I’m getting excited about the Madrona mitten workshop. I leave Thursday morning, come back Monday evening.

I’m in the midst of the lace & intarsia  part of Emily.  Luckily I was able to use the same size needle for both parts, unlike I originally feared;  after initial swatching I thought I’d use a US4 for the Traveller and a US2.5 for the Gaia, but I’ve ended up using the US2.5 for both parts.  The Traveller is knitting up well, giving a tight yet squooshy fabric.  I think (hope) I’m still on track for finishing that section before the trip.

Of course there’s no other knitting of which to speak.

Garden-wise, we harvested another 20 or so tomatoes.  I’ve not tried to do any preserving;  we’re just eating them, usually in salad (mozzarella) or on sandwiches.

I just picked 31 tomatoes off the Cherokee Purple plant.   I’m amazed at how prolific this thing is.  We’re not doing anything special to it.  Shoot, we’re not even watering it really.

There’s only so much caprese salad you can eat.

Perhaps I should try gazpacho or something similar….any ideas?

I don’t know where the last week went.

(Well, I do;  it was spent either sitting on the couch knitting or in front of the computer working on charts, schematics, and spreadsheets.)

Work continues on the vest (and that’s all I’m saying regarding it). Don’t forget to enter the contest here!

The test knitting is almost complete on the Twisted Mitts, so I expect to have those published on Ravelry & Patternfish either this weekend or early next week.  I don’t think I’ve said much (or anything) about these;  they’re full mittens, sized for men, meant as sort of a small primer on twisted stitches.  The inner cuff is ribbed.  I knit these with the Black Water Abbey sport in Indigo.

Garden:  picked 16(!) (granted, many of them small) Cherokee Purple tomatoes this morning.  Did you know someone did a website just for this variety?  I’m sure my neighbors think I’m nuts if they don’t already — I ended up stretching out on my neighbor’s driveway to look up into our plant, seeking ripe tomatoes (found some that way, too!).  Grilled hamburgers with tomatoes for lunch tomorrow (I’ll make some buns)….tomato & mozzarella salad (I think I may try making mozzarella again, it’s pretty easy)….

Loved seeing this article.  As I’ve discussed before, cables and such are my favorite things to knit (and now design).  It’s great to see they’re now (again?) considered very fashion forward.

I made a batch of hot dog buns (my first batch ever!) yesterday.  I did let the bread machine do all the kneading.  Past bread making attempts, totally from scratch, have not gone well, resulting in small hard inedible bricks.   I think the difference is if I let the machine do the kneading, etc then I actually do leave the dough alone long enough to rise as it ought to — i.e. I leave it alone til the machine beeps.  If I do it totally from scratch, I get impatient.  Anyhow, they came out lovely, though a bit large;  cut in half then sliced open they’ll work as small hamburger buns.  I’m going to make another batch today and take them all over to our friend Mel’s later today — Memorial Day grilling.

Here’s a pick of the backyard mid morning, in sunlight. I really should get some front yard pics, but it’s very June-gloomy this morning (of course it’s only about 6:30 a.m., and it should burn off).  I’ll get some at some point this week.  Other gardening stuff:  I don’t think I mentioned it, but I picked the first new tomatoes off the everlasting tomato plant.  They were good!  I learned that Rigel enjoys fresh tomatoes as well.  (The everlasting tomato plant is the Cherokee purple in the side yard that just wouldn’t die last fall.  Since it seemed very vigorous I didn’t have the heart to yank it up.  It’s now producing tomatoes — about normal sized, too, maybe just slightly below normal sized.)

Dave and I are now tentatively planning on going up next weekend (this coming weekend) to Paso Robles.  We’re thinking of leaving early Saturday a.m. (6 a.m.-ish) which should get us to Paso by 10-ish.

It’s raining.

Yes, it most parts of the country, not that unusual of an event, but it’s not typical of our weather patterns in Los Angeles.  Not that I’m complaining, too much;  the plants are loving it.  I don’t have to water the garage roof EarthBoxes, or our valiant surviving fruit trees.  And we’ll get more poppies blooming, I’m sure.  We’ve finally managed to pull up nearly all the brown, gone to seed poppies.

But still.  Rain in May?

Oh — regarding roof top gardening — I noticed this past weekend that a neighbor several houses down now has plants on his garage roof!!!  I’d noticed several weeks ago he was undertaking a big woodworking project — boards everywhere.  Now he has lovely wooden boxes, with, it appears, veggies, on his roof.  We’ve started a trend!  (I will say his boxes are very pretty, much prettier than our Earthboxes & homemade, Rubbermaid Earthboxes.)