String Notes

I took a four-day weekend. My mother came to town on Thursday, and this required half a day of frantic efficient housecleaning, so I just took the day off. We shopped for plants, and food (and ate very well over the weekend – Nick is an excellent cook). More on the plants later. My mother and I worked outdoors, and she pulled phenomenal quantities of ivy. For some reason she likes doing that, though she assures me that I don’t have to keep any around just for her.

Between the two of us (by which I mean mostly her), the ivy has been pulled up around two and a third of the sides of the house where it needs to go. Some areas have been cleared twice, and are looking rather ivyless – it seems there’s hope!

That bush is of course a redbud and I apparently had complete and utter brain failure, since I even knew it was a redbud. Here’s the new leaves to confirm:

Sunday afternoon while Nick did this (he’s on the right, in the blue):

I finished this:

The first of the pair is done, and the second has been cast on. I apparently got a bit carried away with the color patterns and made the heel flap too long, but it will work anyway. Of course now I need to make them both like that so they match.

When I sat down last week to write the next section of the Thinking about Knitting article, I realized that I had managed to completely muck up the purl shots. I don’t know what I was thinking, but that isn’t any way to make a purl stitch… I retook them today, so the article should appear shortly.

And finally, for Tamie:

Morgan is dutifully mowing the tops off my pinks so they stay nice and even. He’s a weird cat.