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I seem to have fallen off the blogging bandwagon lately. A combination of only knitting a few stitches here and there late at night before going to bed (trust me, pictures of gradually lengthening green tubes are just not that interesting) and often choosing to work on a project rather than write about it have kept me away from the computer.

Even though the knit-blogging juices haven't been flowing, I've really enjoyed playing with my camera this summer. These top two shots are from our trek to the arboretum yesterday. There was a wonderful moment when the wind picked up just as I was trying to capture a shot of the echinacea and Tadpole exclaimed, "Don't worry, mommy, I'll hold it for you!" as she lunged in front of me to hold a flower stem still. (For the record, the pic above was taken after the wind died down).

Our garden is an endless source of delight this season. I'm especially fond of the sugar snap peas (even if they persist in growing out into the air rather than up the trellis I thoughtfully provided this year). I'm hoping I planted enough that some of the pea pods will make it into the house before I eat them.

The kale is looking terrific this year and the girls are eager to turn it into kale chips.

Hopefully this will turn into more zucchini bread than we know what to do with. I was good this year and (mostly) obeyed the spacing suggestions for the various veggies we planted, which explains my overflow pumpkin patch in the corner of the back yard.

So, if I haven't been single-mindedly focused on my Stasis sweater, what have I been doing? For starters, I finished a quilt top:

It's a night-time cell phone shot but I was (am) so incredibly proud of this one. Honestly, cutting the long straight pieces for the sashing and borders was the scariest part for me since no matter how careful I am, I'm amazed at how imprecise my cutting can be.

I'm getting this one quilted at my local quilt shop and will get it back sometime next month. Then I'll just need to put the binding on and convince Tadpole that it's mine, not hers.

With the big quilt top done, I wanted something quick and easy to piece together so I could practice some more free motion quilting. Yesterday, I cut some fat quarters into 6" squares and played with the layout until I settled on an arrangement I liked (a very methodical random assortment).

Tadpole thought placing the squares was pretty fun, too. Staying up a bit later than I should have, I pieced the top last night:

Now I just have to figure out how to quilt it. Pebbles? Free-motion lines? A combination of the two? Quilt alternating blocks and leave the others open? Clearly I still have some thinking to do.

I also need to start thinking about fall sweaters for the girls so I can start them in time to finish before fall. It was chilly enough for sweaters a couple of weeks ago and the girls were happy to model for the camera.

I could have sworn those sleeves were longer!

Tadpole has requested a sweater with "flowers and lots of buttons." Any suggestions for a girl's cardigan with flower motifs? I have several thoughts for Sprout but nothing has coalesced into a workable idea yet. It's only June - plenty of time to let the design ideas percolate a bit longer (and finish my own sweater.

In the meantime, I've just joined the sleeves to the body of my Stasis pullover and have plenty to keep me busy. Another inch or two of stockinette before things get interesting again. I'm looking forward to the colorwork yoke!

Besides the knitting

I've actually been pretty productive on the knitting front lately. I finished my big lace shawl, and the lace scarf that has been my train knitting for much of the last year. Are they blocked? Well, no. But I did weave in the ends, so that's something, right?

And I've almost finished a sweater for sprout (my replacement train knitting once I finished the scarf) and started a new sweater for her once the first one got too finicky for commuting.

Do I have pictures of any of this? Nope.

But I do have pictures of the other crafty things I've been up to besides the knitting.

After all, I have my Tour de Fleece spinning to share:

That's 612 yards of BFL 2-ply (roughly a heavy fingering weight - I haven't checked the wpi count) spun from 6 ounces of Briar Rose top. The Tour was a fantastic way to focus on spending time at the wheel. I actually managed to spin every day that the riders raced. But I've managed to sit down at the wheel only twice since. Not for lack of motivation (I'm really looking forward to spinning up the second half of my fiber and turning it into a Tilt wrap), but there are only so many hours in the day/week and I have plenty of other demands on my time.

Like this little person helping me take an FO shot of my new yarn:

 Just for comparison's sake, here is (part of) what I spun when I first did the Tour three years ago

and this is the not-yet-washed BFL from this year

What can I say? My girls like yarn. At least they come by it honestly.

Yarn isn't the only thing to keep me occupied these days. The quilting bug bit again. I'd pieced these giant flying geese blocks while I was still on maternity leave and then sewed them together into a mini quilt top a few weeks ago. The fabric had been sitting on my desk for a while and, with some great encouragement from Jacey, I decided that decluttering my workspace needed to include taking my first stab at free motion quilting.

It's not perfect (there's a reason I'm not showing the back) and quilting only in the dark sections hides imperfections nicely, but it's done! And I had so much fun that I'm planning to use FMQ on my next quilt, which I spontaneously/accidentally got started on this weekend with leftover squares from Tadpole's birthday quilt.

Yes, I probably should have watered the back garden instead of dragging Mr. Tinks and Frogs outside to snap a quick picture. But I was so darned proud, I couldn't contain myself. You see, I somehow managed to lay out the blocks and chain piece the rows together in an hour on Friday night. An hour!

And, just in case looking at this picture makes me think that I really should go put my quilt sandwich together (a very bad idea) instead of knitting a few stitches and heading to bed (the responsible approach), I'm going to leave you with a shot of our pumpkin collection. 

Who knew pumpkins ripened in August? Not me. We're going to be eating a lot of pumpkin pie this year.

Summer non sequiturs

I'm spinning like a dervish (well, a dervish who sneaks in 20-30 minutes with the wheel after work in the evenings) and having a blast with the Tour de Fleece. So far, I've managed to spin every day of the Tour. Yay! Naturally, my photographic evidence is scant - my only daytime shots are from last weekend and are making their way from my phone onto the computer while I type (along with several hundred other pics of this and that). Tomorrow is a rest day on the Tour and I'll poke around a bit to see if there is some fun way to show off my nighttime snapshots of spinning progress. A gif maybe?

But for now, I thought I'd share a few non-spinning delights. Ok, not too far removed from spinning, at least for this first one.

Pretty much as soon as the yarn was dry, Tadpole and I wound up my new polwarth/silk yarn. And I cast on the next day. Kuura is a delightful pattern to knit - interesting yet intuitive and not too busy. I'm flipping the main body and edging charts to have a lacier body to the shawl. We'll see how it looks in the handspun.

So far, so good. This yarn is just lovely to knit.

And, bit by bit, I'm slowly working the crochet bind off on my Fiori di Sole shawl.

I feel like this is moving at a glacial pace but it's not quite that bad. Maybe more like tortoise speed. It would probably finish up more quickly if I didn't ignore it to play with my new handspun.

And, in non-knitting news, I have pumpkins!

Honest to goodness pumpkins in my backyard garden (ok, expanding onto the driveway, if I'm being really honest). That picture is a day old now and the little pumpkin was almost the size of my fist when I went to check on it this evening.

I've got some handspun calling my name before it's time to turn in for the night so I'll just leave you with this shot of our garden visitor hanging out with the zucchini.

How many rows can I knit before I nod off on the needles?