This is sock pair #9 for this year. I chose another of my self striping yarns so I could knit while in the car. Also, because there is just so much going on that I need something that doesn’t take thinking. Today I used the pressure cooker again and I don’t leave the kitchen while using it or I may become distracted and bad things could happen. So I knit in the kitchen.
I did the cuff on this pair last month and then decided to make the purple pair instead. So I started Friday with the cuff already done and have been working on them in the car and in the kitchen. They will be my take along pair.
Other than the 2 hours spent walking my Fitbit steps, taking water to the bees, picking tomatoes, roasting a pan of cherry tomatoes, picking and freezing raspberries. freezing three trays of bananas and canning one load, I’m straining to remember what I did. Why does everything take so long? Not one of these was a big job.
Oh, yes, I selected fabrics for the scarf part of the “Knitters Gifts” quilt and will press them later this week. I prepared the pattern as it is a paper piecing pattern, and worked a bit on pillowcases, but didn’t actually finish any Perhaps that is why it seems I don’t get enough done, because I work on several projects instead of just one. I do so want to get back to embroidering. Patience, summer is only for anther month.
This is my vacation week. I will be using it for family time I made a potato salad for our picnic with Kati and Zach tomorrow. It’s really too bad we’ll all be involved in the activity without anyone to take photos. They are going to try to teach me to kayak. I am going to try, but I have no thoughts of being able to accomplish this. I may be spending a lot of time in the water. And I ‘m quite sure this will look very funny to others
Then the next two or 2.5 days, our Boston grandson will be here and we will be enjoying the Seattle Science Center with the three grandsons and a couple of our children. Our children so enjoyed it when they were young, maybe still do. I haven’t been there in a long time. Yes, summer is nearly over and the boys will be back in school and every activity available.
One of the things that I try to do is to be as truly prepared for winter as possible. If there is a snowstorm or a power outage, I don’t want to have to navigate the roads and I’m quite sure others don’t want me to either. I also stay home when the flu season is the worst.
I am thrilled to have enough hay now in the hay building for the animals. It was rather interesting since I have not purchased 2 ton for this location. The last bale barely fit into the building.
Add to animal feed, the people food. I have been freezing and canning all summer. We started with the berries and yesterday and today, I cooked some beans and canned them as well as picked 4 pints of green beans. Tomorrow I’ll pick more tomatoes and then can the green beans and tomatoes in the same load as they take fewer minutes. Pressure cooking just takes more time than water bathes. Here are today’s black beans, cannellini beans and some garbanzos. I love being able to just grab a pint of beans for a quick meal, so in September when the weather is a bit cooler, I’ll be putting up many more of these.
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I’m not sure what pattern I want to use on the stripped socks that I started yesterday, so I put them aside and started these purple ones instead. As you can see, I’ll have to be a speed demon to get them done by the end of the month and since there is gardening and watering to do, they probably won’t get finished this month. But then, I did get a cowl done this month, so maybe that counts as 1/2 a pair of socks.
These are from the volunteer tomatoes that I left in the greenhouse. This is a 2 gallon container, half full. I swore I would not keep anymore volunteers, but I’m about to relent and maybe keep 6 plants. They are so much earlier than the other tomatoes.
I bought a clove of Elephant garlic at the grocery store and saved 6 pieces to plant (outside) It did so well, I plant to put in even more this year. I’ll save back from these plants.
This normal looking garlic grouping has both some red and some white. I’m thinking I bought a small package of it for planting. But that was last fall and my mental computer fails me.
These little things are on the side of the normal garlic. Do you know, can I just plant them and expect garlic next year from them or are they seed and take two years. Maybe I should look that one up. OK looked that up and yes, I can plant it, but somewhere that it will have two years to grow. So that might be among other plants since the garlic does give off odor of which many bugs are not fond.
I put cabbage in the greenhouse this spring. My guess is that it was too warm in there for it as it didn’t grow well. So these are rather cute little “personal” sized cabbages. Next year after I get it started, I’ll put it out in the garden and put slug bait around it daily. Slugs got all the broccoli that I put out this year. But then I only put the bait out on a weekly basis and it rained profusely.
The lettuce is needing to be replanted this week in a different spot as it has become leggy with other plants shading it too much. So I’ll plant it where I took the cabbage out.
I could show you the raspberries, but I’m afraid the didn’t even hit the bowl. They were directly consumed. I like these plants that produce year after year without replanting.
Bantams at the age of 4 months already trying out their crowing sounds. It is rather funny listening to them learning the crow.
A still wet baby arrived and the mothers are co-parents. They shared setting duties and now the baby will be under one for awhile and then the other. There are 3 more eggs, so maybe each mom will get her own baby. Can you see the bantam mom in the back and the baby nearer to her? The eggs were from large chickens.
The other baby is an artichoke. I don’t know if it will grow larger or when the time to pick is so will wait and watch. I’m sorry, somehow I hit the gray setting on the camera.
The weeds grew so fast when the warm weather came, that we hired two fellows from the high school (couldn’t get them before school year ended). So they spent 7 hours here today with half of that cleaning out the chicken house and the other weed eating the weeds between the garden boxes. I’ll get a photo of that when the sun is shining. We zonked out today.
