Yesterday was a wonderful Mother's Day. My amazing children were up at 6:30 (I could hear them puttering about quietly) making me breakfast in bed. This is a tradition with them. They do it for us every year for Mother's Day and Father's Day. They made me cards, too. This was the first year my son made an animated presentation as an e-card. Of course, once my daughter saw this, she wanted to do the same although she had already made me a beautiful paper card. I wish I could share them with you, but it was through my son's school's network.
The pièce de résistance had to be from my husband. After many years of pleading and waiting, he finally cleaned the garage! I can actually walk in there without tripping over things. I might even be able to fit a car in there now.
The weather was gorgeous, at long last! My husband and the kids worked so hard pretty much all day in the garden and the garage. They wanted me to relax and not work. That was a lovely sentiment, but realistically, someone had to do the laundry and cook while they were hard at work outside all day. I transplanted my eggplant seedlings (I started them indoors 8 weeks ago in pellets) into the newly modified garden patch and started some new seeds in small pots in my little greenhouse outside. In April, we demolished the children's old swing and slide set which they had outgrown and transformed our old 6 ft. x 12 ft. patch into one 4 ft. x 6 ft. patch and one 6 ft. x 12 ft. patch and this time, they are raised beds.
Since this picture was taken, we've added more soil. As the weather improves, I hope to have to have pictures with more plants in here.
I got my phoenix tattoo at Good Point Tattoos and Piercings in Oakville today. It turned out really well and surpassed my expectations. I'm really happy with it! I have gone through many changes since my job change in September. I thought this was a very appropriate symbol. Rebirth - rising out of the ashes and starting anew.
More on knitting and gardening coming in the near future.
Once again, I have a few projects on the go. In the meantime, here's a shrug I finished not too long ago. It's from Mission Falls book East Meets West. I didn't use the yarn recommended; I substituted with what I had in my stash, Berroco Peruvia Quick. I also added an extra cable on each side of the back where it meets the arm to suit my girth. I'm very happy with the results.
I've just uploaded the placemat pattern to Ravelry. It's free! All you have to do is press this button 
to get it. Enjoy!
At least one finally is so I can take a picture of it and post. I'm still working on the written pattern part to post on Ravelry. I'm getting there. Even though I tried to weave loosely, I still feel the work pulled in a bit. The tension in weaving is definitely different from the tension in knitting. I used one long strand back and forth and wove the ends in at the back of the mat. An alternative would be to use individual strands for each "woven row" and leave the ends longer then tie them to each other to create a fringe. My family voted on no fringe, so here it is...
close up.
I'm currently in the process of updating my projects on Ravelry which I plan to blog about as I go. This one was for our friends' baby, Adele. I'm happy to say she received it while she was still a baby - 4 years ago. I have a lot of posting catching up to do.
The pattern is called Heirloom Baby Blanket and can be downloaded for free from the Lion Brand website once you register with them.
We're back from March Break. It was a wonderful week at my mother-in-law's in Quebec. It's been very difficult to get back into the old routine since this week has been anything but routine. Things have been going a little nuts, thus making it difficult to get a blog post out or update my projects on Ravelry.
I am finally going to finish one of my UFOs. I started this back in 1996 inspired by a technique article called "Dropped-Stitch Weaving" in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Vogue Knitting - SCARY. I have UFOs that old; predating the birth of my children. I got bored with it because it was so simple and not really challenging, so I put it aside. Now, I look for that mindless, easy knitting to fill small gaps of time where I wish to be more productive and clear the horrendously large stash in my closet.
I will eventually post the project with free instructions to download on Ravelry. I'm getting there. I pressed the mats a couple of days ago. Now, I just have to do the weaving; which could take quite long. The photo below is of small sample I worked on.
