Finished the second Spring Ruffled Top with the other batch of fabric I got. This one has a more “night” feel to it, vs the first one.

Still loving it. Very comfy and cool.

This weekend we kept an eye on the neighbor’s dog, and decided to wear her out on a hike to St. Mary’s Falls.

It is a very pretty trail that follows the creek to Gold Camp Road, and I can see adding this to our roster of hikes!

Plentiful raspberries to pick all the way up!

Love these signs.

Perty.

View to the city with Cheyenne and Cookstove Mountains.

At the falls.

Punchbowl.

Pin cherries.

Flowers.

Lauren finally got a picture of Arlo in her Ellis Dress!

She is so cute!! She also says the dress is easy to put on the baby, which is reassuring for the future if I end up knitting one for a stash.

Decided the first zucchini of the year should be made into my favorite muffins!

I am so glad I ventured out into other veggies this year. I used to focus so much on tomatoes, but this year decided not to plant any… until my neighbor gave me some transplants, which ended up going in gigantic pots this year.

Anyways, some excitement was to be had in harvesting the garlic and shallots. Those 2 are sort of a mystery to me. Right now they are curing and drying out for storage. I’m excited to see if the flavor is much different than store-bought.

I am a little sad though, about half of my shallots were lost to some kind of wormy thing that ate through and rotted some. At least my compost pile appreciates the gifts.

An interesting thing I noticed is that I planted my zucchini seeds directly into the ground this year and was able to get a my first fruit only about 2 weeks later than before. I thought it would be drastically late. And the kale was surprisingly easy to grow as were carrots. The carrots are still in the ground until I harvest them, but here is a fun pic of what’s been going on underground all summer:

Carrots in love:

I plan on planting more kale and spinach as soon as it starts to cool down a little bit. We have had tons of rain and its making everything grow like crazy! I planted more lettuce a few weeks ago and have tiny sprouts, hoping they shoot up so we have lettuce again. I am not so great at timing out my plantings yet, but in time hopefully we can have a continuous harvest all summer long!

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is building a cold frame or a mini greenhouse of sorts for greens all winter. Just thinking about going back to the grocery store all winter long for spinach and lettuce just makes me sad. It really tastes so much better to grow your own!

I seem to have been missing from the internets.

It makes sense, I have been very busy. Not much knitting going on. But I did start my own graphic design business and things have been bumpin’ as of late! It kind of tends to distract you from everything else! If you look to the right, you’ll see a link to my design site, longnamedgirl design. That is mostly what I have been up to lately!

But I have had some time to cram in some outdoors. I will share a select few things to get you up to speed:

Durango, CO.

View from Strater Hotel.

This is where I jogged most days as I had a nasty wrist injury from a motocross crash. Biking was out of the question for the last few months.

Then our friends Tom and Megan got married! This is our only picture…

Then we did some fishing on the South Platte, and caught nothing.

Mike built a platform so we could “truck camp”. So far we have camped twice and its been great!

Had a great hike along the Avenger Claim Trail Loop:

Then headed to BV and Salida for the 4th.

Breakfast at the Boathouse Cantina.

Carne Asada calzones over the fire.

Stormy campsite.

From camping, went to ride the Rainbow Trail in Salida.

Then on the way home, explored the backroads and ended up driving from Tarryall to Deckers.

I totally sewed something awesome! Exciting! I finished this a few weekends ago but did not have a chance to take a photo until today, and I had to experiment with the self-timer. So here you go round 1 of the Spring Ruffle Top!

Loving it.

All the sudden I feel the need to sew stuff. Maybe its all the fabric sitting in the drawer, waiting to be used for so many years. Who knows? Anyways, I finished a bag:

I opted to not go for lining. Mostly because I did not have any lining material, but also because the bag fabric is a heavier canvas type material. I am proud of myself for my first project of neat seams and no frayed edges. I am really not a good sewer, but I am trying to improve my skills!

More pics:


The inside.

I also had bought fabric for this Spring Ruffle Top a while back and finally got the gumption to start it last night. I spent most the time trying to make the straps and ruffles as neat as possible, and then got far enough to pin the body pleats in place:

Here is a shot of the pieces so far:

Close up of pleats

Close up of ruffle band.

I also have a more “night-oriented” selection of fabric to make another one of these. A grey spotted version with red detail. Hopefully I will get that one going as soon as I finish this one!

I do have to make a note too, that I really love these kind of instructional sewing patterns. They are just so much better than tracing a piece of paper and hoping the product will fit you.

Yay, Abigail is finally big enough for the cardigan I made! Some cute shots from today:

Finally I can reveal the Ellis Dress on the internets! I knit this for my friend Lauren, who just had her baby shower a few weekends ago.

I used some mustard yellowish Cotolino. The yarn was really great to work with!

Also in other baby knitting news, I got to see A Cardigan for Abigail in use this weekend. She is finally big enough for it! I am going to try to snag some pictures next time.

Saturday we took a hike at the Cheesman Trail, near Deckers. It was really beautiful to hike along the Platte River, see the fishermen (and women) and have the lovely smell of water in the air.

Swiss-cheese lookin rock.

Fisherman down in the Platte.

Fresh water spring found along trail.