Update

Wow! How did it get to be the end of June so fast? It seems like we just got out of school. Oh. Wait. We had so many snow days (not to mention the metal dectector days) that school wasn't out until June 13. Then a trip to visit The Brother, Youngest Niece and family, then a trip to the south with The Husband. Sheesh, catching up.

Here is the Peacock shawl.

Pattern: Osrtich plumes. The pattern is in the Knitters' Shawls and Scarves

Yarn: Knitpicks Shimmer in Turquoise Splendor

Needles: Options Wooden Size 5

Size: 24" by 85"

Notes: This was a lot of fun to knit. It looks really lacy but is a variation of the Feather and Fan stich, meaning there was really only patterning on every fourth row. Fairly mindless knitting as long as you check your stitch count after the pattern row. The yarn blocked out beautifully and is nice and warm for as lacy as it came out.

The roses are in my front and side yards. They must be some sort of antique rose because they smell delicious even from the kitchen.

Speaking of the kitchen, it's been a while since I added a recipe. This is one I worked out when I had some left over bread. It was really nice artisan french bread. After two days it had turned to styrofoam. I hated to throw it away and thought I would try bread pudding with it. I cut up the bread (well, it sort of shattered when I cut slices) into half inch or so pieces. Then I sprayed a caserole pan and added the bread. I mixed 4 eggs with 2 cups of skim milk and 2 cups of cream (that's what I had in the fridge that was about to out date), 1/3 cup sugar, about a half teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg (if you don't think there's a difference, smell the bottled stuff and then the freshly grated, go ahead, I'll wait.........see.) and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Pour that over the bread, cover the pan with saran wrap (or the glass lid that came with the casserole) and refrigerate over night. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and bake for about an hour, or until a knife inserted in th middle comes out more or less clean. Elder Son really liked this. Especially when I said it was good for breakfast. After all it has a lot less sugar than he usualy gets from Froot Loopys.

This is a package I got from Knitpicks with a birthday gift certificate from my Out West Friend. (My birthday was in March, but I spent a loooong time choosing the yarns I wanted). As I was taking the picture of the sealed box, The Husband was eating his lunch and squinted at me, then shook his head. Later I was reading Franklin's blog (May I call you Franklin? Thanks, I feel as though we are friends.) and Franklin had a picture of some yarn he had just received in the mail. Said The Husband, "Do you all do this? I wondered why you were taking a picture of yarn, but mine is not to reason why...."

You think he'd have figured it out by now. We are all nuts, in the nicest way possible of course.

This is the yarn and just at the bottom of the picture you can see a corner of one of the books. I got: Desiging your own Aran Sweater, Knitted Critters for Kids, and Nicky Epstein's Scarf book. Now I need more yarn.

In this haul I got some sock yarn, including some for summer socks, enough lace weight for two more shawls (one for YSS, Happy Birthday sweetie!) and the Autumn lace sampler just to play around with.

I thought I might try to get a head start on the Winter knitting and work on the things that will have to be mailed. This is for Great-Niece. I bought The Paper Bag Princess and this will be one of those cone shaped hats worn in the middle ages. I have a wonderful piece of sparkly pink veiling for the very top. I think this is the first thing I have knit that is supposed to be felted. Wish me luck.

The knitting to the right is a ribbon vest from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch. It is some Lion brand ribbon I found at the local dollar store. Whee! Name brands for cheap cost. Of course, I figured out that I would need 8 balls of yarn, so I bought 9 and half way up this side I had used 4. Which meant that I would only have one ball of ribbon left for the shoulders, front and back. Luckily while I was visiting Youngest Niece, she wanted to learn to knit and was willing to go on a yarn crawl. We found remaindered ribbon at a local craft store. It was the same dye way, but not the same lot. I figured that it would be close enough for a $13 vest.

Whew! Now we are mostly caught up. Do you think I could keep a resolution to post every Friday during the summer? We'll see.....

It's Hot!!!!

I used to love summer. All that time to read, knit and swim. But that was in the great north (as we call the town where we used to live, which was often the cold spot in the continental US) and summer temperatures rarely went higher than 80 degrees (27 Celsius). Now that we have moved south (not that far) and with global warming a normal summer temperature is 85 (29 Celsius) with a heat wave every two weeks and the heat wave is easily 90-95 degrees (32-35 Celsius). Yuk! And we don't have air conditioning in any room but the sewing room.....

In gardening news, I started to mulch the roses right outside my kitchen door, but somehow I hurt my knee. It was either Pre-school (man, those kids are short!) or kneeling on cement for four hours while I cleaned out the lavender beds. At any event, there hasn't been a lot of gardening. Last year YSS and I bought a beautiful blue planter that I wanted to make into a water feature on the back patio (this is really too grand a word for the paved area behind the house, but it gives the flavor of my plans). Yesterday I finally got a water lilly and some fish for it. One of the fish was floating this morning. Maybe I should have waited for the silt from the water lilly to settle before adding fish?

On the knitting front I am headed for my brother's house next weekend and Youngest Niece wants to learn to knit. I gave her lots of info and some yarn for the Winter Excess Holidays and now I'll have a chance to sit down with her and knit in person. I have nearly finished the Turquoise Splendor shawl. The goal for today is to finish the edging and block. Whee!

As for Quilting, well I have good intentions. Eldest Niece's quilt is out and all the plans are suitably enlarged, I even cut out 150 grapes. And that is where the quilt stopped. Crud, I just remembered that one of my goals was to have her quilt ready to applique when I go south (lots of air conditioning) with The Husband. Due to some schedule changes of his, that will be in 11 days! I have to finish Little Guy's quilt (finish? Ha! Start!) so I can take it to him next weekend. It's a good thing this is the last week of school.