All grown up

I once showed you the Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars from our garden. We had a number of them over a week or two, eating the dill on my back deck. 

Then, they all disappeared. We looked, but couldn't find a chrysalis anywhere. Obviously they don't want to be found, but we worried they'd all become bird snacks.

Yesterday, something flitted by, and I managed to get a picture of this Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly! 

Our baby is all grown up!

(Blogger, like so many other things, has a "new look," Instead of words, they have little icons which are not so easy to interpret, and a new way of sizing photos. I think all is well, and I hope things don't look too weird once I press the little paper-airplane icon to upload this.)

A bit of park knitting

I went to the park with a friend today and we sat in the shade and knitted. I didn't take my big square, the backing for my Kaffe squares -- which is coming along just nicely and almost done -- because I am changing colours every eight rows and that's just too much to keep track of in the park, so I started a dishrag.

We knit for an hour or so, then I came home and finished it off!

The perfect dishrag is not a pretty yellow, because you know it will all just end up coffee-coloured in the end, but my supplies are running low! The yarn used for the "mortar" here is about a gazillion years old and I have been doing my best to use it up forever. Icky beige with splotches. Luckily, it too will fade in time!

I hope to have a finished cushion cover soon, but here is a teaser of the back:

I am using all the colours for the back, but not repeating the stripe sequence. I had to take this picture so I would know what colour to use next! Almost done...  And you notice a jigsaw puzzle started in the background -- 1000 pieces, tomatoes... Pretty terrible, but doable. I'll report in on that later, too!

Years and years in the making

I know these squares have been hanging around for a long time, but I am only now understanding that they have been hanging around for about six years. I took this picture in October, 2014.

In the last couple of weeks I have added two more.

All the 2014 patterns are from Glorious Knitting, Kaffe's first book, and glorious it is indeed. When in doubt, add another dozen colours. These last two are from a "field guide" published by my old pals at Modern Daily Knitting, which used to be Mason Dixon Knitting. These are colourful and fun, but less busy. I hope all my squares can play nicely together, the old and the new.

I need one more of these small squares, and then a big one, the size of all nine of these together. Sew them together, installing a zipper along the way, and there's a cushion cover.

I should be done by 2025 or so!

I finally finished something

The scarf!

I am not sure when I started this, but it seemed like it took forever! Now, of course, it is 30ºC and not at all comfortable wool scarf weather.

I started just making a scarf, garter stitch, about 6 inches wide. Of course, that got too boring. The yarn makes a bumpy texture, so for contrast with the bumps, I made some holes, just here and there.

Even that got a bit boring, and it seemed the yarn would never run out, so I made one end of the scarf wider. It keeps your chest warm under your coat, and somehow it seemed like less knitting! (Knitting is my hobby, but finishing is always more thrilling than just keeping on knitting.)

A lovely, drippy, picot edge. This pond-scum green is my favourite colour, and with bumps and holes and odd shaping, a drippy edge seemed perfect.

It's long enough to do the double-loopy-wrap thing.

I could have squeezed one more row out of they yarn, but pretty efficient, I say!

I did convince myself not to cast on something totally new! I got out my Kaffe Fassett squares and set to work on a half-finished one. Who knows when I last worked on it, but I could not sort out where I was in the chart, so...

Old Kaffe has mellowed somewhat with time and his new patterns don't need quite the fiddliness of some of the old ones. I have cast on for a simple striped square, and will show you my progress next time! I don't even have a picture of all the squares, it seems, and that will have to wait for daylight. So, something to look forward to.

A trip to the islands

It is always lovely to go out to the island. The ferry is now only selling tickets online, and one has to wear a mask while waiting and on board, but that's not hard.

We went early yesterday morning to "avoid the rush," but there was not really a rush. It was really nice to walk around, with the trees and the beach and the wee breeze, but it was still really hot! This summer has been, as the kids say, brutal.

The Centreville amusement park is closed, as is the little farm. I don't have much interest in kids' rides these days, but I do always enjoy talking to the big pig and the chickens at the farm. Next year....

From the ferry

If you click to embiggen, you can see the lifeguard's chair is in the water

On the way home, I stopped at my favourite echinacea flower patch and found this bee. The picture is actually upside-down, so that the bee is right-side-up.

Three things

Thing number one: I did go up the hill and spend my gift certificate at the yarn store.

The green I bought in Vancouver; the new yarn is the mix of petrol blue and browny greenish. It is lovely, and now I have to finish the lumpy green scarf so I can get to work on a light lacy cardigan. There is enough of the multicolour to make a big lace shawl, but I'm trying to be a bit practical.

Thing number two: I got a haircut.

This should last me! After all, my Christmas haircut had to last until July.

I saw my hairdresser last week when she was sitting outside her shop having a break, so immediately booked an appointment. She had just opened, I think. She has only one customer at a time, masks worn, no blow-drying, disposable capes: all very careful. I won't be rushing back in a month, I think, but it's nice to know I can.

Number three: Here is the little park I mentioned before.

This is where my Scrabble lady friend and I met last week. The third friend is staying home after going to a cottage with someone whose colleague then tested positive for COVID-19. No word on that yet!

School in the top left, brown grass throughout. The little maze is cute, and kids scream down the path on scooters into it, while nervous old ladies like me avert our eyes. There will be nice shade trees in a few years, but now one has to be lucky to get the bench in the shade.

Is it worthwhile making plans for July?

1. I have a (very) few plans marked on the calendar for July.
2. Tomorrow I am going to go and sit at a picnic table or perhaps on a blanket in a park with some friends. These are my Scrabble buddies. We haven't yet figured out how to play Scrabble without getting our moist droplets uncomfortably close to one another, and our online game is gone, replaced by a new platform that we don't like. Expect grumbling about that! 
3. (We could just sit outside with masks on and wash our hands after all handling the tiles. That could work!)
4. On Friday I have a date to walk up the hill to the yarn shop. However, it is forecast to be 32 degrees out, and my friend is even wimpier than I am about the heat. I have a gift certificate and so just must go and get something pretty. 
5. Oh, on the 7th of July I can book a time slot to go to the Royal Ontario Museum. Not sure I want to rush out to do that. Maybe I'll book a time for weeks from now and see how things go. 
6. The last item now on my July calendar is to water my new succulent on July 12. That will be an event, for sure. I will start with every two weeks and see how it goes. With time passing so oddly these days, I figured I'd better write it down! I water the other plants when they look a bit droopy, and since they are in the bathroom I do notice them. 

Well, this looks like a very exciting month. Not. So tired of this!