Sunday, May 6, 2012

Pecks of Peppers

I got a plant from my office for Administrative Professional's Day, the politically correct term for for the commonly-known Secretary's Day.  The plant is a type of ivy and it's dying.  I put it inside, it withers.  I put it outside, it continues the death spiral. I water.  No change.  I spritz it with water.  Yep, you guessed it.

However, Mr. Grumpbump seems to have a way with the plants (as he does with the cats, who love him so much more than me).  He started planting all kinds of everything once we bought the house.  There is no real plan to what he is doing.  I know he enjoys color, so anything with a bloom brightens his day.

Although our area has suffered from lack of rainfall, Mr. G has managed to keep some of his garden alive and thriving.


Sunflowers
Lantana

But Mr. G's real promise seems to be with vegetables.  He admittedly went a bit beserk planting peppers because we must have 50 of them growing and so many more flowering.  The majority of the pepper plants are sweet peppers (light green in color).  Yes, you can add them to salads or eggs or stir-fry, but they are not that versatile.   Interspersed with the sweet peppers are a few hot pepper plants, and the peppers on those plants are small and tight and a very dark green.  They practically scream "hot pepper".  I'm not touching those.

We have at least 10 more plants like this.
 Mr. G has one bell pepper plant.  So far, we have picked two peppers and they have been on the small side.  However, they taste great.  The plant has two more almost ready to go.
Bell Peppers
 So, with the garden feeling a little too green, there is a promise of something different.  I have yelled at Mr. G to plant some more damn tomato plants.  Tomatoes are my absolute favorite thing in the whole world.  You see those itty bitty red dots?  Say a prayer that they have lots of babies who grow up to be red juicy delicious.

Grow, dammit!
 The vegetables and sunflowers are growing outside of the patio area, in a small patch of ground called our backyard.  The lantana, catnip and other greenery are growing in the areas to either side of the pool.   With the addition of all of these plants and shrubs, we have fooled Delilah into thinking she's really outdoors and she has stopped her incessant whining at the front door to be "let outside".  Now, she will cry at the back door, which we will gladly open to let her out.  Many nights, she will sleep outside and you can find her in the catnip/lantana area, where she had matted down the mulch to make a nice, comfortable spot for herself.

Delilah
I'm still working on washcloths but I might pick up my scarf project and try to finish it today.  It was 90 degrees yesterday so knitting a scarf seems counter-intuitive.  However, I don't have that much more to go before it's done, clearing space for me to start that baby blanket.

Crazy Colors Scarf
I bought a new computer a few weeks ago.  Mine was just becoming too slow, even after I re-installed the OS and cleaned everything off of it (most stuff I have is stored on an external drive).  Mr. Grumpbump's computer was replaced last November and his prior computer was about 6 months old than mine, so I knew the time was coming.  I'll probably sell the old one on eBay, but I'll have to do a lot of cleanup on it (both internally and externally).    You know with new things you make all kinds of promises to keep it looking perfect and new and fresh.  That's where I am right now.   I am trying to keep it free of cat hair, crumbs and the like.  I'm not very good at sticking with my commitments and typically I just give up.  I'll be abusing this computer in no time.


Friday, May 4, 2012

Friday Night I Said I'm Sorry

I am sorry for neglecting this blog for so long.  I have tried to write a posting several times in the last week or so, but I lose interest so quickly.   I think I have a lot to say but when I'm staring at the computer screen nothing motivates my fingers to move over the keys.

It's Friday night and I had a long, ugly day at work.  I left around 5:30 and hurried home.  Mr. Grumpbump and I made a trip to Michaels.  I bought baby yarn because I'm knitting a baby blanket for Mr. Grumpbump's niece, who is having her first baby this fall (she's having a boy).  While it's true that I have a stash of baby yarn from the last blanket I knitted, I fell in love with some beautiful blue and green skeins of yarn.  I really dislike the Michaels that is close to my home.  The yarn section is always so messy and under-stocked.  I wish there was a Hobby Lobby nearby.  The only one in my town is near my office but generally I have a hard time leaving for lunch.   It is my new favorite big-box yarn store.

The baby blanket I'm knitting is the gradient garter pattern, which I've previously done.  The problem with the last project was that the yarn would get ridiculously tangled.  I'm not making that mistake this time.

As for my other projects, the third ripple afghan is still on needles, having been so long neglected.  I really don't have that much more to finish but other projects keep getting move up in priority.  I knitted these really cute and super simple fingerless mittens.  I made them for a friend at work and we added some buttons to give them a funky, quirky look.

So easy

Left off the "flap" and added buttons
I had to add the felt white flower "button" at the inside beginning of the thumb gusset because there is a gap where the knitting goes from in the round to back and forth.  I could not pull the yarn tight enough to close the ladders that were formed.  I even tried to add more rows but nothing seemed to work.  So I just covered up my mistake.

I'm also knitting a two-color scarf for the same co-worker.  I really should try to finish it this weekend for her.  She will love to model the scarf (as she did the mittens above).  The colors are very bold and eye-catching (pink and green and purple and yellow).

Also on some needles around here are a few washcloths.  Sometimes it feels like I am going backward in my knitting, as if I'm not progressing.  But knitting is also about relaxing and de-stressing for me so I can't be too critical in my thinking.  So I have projects strewn about the house and have not left much room for the cats.



Tigger is a great cat - he loves to be near us.  When Mr. Grumpbump and I are outside of the patio, he goes meow crazy and yells at us to come back inside.  He doesn't like being left alone.


Finding My Treasure

Now that my shawl is complete (yarn purchased during the Orange Blossom Yarn Crawl in March), it is just hanging out in my foyer until I de...