Done, done, and done!!!

Most of the cactus garden is done. Gravel is spread (mostly), cacti are planted (mostly), edges are put in place (mostly)... Well, you know the saying: 90% of the work take 10% of the time and the remaining 10% of the work take 90% of the time. For now, though, I am enjoying the fruits of the 90% work and try not to think about the odds and ends that still need to be finished.



Here, again, is the front part of the yard:

As you can see, I desperately need the plants to grow :).

This is the side of the house where the truck had dumped the 12 yards of gravel. You can still see a tiny little elevation with a little extra gravel (for those remaining 10% of the work, remember?). But I am done working on the yard for now and wanted to leave it looking somewhat "done."

This, apparently, is a sago palm. I bought this one a little while ago at a school plant sale.

 

I also received a few "pups" from another kind freecycler. And they look like this:

 

Okay, last gardening picture (I promise). I could not resist this one. It is our very first red tomato. I will give it one more day. It is beautiful, big, and will be delicious! Too bad my husband is missing out (he is out of town).

Okay, enough with the garden and yard. Back to knitting...

I finished the shawl/vest. It came out nicely, but the front parts could have been a little wider. I was afraid that I would run out of yarn.

Now I just need some cold weather to be able to wear it. But that's gonna take a while :). Maybe I will take it to the office, where the A/C sometimes gets quite cold.

Oh, and I forgot that I also finished "Ellie Elephant." I don't like it quite as much as the baby monkey before, but it came out okay in the end, I guess. My daughter has not seen it yet, so she will be the ultimate judge.

And just in case "Ellie" will not pass her judgment, I quickly started another monkey. Hopefully, I will get it finished before my daughter comes back home.

As you can see, still monkey-ing around :)...

Too sore to knit!

Wow, the drainage ditch and the cactus gardens are done! Well almost... I still need to add some cacti. But all the digging and shoveling is done. All the drainage pipes and all the gravel are in place. And I even planted some Agave plants already.

It felt good to do all this manual labor! But both hubby and I are sore all over! Name a body part... it hurts! The pain will subside, though, and the lovely front yard will stay. Now if we could just get the neighbor cats to stop using is as a litter box :).

Due to nightly pain recovery sessions, knitting took a bit of a back seat.

"Ellie Elephant" is still a work in progress... My vest thingy is still a work in progress... The good news is that the buses I take to work have started running again (after a short summer break), so I have more time to knit again. Though neither of these two projects lend themselves for commute knitting at this point.

SOOOOO, I had to start a new project... I got a huge load of yarn from a very nice person on Freecycle.I just can't believe my luck! All kinds of designer yarns and different kinds of sock yarns! Must of been a few hundred dollars worth of yarn in that box I got! Here is just a very small excerpt:

Among my loot were 14 skeins of ON Line Trend Setters' LINIE 78 VEGA (it appears to be a line from 2002). Color is purple with a metallic thread woven into an inconsistently bulky wool. Very nice!

I saw this nice vest/shawl at Coldwater Creek and am trying to use the yarn to make something similar.

Stay tuned...