On a roll

I have been on quite a knitting kick the last two weeks.  I finished the Midsummer Night shawl I mentioned in the last post on Sunday morning, but it was too cold to to wear it out to dinner for our anniversary that evening.  No matter, warmer days are coming and I'm sure I'll be able to use it soon.  As soon as I took that off the needles, I cast on my first glove:

The pattern is called Socrates and it comes from One Skein Sock Yarn Wonders.  The yarn is called Bonsai, by Berrocco - I bought 8 skeins of it, unsure how much of it I would need for a scarf and gloves.  Because it's a different weight that the sock yarn recommended by the pattern (it's thicker - a nylon/bamboo blend) I am using much less that I would have imagined and one skein does one glove.  I have started to think about a hat to go with the scarf and gloves.  As soon as I finish the other glove.  I had to modify the fingers from the pattern as well - I knit them originally following the pattern and they made me look like I had Muppet hands, so I ripped them back and decreased the stitches so they fit my hands better.

Yesterday I was back to focusing on knitted vegetables, so I made myself and eggplant (or aubergine, as the Brittish pattern writer calls them):

I was pleased with how it came out.  I decided I was going to work on something else after I finished that, so I whipped up another pea in a pod:

We will have to make do with knitted vegetables until the real ones are ready. 

In the didn't-really-make-it-myself category, I've been working on painting some unfinished bird houses we picked up at Michael's on sale for the yard:

We have a bunch of hanging plant stands scattered through the back gardens, so every couple of years we paint new ones, spray them with a sealant, and hang them outside.  Much easier than running out to water hanging plants.  We have enough trouble watering the flowers out front.