I've been bitten badly by the silver bug....once I see how things are made, a whole new world opens up I want to explore. I've almost had my fill of rings  (I still have two in the works to finish though)...claws fittings are next on my list of things to do. Anyway here are my first two rings...

The Star Ruby (can you see the star, can you, can you)

The Boulder opal with hammered ring shank (my jewelery Earth contribution).

The return of things that go ugh in the night

I loved the way Viktor turned out...that Tapestry is some mighty pretty stuff...it works magic so easily. I wanted Viktoria. I have had 'Road to Golden' in my queue for a little while and figured it was a good fairilse pattern to use. I also had some kid classic left over from the teapot fiasco and from sale bins. What better reason to buy more Rowan Tapestry?

Well best laid plans and all that. Ugh. What went wrong? Well an examination of the FOs on Ravelry and I realised that the diamonds needed to be dark and the background light. Tapestry was a mixture of light and dark and just didn't work... the kid classic was scrumptious though. I went back to the shade card.

Now that's better (a sweater is really just a giant swatch). I dub thee sea-to-sky highway.

Frogging Garden Style or What was she thinking?

When we were looking for houses I wanted one with a nice sunny backyard, a vege garden and an exit from the back of the house. This turned out to be difficult in the entry level price range...see Michiganders don't go into their backyards for 1/2 the year so why have a back exit (now I'll get rotten fruit thrown at me but I swear most houses=no backdoor). Vege gardens were very rare (I think I saw two behind over 50 houses). So when we found a house with the potential for a great backyard...all I had to do was build my own raised beds...simple.

Three years later we broke ground for the vege garden.

Brought a load of wood

Finlay reminds you to always wear safety glasses when using powertools

As I was building it, hubby kept saying 'its too tall'. 'Nah...look I can reach the beds kneeling'. 'Its too tall'. I refused to see it until I was inside screwing in one of the last screws and I glanced at the wheelbarrow (means by which the compost will travel around from the front yard where it will be delivered). I did a little calculation of how many wheelbarrow-fulls I needed (about one million) and realised....its too big.

To Be Continued...

Viktory in completing an Earth Element

Hubby gets to celebrate the arrival of Spring and warm weather.

The Pattern: Viktor from Rowan Magazine 40
The Yarn: Cascade 220 wool in colourway 9338 (a heathered green) and Rowan Tapestry in colourway 170 (country)
Words of Wisdom: I reversed the colours so the main colour was plain and the fairisle colour was the stripey Tapestry. I think this muted the business of the orignal sweater and it definitely reduced the cost. It also meant the pattern needed to be for a worsted wieght yarn rather than a DK so I adjusted the gauge accordingly. By complete accident the ending of pattern on the sleeves matched the ending of the pattern on the front and back. Hubby has been wearing this already and it looks very nice on  (I haven't had time for a photo shoot).