On The Needles

I'm currently enamored with sock knitting. I'm saving mostly sock patterns on Ravelry and have mostly knitted socks (with a short foray to a sweater for a baby that arrived into my circle of friends in March) this year.

This is a pair of basic sock from The Knitters Handy Book of Patterns ** by Anne Budd, Knitting socks from this book got me over the sock knitting mountain that was in front of me.  I'm hopeful that if I keep knitting, I will learn to design my own patterns.

I bought the yarn at my favorite LYS (local yarn store for the non-knitters in the crowd), Fiddlehead Yarns.  They are wonderful - great classes and expert help when you need it. They have a good selection and I can usually find something I can't live without there.

The next pair I have planned is this wonderful pattern by Cookie A. I have to work on it when I'm not with my granddaughters though, I can't follow a chart if I'm distracted.

**Affliate Link

Getting Ready to Garden

I"m getting ready to plant my garden. As I live in an apartment, I actually have plots in the local community garden. I'm was lucky enough to score two plots so am planning on lots of vegetables and some herbs for us this year.

Racine has an amazing community garden network. I'm continually impressed by the breadth of the options they have as well as the community participation. The Racine Urban Garden Network is a great example of how to involve the community and it's users.

I'm late on planting because I was horribly sick for about 3 weeks in the first part of May. I'm finally back to myself and am excited to get started. My sweet granddaughters and I will be going to prep the site tomorrow and hopefully plant this weekend.

I was struggling with what to plan until I came across this post from Williams Sonoma via Pinterest.  This helped me put together a plan for our garden. I'm using the Beginner and Salsa gardens as a starting place. I have enough space between my two plots to also put in the canning and salad gardens so will probably go that route. I love the idea of feeding my family from the salad garden through the summer and from the canning garden through the winter.

I'll post pictures throughout the process.  If you have ideas on what to plant or recipes for what I do plant - share them!