Bastille Day and knitting

It just seemed appropriate to show some knitting in honor of Bastille Day. Madame Defarge checking in here...this is a Log Cabin piece, technique swiped from Mason Dixon Knitters, it's all their fault.

It's also a new addiction. I made a nice lap robe for HP using various cotton yarns, good for summer, and now I'm using part of a wonderful stash of pure wool I got at the local thrift recently. Great haul, mostly very good quality, very fresh smelling, unused, labels still in place and all that.

This green is so old that it's still called ombre! not self striping, and the label is that of a department store that was defunct about thirty years ago. The prices on some of the yarns are hilarious, too, definitely nostalgic. A nice find, and it saves a ton of harvesting, too.

About Log Cabin: it's one of those things that you get into while you're wondering what to knit next. Once you get going, you do it however you want to -- this time I did a diagonal square for the center and went from there, the yarn being busy enough not to need much more in the way of fancy steps. Not sure what it is going to be yet. It might be a blanket. Or an afghan. Or pillow cover. Or possibly a hot dish holder thing. It all depends on how I feel and how my hands hold up.

Honestly speaking, I'm probably doing this as a delaying tactic before getting back to my Hard Knitting, the Cardi Cover, which is not as hard as I thought at first, but it is still big..I need to have the heatwave firmly behind us before I proceed with it. And I bravely undid half a mat thing which I was liking less and less as I went along, decided life was too short, and there were other uses for the yarn.

Knitting simpler stuff is a great tranquillizer and there are days when that's just what I need around here.

But, on the subject of Getting Out and Doing Stuff: Yesterday Corelli was the target of the Dynamic Duo recorder players, as I seized the chance to get over to Stefi's and play duets. It is such a high point to do that, great fun, she is the best company, aside from being a pretty good musician into the bargain.

Poor Corelli survived our onslaughts more or less. We played a few earlier pieces, too, Elizabethan and Restoration, including a few I played on the flute in the recent past, and I had to womanfully avoid playing flute fingering out of force of habit. This is either very good for your brain or it makes it smoke with effort, one of the two. I believe there are people who think that the smoking-with-effort is itself good, but I dunno.

And the stephanotis finally woke up and has been putting out a ton of new foliage and buds galore, a little group of which have opened up, after I wondered if was ever going to do anything.



I had tended it all winter, no movement in any direction, not growing, not wilting, just sitting there as if it was waiting for a bus to come along.

I read that it's not easy to get it to flower again a second year, so I feel quite obnoxiously happy that it is doing so.



I also read that it grows like a weed and you have to contain it with a framework, which I'm not in too much danger of just yet.

And I wondered, while wandering around the patio, three steps in each direction, how come my wildflower containers, while very pretty, all kinds of colors, were only blossoming for a single day. I'd admire something and next day it was gone. Not withered, just gone. Until now I looked out and there was a squirrel sitting on the rim of a pot, holding a flowerhead like a pizza in his paws, munching straight through it. I seem to have planted a squirrel cafeteria.

One of the things I like about the flower carpet deal is that it's largely wildflowers and old fashioned seeds in the mix. I don't think gardening is about novelty, but about preserving as much as growing. Evidently the squirrels share my taste, since they have never bothered eating the other flowers at all, just the traditionally flavored ones.