flower power

i’ve been wanting big iris in our flower beds ever since we moved here—i love their lush flowers.

david has planted several batches of miniature iris, but their blooming gets lost among our other plantings. finally this year, we have at least one big fat iris and today, it bloomed. what a beauty, eh?

love the brown and purple mix of colors and that little flame of yellow at the center. must. get. more

while our neighbors have poppies that are already wide open, ours are still shut tight. typically, they don’t bloom until memorial day, but once that day arrives each year they bust open right on schedule.

i’m looking forward to seeing many pink and red flowers this weekend. i do wish we had the orangey-red ones—another thing to add to the wish list for the yard. the bed where they live needs a complete overhaul; it would be good to have some lavender and rosemary there, along with the poppies and sage.

speaking of gardens,  barb brought over this adorable fairy garden; she’s now selling supplies for them in her fly by night fairie gardens and made one each for susan and i. mine is in the sunroom where we can enjoy it when taking a break. barb has lots of great stuff on there to put together one of your own; this is a wonderful project to begin now with a child or an elder, so they can work on it throughout the summer months, maybe incorporating some reading, writing, and storytelling for good measure.

i have not started yet another pair of socks to get in the way of the ones i showed you the other day—this is the cuff for a fingerless mitt to match those socks. well, to match them in design anyway, hehe. i’m knitting with our breakfast blend fingering yarn in the espresso colorway; isn’t it yummy? i’ve been wanting something in this color ever since it came in (what i really want is a sweater in the espresso DK, but i don’t have time right now to knit one).

these will be a quick, cute accessory project, perfect for traveling. starting next week, i’m going to be away for half of every week until the end of june, except for the middle week when the book chapter is due. which means that bigger projects will most likely suffer a bit and small projects will just be easier all around (and better blog fodder).

speaking of larger projects, i’ve swatched my sea pearl for the sweater i want to knit with it and all is in alignment to begin except that i need to make myself some charts. my wishes and plans seem always to exceed the actual work time i have each day lately, but i do want to get this on the needles in the next week or so, before all that travel starts. even if i can’t work on it a lot at first, it will be in a state where all i have to do is take it out of its project bag to settle in and get some work done. i can worry about pattern writing later on when i’m home for a stretch.

oh wow, i stepped outside the back door this morning and found our climbing hydrangea covered with blooms.

i can’t get over how big this vine is now—it looks sasquatch this year! seems just a few years ago that i was trying to train it to climb the bottom of the trellis.

and another thing i can’t believe it’s time for already

wherever does the time go??

this weekend we have a couple of special things for you—first we open sales of our new BNW cheviot sock yarn on friday and then on monday, a special memorial day surprise that you won’t want to miss; i promise it will be fun. have a great week; summer is almost here!