Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Some garden colour

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The garden is planted, here are a few of things that are in bloom.
Lily of the Valleys- this picture was taken on Saturday and these lilies are past their prime now- they were starting to fade on the weekend.

This flower is nestled in amongst some LofV- the wide leaves are from the LofV. Does anyone know what this is? It has very thin green leaves - visible in the pic - top right side.


This Oriental Poppy hasn't changed from this since Sunday. None of the other buds are showing signs of opening. I wonder if this bud was damaged by something.

Blue flag iris - these look loaded with blossoms - last year they had very few blooms.

I purchased this plant from the Doon Heritage plant sale. Any guesses on what it is - hint there is some in my stash.
Two vests for Dulaan (Challenge Vest 1.0 and 2.0). The vest on the pink one gave me a massive headache, and is part of the reason the project was lingering for so long. I think it just has to do with the neck opening - it doesn't seem big enough. I ended up just crocheting around the edges. It needs some ends trimmed and a good blocking, the purple vest (Dulaan Challenge vest 2.0) was finished, but needed a small repair job. It was a casualty in Keeper's attempt to get at the Alpaca lace weight that he loved - both were in my knitting bag. All is fixed now - I just need to photograph the rest of the items and send them to Arizona.

Some finished comments on the vests. This started as Guild challenge - we swapped a single ball and had to come up with a project to use that with. I received a ball of homespun
with many colours. What to do with it? I pondered it for a while and then thought of using it a project for Dulaan. I got out Ann Budd's Knitting Pattern book and went through my stash. I didn't think I would have enough of pink or purple for a vest by themselves so I figured I would use both in a vest with stripes. I knit the pink one first - realized the yarn guidelines were generous, the horizontal stripes makes the colours muddy and pink was just too pale in comparison. (I thought after I could have overdyed the yarn - oh well). The second vest was born - I cast on fewer stitches but followed the length size as for the pink vest. I tried my hand at intarsia - the six stitch stripe allowed the colours to develop - Not get muddy next to each other. I used most of the challenge yarn - and the purple (Cascade 220 left from this). I like version 2.0 much better than first one. The pink yarn is Patons Classic Merino left over from a Sophie bag pre blog.

2 comments:

Wily Jeneric said...

Ah, the joys of latitudinal differences. Our Lily of the Valleys are completely done (but they sure smelled sweet). I am not at all near my wildflower guide, so I can't help with the unknown. As for the other plant, an annoying duck said it was A-FLAX.

I like both vests, but I see your point about the muddy color. Both are good efforts - I am impressed. Now, how's that knitting challenge I flung at you coming along?

Anonymous said...

I have quite a few of your unknown flower scattered around my property - they like to spread! The common name for them is Star of Bethlehem. They were in my garden when I moved in back in 1980 so a very hardy perennial. I also had a flax plant for many years, but it did not come up this spring - enjoy!