Seedlings & stitches

The weather during Poorneet (mid Spring) has been less than consistent.

One day it's sunny and warm, then a week of windy, rainy, cloudy, windy weather. Then a day of sun. Usually the sunny day is when I'm stuck inside working and miss the chance to do some gardening outside.

I managed to throw some seedlings and seeds in at random times over the past few months which are doing well now.

Let's be honest. Spring is pretty much all about the sweet peas, isn't it? 

Almost open!

As you could see from the 1st photo, the creamy yellow nasturtiums have taken off. I didn't plant them intentionally this year. Their seeds are just now a part of the garden and pop up everywhere. When they get too much, I reef out masses of lengths and feed them to the guinea pigs.

I may have to rescue Daphne from them soon. Daphne (below in the blue pot) is recovering from a 'mass horticultural event'.

Which for Daphne involved pulling her 10 year old self, 'roots and all' out of this blue pot, giving her a severe root and top prune, shaking out a lot of the old potting mix, then planting her back in with fresh mix and a thorough soaking in a Seasol solution.

The interwebs told me Daphnes are quite likely to turn up their toes and kark it at any repotting or digging up attempts, but she desperately needed it. Look at her now 5 months later!

All the violas are flowering and clumping happily.

Poppies!

I think the zygocactus is a little later than usual, but I've been kind of very lazy at watering the pergola plants over winter.

After seeing english daisies growing wild in lawns when I visited England last year, I've been hankering to get some growing. I planted a few around in my pots.

I also finally managed to get some forget-me-nots sprouting from seed in a large planter. If I can get those self-seeding through the garden, I'll be very happy!

Speaking of self-seeding, this parsley plant and this little rose have both popped up in the vegie garden. The parsley, I get it. The rose, no idea what it is. I've never had a self-sown rose plant before! I'll dig it up and pop it in a pot to see what flower it has.

My asiatic lilies! They pop up every year and some grow up to 5+ feet. 

Poor Retro Owl pot. He has fallen over and broken into zillions of pieces, but I won't let him die. I keep asking the Bear to glue him back together again...

You say Clem-ay-tis, I say Clem-ah-tis... Such a poser Nelly Moser.

Our first tomato growing on another self-sower!

And happily after the recent modest but delicious orange harvest, the orange tree is full of flowers.

Look ma! No seeds!

8Track looks on from behind the sliding door covered in muck from dog paws and noses.

I finally finished a cardigan I've been working on. It's a crocheted raglan cardigan using leftover (and some whole skeins) sock yarn.

So usually 4 ply, all in single crochet stitches. There was a little section around the yoke where I tried a bit of moss stitch, mostly to see how it looked more than anything.

Once the body and arms were finished, I crocheted several rounds to accommodate buttons and buttonholes, as well as make the waist hem and collar look tidy.

I have a zillion buttons and not many matching. 

It's not the best photo of the finished cardi as I hastily took this after poking around doing a bit of gardening, but I grab it to wear most days as it's warm but light.

I'm now planning cardigan number 2. I'm sort of fixated on the idea of a fairisle crochet cardigan. I've tried playing around with mosaic crochet, tunisian crochet and intarsia but they don't really give me the look I want. 

This was my first attempt at doing waistcoat stitch in the round. YES! In the round...

You can't really do it back and forth in rows as you have to insert your hook between the 2 legs of each little V in your crochet stitch which doesn't work when you're doing a return pass.

I was contemplating the idea of whether it was possible to 'steek' crochet like knitting. I found an old blog post by Vicki Brown Designs from 2012 where she showed her efforts at crochet steeking by chaining across from one end to another which is a brilliant idea, but you still have to weave in all the ends so you may as well just crochet flat. Still, thanks for trying Vicki!

I then spent yonks plotting out fairisle designs in an excel spreadsheet as a way of procrastinating from cracking on with the actual thing!

This was just some random different designs I smooshed together from traditional fairisle designs freely available online.

Waistcoat stitch while switching colours is a little bit slow, so if I start now, I may have something ready to wear by next winter!

Have you tried this before? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Louise

 🍊Red Haired Amazona🌷