Crazy, there is really no other word to describe my life over the last week and a half.You probably all noticed that I did not make my usual Sunday post about the new colorways. I was sick, so sick that it took every bit of energy I had left to upload the new colorways to the website. I remained sick for part of the week, and so spent a lot of time in bed, reading about water gardens, dreaming of all the yard work awaiting me, knitting very little, as I was too tired to do even that.
I looked at so many pictures of gorgeous water gardens, that they became the inspiration for this week's colorways. This week, my colorways are Water Lily, Koi, Waterfall... I hope will enjoy the Water Garden Collection . Above is a picture of the Lotus Colorway.
I made some progress on the promised new sock pattern. I really like its simplicity, and yet very beautiful texture. I am half way down the second sock, checking my notes. The pattern will be available as a free pattern on the blog. I really like playing with 2 colors, without any fairisle, just a pleasant game of slipped stitches!
I have also started working on a summer cotton jacket for my baby girl. I am using an Ella Rae pattern. It is called Sophia, and can be found in her book 4 of patterns for Women and Children. I am not using her yarn. I had 8 skeins of Saucy Cotton in a great turquoise colorway. I know she will like it. I love the simple lace pattern, and keep wanting to complete "just" one more repeat, which is a pretty good sign that I will enjoy knitting the jacket. The pattern does not include any edging, and I know that I will be adding one, as I prefer the edges not to roll. I will probably crochet it, but I am not there yet. It is my goal to have the jacket ready before my little one leaves for France with my parents, so that she can wear it on the beach. The departure is on May 12. That leaves me about 2 weeks. I am making the size 7-8 years. I hope this is not one of my crazy unrealistic ideas...
I mentioned earlier in my post that I had been looking at a lot of books on water gardens. We live in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, which used to be a suburb of Boston. The large Victorian homes that can be found here, also have large city gardens. Ours may have had some plants at one point, but is now just a plot of underused land. I have been dreaming of transforming it. The transformation will not be easy. The previous owner of the house must have been a squirrel, or somehow related to one. He did not burry nuts, but rather he burried bricks. Each time I dig, and try to turn the soil, I hit a brick. They are not burried as if they had once been a patio, but rather randomely! I must have dug more than a hundred, in one corner of the yard only. All these bricks gave me an idea though. I like the idea of recycling materials, and so the idea for a central brick patio area was born. Even though I liked the idea, I felt there was still something missing. Which brings me to the topic of water gardens. While I was sick, I was browsing some magazines, in bed feeling pretty miserable when a picture of a bricked patio, with a square pond in the center caught my eye (May 2008, Country Home). I fell in love. So this summer, apart from designing new colorways, homeschooling the kids (which is pretty much a year long thing for us), knitting, painting the inside of the house, I will also be digging hundreds of bricks out the ground, digging a hole for a pond, setting up a pond, building a brick patio, putting up a fence, and planting zillions of seeds that will hopefully grow and bloom to transform my abandoned garden , into a little city paradise, where I can sit, and knit while the children play around me...
3 comments:
Dear Caroline,
Beautiful colourways, as usual! I was so happy about your patio project, and wanted to share something I learned when I did mine. I had my vegetables and herbs in the center and the bricks as framing pathways. I found it extremely helpful to lay a weed barrier under the sand, so that when it came time to weed they came out easily. Good luck and I hope you post pictures when done!
Your ideas for a bricked water garden sound heavenly. From my own experience, may I suggest that whatever research you do on preparing ground for brickwork, no matter how tedious it may sound, follow it and then do a little more! My indefatigable husband engineered brick paths that frame the garden we built in 2000. Eight years later the paths remain even and weed free (but not moss free, thankfully!) because of his hours of readying the surface that would receive the bricks. Digging down deep, spreading a crunched-up gravel called "modified," tamping, followed by sand, more tamping, and, finally, brick, then more sand between the bricks. And our two children did their share, each adopting a path as "theirs" and laying the bricks in place for, as my daughter said, "forever." I know yours will be lovely, a bit of Giverny in Jamaica Plain!
Hey Caroline!! I love your yarn colors they are awesome!!! anyways I just wanted to see how you were doing up in Boston. I miss you soo much, I hope you have been having fun knitting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I miss it so much; with all the afterschool activities and homework I have not been able to knit. Well have fun coming up with and creating new projects!!!!
Luv,
~Victoria Cook
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