What a Life!

Every year since I’ve lived in Nebraska, I’ve planted a vegetable garden. I can’t say I’ve been very successful at it. But I can say, that each year I’ve been more successful the year before. When I lived at Calvert, the soil had a lot of clay in it and you had to have just the right moisture level in order to be able to pull weeds because the soil would turn to stone when it got dry and you’d just pull the tops off. When we moved to this house in August, the previous owners had a garden and their tomatoes were still standing and producing the most incredible tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. I still have the tomato cages they left, but I can’t say I’ve had the same success with tomatoes.

Each year, the weeds have been a major problem, as has been getting outside to work in the garden. I don’t get out there necessarily right away when I should to get things planted, and then it’s warm and the weeds go crazy and I can barely keep up with them. Last year I kept up with them really well until one day late in July when I knelt in the grass while I weeded and got grass cuts all over my legs. I was pregnant with Joey so I wasn’t sure what I could take. My legs itched and burned so bad – every time I moved it took about 60 seconds for the burning to subside. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night. When I called my doctor to see what I could take, the nurse told me to wear pants when I worked in my garden. Yeah, next time. It took me about a month to get out there again, and by then, everything was overripe and the weeds were up to my knees.

Last fall I put a big question mark by gardening and decided I would ponder it over the winter. Was I gardening because that’s what my mom and my grandma’s did so that’s what I should do too (my mom was a SAHM as I am, and my grandma’s raised their children in the days before we had SAHMs and WOHMs)? Or was gardening something I really liked doing? I gave myself permission to quit if it wasn’t really something I wanted to do. With that in mind, I let Steve plant alfalfa over the entire plot around Labor Day. It will restore nutrients to the soil, and act as a cover crop if I don’t get anything planted.

I didn’t want to quit gardening, though, without going through and really thinking about what I had been good at and what I had failed at. I looked at each crop individually and listed the pros and cons of each. Were they more trouble than they were worth? Is stuff from the grocery store just as good or better? Did it grow fairly easily or did I have problems with bugs or other things? If I had problems, what were they and what are my options for dealing with them? Are my options for overcoming those problems worth the trouble of getting the crop?

Even with permission to quit and a history of failure, I still seem to have the itch to plant a garden. I had thought I might still garden this year, just on a smaller scale. Yesterday I started going through what I might plant and actually mapping out a garden plan. I know, revolutionary idea. Usually I just go out there when I get around to it and start planting things, and then I have problems like corn right next to where I put the sprinkler and some parts of the garden don’t get water.

Last year I planted vine crops like squash and cucumbers, and once they got going, they took over the entire garden. When I cleared everything out so Steve could plant alfalfa, the tomatoes, peppers, and Swiss chard was still going strong (in spite of lack of attention) so I left it. Where the vines had taken over, there were very few weeds. My peas hadn’t grown at all, and my ground cherry tomatoes never came up. There was quite a bit of rotton squash and cucumbers that got hauled off. I put everything in piles, but Steve had to load it into the wheel borrow and dump it behind our shed so he saw all of the unpicked produce.

My initial plan was to just plant the west side of the garden which gets sun all day – the east side gets some shade but only for part of the morning. I’ve worked 4′ columns with 2′ walkways between in an attempt to do French intensive gardening (more vegetables in a smaller space means less weeds). My garden is large enough to get seven or eight of those columns each about 20′ long. I thought I might plant three or four of them and leave the rest in alfalfa which Steve thinks he’s going to mow.

I did an internet search on French intensive gardening and came up with some interesting links. I found one site that listed how many of each type of plant you can have per square foot – like four bean plants per square foot. The thing about mapping things out is that you have to think about when things mature and what they’re like when they mature. Cabbage hardly has any weeds between it once it’s done, but while it’s growing, it doesn’t use all of its space so weeds start growing. I decided to block my garden into 4′ x 4′ squares and plan it that way. So tomatoes, for example, would take the center four square feet of one of those cubes, leaving twelve square feet around them for something that does okay with a little bit of shade (I’m thinking grean beans or parsley, which can be planted at a rate of four plants per square foot and get along well with tomatoes, supposedly).

Then I got to thinking that my vine crops could still be planted. I could plant them on the east side and leave the alfalfa up to grow as it pleased until the vines needed the space. I wouldn’t have to weed anything, and once the vines took over, I wouldn’t need the alfalfa anyway. So I may again try to grow cucumbers, muskmelon and some squash.

I also went though and listed what crops can be planted each month. I want to plant things as soon as possible so they mature before it gets too hot and so they’re bigger when the weeds start growing faster in the warm weather. Last year I planted my potted plants in mid-May, which is about right, but I didn’t get any seeds planted until after Memorial Day. It was still in the “range’ for everything, but the weeds were already a problem when little seedlings were trying to break through. This year, I shall plant what I can in April, finish the rest in May, and use drop cloths to cover it at night if I need to. So by May 15, everything should not only be planted but growing in full view as well.

Then when I plant things, I’ll make a note of the estimated days until harvest so I will know when to start checking for produce. Another one of my downfalls has been that things get too ripe and then they aren’t any good. That’s what happened with my corn last year, for example. If I know when to look and what to check for, I should be a lot better about actually harvesting things when they’re ready. I’ve also developed a good system of planning a menu and using the ingredients I have in my pantry; if I apply that same habit to using or preserving produce from my garden, I should be able to make use of most of it rather than inadvertently letting most of it go to waste.

My new camera will also help motivate me. Think of how much fun it will be to take pictures of those little plants as they come up and grow. Of course, I won’t want weeds in any of the pictures which will add further motivation to keep up with the weeding. Then I can post pictures on my blog and show everyone my pretty garden. Won’t that be fun?

I had so much fun working on planning my garden yesterday, as you can tell. But when I told Steve about some of my ideas, all he did was rain on my parade. Are you sure you really want to garden, or are you just in love with the idea of gardening? How are you going to keep up with the weeds? Every summer it gets hot and you quit going out there and then you don’t pick anything and all this stuff goes to waste. I know, I know, I know. I already addressed all of those issues before I began planning, and I haven’t bought any seeds yet and I won’t until I have a specific plan for overcoming each of the obstacles that’s tripped me up in the past.

Steve thinks gardening is just a bunch of hard work for nothing. If you can’t plant it and till it with a tractor, it’s a waste of time. I’m sure if he ever decided to knit, he would buy a machine to do it. Make a whole adult sweater in one evening instead of two or three months. That would be his style. Which is fine. No one’s forcing him to garden or anything. If he prefers vegetables from the store, he can go buy them himself and cook them himself, too.

He grumps at me sometimes because I go and do things and I don’t tell him about it until after the fact. Well, there’s a reason why I do that. It’s so I won’t have to hear all the reasons why I’m going to fail. If I go out and do something and do it successfully, reasons why I might fail are irrelevant as my accomplishments speak for themselves. And if I fail, well, I failed so none of his reasons why I might fail are news to anyone. Really.

Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. As long as I learn from my failures (which, I admit, are many) and try not to repeat them, I see no reason why I shouldn’t plant a garden if I want to. And if he wants to rain on my parade and tell me all the reasons why I’m going to fail, well, gardens need rain, and I shall prove to him that he’s wrong by being successful.

This little red hen shall prevail!

This morning when Steve opened the door to go to work, I could hear birds singing. After he left, I stepped outside the front door and took this picture:

The snow is melting, the birds are singing, spring will be here soon!

I am still grieving the fate of my little sweater that I posted about yesterday. However, I think the stretching may be due to the fact that even though I washed it alone, I did not have it in a lingerie or sweater bag (as is my normal practice) and that may have been enough to stretch it out of shape even though such a disaster has not happened with any of my other sweaters washed in the same cycle, at the same temperature, with the same soap.

I did write up the pattern for it this morning. You can call me the ultimate nerd, but I have a little Moleskine (prounced mole-a-skin-a) that I write my patterns in. I only write the version that I actually did, and then later, if I want to write the pattern up and add different sizes, I have something to go on. I have little *’s to indicate notes on why I did something the way I did or tips to make things work better (say I tried a method and it didn’t work – stuff like that). So this morning, the pattern for that little sweater was recorded in the Moleskine.

If I do write it up in other sizes and have it tested, the knitters may choose to use different yarns so the sizing I did with the gauge I got (which I measured over and over and over again as I knit to ensure it was what I thought it was…which is my approach to gauge). The other yarns will probably hold their shape better, as other yarns I have used and might have substituted in this pattern have. Once I type it up, I will add the sizing and then there is a knitting board that I frequent (in fact, happen to be a mod on) where I shall put out a feeler for a couple testers. All is not lost…

In other news, I made pecan pie this morning. It is something I bought the ingredients to make at Christmas time, but with Joey’s surgery and Grandma’s funeral, I never got it made. I still have my list of things that I was going to make, and I decided to just start making them. They’ll taste as good now as they would have then, and I’ll still get my annual “fix.” Last weekend I made Peanut Blossoms. Today I’m making the pie with a leftover piecrust I had saved. Still on the list are fudge, white chocolate chip and Craisin cookies, and cookies that use “fruitcake fruit” but taste much better than fruitcake.

I used the recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Betty Crocker is my standby old-faithful sort of cookbook. ATK makes things more difficult, adding steps that Betty Crocker doesn’t bother with. Sometimes, as with this recipe, they are well worth it. It’s a good cookbook to have around, though I haven’t liked everything I’ve tried from it.

Doesn’t this make you wish you were coming to our house for supper?

I finished reading my February book before the month ended – Sidney Poitier’s The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography. More about that in later posts. My March book is Echo House by Ward Just. I used to live in the Washington D.C. area, and I love politics. This book fits in with both those interests, and I must say, so far I am enjoying it.

And speaking of monthly goals…yesterday when I was in town, I stopped by Earl May and picked up their seed catalog for 2007. This morning I was browsing through it and pondering what I might plant in my garden this year. I’ve been wanting to have an herb garden, and I was considering exactly what herbs I might plant. Such as lavender. What might one use lavender for?

I seemed to remember Interweave Knit’s Holiday Gifts issue last year had some sachet patterns that used dried herbs as stuffing. I got out the magazine, and sure enough, you stuff the sachet’s with dried lavender. So perhaps I’ll be including lavender in my little herb garden.

In flipping through that magazine again, I noticed a sock pattern, and when I looked at the yarn used by the pattern, it happens to be Reynolds Whiskey, which I have two skeins of color 86 I had planned to knit for myself (into what, I did not know). Ach! This pattern would be perfect!

I had ideas for other projects I might use this yarn for, but I was hesitating because I wasn’t sure how it might feel against the skin. This will be the perfect opportunity for me to find out – a la socks for myself.

Pretty, eh? My initial goal this year was to knit one sock per month or six pairs of socks over the course of the year. I had pulled some yarn from my stash for my “March socks” but I had not yet decided exactly what I was going to do with it, and I could not find the needles I wanted to use with it. This yarn I have the right needles for, and I’m in love with the pattern, so I’m all set. Perhaps I’ll be casting on new socks this afternoon as I watch the NASCAR Busch series race…

Remember this from the other day? I had just gotten the yarn and had barely begun.

Here it is once I finished the front. This is the back where you can see how I carried the yarn with the intarsia and binding off while doing stripes.

And the front – same stage as the above picture. Doesn’t it look nice.

Here it is with the shoulders seamed together.

Now the collar is done. Isn’t it fun to watch this little sweater take shape?

The first sleeve is finished, and the second sleeve is well on its way.

Finally, we’re ready for seaming.

Here is how much yarn I had leftover. Not much…but I didn’t run out like I feared.

Here are all the ends from the tails I buried.

And this is the finished project. Pretty, eh?

…with one small problem.

The dimensions I knit were 23 inches wide. After blocking, the sweater was 26 inches wide when wet, 25 inches wide when dried. When it was 26 inches wide, it was also an inch longer (both the body and the sleeves). Now that it shrunk back down to 25 inches, it is closer to the original measurements for length.

And I’m rather peeved with it. Yes, this is one of the issues with knitting. They talk about swatches. You’re supposed to knit a plain square, wash it, put it in your pocket for a couple days and see how it wears. Kind of like checking to see if you have all the ingredients before you start making cookies.

I’ve swatched before. Followed the letter of the law. And try as I might to do everything I plan to do the same way as I will in the real garment, the measurments of my swatches have not once correlated to the measurments of the finished object. So I’ve thrown up my hands in exasperation.

I find gauge swatches useful when I’m designing and I want to see how a certain stitch pattern will really look or I want to test my bind off and decide if I want to bind off as I go or do it all at the end. But for purposes such as this, the most extensive gauge swatch probably wouldn’t have prevented the calamity. When you wash a full garment, the sleeves pull on the body and cause things to happen which don’t occur with a plain square. The widening is more pronounced at the bottom hem than up top as well as more in the back (one piece) than in the front (where you have the divide for the neck).

I had thought it would be worn over a turtleneck onsie rather than alone, and with the resulting dimensions, I think there will be no choice but to wear it that way. It should be fine as an oversized pullover jacket. But I’m disgusted none-the-less.

According to what I’ve heard, wool typically lengthens, and cotton widens. This is superwash wool, which should lengthen (something I would have been perfectly happy with had it occurred) rather than widen.

And the debate as to how much ease little baby sweaters need is still out with the jury. Four inches of ease for an adult sweater is the norm, and this little sweater at 23″ had four inches of ease for the “typical” 12 month old child. I’m thinking, though, that the belly is bigger than the chest, and that is why every baby garment I’ve measured has those four inches of ease.

I have yarn to make one more little sweater for another baby. It’s the Deep Ocean color of Knit Picks Swish Superwash yarn. I think I shall use smaller needles (US 6 instead of US 7) and knit an extra inch longer than I would have otherwise. The second sweater will be targeted as 18 month size, but I will probably use about the same number of sts. It will be a completely different design, and I have until the end of the month to finish it according to my self-appointed goal. Be my luck it won’t widen and I’ll be stuck with something that’s a bit narrow. There are ranges in what fits well – it isn’t an exact science – so just as with this sweater, I’m sure it will still be wearable. It just might not be what I intended.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of a knitter!

Here is a great daily photo blog…with amazing photos and really great captions.

This morning, I got up around the usual time (5:30) so I could have a few moments to myself for the sake of my sanity before the boys got up (usually between 7:00 and 7:30. But…it was not to be. Joey started fussying because he was hungry shortly before 6:00, and in the process, he woke Ben up as well. So much for that. Joey was whiney because he wasn’t exactly ready to be up yet, but my attempts to put him back to bed were in vain.

Steve left for work, and I put Joey down for his morning (albeit early) nap. Usually when he gets up early like this, he’ll take a longer morning nap – say, three hours instead of forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. Since I was looking forward to that long nap, his getting up early hadn’t put me in too bad of a mood.

I fed Ben while I showered, and then I headed downstairs to post a review of my new camera on my blog, now that I’ve had it for a week. Usually Ben follows me downstairs, or at least I can hear what he is doing upstairs.

I started typing away, happily writing about my new camera. I noticed that it was a bit quiet upstairs, so I hollered at Ben to come downstairs. No response. I called him again. Still no response. I did the counting thing. 5-4-3-2-1 Still no appearance from Ben. So I headed upstairs to investigate.

When I got upstairs, he was sitting nicely in Steve’s seat on the couch. Too nicely. I asked him what he had been doing.

“I take pictures of Joey.”

I turned and walked into their bedroom. Sure enough, the evidence was there. Joey’s crib had been rolled to the center of the room (gotta get the right pose, you know) and he was wide awake. So much for a long morning nap!

I decided I had two choices: I could empathize with the parents who put their kids in cages and are now in jail for it, or I could take a picture of Joey myself.

I grabbed the camera and stuck the lense between the bars of the crib. This is what I happened to catch:

Now, a little bit about my new camera. It’s a Canon S3 IS. It’s what I call a “faux SLR.” It’s not a true SLR, but it is more than a point-and-shoot. It looks like an SLR, and you can adjust the settings on it like an SLR. In fact, it feels very similar to the film Canon Rebel I once owned. It has all the point-and-shoot modes like portraits, landscape, sports action, etc., and it has the manual modes – aperature-priority, shutter-priority, all manual – that my Canon Rebel had as well. Here is an interesting article if you want to know more about these faux SLR types.

I recently organized the photos from my old camera into folders according to the month in which they were taken. I’ve been using Picasa as my photo editor, and when you download photos, it wants a new folder name to put them in, and when you go to look at them in MyPictures, they’re all out of order. Anyway, most monthly folders had about 80 pictures in them. This camera I have had for seven days. It numbers pictures consecutively beginning with 001, and I’m well into the 400 range. We’ll just say it’s very easy to take pictures with.

Now there are those who claim that film is better and digital simply cannot replace it. I, for one, think digital is great for my objectives. When I had my Canon Rebel which I loved dearly, I wanted to learn how to use the different manual modes and take some great pictures. But the cost of buying and processing the film held me back. With this camera, I can do the same things I wanted to do with my Canon Rebel, but it doesn’t cost me a dime (other than eating up memory on my hard drive, perhaps). I can see the pictures immediately after I take them and adjust any settings. That makes the learning curve much quicker because you don’t have to wait a week to see that your photos were underexposed, and you can see on the picture what your settings were and know what to change if you come back to it later.

The shutter lag on my old camera was what put me into the market for a new one. No matter how hard I tried to work with it, I seemed to always miss the great shots. This camera clicks happily away. In fact, it works so slick you hardly realize that you’re taking pictures. You can experiement with angles, composition, and all sorts of things (which makes the tally add up so quickly). Of the scene pictures (non-people), I probably delete a third of them on the camera and then sort through them some more once I download them. The people pictures I don’t delete (yet) unless someone’s eyes are closed or something.

One of my favorite tricks is the continuous mode. You know how some people always have their eyes closed or your kids smile right after you take the picture? Continuous mode is great for that. Just hold the shutter release button down until you get three or more shots. The first one probably won’t be worth much, but chances are one of the others will be pretty good. I’ve even managed to get some good shots of Steve, which seemed impossible with the old camera. And yes, it had continuous mode, but with the shutter lag, it wasn’t worth much.

Another thing I love about this camera is that you can adjust the intensity of the flash. I was sitting next to Steve on the loveseat in our basement and he was holding Joey I decided to take a picture of Joey. The first one was too dark (I didn’t have the flash on). The second one was over-exposed on Joey’s face since he was so close. I adjusted the flash intensity and got a couple great shots. Of course, Photoshop could correct any of those pictures, but why doctor them up later if you can take them right in the first place?

I must confess that I have outgrown Picasa’s editing capabilities with this camera. It was great before, but it simply doesn’t do the trick with this one. I’d love to have Photoshop Elements (I think Photoshop would be overkill for me at this point, just as a $1500 DSLR would be). With as many pictures as I’m taking, I’d really like to delve more into photo editing so I could save the great shots where the camera wasn’t quite set right yet.

Obviously I’m having a lot of fun with this camera. I need to go shopping for a toy camera for Ben since he seems to enjoy taking pictures too. I know he’d have fun playing with it. Always more things to buy and have…