ECF - Party Edition

Two weekes ago my girl turned 11 and this weekend she'll finally get to celebrate it with her friends. Naturally, she requested a cake and I obliged.



The funny thing is that I know from experience that the girls will be totally sidetracked by the sundaes and forget to eat cake. Too bad! It's came out really well.

Garden Report - May 20th

Aren't these blueberries lovely? Yeah, I didn't actually grow them for real. These are on one of 2 bushes that I bought this year. I'm going to plant these 2 and the original 3 in a new spot in the hope that they'll do better there. The reason I didn't plant them yet is that I didn't want to disturb the plant while it was producing berries.

It turns out that it didn't matter because the temporary home for these plants is right next to the bird house where the baby birds were. Duh! I hope that they enjoyed them.



Fortunately there are plenty of things that are growing well in our garden this summer and here's a peek at some of them.

This is broccoli. I know it doesn't look like it yet but the plants look healthy and seem to be growing well so I have faith that it'll look more broccoli-like soon.



Here's one of the plants that Stinkette is most excited about. Potatoes! We've got 4 plants in the garden and another 4 in a planter on the deck. For ages it seemed like nothing was happening and Bruce felt silly watering a pot of dirt but now they've sprouted into happy, leafy plants. Even if we only get a few potatoes it'll be worth it because the plants look so great on the deck.



Here's the last on to share today. It looks a lot like the broccoli but it's different. Can you guess what it is?



It's one of my favorite veggies - Brussels Sprouts.

Dazzling Dozen Potholder Swap

Do you get random requests on Ravelry? I do. I'm not talking about friend requests. I love those! I get so many ideas about what I want to knit next by watching what others are doing.


What I don't enjoy is the queries about selling my stash. Especially when it's a sweater's worth of yarn I just bought. No, I bought it because I want it. If I was open to trading or selling it then I'd label it as such. It's just a nuisance. End of rant.

Another type of random request is the request to join this or that. Often I'm not sure who it's coming from or why but, whatever. I usually don't join... except for the Dazzling Dozen Potholder Swap. This one spoke to me.



The idea is that everyone is broken into groups of 6 or 12 and accordingly you knit a potbolder each month to send to the member of the month, except for when you're the member of the month and you get 5 or 11 potholders in the mail. I love having a reason to play a little with the crochet each month and not have to do one pattern over and over again. It's also cool that it's spread out over quite a while so there's no pressure.



This is the first one I made. I sent it out on time (just barely) and it was received positively. I used the Scalloped Potholder pattern for both sides. I'll try other patterns for other ones. It should be fun. Especially since it's using up tons of yarn scraps.