Mother's Day

First of all, I had a happy not-quite-surprise this evening. Ok, well it snuck up on me anyway. When we first bought our place in January there were these two HUGE bushes out back. They were way overgrown, and it took me two long trimming sessions to just get off the dead wood and do a little shaping.

I was hoping they were buddleia bushes, but I wasn't quite sure. I read that you really should do a severe pruning on them in spring, but these guys were well over 10 feet high. Also, they weren't looking too healthy. I thought I'd prune more aggressively next year. So I did the best I could, and hoped for blossoms.

I forgot to check them over the last few days, and happened to glance out the window tonight. Buddleia it is!

Yay!

As usual with any outdoor work, I had Supervisor Spook and Overseer Marmalade.

Another happy surprise: we have grapes! Or at least we will someday, hopefully. They're getting a little out of hand at the moment. I think I'll build a little trellis between the railing and the neighbor's fence. There's another vine already trained on top of the fence.

For Mother's Day this year I made a set of fingerless mitts to match the shawls I made for Christmas. They're both original patterns.

For my Mom's, I ran into the Solitary Sock problem. I made one, and was really happy with how it turned out, but then I set it aside to work on other projects. By the time I came back to the second, I didn't even know what size hook I'd used. On the bright side, the second one turned out looser, so it was just a matter of going down a hook size and re-working part of it.

I hear this happens when people make socks... That's why I'm intrigued by the concept of knitting two socks at once. Too bad it doesn't really work with crochet, other than holding two skeins. Which is not a bad idea, really.