I had a long weekend and it seems to have eaten up more then it's fair share of time.  So let's review what I got done!

I'm just about done with gardening for the winter:

But that's not my harvest.  Nope, someday I hope to get a haul like that from the garden, but this is a photo of the storage crops my local farm stand was selling.  I think Foote Brook Farm actually the closest farm to us.  They're all organic, and it turns out they sell winter storage crops in bulk.  I love it.  There's no good scale in this photo unless you know how big my kitchen island is.  This is 50lbs of potatoes, 40lb pumpkins, 40lbs delecatas, 25lbs carrots, and 40lbs tomatos.  The tomatoes were a real score because most farms in the area barely have enough for themselves due to blight.  I'd pretty much given up making pasta sauce this year, until I found these!  More on the pasta sauce later.  I will highly recommend Seeds of Change for (among other things) they're great hints on long term storage of your autumn harvest.  Or at least I think I recommend them.  I'll let you know how things work out.  After all, picking up 50lbs of organic potatos for $38 is a steal of a deal, but only if they last long enough for us to eat them all...

I also harvested the last of my beans, they're still not dry enough for shelling, so I have cookie sheets of beans all over my living room for the next week...  I split my alpine strawberry plants up and spread them out.  The domestic crowns I planted last spring look pretty good too.  It's going to be a massive strawberry bed someday, but hopefully by next year it'll be big enough for more then just grazing on handfuls of strawberries (not that there's anything wrong with that either!)

While I was out in the garden I had to run in and grab my camera.  The setting sun was shining in under the clouds and painting the already orange hillside a glowing shade of gold:

Which the camera barely catches.  Oh well.  It totally botched the shot of the snow squall on the same hillside about 10 minutes later, so I'll spare you that photo.  This was also the weekend I stood around being the cheerleader for Neil while he puts in the storm windows.  I'm sure I could do it if I had to, but he's much better at getting them in without pinching his fingers or dropping them - and with giant sheets of glass dropping them is really frowned on...

Knitting, lots of knitting.  In fact knitting took up most of my time this weekend, and I'm ok with that.  I took a break from the cabled hat that was causing me so much grief, and knit a mitten:

It's an icewine mitten, in sport weight yarn (coopworth, from the sheep and wool festival) I changed the cuff from ribbing to braids and snowflakes, and did the cuff on size 1 needles.  Then I moved up to size 2 for the hand.  It was a bit tight, so I blocked it before starting the second, and that make it just perfect!  I blocked it over a tall skinny honey jar that's just over 8" around.  This stretched the floats out and evened the stitches so perfectly.  Someday I'll knit the mate.

I finally knit Verity:

To go with the Just enough ruffles scarf I made last spring:

It's warm and squooshy, the handspun white has a lovely texture.  I also managed to save almost, but not quite, blue yarn for the hatband.  It's knit back and forth binding off the hat sts at the end.  And I ran out with this many sts left:

Of course this is some blue I kool-aid dyed and spun as a batch months ago.  There's no chance of having any more that matches. Luckly there's a tab that overlaps so I just finished up with white yarn and the tab was just long enough to hide the little white square.

So yeah, knitting took up a lot of my weekend.  Knitting and also writing up knitting patterns and taking knitting pattern photos, and some knitting pattern charts.  All that I and still need to do some seious knitting pattern layout.  But soon, there will be more knitting patterns, so that's good.

Last evening I started to put the garden to bed. I picked my squashes - which made me feel like less of a failed gardener!



Although the butternuts and pumpkins are teeny. I think that's due to the lousy growing season. The sweet dumplings I grew from saved seed appear to be true to form (the white ones) so yay! And the vigorous volunteer appears to have been a hybrid, they're the green ones speckled with thin yellow lines (and orange bottoms) I'll be interested to see how they taste. I also re-found a volunteer bean plant that I thought the squashes had shaded to death (not dead!) I suspect it grew from one of the many wrinkly beans I didn't cook for dinner some night last winter. I'm contemplating harvesting the seeds to grow next year instead of to eat, since it seems to be such a hardy little bean variety.

Along with pulling the squash vines I pulled the lettuce bed and started in on the corn. If it's not actively raining when I get home tonight I'll work in the garden some more. I need to pick up some garlic soon to seed in for next year. I also plugged in the chicken coop timer. We've been getting 2 or 3 eggs a day for awhile and the hens are (some more clearly then others) molting. I hope that with the added light they'll get back to laying sooner then they did last year. (really I should remember to plug the light in at the beginning of september)

This weekend I'm going down the the VT sheep and wool festival. Saturday looks like it'll be cloudy and rainy, but as the friend I'm driving down with said "the weather won't matter, we'll be high on wool fumes!" Neil's working that evening, so I have to be home in time for the animals' dinners.

And now, I'm going to sit in the sunshine before the clouds roll in!

I had a great weekend.  Saturday was a perfectly beautiful fall day, the kind of day that gets me raving like a lunatic about that peticular shade of blue sky that I swear only happens on fall days when the trees are red and there are no clouds.  We spent the morning running errands around town, including introducing ourselves at a new dairy farm - this one sells milk year round (the milk from our neighbors is wonderful, but his two milkers dry up soon, and we don't want to go back to store bought milk)  Neil impressed me by cleaning the chimney himself (we may have the easiest-to-clean chimney ever)  Then I joined Neil on a trip into the big city where we walked up and down church street and I was shocked by the number of "new" stores on that street.  I guess I really haven't been into Burlington in quite a while.

Sunday was the complete opposite, rainy, dreary, chilly.  That morning I declared that I would do nothing but sit on the couch and knit.  And yet, by the end of the day I'd also baked cookies, frozen corn, and made and frozen pesto.  I would sit for awhile, but then I'd get antsy and need to DO SOMETHING.  Then I'd try to sit again, but the laziness kept wearing off.  I did get quite a bit of knitting done.

The shawl for my mom is moving along.  It looks like a white lumpy mass (all lace is lumpy and shapeless, no real surprise)  I'm already into the edging chart, but since the "edging" takes up 45-65% of the yarn I suspect I'm only about halfway done.  About 10 rows back I counted and had 345 stitches in a row - and each one is a little longer then the one before it...

The closeup is the best shot, trust me.  Also, look at the cute little nupps!  (those are the rounded clumps of stitches, they're so fun to work)

I also worked on the endless blanket, I've finished the 7th row!  This means I'm now 11.2% done (I was about 10% done at the end of the 6th row...)

See how it stretches on forever?  That's exactly how it feels when I'm knitting on it, in a good way of course...

We've been having some of the warmest sunniest weather (that's only a little bit of an exaggeration) since May this week - which is odd since it's the first day of autumn.  Maybe the fact that it was 60 overnight (craziness) is why I've been feeling rather un-inspired to work on any projects in the evening.  Not that I'm uninspired overall, I feel a bit like I have designs falling out of my ears the last few weeks, it's actually getting the knitting done that keeps holding me up.

Of course what that means is I'm making regular progress on the easier things.  The square sock blanket has become my evening knitting of choice for the last week.  And at about 3.5 squares a night I estimate it'll only be another 416 nights before I finish it (not including knitting on the edging)  So, given my habit of stuffing a project to the back of the closet for months at a time I predict this blanket will be done in (if I'm lucky) 3 years.  Wheee........

It's tricky when you're busy, and don't have internet at home, to keep up to date on everything. So here's a rapid-fire summary:

On the farm:
The tomatoes all died of blight. They went from healthy to dead over the course of a week. The first 4 days just the bottom leaves were brown, then in 2 days the entire plants died. It was sad to watch and I'm feeling very defeated in the garden. Luckily it's just the dried beans, cabbage and winter squash waiting left, so they can handle my moping and ignoring them for awhile.

Mama blackbeard still has all 11 babies. I haven't got a clue how she keeps track of them all. We have a wanderlust chicken, I'm pretty sure she's not nesting, but she's also not coming in to sleep at night. I don't know if she survived the weekend or not.

Weekend:
We went to NH to visit my family. Good times and good cake were had by all (my birthday and my future brother in law's birthday were both last week)

We went on several very nice hikes, and Neil seems to have managed to wash himself carefully enough after a walk through a patch of poison ivy that so far he doesn't have a rash.

Knitting:
Beginning of last week I finally finished Neil's sweater, this one was almost a year in the making (with lots of closet time)

I re-knit the yoke 3 times and it's still not perfect, but it's pretty good and Neil really likes it and I really like that he wears it so much.

End of last week I finished some crazy cabled blue socks

The Ornette pattern from Cookie A. Brilliant.

And I cast on for a lace shawl

It's getting bigger quickly. This one is for mom!

And I'm working on a sweater

It'll be the second rogue I've knit, and I almost never knit the same pattern twice. But I've learned so much about knitting since my first rogue. This one is for a friend who provided the yarn as well as a lot of comfort and understanding to me late last fall.

And I have this strange urge to cast on about 3 different sock patterns. This always happens when one sock pattern gets finished. Socks want to breed like rabbits, but my hands only knit so fast.

I also have 3 other sweaters I want to knit, and yarn for 2 of them in my stash. The next two will probably be Ruby Red and Wisteria which are ready to go as soon as I figure out how to extend the day (currently I'm trying the "sleeping less" approach)

I also have the yarn for OWLS...

I really want to knit Luminen, but I need to find the yarn first, and with property taxes due next month there really isn't any yarn money in the budget. Clearly this is why I have a stash. Of course my stash could keep me knitting for over a year, but I haven't got enough of any one color for Luminen.

And in the stash world - I did get yarn money for my birthday! And I got more sock yarn. Don't ask about the Luminen yarn I just mentioned wanting. It'll just have to wait. Clearly I have enough other projects to keep me going for awhile anyway.

So in summary, the summer gardening push is winding down which is good because I have a serious case of startitis going on. And it's monday. At least that means lots of bus knitting time ahead.

With this sweater:



( details photos, and what else I did with my weekend )

It's harvest season!

( And I went away for the weekend )
ETA: I just broke down and called the store that has the perfect buttons.  They were still there and they're going to ship them to me!

It's been a busy (and long) week at work.  The bad news is our department is loosing 3 people (RIFs reduction in force) along with the 11 vacant positions they have to shut down (not firing anyone but not filling the position) and probably twice that in vacant positions that they aren't allowed to hire anyone into (so the position doesn't stop existing it just doesn't get filled)  And since the state has already said they're not reducing the police force that keeps the public safe all these reductions come from the civillian side of the department.  Luckily, the federal grant funding that buys all my supplies has been approved so I should be good for another year.

Other then that fall is a busy time of year.  We're preparing for the winter and trying to fit in all the things we wish we'd done this summer.  We've got a storm window and a chainsaw to fix, we need to get our furnace inspected and clean our chimney and stack the last of our firewood.  This weekend we're going apple picking and making apple chutney, apple wine, apple sauce, apple butter, and probably apple pie.  Apples may be one of my favorite fruits (oh let's face it, they're all my favorite fruits, just like they're all my favorite seasons)

And of course I've been knitting.  I'm mostly done with my bug hat, I've started on a hat for Neil that will probably be a free pattern.  I'm still working on the cables in the tangled yoke cardigan (the sweater is big enough it mostly stays home now) I have 1/2 a sock in my purse at all times, and I have more yarn coming (which should arrive today!) even I don't know how I kept all this organized pre-ravelry...

And now I'm going to sit in the sun for 30 minutes with my knitting, a book, and an apple.

It's that time of year again and I'm looking for some people I can drag along to a renaissance faire!  Let me know if you're interested and if so do some weekends work better then others?  Do you care/have a preferance which faire we go to?  I'll happily go to more then one if different people are available different times!  I'm figuring I'll be driving down to the faires in the MA/CT/NY area, but I'd be willing to drive west if someone wanted to check out Sterling with me.  I'm also willing (as always) to loan out costumes!