Eloquent Pedestrian

Sometimes I wonder if the whole state of Minnesota is from the house of Stark. A few weeks ago we had an abnormally warm day, all the way up to 70 degrees in November. When it was freakishly warm in March of this year, people put on bikinis and swam in lakes that still had ice in them. But warm in November? Everyone was putting up Christmas lights and raking leaves, taking in garden decorations, and otherwise preparing for winter. We've switched into the winter mindset, even when the winter weather wasn't here yet. We've lost the drive to go and enjoy warm weather, and we're looking forward to enjoying winter weather. Which is why I'm sitting here watching news coverage of the massive storm that's supposed to bring massive (8") amounts of snow, clog up traffic, cause blizzards, and possibly become a thundersnow. The weather forecasters are bored. They're driving around filming themselves in the backseats of cars. Minnesota has gone winter crazy. W...

Beautiful weather for the first time in two months, and what am I doing? Sitting inside and watching the Olympics. Don't worry- I'll go outside soon. But it's just so easy to get sucked in to competition after competition. I've been a little troubled this Olympics by a lack of enthusiasm from my friends and family. I personally blame the British. I have never heard so much complaining about what an inconvenience hosting the Olympics have been. I also blame hot weather, midsummer slump, and too much hype. I, however, love the Olympics. Not so much to watch my country dominate the medal count or to get angry about political connections. I watch the Olympics for Oscar Pistorius, who was born without fibulae and runs with cheetah blades, who has fought for four years with people calling his blades an advantage. He qualified for the semifinal, and got some serious respect from his fellow runners even when he didn't qualify for the final. Or Chad le Clos, also from ...

Lately I've posted quite a few pictures on facebook of my garden. I know not many people are interested in seeing picture after picture of the same plant in gradual stages of growth, but since this is most of what I'm doing these days, it seems appropriate. Every few times I post pictures, I get a similar type of comment: Jane Doe: Wow! No weeds! My first reaction is usually to reign in the urge to inquire about the health of the commentor's eyes. My garden is full of weeds. This would be especially rude as people are just trying to be nice, but it's just plain not true. My garden is full of weeds. Why is it full of weeds? Because I'm lazy. In fact, the Lazy Gardener is probably a more apt title for this blog than Eloquent Pedestrian, as I'm not sure I've been either of those things in this space. I like picking out plants, I like putting them in the ground, I like eating what comes off of them. All those in between steps usually get ignored. My tom...

Lately I have had an affliction of the needles. I have too many projects on them. (I do have new needles since my last knitting post) But I have so many things going on, I can't stand to go to my projects page on Ravelry and see them all. So I want to FINISH things. So first, I finished up my first pair of toe up socks, which have only been waiting for me to have the right needles for them.  I initially "finished" the socks a little short because I was worried about having enough yarn. I had plenty of yarn, and I decided to use more up by adding two inches to each sock. I ended up knitting four extra inches, and I still only stopped because I couldn't stand the things any more.  That's me, doing my best impression of a foot form. I've also had a bug to knit a sweater for a long time. Just like with socks, I have heard a lot of talk about how hard sweaters are. So just like with socks, I decided to knit a baby sweater first. Fortunately my cousins are ...

This is my least favorite part of gardening. Come to think of it, this is my least favorite time in knitting too, which is why I'm working on so many things at once... Anyway! All of my lovely little plants are in the ground, it's too early to tell if the carrot experiment will work the second try, and I've waited this long to show you my lovely mulched garden:  Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle. (A path! A path!) Oh right, have I not mentioned my roses are GORGEOUS? I have more to clear, and some more seeds to plant, but that's not the point. The point is that the exciting part's over, for now. Picking plants is exciting, watering them every day is not. Putting plants in the ground is exciting, weeding is not. So unless I become an obsessive record keeper and start measuring all of my plants every day and p...

This gardening season has been so different for me as a gardener than the two years before it. Because the weather gave me a head start, compared to the late snows of last year, I have not felt rushed or overwhelmed. At least not yet.  I did not accomplish many of my goals for winter garden related activities. But I did make a rough plan of what I wanted to plant. I even made a budget for everything I wanted to buy. When my mother asked me where I was going to put all of this, I told her, and she didn't believe that I would go through with it. To be honest, I wasn't sure I would go through with it.  But since there was nice warm weather in the month of March, I got a head start. I tried a couple of cold weather crops, with mixed success, and I cleared grass. I developed a method, I found ways to use my unwanted grass, and I committed myself to putting in the time. For the first time in months, I came home from work and didn't collapse into a chair. I went ou...

For the longest time, I didn't write because I had nothing to report. I hadn't knit, it was suddenly too cold to garden in the month of April, and I didn't want to bore anyone. I closed my eyes and come out of a time warp into the middle of May with so much to report I may have to do multiple blog posts. Next goal up: a posting schedule. This post will be about my garden. First off a status shot: This may not look like much, but compare it to the "before" status shot and you'll see what most of my gardening time has been. My ambition is to clear out all of the grass between the sidewalk and the garden patch, as well as planting all of the area around the tree stump. (You can see the tree stump there, but it's behind the rose bushes. The weather has gone from unseasonably warm, to unseasonably cold, to unseasonably wet. I have been impatient to get things in the ground. This was made even worse because my seed catalog orders came in. So I plante...

Glorious weather aside, this hasn't been my best week. Suddenly I have developed allergies, and this has paralyzed me with fear. What if allergies mean that I cannot garden this year? I have received so much joy from my time playing in the dirt, I have been so excited about seed catalogs and plant budgets, I don't know if I could survive indoors with nothing to do but watch the green things growing outside. But things have improved to the point where I can survive, both indoors and out, with minimal inconvenience. Still not ideal. BUT. It's the end of the month, and that means new Who Club yarn. Now, I must make a confession. While I have absolutely loved all three colors from the winter Who Club, none of them were the beautiful project yarn I'd hoped I'd get out of the club. Meet my new best friend: Big Flashy Lighty Things and a Cloud Belt. In case of monitor fail, this is a light purple to periwinkle to light blue colored yarn, and it is luxuriously gorgeo...

Hit play on this before you continue to read: Things have gone a little crazy here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. To some degree I expect this. At some point in March it gets warmer here, and in my twenty-five years here I have often seen people running around in shorts and flip flops in fifty degree whether with piles of snow still on the ground. But come on, Mother Nature, this is just ridiculous.  On Saturday we didn't just break the record high temperature, we did it by ten degrees*. People have gone insane. There are women in bikinis by lakes, the parks, zoos, and ice cream shops are packed. People are not only wearing their sandals and shorts, but their tank tops and sunglasses.  I have not been immune to the madness. I grilled outside, I walked places, I hung out in the park. Don't worry, no bikinis. (There's a mental picture you can all do without) It occurred to me some time last week to check under my leaf cover. I've been nervous about my t...

When last I posted I was pretty excited about my Who's Your Doctor Yarn Club through  Nerd Girl Yarns . I'd received my first yarn, Boomtown, and had knit some beautiful gloves out of them. I've worn those gloves every day since, through the coldest this strange Minnesota winter had to offer. I have since received both of the other yarns in the Winter Who Club. And they are beautiful. First there was "The Scarf": If you aren't familiar with the Who-verse, it may seem strange to refer to a scarf without any description. But if you have any knowledge of Who-dom whatsoever, you know exactly what this is a reference to. I started watching Doctor Who because a couple of casual mentions and a front page link on Hulu caught my interest. I watched all of the current series' seasons before realizing there was an older show that all of the episodes referenced. The old series is harder to catch up on. It began in 1963 and ran until 1989. Seven actors portrayed...

On Christmas Eve I got two wonderful knitting-related presents. First the book Little Red in the City , and second a gift certificate to a new local yarn shop. I was extremely excited to get Little Red in the City. I've been talking about this being the year of the sweater (and I have a practice sweater in mind), but I've also talked a lot about how sweaters scare me. They are a lot of knitting, a lot of construction, and knit to fit. Almost all of my greatest knitting phobias, all of them if it's a color work sweater. This was what mom had in mind when she bought me this book. And my first reaction was that it is so very pretty. It looks like a coffee table book, meant to set out for everyone to see. Then I read the inside and I absolutely love this book. I love the conversational amusing tone, and the easy to understand tips and instructions. I'm making a sweater out of this book, later in the year, just you watch. The gift certificate was for a store cal...

I haven't posted here in a long time because I have been far too busy knitting. Which you'd think would be a good thing for a knitting blog, but blogs don't work if you don't write in them. I thought about doing a big post about Christmas time, but instead I'm going to give it to you in pieces. The first gift of yarn-mas was from my friend Kat, who bought me the stitchmarkers from  Nerd Girl Yarns  which I had hinted she should get me. And by hinted I mean that she asked me "What would you like for Christmas?" while we were online one night. And I responded "These" with a link to the stitch markers. I may have pictures of the beautiful Tenth Doctor stitch markers at some point, but they will be in any of my in progress pictures to see here. The second gift of yarn-mas was from me to myself. It was the first installment in the same Nerd Girl Yarn's Who's Your Doctor? yarn club. I pay a certain amount and every month I get an exclusive ...