Crazy, there is really no other word to describe my life over the last week and a half.You probably all noticed that I did not make my usual Sunday post about the new colorways. I was sick, so sick that it took every bit of energy I had left to upload the new colorways to the website. I remained sick for part of the week, and so spent a lot of time in bed, reading about water gardens, dreaming of all the yard work awaiting me, knitting very little, as I was too tired to do even that.
I looked at so many pictures of gorgeous water gardens, that they became the inspiration for this week's colorways. This week, my colorways are Water Lily, Koi, Waterfall... I hope will enjoy the Water Garden Collection . Above is a picture of the Lotus Colorway.
I made some progress on the promised new sock pattern. I really like its simplicity, and yet very beautiful texture. I am half way down the second sock, checking my notes. The pattern will be available as a free pattern on the blog. I really like playing with 2 colors, without any fairisle, just a pleasant game of slipped stitches!
I have also started working on a summer cotton jacket for my baby girl. I am using an Ella Rae pattern. It is called Sophia, and can be found in her book 4 of patterns for Women and Children. I am not using her yarn. I had 8 skeins of Saucy Cotton in a great turquoise colorway. I know she will like it. I love the simple lace pattern, and keep wanting to complete "just" one more repeat, which is a pretty good sign that I will enjoy knitting the jacket. The pattern does not include any edging, and I know that I will be adding one, as I prefer the edges not to roll. I will probably crochet it, but I am not there yet. It is my goal to have the jacket ready before my little one leaves for France with my parents, so that she can wear it on the beach. The departure is on May 12. That leaves me about 2 weeks. I am making the size 7-8 years. I hope this is not one of my crazy unrealistic ideas...
I mentioned earlier in my post that I had been looking at a lot of books on water gardens. We live in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, which used to be a suburb of Boston. The large Victorian homes that can be found here, also have large city gardens. Ours may have had some plants at one point, but is now just a plot of underused land. I have been dreaming of transforming it. The transformation will not be easy. The previous owner of the house must have been a squirrel, or somehow related to one. He did not burry nuts, but rather he burried bricks. Each time I dig, and try to turn the soil, I hit a brick. They are not burried as if they had once been a patio, but rather randomely! I must have dug more than a hundred, in one corner of the yard only. All these bricks gave me an idea though. I like the idea of recycling materials, and so the idea for a central brick patio area was born. Even though I liked the idea, I felt there was still something missing. Which brings me to the topic of water gardens. While I was sick, I was browsing some magazines, in bed feeling pretty miserable when a picture of a bricked patio, with a square pond in the center caught my eye (May 2008, Country Home). I fell in love. So this summer, apart from designing new colorways, homeschooling the kids (which is pretty much a year long thing for us), knitting, painting the inside of the house, I will also be digging hundreds of bricks out the ground, digging a hole for a pond, setting up a pond, building a brick patio, putting up a fence, and planting zillions of seeds that will hopefully grow and bloom to transform my abandoned garden , into a little city paradise, where I can sit, and knit while the children play around me...