Fresh garden salad, and the lonely bootie...

I hadn't planned on taking a picture of part of our dinner. If I had, I would have used the blue bowl (nicer colour contrast) but as I looked at this salad I was rather pleased that it all came from my garden, and that seemed to make it look tastier (ranch dressing helps too!)

Have I ever mentioned my food scale and how much I love it. I use it all the time in the kitchen, but also, occasionally for yarn. Here are the booties I've been working on. Actually I started and finished the one while I was in Philadelphia, but didn't think I had enough yarn left to make the second so I never cast on. Also, I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's kindof huge. Maybe I'm delusional about the size of baby feet, but seriously this thing looks like it would fit a 2 year old (I made the three to six month old size, and even used suggested yarn weight, although not exact yarn I substituted worsted weight cotton for worsted weight cotton which the pattern says is totally acceptable, and used the suggested needle size...no actual gauge was given). So maybe I am baby size delusional.

Anyways, the weight of the booty and extra yarn is 22g.The finished (but not seamed) booty is 15g....uh-oh...Yes, as suspected, (like I needed the scale when it was this obvious) the remaining yarn is only 6 grams. :-( A forever lonely booty.
Since these little projects are just my "guesses" for a friend who is pregnant, but waiting till birth to find out the sex of the baby, I thought I might just seam up the single booty (or bootie, I couldn't figure out what the correct spelling was of the single form of booties) and maybe fill it with some baby stuff, like maybe a pacifier, or a little washcloth, perhaps a knit washcloth...I already made a hot pink baby bib, that was my "girl" guess, so now this is my "boy" guess. What can I make next? I'm working on a couple of other things, but they're longer term, and I need lot's of super quick, (and inexpensive...dishcloth cotton or stash busters are perfect) little things to make and keep giving every month(ish) I've fallen behind...this is only my second thing and she's almost 1/2 way there!

Our house

I thought I would share a few pictures of our new house...sort of a photo tour...since the knitting is coming along so slowly (but really, I'm only 4cm from the underarms of my brown silk top...then I knit the sleeves and join it all together and should be almost done!...someday :-)

Here is our house from the street. I took this about a month before we moved in, because I wanted a picture with the sold sign on it.So, when you walk in the front door, there is a fairly large entrance with the closet and stairs right in front of you. A little further in and to the left is the small bathroom, another closet and the garage door.
If you keep going straight (don't turn left for the bathroom) then you end up in the open space of the livingroom/kitchen/dining area. Here's the first thing you see. That's our new couch and chair...I looooove them! So comfy, and I've wanted brown leather forever!

While you're standing in the entrance to the living room you can also step left into the kitchen...this view is from the other side, of my sweetie doing the kitchen clean up for us :-). The archway is right beside the fridge.

See it's all sort of open. He was really not enjoying my photographic tour. :PLittle kitchen table area with the patio doors to outside are right "behind" the kitchen and beside the livingroom.
This little area is sort of directly behind the couch and chair. It's a long narrow room, the couch and chair are set to look at the corner fireplace (that's the reason for the strange angle) and the TV is on top of the fireplace. I thought I would make the area by the windows a little reading area. The furniture doesn't quite give that feeling, but someday (a long long time from now) they'll be replaced with something that screams "turn the tv off and come sit and read...or KNIT". My plants by the way, seem to be loving that location, it's such a nice bright room.
I just realized that I only took pictures of the main floor..ha! We DO have bedrooms and an office (3rd bedroom made into office) upstairs.
Anyways, on with the tour! If you look out those windows by the reading chairs, or step out the patio doors from the eating area you end up here, on the back deck. It is shaped the same as the back of the house, and I find it rather interesting in a good way. The previous owner left all sorts of scraps of wood, old garden tools, bags of half saturated concrete sand etc stuffed under the deck. It will take us a while to get everything cleaned up and looking the way we want, but it will happen...one thing at a time. :-)
And lastly, here is a view from the back deck, out into the back yard. It's a decent size, much bigger than most of the houses we looked at. The lots in town now are very small. So, we are right in town, but if you look behind you see all those trees! That's because directly behind our back fence is a paved path that leads to the (mostly) city wide multi-use path system, for biking, walking, running, rollerblading etc. There is a ravine that runs just in behind those trees, and the path meets up the the Thames river and weaves it's way along beside it for much of the distance. (The Thames river unfortunately is so heavily polluted that you wouldn't even want to stick your baby toe in :-( I really miss living by the St.Laurence river back home, where I could just jump in...but, at least the Thames is still pretty to look at)And that concludes my photo tour. We still have to paint almost the whole house, as the previous owners were pretty tough on the paint job, there are marks everywhere, and I'm not hanging pictures until that's done. So it's pretty bare looking...but starting to feel more homey everyday :-)

Counting small successes

Here are some pics of my square foot gardens. I followed the book directions pretty closely, except that I couldn't get vermiculite in anything larger than an itty bitty bag, so I had to substitute perlite. I know, how disappointing but it was that, or forget about the whole thing! I think it's turned out rather well. Except for the pesky earwigs, ewww gross, why oh why are there so many earwigs, and why do they want to eat all our food!?!?!

Here is some lettuce, spinach, panseys (just cuz I like them), and carrots. I have a few extra squares open now because we've harvested the radishes, and I moved the two big tomato plants to separate planters....I've got to get around to planting those extra squares, it would probably only take me 5 minutes..ha!

The cucumbers and sugar snap peas are climbing...
Close up of the sugar snap peas, they are just starting to appear since I got them in a little late.
Some beafsteak tomatoes, these plants I started from seed, so I'm super hopeful for them.

More lettuce, this grand rapids variety has done really well, much better than the iceburg which seems more delicate in the July heat
The start of the green peppers, I've got a lot of little beginnings on the red bell peppers too, these plants were purchased, I tried to start from seed but had no luck.
Some tomato blooms, I'm soon to be overrun by tomatoes I think...I'm ok with that :-)
The first of the cucumbers to be harvested, these are a pickling variety, I picked up the plant for 49 cents, along with an english cucumber plant because I was worried that the ones I started from seed wouldn't survive, turns out, they all did..ha! I don't even know how to make pickles :-)
The first english cucumber, hopefully there will be more where this one came from.

Yes, more cucumber blossoms, I can't begin to tell you how many cucumber blossoms there are!
The first roma tomatoes, and there are lots of them, all green still, but lots of them...these are the ones for sauce, but I'm not sure which type I'm supposed to use for salsa...anybody know?
Here's a view from the back deck, two large roma tomato plants in huge planters, then two square foot garden boxes, complete with supports and chicken wire cages to keep the squirrels out. I have more of a squirrel problem than a bunny problem so far...pesky black squirrels, they've not found their way around the chicken wire thankfully, and we have far less a this house than at the last place.Well, that's my garden tour. :-) I've got a few house pics for you too...but I thought I had better save those for another post :-D

Thank you Jen!

So, when we picked up the mail yesterday there was a key in the mailbox, a key for a different larger parcel box mail box. Imagine my excitement. I love getting mail (good mail...no..no more bills!). We're still getting used to having one of those big mailbox units at the end of the street with everyones little box in it. Anyways, enough ramble!

Inside the box was a birthday and new house gift from Jen, my knitting buddy and literary advisor ;-) She picked two books for me (I've loved all the suggestions so far), along with a letter telling a bit about where she came across them and why she liked them. This is so cool!
And look what else she included! How cute is this bag, I love it, and I have nothing (NOTHING) that is anything like this, and I have really noticed it lately and started searching for just such a thing....spooky almost isn't it...heheheeh now I'm just silly
Just look at the inside fabric, and how similar it is to the new wall colour I painted in the office. The fabric is a bit richer, and a bit more blue... but it's pretty close.
Here is a shot of it done up, I love (love a lot) the bright swirly fabric, what a great gift! Thank you sooo much Jen, you rock! :-D
On a smaller note, I went for a walk with H after dinner tonight, the local multi-use path system runs just behind our house so it's wonderful. Look what I found on the way back. I have never ever seen one that I can remember in my entire life, but here is it, a four leaf clover. I wasn't even looking really, I just sort of glanced through for a few seconds and it caught my eye.
I thought this extremely special, but then a few minutes later, my hubby found a 6 leaf clover..now who's ever heard of that, and what sort of mutating pesticide are they using around here :-)
For the record I still think my four leaf clover is more special, because clearly the six leaf clover is just two that somehow got stuck together at birth :P

We've moved!

Well, we're finally moved...I've found my camera...but not the batteries..oh well.

We've painted one room, the one that was really REALLY bad, it's now a nice extremely bright..or dark...depending on the sunshine teal colour. H actually really likes it. (I'm a little surprised actually...pleasantly surprised...I just kept saying all the time...it's just paint, so if you don't like it we can just paint over it.... phew...no painting over..the bright happy teal is staying!)

I'm actually not that adventurous with colour, the bedrooms are one thing, but the rest of the house will be more neutral...cuz am a colour scaredy cat!

Well, it turns out I can't write much more...hubby wants help putting the new lawn mower together, I told him that if he pulled my car out of the garage (YES, WE HAVE A GARAGE!!!!) then I would meet him in there and help him wrestle it out of the box :-)

...but...between unpacking and setting up..I should actually be able to say hi online, since we now (as of yesterday) have internet and television hooked up ...woo hooo... (I'm far move excited about the internet than I am about the television :-)

Oh yeah, and I actually knit like about 2 rows yesterday...first knitting I've done in I think WEEKS now...uggg..I miss knitting...and I totally broke my one knit at a time thing...so I feel completely unproductive.....so...no more NEW knits until these 3..or maybe 4 projects are done...then ..back to only one or two (max) things at a time :-D let's see how long it holds this time....

I'll be back soon!

:-D