Knitting a Dress & GREEN Farm Yard

Remember my Maggie Maria Rabbit I made from the kit from Alicia Paulson?  WELL.. she just brought out some knitting patterns for new clothes for her Maggie Rabbits and I fell in love with this cute little knitted dress, so I ordered the pattern and some teeny tiny buttons.  By the way, she sold out 1000 kits in a few days, but has now made a LOT more and so if you want a kit with all the materials, you can buy it in her online shop.  Here I am below, on my THIRD try, knitting my little tiny dress.  I'm not an accomplished knitter, so this is quite a challenge for me.  I started using a #5 circular needle and the yarn was stretched so far on the needles I couldn't knit.. try #2 was on 4 double pointed needles, and I realized that I didn't know how to use stitch markers on knitting, only crochet.  I emailed my knitting friend, Meredith from Mereknits Blog and she has kindly helped me with a myriad of questions.

Here is my Maggie Maria showing off the beginnings of her dress.  I'm using my vintage faux tortoise shell knitting needles I bought from Australia on eBay.  LOVE them.

After 3 tries and HOURS of frustration and feeling like I wanted to jump off a cliff.. I think I have it.  The next row scares me.  More on this next update.

I went outside to see what was growing and found my little roses I potted up last summer in bloom.. this one's name is "Playboy". 

I think I lost the marker for this one, but I think it's a super doubled old rose.  These 4 are from Heritage Roses - each rose is true to the roots - they don't use root stock and grafting.  This one smells divine!

I have tons of my 4th of July roses - it's a climber.

The begonia is happy.

My hosta is huge with Japanese Forest Grass behind it, and my corkscrew willow coming along.

My orange honeysuckle is covered with blooms!

And here is the yellow centered rhodie, our 2nd last to bloom.

I noticed our sage in the herb pots was in bloom!

During the winter wind storms, a big huge branch broke off one of our Douglas Fir trees and fell on my beloved "Beauty Bush".  Hubby used the tractor to try to straighten up the old shrub, but 2/3rds of it broke off when he was trying to save it.  I'm so happy to see that 1/3 of it survived and it's in bloom.  I love this flower, like little orchids.

Pretty, huh?

I'm near the top of the creek of our water feature - do you see Dayle's garden sculpture of a Chinese warrior.  He guards to creek and pond.  He hasn't done too good of a job, letting Great Blue Heron's take our fish and raccoons, also.  :-)

From under my Japanese red maple.. our deck and back door.. and the creek.

Do you think it's green enough here?  I mean.. really!

My garden sculpture is a art deco lady leaning on a stone wall.  To her right we planted a hardy fuchsia - it's doing pretty good!

This Sweet William comes back in this pot every year.  Love it.

Our woodlot from the bedroom French doors.  Green!

One of my newer blog friends is Jennifer from Thistle Bear Home and she posted a few days ago about her wonderful parents-in-law and the 2 lockets they gave her while there on a visit.  I told her I'd share my locket.  I found it on eBay - it's vintage and made of rose gold with old style diamonds in a star pattern on the cover.

I often wonder about it's history.  It's engraved on the back - Nov 1907 with the initials of A, T & S.  I knew it was fate that I found it as those are the initials of my 3 children, Amy, Travis & Shawn.  :-)

I wear this often.

Inside I printed up tiny photos of Dayle and I when we were married and our 3 children, all their senior graduation photos.  These have faded, I think I need to print up a new set of photos.  

I just received a box of 100 of these pins - they depict the highway sign that I drew and designed which has been on our highway here for many years.  If you want one, I'm selling them for $5 plus $2 S&H.  Just email me at Teresa@byTeresa.com  -- they are 1 inch wide and 1.25 inches long.

My daughter sent me the cutest photo of our youngest granddaughter, Paige.  Isn't she adorable?  She graduated from Pre-School!  

We had a nice peaceful weekend remembering our service men and women.  On Sunday around noon our son and dil brought our 13 and 8 year old grandsons to spend the night here while they had some me time at Skamania Lodge in the gorge.  The boys were fun to have with us.  What amazed me was their appetites!  Their parents brought a crate of fresh strawberries and they ate the entire thing in just a few hours!  For dinner we made them a 9x13 pan of chicken in a garlic cream sauce with white and wild rice.. and they polished the whole thing off!  (We ate our lo-cal dinners)  Then for breakfast Dayle made them 10 eggs scrambled with cheese, and 2 pieces of toast, and after that, they toasted up the entire rest of the loaf of bread and ate it with 1/2 jar of jam!  Gadzooks!  Growing boys!!  LOL!!  Have a great week!!  We'll be attending our 5 year old grandson's graduation from Pre-School on Thursday - that should be fun!!  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)