Earlier this week, I mentioned that I was away this weekend. The course I was attending was only 15 minutes from my parents’, so I crashed at their place for the weekend to save myself some travel time.

But the course didn’t start until 6pm on Friday, so I took the opportunity to do some quilting before I went…

As a result, Sprites’ Garden is complete. It’s not a very big quilt (38″ square) so it didn’t take long.

It was a fun, and quite frugal quilt to make. The main blocks were a charm pack I got as a free gift with a MSQ order. The purple solid was a clearance bin find.

As was the backing…. a cute chunk of flannel for just $5! The binding was part of a mystery grab bag order from MSQ… and it just happened to match one of the fabrics in the charm pack! I did have to add a couple 5″ squares to have enough for the pattern, but they were all leftovers from my stash.

There’s no babies on the immediate horizon, so this will be tucked away for now. It was made for the pure joy of it, and I’m sure the right recipient will come along eventually!

Since I’ve been making such good progress on my holiday knitting, I figured I might as well keep at it with my next cast on.

Miss Wren is the only little one left on my gift list… all my other kids are tweens or teens. I’m still debating on whether I’ll make her another sun dress like last year (I do not enjoy making ruffles, regardless how cute the result). But I definitely wanted to make her a new cardigan, so I scoured Ravelry. I wanted something similar to her Old Shale Cardigan – something with classic appeal. I found it in the Baby Fir Jacket.

Then I went stash diving for the perfect yarn.

I have a fair bit of Fat Cat left from when we closed the shop. Wren’s mom loves bright colours, so I thought this bold Violet would be perfect. The pattern actually calls for sport-weight, and Fat Cat is DK. But the pattern only goes up to two years. Wren will be two-and-a-half by Christmas, so I’m hoping a slightly heavier yarn on a larger needle will give it just enough wiggle room for a growing girl.

I’m already past the underarms, and so far it’s looking good. I don’t think this will be on the needles long. I wonder if I can finish all my Christmas knitting by the end of summer….

I was away at a course all weekend, and I was so consumed with it that I completely forgot that yesterday was Burton’s gotcha day! I only realized it when the memory came up in my Facebook feed!

This is what he looked like when he first arrived. Just a cute little ball of fluff with a mischief streak a mile wide.

Two years later, not much has changed, he’s just bigger and fluffier.

and maybe just a teeny bit cuter!

Here we are, another Sunday, another trip through the garden….

As ever, my garden is continually surprising me. You’ll recall that I have both pink (Candy Mountain) and peach (Peach Dalmation) Foxglove…

Well now I have white too. This little one is growing right beside the pink one.  It threw me for a loop until I read that foxgloves are kind of like Labradors… they carry all the colour genes in their seeds, so apparently you can get any colour from the seeds of the mother plant. I’m not going to complain.. the more the merrier, I say!

Another surprise were the pink Armeria blooming again. I moved them to a different spot this year (they get a little more sun) and I guess they are happy! They’ve never bloomed twice before.

After years of just yellow and white blooms on the sedums in the tree garden, suddenly we have pink! But I’m not complaining. They are lovely.

My Bachelor Buttons have started to bloom. This plant makes the little green sweat bees very happy! It makes me happy too because it’s such a good bloomer!

Another incredible bloomer is my Blanket Flower. I had three of these, but two didn’t make it through winter. I’m so glad this one did! It’s such a happy plant that blooms all summer long!

The daisies are actually a couple of weeks late this year. But despite their tardiness, I think this is the best they’ve ever looked! No bug problems, and they are standing nice and tall.

Speaking of daisies… this little Gerbera Daisy is one from a couple years ago. Gerberas are annuals here, so I put this one in a pot and brought it in for the winter. It really thins out inside but it doesn’t die off. Come spring, I put it back outside, it leafs out all over again and boom! Big, beautiful blooms!

Last year, my poor Red Hot Poker got crowded out by a Coneflower. I thinned and moved the Coneflower this year, and as you can see, the Poker is very happy. This variation is called “Traffic lights” and I think you can see why.

July is lily season and mine are not disappointing! These ones are out front. They aren’t at all what I ordered (there was a mix-up last year), but they are nice none-the-less.

The Day Lilies are also in bloom – the first to open is the small and compact Stella d’Oro. She’s a lily you often see in commercial landscaping… she is very easy to care for and blooms repeatedly.  I have several colours of Day Lilies and I really hope the purple ones make their debut this year.

Both my pink and purple Lavender plants have bloomed.

As have the hollyhocks, which are HUGE this year. They are looking great and showing no sign of the rusty mold that plagued them last year.

I don’t have much by way of food plants, but they are all doing great. I’ve been enjoying fresh strawberries almost every day. In another month or so I’ll be doing the same with raspberries and black berries.

Next week should see new blooms on the Susans, Delphinium, Liatris, Coneflowers and Tickseed, There’s always something exciting happening in my little gardens.

f you’ve not a fan of spiders, you might want to skip this post…

 

Back in May, I spotted this teeny, tiny Orchard Orb Weaver in the back garden.

Over the years, I’ve had many spider “pets”. As a child, my favourites were the big yellow garden spiders, and as long as their webs weren’t in bothersome places, my Dad always helped me make sure the spiders did well. We’d watch them all summer long as the caught food in the web and grew and grew.

This particular spider had built her web across the pathway between my red and yellow irises, but there is another way around, so I’ve been careful not to walk through her home, and I water gently on that side of the garden. These past few months I’ve enjoyed checking in on her each day.

She grew quite quickly, and she has the most amazing colour. Bright green legs and a gorgeous body with orange, green, yellow and black.

Despite how the pictures make it seem, she’s actually not very big. Her leg span is not much bigger than a dime

A few weeks back, I noticed a second web, right beside hers, with a second, smaller occupant of the same breed.

By the next day, the interloper was gone. I wasn’t sure if she ate him or just sent him on his way.

Either way, she was all on her own, sunning herself while she awaited her next meal.

Happily, I got to see that too! Here she is mumching on a fresh, juicy blow fly!

A few days later, I noticed two more webs, each with their own spider – one in the raspberries, and one by Blue Girl.

They aren’t quite as big as the first spider, but they are beautiful…

Sparkling little jewels hanging by silver threads!

Don’t mess with the gnomes…

… they have a very large guardian creature.

I’ve been on vacation this week, so I took advantage of the free time to take a day and finish Paisley’s Christmas quilt.

And for such a simple pattern, it is a stunner. Since Paisley is several years older than her sister, I wanted to make it a little bigger than Rowan’s. But I goofed up. I knew I’d made Rowan’s one row longer than the original. And for some reason, I was thinking the original used 20 flowers. So then Rowan’s had 24. And to make Paisley’s one row longer, I’d need 28.  But the original actually used 16, Rowan’s 20… so Paisley’s ended up being TWO rows longer!

Which means it ended up about 52″ x 85″. Oh well, Paisley is a tall girl, she won’t mind the extra length!

The quilt was made from Boundless’ Petal Noir line, bought during a Craftsy/Bluprint Black Friday sale. When I finally got around to completing the top, I was able to snag border, binding and backing fabric from the same line on clearance.

So the whole quilt has the “scrappy but coordinated” feel.  Since Paisley is no longer a little girl, I wanted her quilt to be a little more sophisticated than her sister’s. I think I managed it.

And that’s another Christmas present off the list! Woohoo!

With Ethan’s socks off the needles, I needed something new on. I needed a change from socks, but I didn’t want anything big and complicated either, so I decided to tackle the pile of dishcloths I wanted to make for Dave’s Grandma for Christmas.

I’ve long admired the round dishcloths I’ve seen several of you make so I hunted Ravelry for a pattern and came up with the Almost Lost pattern.

The pattern could have been written a little bit better, but it was easy enough to figure out. It was even easier to memorize. Both of these were knit in Bernat Handicrafter Cotton (colours are Psychedelic and Candy Sprinkles).

I’ve mentioned before that cotton is not my favourite thing to knit with, but the small size of these meant it wasn’t too terrible.

Once they were complete, I dived into making couple more.

This time with Red Heart Scrubby (colours are Tropical and Capri). It’s a yarn I’ve wanted to try for a while. And while I’m glad I did, it’s not something I’ll knit with often. It’s like knitting with an eyelash yarn, but a very sratchy, stiff one. Not fun. But I think they will make excellent scrubby cloths!

I’ll probably add a few more cloths to the pile before Christmas, but for now I’m moving on to something else. Stay tuned

Saturday, Mom and I loaded up Dory and headed north to Owen Sound.

Miss Rowan had a birthday last month and I hadn’t had a chance to give her her birthday present yet. It was a beautiful day, so we packed our swimsuits, and joined her for a dip in her backyard pool.

Miss Paisley was working, but we did get to see her before we left.

There was also a visit with Bella

And though it looks like she was in cat jail, she was happily sunning herself in her catio.

Miss Rowan had puppy-sitting duties that day, so we also go to visit with Titus

… the chihuahua who lives next door. I have never actually been a fan of chihuahuas, but if I could have snuck this guy home in my purse, I would have. He’s just the sweetest little thing.

As always, it was a fun visit that was over too quickly. But there’s plans in the works for an August trip to Sauble Beach – a playground from my youth. I can’t wait!

Happy Canada Day to my fellow canucks!

The year is half gone and after my little spending spree the other week, I realized I haven’t really stuck to my resolution to get my spending under control. Financially, I’m in better shape than I have been in the past, but I could be a heck of a lot better. Right after that spree,  I had to do some emergency work on Dory. It was only because of Dave’s free labour and a small family loan that I was able to manage it. I really need an emergency fund and to do that, I really need to curb my  spending.

So… I redid my budget, and I can be debt-free by October. But only if I stop spending willy nilly and commit to paying off those credit cards. So I set myself some rules – well really one rule: If you don’t need it  – don’t buy it! This applies to:

• Clothes: Honestly this one won’t be hard to accomplish. My drawers and closets are over-flowing with clothes. I have more than 30 Old Navy Fit and Flare dresses – not to mention about a dozen other styles. What I really need are new/bigger dressers, but they can wait until the cards are paid.
• Shoes: Again, another one that’s not hard to stick to.  It’s actually been months since I’ve even looked at new shoes. Now that I work from home, I don’t really have anywhere to wear all the fabulous shoes I have!
• Candles – with or without jewelry: This one hurts a little. You know I loved Charmed Aroma, and they came out with the prettiest little shell candle that would make a lovely planter after the candle is gone. But no. I don’t need any more candles (I really only burn them in winter and still have several unburnt ones left) and the last thing I need is more jewelry. Much like my clothes, I’m swimming in trinkets. I bought a huge jewelry armoire, and it was still not big enough to hold it all. Both of my dressers are covered in boxes and earring stands.
• Plants: Household or garden. Since most of the nearby garden centres are closing up for the season, this won’t be too hard. What will be hard is not grabbing a new house fern or two on grocery day. But the house does look like a jungle come fall when all the house plants come in from their summer in the back yard so I definitely don’t need more.
• Yarn: This one is not terrible, I have a pretty good stash and still have a bunch of undyed yarn in the basement I can customize in a pinch! I should be able to stick to it pretty easy.
• Fabric: This is going to be the hard one. Like any new hobby, the desire to “buy all the things” hits hard. But, I already have a sizeable stash, with plenty of fabric to keep me piecing for quite a while. I just have to stay strong.

Now… that said, there are some… caveats. I said “If I don’t need it…” If I do need it, I can get it. However, we all know how flexible that word “need” can be. So I’ve set some boundaries around that. To purchase, I must truly need it. For example:

•  My last pair of underwear is full of holes. I can buy new underwear.
• My only pair of running shoes lost a sole. I can buy new running shoes. However, if one of my pair of high heels breaks… no dice… I have eleventy billion pairs of heels. Even if it’s my favourite only green pair. Something else in my collection will work.
• I absolutely need it to complete a crafting project.  Like my Time to Sew squares… I currently need some cream sashing fabric that is close to the background fabric in the blocks. Nothing in my stash is close, so I can purchase that fabric, and only that fabric. This will also apply to backing fabric and batting, but only for tops that I currently have completed or in progress. No “for future use”.

When I told Mom my plan and my rules, she said she’d join me. While she doesn’t have a problem with clothes, shoes and plants like I do, we all know she loves to buy sewing gadgets, rulers, stencils and fabric like it’s going out of style.

She also suggested we mark each day we stick to our plan on the calendar with a BIG X, that was we have a visual of our progress and how well we are doing. We are both terrible online shoppers, so I think having this visual right by the computer will help us both immensely!

And while I said I’ll be debt-free by October (if all goes to plan), I think I’ll try to stick to the plan to the end of 2019! By then I might even have a nice little emergency fund squirreled away.

If you’d like to join us, feel free. I think it’s going to liberating to see that credit card balance say ‘0″.