A Math Question...

Tomatoes (hothouse, on sale at Loblaws this week) - 99 cents per pound.

Tomato plants purchased at garden centre - $7.99

Bamboo tomato plant stakes - $2.99

Veggie-gro fertilizer - $5.99

Months of effort staking, weeding and tying up droopy tomato plants - incalculable

The value of your boss' father who can provide delicious home-grown tomatoes when your efforts produce the feeble, wormy specimen on the left...priceless



Yup, a summer's 4H project for the kids comes to fruition...very meagre fruition. Between the worms, rabbits and generally soggy conditions, our tomato crop was a real bust this year. Fortunately Mr. A took pity on us and gifted us with some pretty healthy looking specimens!

Not much knitting to report, Na Craga and Indigo Ripples are equally slow projects, but for vastly different reasons.

So, in the absence of knitting pics and just because he's so cute...my newest nephew!!

Don't think I posted this...

It's for Ellery...it's Hey Teach from Summer Knitty

Quick to knit and the lace makes it interesting without being a grind! Great pattern!

I'm picking away at DH's Na Craga and whoopsed on one row of the honeycomb pattern. I picked back 4 rows of just the 16 stitch repeat and corrected the error by reknitting the section with crochet hooks. It probably took more than half an hour, but it saved a couple hours (in a good evening I can manage one eight row repeat of the sweater) Kewl or what?


Other than that, not much to report...I'm using a topical medication for a Basal Cell Carcinoma (that with luck will spare me some icky surgery on my face)...but it has the curious side effect of making me feel quite flu-ish...so I'm even LESS fun to be around than usual!

Born with a horseshoe up my....

Well, you get the idea. Less than one full week into school and I had an equipment failure this morning. The alarm clock didn't go off! I'm not a morning person and lately I've been a bit under the weather with some flu-like stuff (another post, another time), so by the time my internal clock got around to waking me it was 7:15. That's about 20 minutes before Boo's bus arrives. Panic ensues.

I raced downstairs to find the bus driver's number to cancel our pick up. (Gilly's special ed class draws kids from a large geographic area and not having to come to our house if we aren't ready can save the driver almost a half hour on her morning run!) While I'm flipping through my mom binder searching for Bev's number, the phone rings and it's the bus company. Bev has mechanical trouble (well, her bus does at any rate) and will be at least 45 minutes late.

Saved by the bell...as we will be tomorrow morning. Note the new Manual Backup for the fancy-@ss iPod alarm clock...





Other than that, the kids are settling into their new classrooms. Clare likes riding a bus and loves her new teacher. French is more fun than she thought. Ellery is enjoying her victory lap during her last year at Junior Public School. She and her g/fs are already mentally designing Graduation Dresses...strapless ones at that...(poor DH, he is SO not ready) Gilly is adjusting to the long busride and we are getting good reports back from her teacher.

Knitting-wise, I've finished knitting Eloise and have to seam it. My choices for projects now are:

DH's Na Craga (it's almost cool enough to toss an Aran sweater over my lap during the evening)

Indigo Ripples (a knit skirt is probably a mistake at my age, but what the hey...)

Cassie-inspired Cardigan (I found some Rowan Linen Print on sale and wanted to make this cardigan....except much shorter and no stripes...hence "inspired")