Spring Fashion

Where else in the world do they declare a public holiday for a horse race! Yesterday was Melbourne Cup day, "the celebration that stops a nation" is the slogan. My day wasn't filled with champagne and high fashion.

I chose muddy boots rather than strappy sandals since I needed to tackle the abundant weeds in my front garden. A couple of hours of serious digging got me through about half of that garden bed--and tired me out thoroughly. The rose is my touch of prettiness and a reward for my efforts. Hopefully all the rose bushes in that section will be happier once I complete the job. That will take several more days like yesterday to achieve. 

Another Way

I rang my friend Knitspin Girl last night to talk about knitted roses--what else! I told her I'd been knitting my roses by increasing every stitch in every second row, then arranging the resulting curly strip into a spiral flower shape. She said, "the only one I know is where you cast on a gazillion stitches and then decrease". My immediate thought was that would be more work than the method I'd been using, but you know how it is--I had to try it.




















I cast on 130 stitches and decreased every stitch in every second row. It's a much looser result than I'd expected. I guess that's because of the way the ruffles form as stitches are decreased. I guess I could rearrange the petals a bit with the yarn ends.

Meanwhile, I've been tackling the weed invasion in the sunny breaks in the weather. I took another bootload of green waste to the tip yesterday. And I really should get out there again this morning.



The Real Thing

After playing with woollen representations of this classic flower for the past few days, here's a real one to look at. 

I spent a couple of hours in the garden yesterday. I don't know what word to use to describe my activity. "Gardening" would imply that there's something of a collection of favoured plants. Well, there's this rose and my faithful Loraine Lee which always has a flower or two for me. Oh, and the grevilleas, but they're a bit overgrown at the moment. "Weeding" is more like it, but it doesn't seem a sufficient word for the magnitude of the challenge. Perhaps "digging" is a better word. Whatever word I use, there's plenty more to do. So I'd better get on with it. 

Textile Silliness

My friend L came over to borrow my whipper snipper yesterday afternoon. We each have such a tiny back yard that it makes sense to share resources. I noticed she was wearing polyester slacks and plastic shoes for her gardening efforts. L commented that the polyester tends to repel the inevitable flecks of grass, but she had noticed some damage to her shins from other bits and pieces kicked up by the rotating line. I figured I had just the thing to solve that problem. I bought a blouse in a local discount store a few months ago. The styling was great all the way through to the shoulders: nice waist and bust shaping, fitted sleeve cap, subtle but interesting decoration at the button placket. Then there were these ridiculous baggy sleeves gathered at the wrist with an elastic band. The solution was straightforward. A pair of scissors and a little hem just below the sleeve cap and I've been wearing the blouse happily through summer. The rest of the sleeves were so extraordinary that I kept them. Yesterday afternoon I grabbed them from their spot in the studio and gave them to L to try on. Here they are: Perfect gardening gaiters!