MouseGarden

I've been doing a lot of knitting and some new stuff.  These are two of my new scarves made from several different colours of yarn.




Had some brief Chinook weather, where warm winds push out the bad weather.  Now it is back to snow, but it does look kind of pretty. 

I'm making some changes to my blog, so some of the links may be a bit wiggly till I fix all the connections.   Then I shall introduce my new scarves.  Eventually I will sell some of my scarves here as well as in my Etsy shop.

Meanwhile it snowed on me.  What?  No!  Yes.

Hint:  This is not what a hanging basket of flowers is supposed to look like.



It snowed over the weekend, and it is taking its sweet time melting.

I've added some knitting patterns for sale.  I also sell patterns on Etsy if you prefer that site.

I like my patterns to be straightforward and adaptable.  I think if a pattern is only really achievable in one particular yarn it isn't very useful.  It should be something that once you learn the stitch you could use it in many ways.  It also should be something you can knit without too much frustration.

Sometimes I see a stitch and think that is awesome, but so complicated,  I am never ever doing it!  It has to be really pretty to make me slog through a 24 row repeat, or more of pattern.  That said, I have my eye on Ginkgo Stitch.  It looks like lacy Ginkgo leaves and is gorgeous, I just haven't learnt it yet.

Update on sunflowers:  they look like Swiss cheese because they've been nibbled so much.  I'll have to take a photo so you can thrill to the spectacle.  The only sunflower in bloom is oddly enough, one I never planted.  It was probably buried in the flower bed by a squirrel or dropped by a bird.

I can feel the season turning.  No!  I'm not ready! (but I will be...I'm knitting a tweed scarf)

I just finished a golden yellow scarf and I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  The knitting always seems to take longer than I remember.  I think it would be a nice color for when the season changes.




I'm expecting hot weather, so I might start winning on the slug front.  The sunflowers this year are a bit underwhelming because they haven't had enough sun.  The poppies have lots of buds but no flowers yet. (I have a short growing season so I can be seen in the garden yelling "hurry up!"  LOL)

Sunday I saw a bobcat for the first time, very briefly.  That was exciting.  I always wondered if the difference between it and a cat would be obvious or not, and yes it was obvious that it was something else.  They are quite fast and a bit stocky.  Didn't manage to get a photo.

Now I wonder if that was the cat print with the long stride that I found in the winter.  Hmm.  And not good news for the people who still let their cats roam around outside.

This July has had a lot of rain, so I am fighting with slugs that intend to eat all my sunflowers, plus my sunflowers are behind because they haven't had as much sun as last year. (the garden is pesticide free, and I don't actually like to kill slugs because everything has its place, but the damage is becoming spectacular)

I am a big fan of sunflowers.  They look great.  Bees like them.  Birds eat the seeds.  Just make sure you are growing the ones that have pollen so you get seeds. 

I experimented a bit recently with using coffee grounds from a coffee machine as a slug deterrent.  Slugs don't like it because of the caffeine, but it doesn't necessarily keep them off.  They don't look well when they touch the stuff though.  I tried tea leaves, but they don't work as well.  What does work is to put jars over the seedlings at night.

Last year the sunflowers did very well but then the plant stems froze and fell over in the fall.  I cut the flowers off with a length of stem attached, hung them up to dry indoors, and then attached them firmly to a hedge with string so birds could eat the seeds.  Chickadees picked all the seeds out and then they were just empty like this.


These were mostly black oil seed sunflowers and Lemon Queens which have brown centers.

Last year I had a huge Russian Mammoth sunflower that was just about to bloom, after growing about 10 feet tall,  and a squirrel running along the roof stole the bud and ate it.  Argh!  You can't trust squirrels. I loved the Mammoth sunflowers but they do seem to need a long growing season to actually flower.

I have had customers ask me how long a knitted scarf should be when they are buying one for someone.  It's also a valid question if you're making a scarf for yourself or for someone else.

It is so nice to have flowers and leaves again.  Winter here lasts what feels like forever.

These are ruffle pansies.  The secret to flowering pansies is to cut off the dead flowers to keep them flowering.  These came as a flat of pansies and then were planted in a tub, which can be placed anywhere there is full sun.  After that you just have to remember to water them sometimes, and deadhead them.  They do all the rest.


And it is almost Canada Day, July 1st.

I didn't blog for a bit because I had snow twice, and my neighbour was building a snowman in May, which is never a good sign!

So after a warm week it's raining.  And I've spent the week taking photos of spring flowers.

These are snowdrops.  I still don't have leaves on the trees though there are buds and the beginnings of leaves.  I don't have green grass either!

I made some felt pins.  Choosing bead combinations is the best bit.


I also have some hand stamped Eiffel tower gift tags.

The thing with knitting is that it takes a lot of time, so now I am not knitting so much, I've switched back to embroidery for a bit.

This is a photo of a needle book while in progress. It takes several hours to finish a piece, partly because as I sew I am deciding on placement of the flowers, and  which colours to use.  The more colours used, the more time consuming it gets. I'm using new brighter colors of felt lately.

Here it hasn't got all the flowers, and all the centers of the flowers haven't been done yet.  The little stitches in the background are not done yet either.  Usually the beads go on last, and they all get done at the same time, because I have to switch to a tiny skinny needle.  Most regular needles will not fit through seed beads!

I might add that the background is a synthetic fake fur throw blanket and not actually real fur.  It was just handy when I was sewing to act as a backdrop.

Once finished the needle book looks like this:

This is the coldest February here in 40 years.  As a result, when it briefly warmed up to about -3 Celsius, some deer furtively visited the garden.  They are actually quite big, about five feet tall or so, but they have very small feet.  So sometimes they might breeze through and you don't notice until you see small heart shaped prints the next day (and possibly missing plants).

They live in a city park but at night they sneak out into suburbia!





Last night it went down to about  -24 Celsius with -33 windchill.  (-11F/-27F)

I keep finding cat tracks on my step, which is worrying because when it is really cold you want to keep your cats indoors so they don't get frostbitten ears.

I want to try some new knitting stitches but I'm still on the fence about which yarn to use.  With this kind of weather it is hard to believe in March right around the corner.

I am freezing.  After lots of mild weather the bitter stuff finally caught up with me.  When I go outside with birdseed I create excitement.  A chickadee threw itself at my feet.  It was -25 Celsius with -33 windchill.  At night it was -41 windchill.

Today heatwave...it's -16 Celsius.  It's sad when that gets you excited.  And the sun came out.

I finished a purple needle book.


I'm also working on a purple scarf.

Happy New Year!

This one I had sitting there for a while as I figured out what I wanted to do with it.  I was doing a lot of knitting over Christmas and the needle book was cut out but I couldn't figure out how I wanted it to look.

Then it just clicked into place.


The leaves are sewn on, and then there are little embroidered seeds.  I love seeds.  Once the flowers are gone there are all kinds of new things to look at and possibly play with.

The weather has been pretty mild for the time of year but a lot of hoar frost.



This is a big local evergreen tree with frost on it.  There was also a lot of mist this week.

A few days after Christmas a hawk turned up next to the bird feeder.  That wasn't the kind of bird I was supposed to be feeding!  It was cold that day so it sat on one leg and glared at me.


Not sure but I think it is probably a  young Sharp-shinned Hawk.  They eat small birds.  They are really good at flying at low levels in and around trees.  Possibly it tried to pounce on someone and missed, but sometimes they just turn up and lurk hopefully in plain sight.  After a short rest it disappeared again.

This is why some weeks the sparrows are very twitchy.