A Colorful Yarn

A new shawl project is imminent!  Thanks to my blog friend KathyB!  :-)  She had a giveaway on her blog of a gift certificate to her LYS - local yarn shop - and I won!  I texted back and forth with the owner and decided upon this yarn she had.  I ordered two skeins of rich dark purple for the body of it and ordered one other color for the lacy edge, pink.  They are out for delivery!  I then found more of the same yarn in some lovely jewel tones and they are here ready to go.

The color names are clever, from the top left, Green Olive, Seaweed, Pacific Rain, (below from left) Appletini, Merlot, Berry Campari and Grape Punch.

This is what it is made of.  

This is the measurements.

The maker.  

This is my favorite color of all time.  I love how this looks handspun and also it's soft and has a lovely sheen.

Oh.. and look what finally came from Australia.  Yes.  I was perusing eBay for the heck of it and this huge collection of vintage faux tortoise shell knitting needles was looking for a new home.  WELL.. I felt honor bound to adopt these and give them a good home.  You should have heard all the reasons why my long-suffering husband gave me why I did not need these.  But the heart wants what the heart wants and I didn't want these beauties to be tossed in the bin for lack of a saviour.  Right?  RIGHT???  What put me over the edge was the ones on the left, the tops of them are so pretty and they had some bigger diameter ones which I like.  I have gifted some from my current collection to my knitting friends and have in mind to do some more of that.  :-D

OK, how about going outside for a bit?  My Siberian Irises have performed beautifully this year after taking last year off.  :-)

My Scentamental rose is blooming.. sooo pretty and fragrant.

The pink Rosebud Azalea is at it's peak.  A stupid blackberry is coming up through it, we're constantly fighting these horrible invasive species in our yard.

My white Rhodie with yellow markings is in bloom.  Love it.

Funny enough the buds are pink before they open.  I think this is Madame Masson.

The dark purple marked Rhodie is looking good, too.  I think it's name is Sappho.

Our tall raised bed is doing well.  The beans and peas are climbing, the potatoes are all up, the onions are up and our row of carrots is doing good.

The biggest potato.

The salad garden is also thriving.  It's been raining for days with the occasional sunny time.  

I will be taking my trug out soon to harvest the bigger lettuce leaves for dinner!  :-)

See the flowers on the tomato!  Yay!

The Clematis, two varieties, are looking good!

I must say, the Bolivian Begonia sure does grow fast!

Every day that the weather is dry and warm I go out and walk around checking on the garden growth and then go back and enjoy time in the rocking chair by the pond, watching the birds and listening to their song, then feeding the Koi and watching the new "kids" now that they've finally gotten brave enough to swim around and eat.

Keiko, the big one and I've named all the smaller koi, Tiger is the orange and white striped one, Pierre the one with a black beret on his head and Ashley is the mostly gray one.  I'm still trying to name the 2 new goldfish.  How about Marmalade for the big one and Kumquat for the littler one?  

I must tell you that it's very difficult to get all 6 of them in one shot.  :-)

And lastly, Dayle found a recipe on Facebook and made it for us and it was delicious!  Click HERE for the recipe.  It's called "Amish Country Poor Man's Hamburger Steak".  We did not have regular mushroom soup so used Golden Mushroom soup.  Still delicious!  We also added snipped fresh chives and parsley from the garden.  :-) We served boiled Yukon Gold potatoes and to top it off, some fresh asparagus that we traded eggs for from our friends Bev and Gary at the end of the road.  The next time we will add fresh mushrooms and minced fresh onion.  We had two meals each from this - but the 2nd night I used some bulk sausage and made sausage cream gravy to top it off as we didn't have much gravy after the first meal.  It was even better!

So.. a good weekend.  How was yours?  Do share.  
((hugs)), Teresa :-)