I've Been Busy

Being busy is a good thing, prevents boredom, but I don't seem to be getting anything actually finished! I did finish my Small Talk shawl though and it came out much better and bigger than I expected. I've really got to take a couple finish photos to show it off. I got to the edging of the Catkins shawl but discovered the beads I had, 4 mm were too small and looked dumb and were hard to attach to yarn of that thickness. I didn't have enough 8 mm beads so went to Joann Fabrics in Alpena to get more but, of course, being a small store they didn't have much so I got a mix of 6 mm and 8 mm in dark and light purple and hope it will look okay.

I'm also attempting my first crocheted clothing, a summer sweater by designer Doris Chan called the Bell Sleeve Pullover. I was having trouble figuring out the test swatch because I had to make a foundation chain of single crochet instead of a chain then a second row of single crochet. Between You Tube and some gals at ravelry.com. I've been really pushing working on the crochet until a couple days ago. Sort of burned myself out. Plus I did have other things I really had to do.

One of those things is gardening. I've got 3 vegetable garden spaces now, two nicely dug up and mostly weed free, the third, the one across the driveway that Hal dug out of the swamp last year is a mess. Weeds and tree roots and really wet. I'm going to plant only cucumbers, zucchini and pumpkins over there this year. The tomatoes which I bought as plants and only have 4 so far will go where the chicken "hutch coop" used to be. I need to get them planted as well the strawberry plants I got today. Other things I've planted are my snow peas which went in a couple weeks ago and are about 3 inches tall and some Katahdin potatoes.

Tomorrow I pick up 10 Cornish rock chicks from the local feed store. They're miserable to deal with but it is only for 8 weeks and make such tasty roasters.

And on a final note it turns out the holes in the light purple 6 mm beads are too small. I can't even get the smallest steel hook through it. I may have to add black beads to the shawl to finish this off.