A short little update

I had meant to do a review of Knitting Green in this post but the weekend got away from me. I had commitments that I had not anticipated and that left me with no time to craft a review.

So this is an update on knitting and cooking:

• Knitting: the contest entry is moving along. Nothing much else to say about it.
• Cooking: I want to recommend garlic scapes to everyone. They are a secret guarded by those who frequent farmer's markets and grow their own garlic. The flavor is clean and mildly garlicky. You can only get them at this time of the year. I usually have to collect them over weeks from the CSA farm to get enough to make garlic scape pesto which is amazingly delicious. I made the mistake of telling someone this at the farm distribution and she promptly went back and collected her share. Darn! If I hadn't, maybe I could have gotten her share out of the trade bin.
  

That is all for now. Next weekend is a long weekend and I will do the review.

How I have been spending my time

I am back in my non-knitting mood. I am slowly working on the project since it has a deadline. I have lots of ideas of things I want to knit or design but getting down to the actual work is not at all interesting.

I have been working in the yard off and on. We have been giving many of our shrubs a hair cut. They are 20 years old and were getting rather over-grown despite pruning. I took a chain-saw to the ones by the mailbox earlier in the season and they are looking very nice now. So I am doing the same thing with other shrubs as they finish flowering. It makes for a lot of clean-up but the result is cleaner and neater looking. I also think it gives the shrubs a new lease on life.

My non-flowering hydrangea has buds on it! This is a plant I got on clearance at the end of the season a few years ago. I made the mistake of pruning the old wood at the beginning of the season. Hydrangeas flower on old wood. OK, so I should have lost one year's worth of flowers. No, it hasn't flowered at all. Maybe it was just mad at me. I have left it alone for a number of years and this is the first year I have seen buds. It always had a lot of leaves and looked pretty.

The CSA produce has started coming in. That also keeps me busy on weekends - cooking and freezing it. We get a lot of greens early in the season and they take a lot of prep time. Knitting should be a nice refreshing change of pace from all this but it isn't attracting me. Maybe I need to work at getting back into it?

A sneak peek

I can't tell you what I'm knitting but here's a peek at some of it. It isn't blocked and it is going very slowly. But it is knitting.

Here's something else that is related. Again, unblocked...

Pictures of the finished object(s) will be after Camp.

Finally picked up knitting again!

I did start knitting again yesterday but since it is my contest entry for Knitting Camp, I can't talk about it here. There way too many Campers who read this blog. So you'll have to be patient for about a month and then I'll be able to show you what it is.

For those who haven't been to Camp, each year we put up a list of contest themes for the next year all throughout the weekend. Then, on the final day, we vote on them. The winning theme is the theme for next year.

People and companies donate prizes for the contest and Schoolhouse Press graciously donates whatever else is needed to round out the prizes. Each of us has a few minutes to describe our entry and then they all get put on chairs in the middle of the room. Each person gets a ballot and we pick our favorites. The entries with the most votes are at the top and the one with the most votes wins.

There are prizes for many of the spots due to the generosity of the prize donors. Whether one wins or not, it is a lot of fun and I enjoy coming up with ideas for entries.