Friday, July 6, 2007

Patches

Our Fourth of July holiday was cool and variously included overcast skies, thick fog, tempestuous wind and rain, and great peals of low-frequency thunder so powerful they shook the house (I've been in smaller earthquakes). Puny human fireworks were no match for the elements!

The bad weather kept me indoors, re-reading Order of the Phoenix and knitting swatches. For the Tour de France KAL I swatched Uptown Toffee, another Norah Gaughan pattern, published in Knitter's K61 Winter 2000 and also anthologized in Jackets for Work and Play.

Uptown Toffee swatch

I like the Nantucket Jacket swatch better, but prefer the Uptown Toffee silhouette. What I really really want is Nan with long sleeves and no hip-enhancing gores. Hm. [Ponders posting limericks, thinks better of it] More swatches to come.

Enchanted Aran Forest swatch

One of my pastors is getting married at Church of the Improv. It's not every day one has a pastor get married, so I knit up the intertwined trees motif from the Enchanted Aran Forest cardigan to decorate her wedding card. After a bit of fiddling, I settled on No. 30 crochet cotton and U.S. 4/0 (1.25 mm) needles (pictured with Jersey quarter for scale, click to view larger).

My prediction that my first tomato would be ripe this week would seem to be another casualty of the unseasonable weather – the patio tomato is not merely not ripe, it's also got greenback (= patchy color, particularly noticeable on the shoulders, indicative of woody spots).

Unripe tomato

Greenback sometimes can be corrected in the garden by heavy mulching and by burying banana peels and Epsom salts in the tomato patch. A bucket or two of clean wood ash would be great too (but I don't have any handy). I'm not sure what to do for a container plant – erm, mebbe foliar feeding? Suggestions welcome. Heheheh, mad tomato science ahead.

6 comments:

Bee said...

oh the teeny trees are amazing ... For what its worth I love the Nantucket such a totally wearable piece Good luck on your swatching journey

CrazyFiberLady said...

Ina, I always learn something from your posts! Good luck with the mad tomato science. We picked our first cherry tomato, or maybe they are grape ones and not cherry, this week. Yummy! Now we are waiting for some of the bigger ones in that tangle of an exploding mess of plants to ripen.

That swatch is absolutely beautiful!

Zarzuela said...

Your swatches are so pretty! Sadly I have nothing to offer on the tomato front. You are much more of a tomato scientist than I!

Jessica

P.S. I haven't forgotten to look for the LB magic stripes. I'll let you know soon. :)

--Deb said...

I can't help you with the tomato issues, but think your swatches look fabulous. And I still like the Nantucket cardi . . .

And, oh yes, I'll be starting OOTP tomorrow morning . . .

Meg said...

Love the tree knitting. Such a clever idea for a card!

Anonymous said...

The inter-twined tree swatch is such a nice touch for a card! I like greenbacks but not of the tomatoey variety. At least it's better than blossom end rot. Could you chop up banana peels to mix into the soil?