Peachy Keen

Hello friends! I hope you're all doing well. I did manage to get my peaches canned (and don't they look beautiful!) but my apartment is still in a bit of a tip. Turns out that driving to the city to pick up peaches one day and then canning all those peaches the next day is a Bit Much and doesn't leave much energy for things like checking the state of the fridge or cleaning the tub. 

I really wanted t get my crop top sample finished this month, but as it still needs seams and a collar I think the only way that might happen is if I sit down tonight and really try to bang it out. There's a bunch of dishes from yesterday that should get washed first, but I think it's doable (if I keep saying it, it must come true). 

We also finally got some rain here on Saturday, and I wish I had been able to sit at home and properly enjoy it. We got almost no snow last winter, and we've had very little rain so far, so everything was super crispy. Hopefully we'll  get a bit more rain soon—Saturday was great, but we're still way behind where we should be! 

Peach Plans

So, I haven't been working much on my sweater sample this week. It happens. I did manage to finish the front of a crop top sample earlier this week, and now it just needs seams and a collar, so at least there's something there. 

I got the sudden urge the other day to make canned peaches, and when I checked the fruit truck schedule and saw that the current deliveries are peaches and cherries I knew that it was meant to be. I ordered 25lbs of peaches, and even though it means I have to drive up to the city tomorrow morning to pick them up, I'm looking forward to doing some canning this weekend. 

Otherwise, there's not much going on over in my neck of the woods. I hope you all have something fun and restorative planned for the weekend, and I'll see you on Monday! 

Book Bingo and Shakespeare

Has it really been a whole week? Lots to catch up on here. First up, checking in with my book bingo square, and I'm doing pretty well. I'm one book away from my first bingo, and, coincidentally, the book for that square is up next on the docket. I have books identified for all but two squares, so I just need to buckle down and keep reading. I'm in a good place, though, and I think I actually might be able to squeeze out a total blackout by July 31.

On Friday my mum and I went out to the fabric store and I got fabric for two dresses and a robe. I still have some fabric in my studio that's already washed and waiting to be ironed and cut out before I can play with the new stuff, so hopefully I can get that room tidied up and prepped for some sewing soon. 

This weekend was also the South Dakota Shakespeare Festival, and this year's play was Twelfth Night, which is one of my favorites. I went to see the play on Friday and Saturday nights, and it was a total delight each time. It was also great to see so many people from the community able to get together in the park—the festival was obviously cancelled last year, and we all missed it! 

Weekending in Pride

It was an incredibly busy weekend, but it was a lot of fun! On Saturday morning my mum and I went up into the city to go to the farmer's market and check out the pattern sale at Jo Ann's, and we finished up at our favorite Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch. Saturday afternoon was the library book sale, which is usually monthly but, for obvious reasons, hasn't been held since last March. There was also an arts and crafts fair that our town's Pride organization hosted, and I got a new tobacco-and-bay-scented soap and bought some stickers.

Saturday night was the Pride Pub Parade, and I partied much harder than I usually do, even without the excuse of being home for over a year. It was so much fun, though, and we ended the night doing karaoke with a wedding party that we met doing their own bar crawl. After all that, Sunday was more for resting. I walked Lee Lee over to the park, which she loved, and I got interviewed by local news about the Pride celebrations, and then I spend the rest of the day doing chores. I was exhausted after being out past two on Sunday morning, though, so I did stop for a nap before folding my laundry, and I never got around to taking care of it, whoops. 

Fortunately, my fingering-weight Easy A sample is just as bar-friendly as the original, and I managed to add several more rows of garter stitch to the body on Saturday night. I love having something that's so easy to pick up and put down mindlessly, but I don't really think I'm cut out for another big bar night for quite a while! 

How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? 

Past the Ribbing and Planning for Pride

If you look very closely, you can see that I've finally started working some garter stitch on this sweater. I haven't been knitting a lot during my lunches this week, but getting past the ribbing is a huge accomplishment and I'm hoping I settle into the rhythm of garter stitch easily. 

This week has been another hot one, but we finally have some thunderstorms today. It still might get up into the high 80s, but right now it's a nice relief. This weekend is my town's Pride festival, and I'm hoping that the heat relief from this storm lasts the next couple of days so we can enjoy Pride. 

Book Bingo is going well, I've marked off four squares already, which puts me in a pretty good position for the next few weeks. I'm having trouble coming up with books for some squares, but I've got ones picked out and lined up for most of them, and I mostly need to keep working through the pile for now.

Have a good weekend! 

Numbers on a Monday

1. I hope everyone had a good weekend. I stayed inside the whole time, because we're in the middle of a stretch of really hot weather—close to 100 degrees at the worst parts of the day!

2. Because of this, I don't really feel like cooking or eating real food when I finally get home, so yesterday I stocked up on smoothie supplies, since those are basically ice cream with more nutrients. My main go-to is strawberry, but I still have some mango in my freezer too.

3. The crop top that I mentioned is continuing apace, and with any luck will be finished this week. I'm hoping to get the pattern out this month, and I'm really excited about this one.

4. Today starts summer reading book bingo at my public library and I am ready to get started! I'm aiming for a full blackout, but that's pretty ambitious. It's been forever since I've done summer reading, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how far I can get!

5. I am definitely still adjusting to working in the library again, and Lee Lee is adjusting too. It's a process. I am feeling very tired a lot and she is alternating between being mad that I've left her and thrilled that I've returned. I'm hoping that we'll both get back into the swing of things soon, but the last fifteen months have been so weird for everyone, I know that it's going to take time. 

Book Haul

Happy Friday! It's been a pretty decent week back, although I'm having a bit of a rough transition. I'm forgetting things left and right and my diabetes has apparently decided to be even more erratic, but we'll get through it. It's also finally gotten really hot here, which I hate, so I'm planning on holing up in my apartment underneath a ceiling fan for the next two days.

I'm also taking advantage of the fact that I'm not currently in school to dive back into reading for pleasure! I've been waiting to read most of these books, and I took advantage of being back on campus to check them out this week. My public library is also doing book bingo for adult summer reading—I don't think I love book bingo, but I really love prizes, so I'm going to try for a blackout on my bingo card. Summer reading starts on Monday, so I've identified which of these books will count towards a bingo square and I'm going to put off starting them until after the weekend.

Knitting is...slow. I've knit six more rows of ribbing on the sweater I showed you on Tuesday, and I have six more rows to go before I can dive into the endless garter stitch body. I have managed a fair bit of progress on a linen crop top that I haven't shared with you yet, but I've generally been pretty tired this week, so no major progress anywhere. 

Back to It

Happy Tuesday, friends! We had a long weekend here in the US, and I ended up getting lots of house cleaning done. It feels really good  to have my space organized, and it's going to be a great place to come home to in the afternoons. Oh yeah, I'm back to work in the library in-person this week. That's a change.

There's really no way to know how messed up my routine is going to be for the next few days or weeks. It's been about fifteen months since I've worked in-person for more than a few hours each month, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a rough adjustment. I'm also worried about Lee Lee, who has a history of separation anxiety, although we did manage to train her out of it once before the pandemic started, and I do believe we can do it again. Hopefully.

Knit-wise, I've got a few different things on the needles right now. This is going to be a fingering-weight version of my Easy A pattern, eventually (turns out fingering weight knits up way more slowly than aran or bulky weight) and while it's a bit of a slog (the back is already done, so we're a third of the way there, technically) I really think the final sweater is going to be great.