We've been busy. After a trip out to the nursery and another to Canadian Tire we spent most of last night and this afternoon playing with plants and dirt.


I've got boxes of flowers along our front deck. My sister, Jane, and I grew the sweet peas and morning glories from seed and then picked up a few more plants to fill things out.


Rob put together our new lawn mower and cleaned up our front lawn. It still needs a good drink but looks so much tidier. That's got to be the fastest possible way to get rid of dandelions.


Two big half barrels (in an awesome yellow) are now hanging out next to the tomatoes Jane gave me. In a few weeks they'll start to show the tops of carrots.


Abby stayed outside with us the whole time we were working. She had a lot of fun chasing bugs and chewing the assembly instructions for the lawn mower but got pretty hot being in the sun for so long.


We were feeling the heat too so, along with an ice cube for Abby, I got some lemonade and cherries out of the fridge. We enjoyed them while admiring our handiwork.

Yesterday marks our first anniversary in this house. It's incredible to think we have been here a whole year. It feel so different now that it did when we moved in.

Oh ... and I got some yarn ... from the nursery.

Yep. I was walking around looking for someone to tell us what the tree we were looking at was, turned a corner in the shop and discovered a nice little display of Knit Picks yarns and needles and some good looking knitting books. It's just to the right of the seed potatoes.

I wanted to get some - to show support for their endeavour you know - and saw the basket of pima cotton at the bottom of the display. The blue and green were so nice and summery and I instantly thought of the Classic Washcloth in The Knitter's Book of Yarn. I scrounged up some needles and cast-on after dinner.


It's so soft!

My last project before we went on vacation. This one probably took twenty minutes from the idea to the finished item. This is one of my favourite skirts; it's a cotton linen blend twirly skirt and it had gotten a little too small. Not so small that it actually didn't fit - that's one of the nice things about twirly skirts - it just sat a little high. On other old skirts I find this fine but this one had a really wide waistband and I didn't like the way it was always running into my ribs.

I put on my skirt and marked where I would like the waistband to be, cut off the extra fabric (cutting right through the zipper), cut a long 2 1/4" binding strip from some cute fabric, folded it in half and sewed it along the cut edge of my skirt. I pressed my seam, folded the binding around to the back and sewed again in the ditch to secure it.


Voila, a much more comfortable skirt. The zipper is still kind of short (this skirt goes on over my head) and I might get around to replacing it sometime but it doesn't really bother me much.

Sadly the whole time we were on vacation it was very windy so this didn't get worn but I know it will see use this summer.

This was another quick sewing project - once I had the pattern traced out. The design is from a Japanese craft book. I don't know exactly what the title is but it was called Camisole and Dress in the Etsy listing (I think this one came from here). It's full of cute little tops and summer dresses.


Copying the pattern out wasn't too bad. It did take me a little while to figure out which pieces I was supposed to be tracing (and I kept forgetting what my bust measurement was in centimetres and had to remeasure it) but the pieces and sizes are very clearly marked. I used some cheap cotton-poly fabric as my tracing paper - the light colours are easy to see through, it doesn't fray badly and it means my pattern pieces kind of stick to my fabric for easier cutting - and traced several designs I liked at once so I wont have to get everything out again next time I want a new top.

The sewing went really quickly. It's such a simple top. My favourite detail is the facing and dip in the centre front. It looks nice with the ties loose or in a bow. My fabric (I think it came from Goodness) is a little crisp for this design but I think it will soften up nicely with a bit of washing and wearing; right now the straps have a tendency to slide off my shoulders.


As promised, here is an 'action shot' - look at my hands, I'm getting ready to knit. Photo creadits go to Rob who was patient enough to keep taking pictures until I managed to keep my eyes open for the shot (it's a special gift).