A Tomato!

We have ONE tomato (and it's about an inch in diameter)!  Katie and I are very excited to find that single little green tomato on our Topsy-Turvy Tomato Plant.  It's our only gardening success story thus far this year.  Our TT Strawberry plants are growing like mad, but all we have gotten so far is NUBBINS which are as horrifying as they sound :-(  I think we maybe got 4 green beans on our pitiful plants.  I am counting heavily on The Potatoes in the Garbage Can to salvage my wounded gardening spirit.

Monday Fun

I was kind of bored this morning (after cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen), so I decided to dye some yarn.  I have some natural dye, which is always fun to use.  This time I tried Woad, which is crazy.  It looks all yellow-green in the dye pot:

But as soon as you take the yarn out of the dye bath and expose it to air, it turns blue:

One skein didn't "take" as much dye as the others, but I'm overall pretty pleased with this little experiment.  BTW, Woad has been used as a dye for thousands of years, starting back in the Neolithic Age, so that's a fun fact!

Travels with Lavs

All of a sudden, I've got trips to take!  If you know me at all, you know I tend to stick to home (in a Paula Deen agoraphobic kinda way lol), so this is highly unusual.

Over the next month, I'm heading to Seattle twice (next week for a few days to help Susna get ready for a big ole moving sale -- really, you're moving?), then towards the middle of August for a week to stay with our Mom and try to find fun things to do with her.  Suggestions welcome.  Just remember she can't really follow movie plots any more so that's out, she gets cold easily, and she can't sit in the car for long periods of time.  Other than that, she's easy to entertain :-)

Then, as soon as I get back from Seattle, I'm off to Virginia for a week!  Can't wait to see my long-lost children way over on the East Coast.  Cara has let me know the weather is still AWFUL there, with the heat and the humidity.  I'm praying that the cicadapocolypse is over by the time I arrive.  The VA-ers aren't big museum goers, but I'm going to spend at least one day at the Smithsonian, and I hope to get to Mount Vernon this trip.  Colonial Williamsburg may be asking too much, but the Civil War Life Soldier's Museum is just down the road at the local strip mall, so yay!  Then we can scoot over to Bob Evans for some deep-fried everything.  And I may make a return visit to the James Monroe Museum in Fredericksburg, aka The World's Saddest and Loneliest Museum, just because the docents were SO happy to see us the last time we were there.  So what if there's not really much IN the museum (evidently J-Mon. left a lot of his furniture and whatnot in the White House, not realizing he was going to have to furnish a museum in 200 years).

So, lots of fun travel adventures await!  And of course I'll be documenting it all for you.  Now to figure out the hardest stuff: what knitting projects should I take?

Finished and Filled

I finished my circular needles holder last night:

And filled it right up with the needles I plan to keep (if anyone wants bamboo or wood needles, let me know cuz I have a few sets that I don't want any more).  LOVE THIS.  I feel very organized!  Though I'm befuddled as to why I own 5 pairs of size zero circular needles.  At least 4 more than I need.

Spooooky...Not Very

Katie and I watched this movie:

When I watched it (way back in 1973-ish) I had to sleep with the lights on for a WEEK.  So I was kind of looking forward to getting scared again.  Didn't happen.  I guess special effects have come a long way since this film was made.  Pea soup vomit just doesn't have the same thrill as it used to.  Didn't need the lights on at ALL.  And Katie wasn't even scared to sleep in her room in the basement.  Boo.

That reminds me of another movie that scared the bejezus out of me when I was a kid:

We watched this at a sleepover at the Herseths' house (Zaids, were you there?  Were you terrified?)  Seriously, this one creeped me out for years.  And then I made the mistake of watching it again.  LOL, NOT SCARY.   At least the acting was pretty good, but nothing kept me awake nights.

THIS movie, on the other hand, still packs a punch or two:

BTW, Pia was FURIOUS at us for watching a scary movie.  Joke's on you, Rotcher, it wasn't really scary at all :-)

Another Project on the Needles

Just so y'all don't think that all I do is watch TV...or that at least I do something crafty WHILE I'm watching TV...here's a cute project I'm working on.

It's a circular knitting needles holder, which is going to look much nicer than my current needles holder, AKA big ugly cardboard box.  You slide the needles through the "slots" and they kind of dangle off either side.  I have a set of charms with the numbers 1-13, so I can label each slot.  And be organized! Yay!

My Favorite Guy...

has to be Ron Swanson of "Parks and Recreation".  Unfortch for me, Ron is married to Karen from "Will and Grace" in real life.  However, we can all enjoy the greatness that is Ron S. in this homage to everything he has said about meat: