It's Almost Time for School....

School starts on Wednesday and I can't wait!! Isn't that horrible? My little boy is starting pre-kindergarten and I am really, really looking forward to a whole 2.5 hours ALL TO MYSELF every week day!

It seems like I haven't gotten a whole lot done in the 20+ days since I've blogged (sorry about that, Mom!) but I guess I have. One of the things I did was to move my considerable paperback book collection from the living room to the wonderful bookcase in the dressing area. I moved my knitting and quilting books into the living room instead, and I'm happier with the arrangement so far.

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I managed to finish my Concentric Squares quilt a couple of weeks ago.




I started this quilt in 2002 (I think), at a workshop with Mary Ellen Hopkins. It was a fabulous weekend, full of sewing and laughing. I think this might be my first finished quilt from that workshop. How pathetic is that?!? I have a bad habit of wanting to make everything queen size, but I think I'm pretty much over that now. Too many quilts in the house!

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Before we left for Idaho I ordered 4 onces of super-wash merino roving, and I managed to finish it earlier this week.


The final weight was 3.8 ounces and I got 367 yards from it. That put it solidly in the sport weight range which is a little disappointing because I was shooting for fingering-weight yarn, but that's all right. It's still beautiful.

Unfortunately it's not right for the project I had in mind so I'll have to spin up something else instead. (Ow, ow, twist my arm! LOL!)

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I lost my mind and signed up for not one, not two, but THREE projects for the Ravelympics that started this morning. One hand spinning project, one shawl project, and one cowl project. The shawl project is about 2/3 designed so far, and I managed to swatch last night. (Swatching is considered "training" and I should've been training and designing for this project last week instead of last night.)

Here's my (kind of out of focus) swatch:


I'm basing it off the wonderful Faroese-style shawls in Myrna Stahman's book, Stahman's Shawls and Scarves.

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I'm making progress on my Pay it Forward projects, but I'm not going to give any more details until things are done and received. I just want to let my PIF people know that I haven't forgotten you!

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Our garden project has done wonderfully!

We started with this:

And now (or last week, actually) we have this:

The birdhouse gourd vine is going crazy, and actually has four good-sized gourds right now.

In the front yard, we actually had a recognizable chrysalis from a Black Swallowtail butterfly!

We planted parsley last year with the hopes of attracting that type of butterfly and we got to watch numerous crops of caterpillars decimate the parsley. It came back every time and survived the winter, so we've had a good time watching them again. Be sure to click on the picture and you can see the filament holding the chrysalis in place.

One of this summer's projects was redoing the front planting bed and adding an island, and we're mostly done! Here's how it looks now:

I'm so thrilled! It makes me really happy to look at it. We put in a red flowering Dogwood so it should be pretty spectacular in the next few years.

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I had a couple of more things I wanted to post about but I think I'm done for now (and I'll bet you are, too!).

I'm going to try to be better about posting more frequently. Now if only I had 20 more hours in a day I might get everything done that I want!

Have a great weekend, everyone!