My Wonderful Hot Day in Seattle

Get your mind out of the gutter. Greetings from Summer in Seattle! Yes, summer is finally here and I’m happy. It may sound weird, but I embrace these 87 degree days because we don’t get many of them and so I can embrace them without getting too sticky. My flower seeds are finally producing shoots and the snails/slugs aren’t eating them–hooray! My first zucchini is done growing. The raspberries and blueberries are ripening. Life is good.

My daughter and a friend spent the day in the backyard wading pool and I spent the day trying to figure out where I am in my Cardigan with Lace Edging (such a straightforward descriptive name) from Debbie Bliss’ Bright Knits for Kids. I knit it last summer for a friend’s daughter and then stalled when it came to actually sewing it up. I hate the sewing part of knitting. Anyway, the little girl for whom it was intended is now too big for said sweater, so I need to find some other deserving young lady to give it to. But first I need to force myself to actually sew it. Yuck.

I’m also knitting Stella Smith’s Martha from Rowan 37. It’s a fun pattern except when it says “Cont straight until 31 rows less have been worked than on back to beg of shoulders shaping.” Sheesh. Right now I’m on the right front pattern–which is on the same page as the sleeves–and in my sleep deprived state a couple of night ago, I kept casting on for the sleeves but then following the right front panel shaping. Needless to say, it didn’t work and I was getting really annoyed with Stella for awhile there. Sorry, Stella.

The chickens were quite perky today at 5:30 am–when they starting bawking and squawking to beat the band. They do this when one of them lays an egg and the rest of them need to support her in the laying process and then announce to the world that the egg has come. And we have four chickens (I bet you already figured that out) which means four egg laying sessions per day. Some days are a cacophony of chicken noise over the miracle of eggs. Most of the time the noise doesn’t start quite that early. Luckily the neighbors all say they like the sound because it makes them feel like they’re in the country. Well, I believe them and hand out the fresh organic eggs to make sure they still feel like they’re in the country.