Catnip is pretty well established in various places throughout my garden. I started planting it to attract the neighbor cats in hopes of discouraging the mice from chewing expensive a/c wires and the chippies from digging tunnels near my foundation. It’s been very effective in that regard. I try to bring a little fresh stuff indoors for my girls who really enjoy it. I think it’s hardly fair to go out and touch it in the garden and not return with a treat for them.

While we were out at Garden in the Woods I took the opportunity for a little garden stash enhancement. I picked up a lovely yellow indigo, a delicate little columbine, shooting star, milkweed, and an interesting little scrubby looking bush that will do nicely underneath the mailbox.

Dad and I had a really lovely visit to Garden in the Woods. You can find many more photos on Flickr here. It was chilly and a bit drizzly so we were very nearly alone in the garden with just one small group along with us on the tour. Usually, I skip the tour because there are too many folks to hear the guide very easily but it was well worth waiting a few minutes for her today.

We’ve had a string of graduations in the family for the last several years and this week it was my sister’s turn to graduate from nursing school. I know she’s worked very hard and hopefully it won’t be long at all before she can start a satisfying and rewarding career.

I’ve knit several pairs of fingerless gloves for Daniel. He’s very choosy so I’ve written 3 or 4 variations on the pattern but this one seems to be the favorite. He often loses one, necessitating a new pair. My plan going forward is to order several skeins of this black and always do the same 2×2 ribbing so that when he loses one, I can just knit a single. I’ll have to go back and modify the pattern a smidge to reflect this ribbing style.

My pictures are a little sketchy of the festival this year. I was able to go with Mom and I was more engaged with showing her around and learning my way around the new location than taking pictures. I was sad to miss out on Miss Tarragon’s fleece this year. She had weak spots and was too full of VM to be useful to a handspinner. I did pick up Pumpkin’s twin, Plum (well the fleeces thereof) which are both lovely cormo fleeces. Shale, a BFL, was only a pound this year so I grabbed Dora’s BFL fleece to go along with. I’ll be boxing those up and mailing them off to Spinderella’s Creations very soon.

These socks are from some Romney blend wool at picked up at CT S&W from Great Brook Farm in their $5 end of run bin. They are greener than in the photo but I hear the sun is returning soon so hopefully my next pic will be more true to the lovely color.

At last I can show you some of what I have been knitting. This is Roosimine, the round 5 pattern for Sock Madness. I wasn’t the primary test knitter but I did get called in for backup when Tricia thought it was really easy and wanted to see if I thought the same. I knit loosely and I think that gives me an advantage in these sorts of patterns so that I blew through the cuff very quickly and it goes over my heel with the greatest of ease.  I have a high instep though so when I got to the arch shaping the sock wouldn’t go onto my foot and I put it away in time out for awhile. Lo and behold, when I got it out for a photo session this morning it does go on my foot but it’s wicked tight over the instep. Now I must decide whether to frog and reknit the foot with shaping on alternate rows rather than every row or just let it be and hope it loosens up a bit more. It’s a very fun knit and I highly recommend it!

I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday but I had most excellent nurses who soon put things to rights.