7.9 And on the knitting front...

I've started one of the Eugen Beugler stoles from Best of Shawls and Scarves, the Corner to Corner one. I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr. The corner went pretty quickly, but now I'm on the full length side-to-side on a diagonal and the rows are longer.

7.8 Spinning on the wheel and spindles

On the wheel is a batt of merino and angelina.

(the batt)


The red is tussah silk from Just Our Yarn (the neverending 3.5 oz I bought almost a year ago - this is what's left of the first half of it.)



And the blackberry English longwool from Freyalyn, which I misplaced months ago and just recently found again.

7.6 Lily forest stage 3

The lily forest is moving along through the bloom cycles. The Asiatics are all blooming now, both in the front bed and in the window bed. The ones in the front bed are the "pastel Asiatic mix", while the ones in the window bed are all Tango lilies.

Some of the pastels up close:

And a closer look at the Tango bed:

Cathy, this is the first of your babies to bloom this year:

7.5 Wheel spinning

Autumn fiber from Cloverleaf Farms:

Spun up to be:

Giving me two bobbins:

One bobbin to go.

7.4 spindlespun

Today's spindle spinning comes via the LDRS 28 rocket launch. We drove down to a farm in Potter where we got to watch all sorts of hi-power model rockets going off. Most of them went up and came down as planned which was fun. Some of them went up and came down not as planned, which was sometimes more fun.

I got a bunch of spindle spinning done while I watched.

6.29 Red lilies

Red Carpet Lily


Not Red Carpet Lily


They're both nice lilies, just not the same.

We have deer here, but by the time the lilies are up and vulnerable, the woods are green and attractive. You notice all of my lily pictures are at the front of the house. The garden at the back of the house is surrounded by a low fence which any deer would laugh at except that it smells like Dog inside (and often has a noisy pesky dog inside). Not quite attractive enough to come into the yard, except in the winter with lots of snow covering everything. Two years ago they pruned my weeping willow, pinched off all the ends of my red twig dogwood (both of which are outside the fence) and just about killed several of the neighbor's arbor vitae hedge which he had just put in.

6.27 Blooms and irritations

The lily forest has started blooming - the Asiatics, as expected are first. The ones to the left, just starting, are the red carpet lilies. The ones in the center are the "ones that were sold to me as red carpet lilies, but aren't". This year the differences are even more apparent; not only are the blooms more orange and more broadly shaped, the plants are almost half again as tall as the red carpets.
I don't dislike the plants for themselves, but for the fact that they don't make the nice border all the way across that I originally envisioned. (I don't dislike them enough to rip them out and start over, but just enough that I will whine about it each year when they get to this point.)
In the back you can see that the Tango lilies in front of the window have just started blooming - the orange ones are always first.

My crankiness level is way up since I started breaking out with poison ivy on my face yesterday. I'm not a happy camper, just itchy.