I got a bargain


I dropped into the local Farm Market to pick up something to snack on at work on Saturday. I thought some cherries - if there were any left - would make work go a little faster & help me avoid fast food. I also went armed with the unabridged audio version of DUNE to ease my pain!
Tomatoes are ripe. Lovely, big, firm, field tomatoes. Gawd, I used to can boxes of them every year when I lived with someone but haven't done any canning since I became single. Domesticity reared its ancient head & I ended up buying two flats of spotty tomatoes at a bargain price!! Then spent Sunday canning a few jars of tomatoes with rosemary, sage & lots of cracked pepper in them. I cooked them down till they got nice & thick in my old soup pot & bottled them up into all those nice expensive spaghetti sauce jars I've been saving. Yes, Virginia, I did them in the old open kettle method! I only do this with tomatoes & jam though. These will be wonderful as sauce or soup base this winter!!


I finally finished my flock of socks. There's 19 pairs in the basket to be sent off this week - I may do one more pair if I have time. I may even continue making a pair or two here & there with the leftovers from adult socks I constantly knit It's been fun but I'm sick & tired of baby socks at this point - it's time to move onto something else for a change! My sock gift basket is almost empty & it's time to fill it up again. I've had three birthdays in the past couple of months & it was great to have gifts already in the basket - thank you Gail for that little idea!!

I actually knit a couple of new washcloths for the bathroom - I wanted a sunny yellow & white combo for a change but Wal-Mart wouldn't co-operate. I ended up with the least offensive of the colors available in the large balls - those little ones are waaaaay too expensive!!! I don't mind this pink, blue & green combo but would've preferred the yellow/white combo or even the purple/green/white just because they go with everything. I'll have to admit though, it was nice knitting ANYTHING other than baby socks! And these are certainly cheerful.


Tomorrow I'm going to get back to my Arvik sweater. I started it in the Legal Loopholes pattern, by Medrith Glover, from the top down. Legal Loopholes has a neat way of increasing an extra 12 stitches in the front & back without increasing the sleeves. This makes a sweater bigger around without giving you armholes to your waist. I'm hoping to learn to use short rows to give extra boobage room as well so the fronts & back will end up the same length for a change . . . . I keep looking at lace but decided it's too hard watching the History Channel or the Antiques Roadshow & trying to knit lace too. I think I prefer Ganseys or Aran knits instead - at least you can SEE your patterns without a bright light.