Dawn Brocco's Life and Design Blog

Gardening
Well, I did finally get into the garden on Sunday and cleaned up most of the obnoxious mess, and I have the splinters and scrapages to prove it!

Yeah, I have gloves. I hate wearing gloves. The seams give me blisters and unless they fit snugly, I can't see how anyone can do proper weeding and gardening chores with them on. And to fit snugly, they gotta be a rubber or latex-like material, which means instant puddles in your hands, while you work. Ugh. So, I don't wear them and my hands suffer. I also don't wash dishes with gloves on. Again, dexterity is severely diminished, and you can't feel if soap or grease is still on the dishes, so what good is that?!

So, anyway, the asparagus bed is sprouting, undiminished by dead stalks and ferns clogging them. And the hollyhock bed. OH the hollyhock bed - fully growing again this 2nd year. Now I can't tell, without actually digging up a plant, if the new growth is coming off last year's roots or has the bed just reseeded itself perfectly? I had to get my garden shears, though to cut out the huge, I mean HUGE dead stalks from last year's plants. These guys were fat and hard, like wood. The shears couldn't get around several of them, that's how thick they were. They grew so tall last year, it was grand. But getting the dead growth out - oy. I've never grown hollyhocks before. These are Indian Spring.

Here's what one site says about them with my comments in parentheses:
"Flowers are edible. (News to me!) Hollyhocks are often treated as biennials, but they are actually short-lived perennials. (Haven't a clue what the difference is, gotta research that one.)

Flower Type: Perennial
Bloom Time: Summer
Height: 5' to 8' (absolutely!)
Exposure: Full Sun

When to Sow Outside: Start outdoors in early summer. Those started too early are susceptible to disease. (Ha, not mine.)
When to Sow Inside: Start 6-8 weeks before last frost for blooms the first year.
Seed Spacing: 4"
Days to Emerge: 10
Thinning: Thin to 2' to 3' apart when plants are 3" tall." (Ha again. Mine are packed inches from each other in a raised bed, organic of course, and they all bloomed and grew like mad.)

I am just not sure how to cut them for a vase. Just as different flowers can need to be prepared in particular ways for vase display, I haven't figured out how to deal with the hollyhocks in a way that they like. More research to do.

Designing
Been busy printing, and tending to life. Only knit 24 sts last night (just one row on a CIC sock). Today, I did more printing, but stopped midway. Who can think with a loud printer going 2' from them? Not me! And I was just keeping stock up, so the rest can wait until another day.

I dyed a small batch of lavender cashmere for a customer yesterday afternoon and washed 3 hanks, which I've left in their natural color, and uploaded these 3 to the yarn page on my site

I *did* have 3 hanks of Periwinkle available, but I'm using them in the 2nd design sample for this new baby sweater design - yes, a KNIT design! I know you're all probably cringing from the quantity of crochet designs I've done lately! I'm back to knit designs for now.

One of the samples is being worked in laceweight cashmere, doubled to give sport wt. Each approx. 2 oz hank has 400 yds, which doubled gives 200 yards of sport weight. It can be used as laceweight, naturally, as well, though I'm not planning any laceweight designs for the foreseeable future

As soon as it's possible, I'd love to get more of this lovely lightweight cashmere yarn in and dye it. Interested? Just drop me a line. And I'll send a special email notice to you, when it's available. Same prices as the heavy worsted wt. cashmere.

Work awaits. Onward.