restraint with a dash of pesto!

This week has been a little hiatus from knitting.  Logan got me hooked on the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer and it has quite literally consumed me for the week.  I read all three books in quickly, but then went back and reread portions that I wanted to revisit or I may have read too quickly through when I was anxious to find out what would happen next.   Needless to say, I have become obsessed with the books and am finding it difficult to tame the squealing fangirl inside.  But I shall exercise restraint.  At least while I’m writing this post, that is.  Seriously, all of my thoughts this week have centered around these books.  I’m creating playlists on my ipod for the characters.   I should post them.  They are really quite good.

Friday I picked up the clapper again after a week of no knitting.  I made some progress at knitting nite and then today.  I’m finally on the straight rows and I’m realizing that this is going to be a little bigger than I anticipated.  But I’m happy about that.  And the malabrigo is so wonderful…it doesn’t matter to me in the slightest that it’s 90 degrees outside and I’m knitting a merino wool scarf/stole/wrap.  

I’m loving the color variation of the yarn.  

My herb garden is also progressing nicely.  Check out the italian parsley and thyme…

I can’t get over how well the parsley is doing.  It makes me happy that I haven’t killed anything yet.  And here are the basil plants that I started from seeds.  They are coming along well also.

Oh, the pesto that we will make together…

soil and herbs

Not much knitting has been done this past week.  I honestly can’t explain why.  Out of guilt, I did sit down at the wheel a few nights where I finished filling the second bobbin with singles and then began the plying process.  But I still have yet to finish that.  There was progress made on the sock front, though.  Sock 1 of Simple Socks 3, the Revenge has been completed and #2 is on it’s way:

Oh, and Eleanor just needs some fringe.

She lays so wonderfully now that she’s been blocked.  The difference is amazing.  But that’s about it for the knitting front.  Not much to report, really.  Or well, nothing exciting to report.

Today was a little sad, though.  One of my girls from the knitting posse is moving away…a few states away, actually and I’m quite sad about it.  Today we helped her finish up some packing so she’d be ready to go in the next couple of days.  Of course, we’ll carry on without her presence on Friday nights, but she will be missed.  Sadness.  

Afterwards, I picked up a few herb plants.  Apparently, I think that this will be the summer that I don’t kill anything I try to grow.  Actually, I don’t know that I necessarily killed everything last summer, it’s just that the stinkin’ bugs ate everything I tried to grow.  But I have high hopes for this season.  I picked up just a couple of basic herbs that I tend to use the most:

Thats rosemary, purple basil, thyme, and italian parsley.  They were out of sweet basil, which is my favorite, so I’m going to give it a go with starting them from seeds.

I started all twelve peat pellets with the basil.  I figure if I shoot for 12 plants, surely I can at least manage to get one to grow and to continue to grow after being transplanted.  I did go ahead and pot the rosemary, purple basil, thyme and parsley into a couple of large pots and sat them on the patio table.  I had considered planting a little herb garden along the side of the house, but I wasn’t sure that I could manage that.  I figured the pots might be a little easier.  Besides, there’s already a large spot of oregano and chives growing along the side of the house.  I guess they were planted a few years ago and keep coming back every summer.  So I’ve got plenty of those two herbs as well.  I ought to at least be able to make a nice italian meal with the herbs I’ve chosen.    And I’m still thinking about a chili plant.  That might be fun.  I might need to pick up one of those tomorrow.