Socks!

The afghan I am working on is proceeding slowly, but in the meantime, I finished the first pair of socks I have knitted in over a year!

The repeat was so large in this yarn that I would have had to splice the yarn somewhere, so I just knitted an asymmetric pair.  The yarn is some Sockotta I picked up from a sale table at Stitches about two years ago for only $5 a skein.  Sockotta can seem hard to knit unless you have the right needles (bamboo or wood are horrible for this) since it has a lot of cotton in it.  I've used it to make several pairs of socks for the girls, and they say it is comfortable to wear.

In future sweater news, the two sweaters that I have enjoyed the most out of the 9 or so sweaters I made recently are the pink jacket and the aqua lace.

I have plans to make more of these.  The aqua one would look nice in a purple, and I want to make the eyelet jacket in a cocoa brown and other colors.  The aqua one could be done in different lace stitches so I will have to look through my stitch dictionaries and get some ideas.

Vegetable Garden

This year we are expanding the vegetable garden.  Most of the new space came from back of the yard which used to be covered in awful ivy.  It took months for the spouse to dig it up and take down the old fence it was growing on, but now it is wide open and sunny back there.  There is a chainlink fence dividing us from the back neighbors, and they have said that they hate the fence and will replace it at some point, but in this economy, that may take years.  I've always wanted a chainlink fence to grow things on, so this year I'm planting the squashes and some sweet peas (flower) along there.  The added benefit is that it may shield us from the attempted attacks of their dog, Oscar.  Maybe if he can't see us, he'll ignore us.

Yesterday I got started on the seed starting.  So far, there are sweet peas and lettuces sprouting, but today I'll get going on the squashes and cucumbers.Here are some views of the garden in its wild spring state before the weeding and plowing.

The first climbing rose of the year bloomed this week. I think this is Pinata.

Projects in the Works

Sometimes it is Spring here, and sometimes it is rainy winter, so not much happening on the 'getting the garden going' front.  I have all my seeds but need to get them started.  Inside, there are lots of projects continuting:

The 'Use Up The Leftovers' Afghan

Trying to be efficient about it

A Dark Orchid V-Neck pullover

Socks for A

  It's been a long time since I felt like knitting socks but I'm on a roll now.  The second pair were originally a 'toe-up' pair with the first sock half completed.  I guess I wasn't in the mood for toe-up because those poor socks had been sitting untouched for over a year.  Since it was time to be ruthless, I ripped them out and started again.  I'm a little annoyed with this Sockotta color because the color repeat is so large.  Maybe that was why it was on the sale table at Stitches. I decided not to stress over it and just make some mismatched socks.  My daughter doesn't care, and you can't be perfectly symmetric all the time.  Or so I am telling myself.