Planned Purlhood

It’s that time again. When spinners lose all sense of reality and try and spin every day during the Tour de France.

I’m gearing up. Literally. As soon as said “gears” arrive from the other side of the planet, I’m sure I’ll be breaking my own records.

I’m spinning for Team Monkey Farts. This is the Spunky Eclectic’s club followers “Team”. I haven’t been able to afford the club for some time, but I do have a back log plus extra Spunky Stash. I think I’ll be concentrating on corriedale & bfl. Right now, I’m practicing spinning fat singles. By “fat”, I mean singles that are thicker than 20 wpi (wrap per inch). I’m aiming for 14-16. The goal is to knit “Daybreak” in “New Day” and natural dark brown corriedale singles.

Other fiber queued up for TdF is Lunar & Jupiter in Spunky Eclectic’s “Zodiac” series on grey corriedale.  While I’m not a big fan of dyed white corriedale top, this grey stuff is a marvelous spin.  There is also some BFL and more BFL.  I have a 4oz braid of “Joshua Tree” that told me it wants to be lace.  How can I argue?

This year, I was determined to have a decent garden. So far, I have two 4×4 foot square foot garden beds and quite a few containers growing “stuff”. I started six tomatoes from seeds this winter. All but one survived the heavy rains. I’ve got a patio tomato, a cherry, two early girls, two brandywines and one striped. Or two striped and one brandywine.

My pepper plant starts didn’t do too well, and neither did the lavendar. I’ve decided to just buy the darned pepper plants, so I now have 4 sun bells, 4 poblano, 1 red bell, 1 serrano, and 1 cascabel. At least 10 basil plants now. The cilantro decided to bolt rather early.

A couple flat leaf parsley, three Florence fennel plants, chives, carrots, volunteer red potato, sweet potato, rhubarb, and four red cabbages round out the field. Oh, and I just broadcast a bunch of “mesculin” mix in the empty spots on a raised bed.

It’s going to be interesting keeping up w/ the watering. I think it’ll be the last thing I do before going to bed in the morning.

I received my mini swap quilt from my partner this past week. Its super cute – thank you!

The block pattern is “Bento Box”. It’s destined as a table topper.

This is the one I sent. Since my machine quilting sucks, I decided to hand quilt it.

I haven’t done much sewing in the past week – mostly knitting and spinning. I expect that I’ll be back at the sewing machine soon enough.