Get with child a mandrake root

Funny, I just bought a book on John Donne yesterday, and today -- look what I found in the garden!

 

 

Of course, mine is a carrot, and very obviously a boy.  But what does that matter; impossible is impossible.

 

We also harvested potatoes this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pretty present for a new bride

Here are some more pretty things from Pam.  My favorite is the peach.  And also the pea.  Oh, and the carrots and radish.  Actually I love them all!

Meanwhile, I am working on "fit."  I took a Palmer Pletsch fit workshop in Seattle last week, taught by Nancy Seifert.  It was great!  I really learned a lot, even though I had taken fit workshop once before.  Now I'm putting the altered patterns in order, copying the sloper onto swedish pattern paper, and finishing the blouses I fitted in class.  Pictures soon!

Pam's newest blanket

Another pretty baby blanket, for a sweet little girl:

First harvest

Today we picked the first "fruits" of David's new garden.   Brand new baby vegetables!  And I planted the potatoes!

And yet to come -- corn!

Back on track

So I took up my labors again this morning, and failed time after time.  Finally I took the key plate out to the garage and fairly soaked it with silicon spray.  Problem solved!  My next try resulted in row after row of beautiful stitches, with no dropped stitches at all.  Of course, now I'm tired like a dead thing.

That's the up side.  The down side is that the row counter stopped working somewhere in the 50s and I have no idea how long this piece is.

Knowing nothing about knitting, I'm taking advice from the innerwebs.  I have read that since the knitting was under tension on the machine, I should let it rest for 24 hours before I check the gauge.  Tomorrow I will block it and see if the gauge is ok, and then I can start!

Keee-rap!

Yesterday I bought some yarn for my first project, and this morning I settled down to making a swatch, only to have absolutely everything go wrong.  I haven't been able to get beyond row 16, and now I see that one of the thingies in the hem weight has broken.  I'll be taking a break until I can calm down.

Machine knitting day whatever (no longer counting)

By day 4 I was no longer losing stitches at the ends, but I did finally drop one in the middle of the row.  I didn't catch it in time and it ran.

I don't think I did a very good job of picking it up, so I dropped another and let it run.  Fixing it went better the second time.

Next I decided to try knitting different yarns from my tiny stash, only to discover that moths had gotten to it!  This is all I could get out of the ball of gray yarn.

Isn't it pretty?  And it looks just like "real" knitting.  And finally I tried some slightly nubby tweed stuff (the actual color is a dark olive).

Sis has offered to put together a yarn package for me to play with, until I'm confident enough to start a real sweater.  Which should be soon.

In the meantime, I have no place to sew.  I'm thinking of moving the knitting machine to the top of the old ironing board, since it's easier to use while standing.