Hi, y’all.

I just want to warn you, up front, that this is going to be the most EPIC POST EVAR, unless I run out of steam, which I might, since it’s about a hundred degrees up here and I am a delicate rain forest flower that can’t deal well with sweat.  But there’s pictures (a whole LOT of pictures, sorry if you’re on dial-up…) finally, and while I was being a giant slacker on the bloggy front, I was totally NOT being a slacker on the Doing Things front.  Which equates to OMG BLOGGERPOSTEXPLOSION.

See how I am?  I won’t let it go this long again.

Let’s see…where to even start?

I took a month off from all my real-world duties, in order to heal up a bit and get back into The Grooooove.  I didn’t realize how worn down I’d been, going at a frantic pace before my appendix decided to poke me a little and say “Oh, yeah!?  Watch THIS!”  *boom!*.  And I almost didn’t make it the full month, even.  My poor brain, unaccustomed to slowing down for five minutes, tried to rebel and move to Florida.  (Not really.  It’s also a delicate rainforest flower.)  But still…

During that month, I started doing a lot of things that weren’t connected by wires to the Grander Scheme Of Things.  In other words, I disconnected a lot.  Turned OFF the computer and went *outside*.  I know, I know.  It’s shocking, for me.

The big thing I did outside was this:

Which doesn’t look all that impressive, does it?

What it is, though, is my garden.  Or, at least, part of it.  (And dog butts.  Because those are EVERYWHERE around here.)  Our soil here is full-on clay.  Rock-hard, no oxygenation, no vegetable matter, nothing.  Trying to dig holes in it requires, at times, *jackhammers*.  No kidding.  (Remember, though — Adobe is made out of dirt.  Our kind of dirt.  I have, essentially, a ceramic back yard.)

While weeds tend to grow in proliferation here, grass takes the next train for Elsewhere, and J’s mom told me point blank when I moved in that nothing would grow here, ever.  That if I wanted to have some homegrown vegetables or anything, I should find a good market, because it’s like Plant Death came here to crash on the couch and never left.

This, my friends, seemed like a nice little challenge to me.  Double-challenge, really, since even with good soil, I can kill an otherwise-healthy plant at fifty paces.

I thought about square-foot gardening, or raised beds, but I wasn’t sure if all the work of ripping up the yard would be worth it if I just exercised my black thumb.  So I got a whole lot of containers of varying sizes, and put in seeds.  Lots and lots of seeds.

And we promptly had a windstorm the next day.  The farmer next to us is really going to wonder where all the radishes in his cornfield are coming from.  *sigh*

Determined, however, to not be foiled by this, I bought plants instead.  Put them in the pots.  Gave them water.  And lo! and behold!  I have green.  I’m not sure if I have the right kind of green or not, but hey…it’s growing, whatever it is.  My tomato plant even has flowers on it, which, I assume, means I’m going to have actual *tomatoes* at some point.  So does my jalapeno plant and my ancho chilipepper plant.  And the cilantro hasn’t yet died, either.  It’s scaring me a little.

See, I sort of did this thing and I’m going to need to fix it pretty quickly.  I put a leftover packet of radish seeds in a circle around the rim of a smallish pot, and dumped some green pepper seeds in the middle.  I thought that maybe one of five would actually grow, since, again, I have the blackest thumb on the planet.  But ALL OF THEM CAME UP.  I have a very green pot right now, and if I don’t replant them elsewhere, I’m going to have a problem.

But not as much of a problem as I’m going to have with five zillion radishes and bell peppers, too.  Hope J likes stuffed peppers.  And roasted peppers.  And stir-fry.  And and and….  Ahem.

Who knew?  Just water them and leave them alone, and voila! :)

The one part of my garden experience that isn’t a vegetable:

This is a shoe garden.  I think I gave the link already.  If not, I’ll post it later.  It’s a free PDF file on how to create a garden of shade plants in *shoes*.  I was intrigued, and bought three pairs of shoes at a garage sale and planted small little shade plants in them, and they’re doing quite nicely.  So I think I’ll end up collecting worn out shoes and expanding this as time goes on.  Adding moss and such.

And that middle part? That’s concrete.  I know.  Pretty.  It’s holding a place for some Washington state rocks that I ordered to make a cairn.

Hey, I was homesick, okay?  :)

Other than playing in dirt, I knit a lot while I was off.  A couple pairs of socks, a sweater, and this monstrosity of leftover handspun:

It’s a shawl, roughly 9′ wide.  Just cast on 3 stitches and do this:

1:  k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 (5 st)
ALL EVEN ROWS, purl.  Or knit back for garter ridges.
3:  k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 (7 st)
5:  k1 yo, k2, yo, k1, yo, k2, yo, k1 (9 st)
7: k1, yo, k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, yo, k1 (11 st)

See the pattern?  YO after the first and last stitches, and before and after the center stitch.  That’s ALL THERE IS TO IT.

Simplest shawl EVER.  Every so often, I’d vary it between garter and stockinette, just to add a little interest, but it’s the easiest pattern out there.  As in, not really a pattern at all, but a formula.  I know I’m not the first to come up with it (was it Wendy that posted a formula once for it?) — I saw it somewhere else several times in different places, but it’s such great comfort knitting.  Just the right mix of mindless and long.  Movie knittin’.

That one’s done on US11s, by the way.  Or 13s. I can’t remember which right now.  But big needles = one fast shawl that’s warm and had been worn quite a bit around the house before it got all tropic out here.

I have more knitting and fibery stuff (OMG! the spinning!  five POUNDS in May!  No, seriously.), but I’ll wait on that until I can get a good picture of the new handspun.  There’s a lot of it.  And socks.  Lots of those, too.

But let’s talk Other Obsessions, shall we?

My yarn and fiber is a collection.  I know this.  I’ll probably never get “done” with it all, because in the interim, I would have acquired more.  That’s how collections are.  Obsessive.  Pretty.  Not really all that practical.

Now, understand something before I say this:  I have never been a girly-girl.  I was much more into tree climbing than learning to put on my own eye shadow.  (Much to my grandmother’s chagrin — she was convinced my scars would make boys not want to dance with me.  Not true!  I just had to find boys with more scars than me.  Problem solved.)  I’ve never been the pink-dress wearing type, and honestly, I generally prefer my soap to smell like…well…soap.  I’ve used the same shampoo for years, and if there’s a part of me that requires some kind of Special Product for cleaning or pretty-ing, it’s going to get ignored.  (I never understood the whole Three Step Facial Cleansing Systems, for instance.  IT’S SKIN.  PUT SOAP ON IT AND RINSE IT.  DONE.  Duh.)

So it was as much a surprise to me as to the world when I started getting into BPAL again.  Perfume?  Scented oils?  Huh?  I’d been exposed to them before, and J even bought me a 10ml bottle of one for Christmas in 2004 (when they still had 10 ml bottles), because they were kind of gothy and stuff, and he was, I think, trying to encourage that.  But it came and went, and I’d occasionally look at the site and think about ordering more, and would get distracted by some Shiny and wander away.

Then it was like a switch being thrown, around Halloween of last year.  There were these really great-sounding limited editions, and a whole series based on a carnival sideshow, and how could I resist THAT?  Bought a few.   Found the forums.  Found out that BPAL wasn’t the only independent oil blendery.

And the rest, as they say, was all downhill.

*sigh*  Collection, it is.  (top shelf Arcana and Cobalt Blends, middle shelf BPAL, bottom shelf is Possets, Cremoso, Superbad, Wylde Ivy, Velvet Moon Bathery, Mythos Mixtures, and a few random ones.)   Those shelves, by the way?  Four FEET LONG.  *facepalm*

And I’ve even bought soap.  Handmade cold-process soap.  Smelly soap. Soap that does NOT, in fact, smell like soap.  And *lotion*.  Good heavens.

I think it may have just gotten hotter in here, and my husband is back home with cold coffee and lunch, so I’m going to have to end this here for a bit.  We’ll continue the catching-up next time.  I kind of feel like I’ve been ditching y’all for our regular coffee-date or something, but I’m making the resolution to knock that off now.  No more long absences.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments and emails while I was gone, too.  Even when I was only checking email once a day, I was all over those emails first.

Thanks.  For those *and* for being here.  Happy last day of May to all.

So CraftChi had this awesome tutorial for making your own photoshop frame brushes and such, which is something I’ve ALWAYS wanted to know how to do, but thought was one of those Big Technical Heavy Things(tm).  You know, the kind that require things like software and knowledge of ancient acronyms like AJAX and COBOL.

Not so! says she.  WOOT!

I was headed out today to start in on getting in my Farmer’s Market list item checked off the list, but apparently, Mother Nature thinks that “Saturday” is synonymous with “Rain Like Crazy”.  Which is fine with me — I have some other things to do that don’t involve sitting in the rain.  Like, say, getting a new camera cord dealie at Target, and picking up lots of old shoes at Goodwill so I can make a shoe garden, based on Sassafrass Hill’s awesome tutorial.  No, seriously — go look at the link.  I’ll wait.

*insert hold music here…doodeedoot, doot doo dee doo doo…..*

Is that not the coolest garden idea EVER!?  I have the perfect little shaded corner of my yard for it.  My yard looks like a junkyard ANYWAY, so having a bunch of plants in old beat up shoes will fit right in.  Look natural even.  I’m not sure if that’s a positive or not.  Ahem.

Unrelated:  I love the smell of grapefruit.  I have no idea why.  I’m not a big fan of grapefruit, the *fruit*.  But the citrusy grapefruity smell?  I’m all over it.  Go figure.

Just found out that there’s an Heirloom Plant Sale going on in the next town over, right now.  Maybe I’ll go there, too, since the Farmer’s Market’s out the window for the time being.

I can’t wait to show you pictures — there’s a robin’s nest just outside my office window, and the fat mother robin just came back to sit on the nest for a while.  I think she knows I’m here (can’t miss the overpowering smell of grapefruit coming from the open window, most likely), but apparently, I’m nonthreatening.  I’m going to be able to see baby robin heads in a few weeks, right from this very chair!

I love Spring.  I missed it.

More later, with photos and photoshopped frames!  Squee!  (Anybody have any interest in a set of knitting frames for scrapbooks and/or blogs?  Or maybe just hand-drawn elements one?  I’m thinking I could put a couple of these in a .zipfile for y’all if there’s interest in ‘em.  Let me know!)

Y’all are going to totally laugh at me.

I keep meaning to update this sucker, but I have misplaced my camera cord and can’t figure out how to get the important stuff OFF it so I can show YOU all.  And as such, I keep putting off updating, because an entry without pictures is no entry at all.

Ahem.

Things I have pictures of:  several shortish hikes for letterboxes, for those that wanted to see.  My handspun knit comfort shawl of doomy-doom, and the pieces of Nottingham, not quite yet seamed, but I’m okay with that.   Some gratuitous dog photos.  Pictures of the beaded jewelry that all of a sudden my brain seems to want to make.  A photo of the Insane Perfume Oil Collection that has sprouted up in recent months.  Pics of the back yard (the real one, instead of this figurative one) and the little bits of garden-planting I’ve been doing to try and make it not-so-junkyardish.

There’s a lot to cover, see.  That month off?  Well, it wasn’t really a month, and I didn’t really take it *off*, but a whole lot went on.  We almost bought a house.  I relaxed and did a lot of creative wandering.  We fixed most of my car, which means I’ll be independently mobile again soon.

Just a metric TON of stuff.  Seriously.

I’m working on the camera-cord thing today.  I’ll be back with some pictures once I find it. :)  (To be fair, I rearranged my whole office to make room for J’s computer in here, and you KNOW how things disappear when you clean/organize?  Yeah, it’s like that.)

Soooon.  Very sooooooon.

I’ve been looking for a good way to segue back into keeping a blog over here.  After the long, flu-filled absence and subsequent recharging, all I’ve really wanted to do is hide from the world for a while.  Get some things done.  Check some stuff off my list, or at least make a dent in it all.

And most of that stuff has been soooo behind the scenes and boring to the outside world that there was no point in taking pictures.  I mean, really — how many pictures of a sweater in progress can you see before you start wishing the blogger to get hit by a bus, just so they’d have something interesting to talk about?

Maybe that’s just me.

Anyway…

The past few nights, I’ve been up late, due to a weird bout with insomnia.  And all three nights, I’ve gotten to a point where I couldn’t stay in the chair and knit quietly on the socks I’m working on — I had to MAKE SOMETHING, and I had to make something RIGHT FREAKIN’ NOW.

And who am I to say “no” when the call’s that strong, right?

This is the third day.  (above)  It’s technically a collage, due to the King County Metro transfer stub I found in a pocket and glued down, but all the rest of it is drawn/painted by me.  It’s a repurposed piece of wood I got from a local dollar store about two and a half years ago, intending to paint over the existing “art” on it, and I’m just NOW getting around to actually doing that.  (I love that it’s already got picture hanger stuff on the back and the sides were pre-painted…it’s literally ready to hang when it’s dry.)

I have some pictures from my month off, and I’ll probably edit those tomorrow if the weather doesn’t improve around here.  (It’s raining like mad, and they’re saying that parts of my state could get *snow* tonight.  SNOW, people!  It was EIGHTY DEGREES here today.  Seriously.  Mother Nature = Needs an Intervention for her Obvious Crack Addiction.)

I missed blogging.  I missed y’all.

We’ll talk again soon.