Gardening and knitting

 I love it when my garden begins to show signs of being ready for harvesting. I've picked several tomatoes already, which is about two weeks ahead of schedule. I've canned a few pints and will can more in the next few weeks.

I came upon a recipe online for oven-roasted tomato sauce. It sounds so delicious, and I love the way roasting vegetables brings out their sweetness (Have you ever tried roasting together potato chunks and butternut squash chunks, with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper sprinkled on them before popping them into the oven? Really, really tasty), so I'm eager to try roasting some of my own.

The tomatoes that aren't fully ripe when I pick them I put into a brown paper bag with a banana or two. The bananas will hasten the ripening of the tomatoes.

Green peppers? Love 'em. I chop them up, place on a single layer on a baking sheet, freeze them for an hour or so, then dump them into freezer bags and put them back into the freezer. This gives me chopped green peppers to use in chili, dynamites, rice pilaf, etc., all winter long.

Last fall for the first time I planted some garlic. I wasn't sure what soil conditions would work best, so I planted the cloves of one bulb in my vegetable garden and the cloves of the other bulb in my flower garden. The vegetable garden tends to be must wetter than the flower garden.

I harvested the garlic two weeks ago and can see that the vegetable garden was the preferred spot for growing garlic. The bulbs now hanging in the basement to dry before cutting off the stocks and roots. I'm a little disappointed in the size of the bulbs, but maybe I'll get a better crop next year. I love garlic. If a recipe calls for two garlic cloves, I add four. That sort of thing.

And knitting. Yes, I've been knitting, of course. This little girl's shrug is called "Entrechat." I found the pattern on Ravelry and immediately bought and downloaded it.

It was a quick, easy knit, an all-in-one, top-down design, so there were no seams to sew up once it was finished. I haven't chosen just the right button for it yet. I'm thinking something with a little bling will be just the ticket.

This is a size 3-4, but the pattern ranges from 0-3 months to 5-6 years, so I should be able to make a lot of these very feminine shrugs for various little girls, current and future!

So that's what I'm up to currently.

Two weddings

It's a drizzly, rather depressing day here in Maine, so I thought I'd brighten things up a bit by talking about weddings.

Two weddings: one on August 2, the other on August 9.

But here's the kicker: The mother of the bride on August 2, and the mother of the groom on August 9, was one person: my niece Cheryl.

I'm pleased to say she survived this intensely emotional time in fine style, and she's now breathing normally again.

The first wedding, the August 2 one, with Ashton and Eric as bride and groom, was held in a church in Boothbay Harbor. Very pretty wedding, very pretty bride, glowing groom.

The second wedding, the August 9 one, with Benjamin and Allison as groom and bride, was held at the bride's parents' home, on Southport Island, near Boothbay Harbor. There's nothing like having the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop.

The weather was perfect for both weddings. As we sat in our chairs waiting for the second ceremony to begin, a gentle ocean breeze caressed us and hummingbirds worked at the flowers along the shoreline.

Ben and Allison's golden doodle, Bode, attended his parents' ceremony. Can you see him intently listening to the words they're speaking? He's at the far right.

I loved the way Allison's veil drifted in the ocean breeze. As you can see, this wedding also featured a very pretty bride. She and Ben radiated happiness.

Here's Bode leaving the ceremony. I found it touching that Ben and Allison's beloved dog got to witness the wedding.

We have no more weddings on the horizon, as far as we know.

These two were a lovely addition to our summer, though. We enjoyed being a part of the celebration, and we know we have two wonderful new family members.

50th

I graduated from high school in 1964. That was 50 years ago.

I know! I know! It seems more like twenty years, tops, but it was, indeed, fifty years ago.

We've had two reunions since 1964: a 25th, which I attended, and a 40th, which I did not attend.

In April of this year, I said I would attend the 50th.

Then I began to get cold feet. My cold feet were due, mainly, to vanity: I figured I was the only one in my class who had aged and looked to be nearing 70.

Early in the week of the reunion, I told Ken I definitely did NOT want to attend. He tried to urge me to go; I said no, I was fine with not going.

By Friday I was having second thoughts and told Ken I would like to go after all.

The first photo shows all of us who attended. Before you express shock at the low turn-out, you should know there were ten (yes, 10) in my graduating class. One was killed in a car accident four years after graduation. Two or three of the graduates didn't attend the reunion. Three who didn't actually graduate but who attended most years of high school did attend.

So there were ten of us at the reunion, and our spouses.

The top photo is of all of us in attendance; the second is a photo of me with my good friend, John. I hadn't seen John since the 25th reunion.

The black and white photo shows us as kindergartners, I think, or maybe first-graders. Six of the ten who attended the reunion are in this photo; I can't identify everyone, so maybe there are more than six of us shown here.

My best friend Elaine. in the middle of this photo above, was my dearest friend from kindergarten to senior year. We phoned each other each night during elementary school to choose our outfits for the next day. We phoned each other every night during high school to try to solve overwhelming algebra, geometry, and calculus problems.We've kept in touch all these years, and Elaine still phones me when she comes to Maine.

I left our little reunion feeling really glad that I had attended after all. For one thing, it was great seeing everyone and catching up on their lives. Fifty years melted away just like that as we reminisced about our school years and our teachers. (For another, joy filled my heart when I noticed they have aged, too!)

Finished!

You'll recall, I'm sure, my unfortunate start with the Brynna cardigan. It was on July 1 and 2 that I spent my time unhappily untangling that first hank of yarn and winding it into a ball.

As I prepared the remaining hanks for my ball winder, I was much, much more careful to make sure all systems were "go" before my hand touched the ball winder.

It's now July 23 and Brynna is completed! She's even been soaked and blocked.

I'm pleased with the outcome. I'm not pleased with these photos, though, because I took them with a ceiling light on, and the artificial light gives the cardigan a pale yellowish-tan color. Brynna is actually a "natural," as you can see in the top photo of the tangled yarn.

I purchased a total of six hanks of Cascade Ultra Pima and used almost all of five hanks. The final photo below shows you how much of the fifth hank is left over. It and the sixth, full hank will  make a nice, soft baby sweater, I believe.

So that's that. On to my next knitting project, which is as yet undecided upon.

Gettin' there

Brynna is beginning to look a bit like a cardigan.

After the unfortunate beginning, when the first skein turned on me, requiring five solid hours of untangling, things have moved along more or less smoothly.

There was that one incident yesterday, when I discovered that in my zeal to finish this project before August 2, I'd knit WAY past the point where I was supposed to have added 93 stitches to the row.

Frustrating? You betcha. I had to ravel out something like 18 rows, add the 93 stitches, pick up my pride, dust it off, and continue on once again.

Today I decided to add a few more rows after lunch. What I didn't bother to do was look at my notes to see which row I should be knitting. I knit a pattern row when I should have knitted a plain knit row. %@#&%^$@#

But as you can see, the left side has a sleeve now, and the right front will have a sleeve before long, if the forces are with me.

After the sleeves are in, I'll then add a peplum-effect lace edging to the bottom, and finally a lace edging around the entire opening. In other words, there's still a lot of knitting to be done.

I'll get there eventually.

Garden Report: So far, so good

 My vegetable garden is off to a great start this summer.

I've picked a lot of kale. I love it in green salads. (The other night I used it in a spaghetti dish: Sauté some garlic and onions in olive oil, boil some chopped-up kale for a few minutes, remove kale from water and add it to the olive oil/onions/garlic, then add lemon juice; boil spaghetti in the kale water. Combine the sautéed garlic/onion/kale mixture and the drained spaghetti, sprinkle spaghetti with grated Parmesan cheese. Voila! A tasty dish.

I've already picked one green pepper, although it is quite early to harvest peppers in these parts. The past two years I've used the Epsom salt trick to get a better green pepper yield: Mix one tablespoon of Epsom salt in 32 oz. water. Spray pepper plants soon after setting seedlings in the ground, then spray again two weeks later.  This causes the plants to yield a lot more peppers. I think, if I remember correctly, it's the magnesium in the Epsom salt that is doing the trick. I chop and freeze most of our green peppers and use them throughout the winter.

I have two beds of garlic. This is my first year trying garlic, so I put one bed in my regular garden area and another in my flower garden. I'm not sure which area will yield the better crop, but time will tell.

The tomato plants, all 18 of them, are developing well. Ditto for the cucumbers and zucchini. I'm especially hopeful to have a good tomato crop this year, because last year's was a bust. I can tomatoes to use in various dishes all winter long. I guess I could purchase canned tomatoes just as easily, or even more easily, but home canned tomatoes have much, much better flavor than the store-bought ones. My friend Lynn has made this claim for years, and I thought she was imagining the difference. Then I purchased some canned tomatoes from the store this past winter. Yuck! There's no comparison.

And finally, to add a little anxiety to my gardening adventures, I spotted this critter looking longingly at  my garden early this morning. There's a second deer hiding in the bushes behind this one. I didn't realize that until I shooed the first one back into the woods. Here's hoping they'll stay out of my garden this summer.

No diamond ring for me

My hand-cranked yarn winder and I have, or at least I thought we had, a friendly relationship. I treat it well; it treats me well. Or at least it did treat me well.

On Tuesday afternoon, without so much as a hint that something was wrong, it turned on me. Boy, did it turn on me! I was blindsided.

The trouble began when I placed on it one of five skeins of Cascade Ultra Pima Cotton, a delicious yarn that I couldn't resist when Margaret and I visited The Ball and Skein in Kennebunkport a couple of weeks ago.

I've knitted with Cascade Ultra Pima before, to make two Chic Knits Brynna  sweaters. (I like the longer style of this sweater, with below-the-elbow sleeves and without those silly thingamajigs connecting the front openings.)

So I decided to knit another Brynna, this one in the "natural" colorway. I have two weddings to attend in August, so a new Brynna will be just the ticket to wear with a yet-to-be-determined dress.

Anyway, to get to the point. I put that first skein of Ultra Pima on the yarn winder, started cranking away, and suddenly all h-e-double-hockey-sticks broke loose. I don't know what happened. All I know is I was suddenly staring in disbelief at a huge pile of what looked to be spaghetti. Or spaghetti vomit, if you will.

I didn't panic. I calmly told myself I could untangle this mess by hand.

So at 3:30 p.m. I started untangling.

At 6:30 p.m. I decided to give myself a break.

The next morning, at 5:00 (because the dog wanted to get up at 5:00), I resumed untangling.

At 7:00 a.m. I finished the chore. Hallelujah.

Five hours to rescue one skein of 200 yards of yarn.

Ken marveled at my patience. He said he would've thrown the yarn vomit into the trash.

Apparently Ken wasn't raised to be frugal. I was. And at $10/skein, I wasn't about to throw away one skein of my delicious Cascade Ultra Pima.

I was hoping to find a diamond ring in the pile of yarn vomit, but alas....

Anyway, yesterday I cast on 99 stitches, and so far it's smooth sailing. (Note the correctly wound cake of yarn next to the hand-wound one. The second skein of Cascade Ultra Pima behaved as it should on the winder.)