Ack!!

See what happens when you close your eyes and just grab yarn?  Pink solid and brown/turquoise/white variegated, but I said I would so I'm going with it.  It's a warshrag not a prom dress.  It'll either spend its time scrubbing spaghetti off plates or scrubbing dirty feet so it doesn't have to be pretty, only functional.  That it will be no matter how hideous the colors are together.

I finished the Scrap Doublethick Cloth last night before supper.  Of course I knitted 2 too many rows to have enough yarn to bind off so I ended up carefully tinking (k-n-i-t backwards) those 2 rows and finishing with a mere yard of yarn left.  It's a little longer than the pattern specifies but, once again, it's a washcloth or dishrag so *shrugs* who really cares.



We've been seeing a few monarch butterflies in the backyard lately so I went over to see the milkweed blooming merrily away, and peeking out from a volunteer shrub are two pink stargazer lilies.  I thought all of the ones I planted along the lot line there had given up the ghost.  Evidently not.  The purple coneflowers are happily blooming too and the daisies and bee balm can't seem to stop.  Not that I'm complaining, you understand, I would like it if they bloomed all season long.  This year I am definitely going to dig up and divide the daisies, spread them around to other parts of the yard that can use their distinctive brand of cheer.  Daisies everywhere!  Hmm, I wonder how they'd do down by the street where the plows heap the snow all winter.  I might have to take a shovel's worth down there and try it out.  I'll have to weed there first, but I should probably do that anyway.










The tag on the gourd plant warned that it likes to sprawl all over so I keep trying to redirect it onto the fence.  It has those twirly, sproingy holdfasts so I end up breaking them off and weaving the end of the vine into the fencing and it's finally long enough to reach the fence.  I'm foolishly excited that there are blossoms on it so gourds might grow.  Grandpa Stephan grew gourds and made them into birdhouses; I want to do that too.

July 27--Arthur Morris, Little Blue Heron Silhouette.  Tia lay on the chaise in the sun watching the heron fishing in the shallows.  She knew she shouldn't lay out in the sun, it wasn't good for her skin and would probably give her skin cancer but what else was she supposed to do?  Manning left every morning on some errand or another leaving her stuck at the villa.  When she complained and said she wanted her own car he told her not to be stupid, that he would take her wherever she wanted to go.  Besides, he said, the only stores on the island sold cheap tourist crap.  She wanted to ask how she could know where she wanted to go if she never left the house, never went out of the walled garden, but he didn't like it when she talked back or asked too many questions.

It was great to have DD visit for a couple nights a week apart but it wasn't enough.  I know we're planning to go there in only 32 more days and stay for a week but I want her NOW.  Thirty-two days will go fast.  It'll still be hotter than Hades in Kentucky but I am certain our motel room will be air conditioned and everyplace I want to go except the races will be too.  Now if I could only work out how to teleport us down there by then...
--Barbara