Colourful Wraps, Brownies and Straw Bales

Well kids, it has been awhile since I lasted blogged. Nothing splendiferous has been happening, just generally a bit busier and being lazy too! However there is always lots to think and talk about in my little corner of the world!

I started knitting this shawl/wrap back in the summer and I did finish it this past fall. I LOVE it!!!

It is Ojo de Dios, such a beautiful design and an interesting pattern to knit. I knit it with Noro Silk Garden-rainbow- #87. It is so nice to wear and it is so bright and colourful, my kind of project!! I could wear it as I cavort amongst my straw bales! It is seriously a lovely project to knit and not to difficult. It's a great wrap and lovely to wear.

It starts with one mitered triangle you knit on your dps. Then the rest of the triangles are picked up on successive triangle edges. The body of the shawl is picked along the triangle border edge and its just good old garter stitch and some short row shaping and you are done! I love how the garter stitch really highlights all the beautiful colours in the yarn. I do love Noro!!! It is the greatest, most prettiest yarn. Looking at my pictures I am thinking I ought to knit another one, maybe in some blues and greens...hmmmm.

Here are some pictures of my friend Stacie wearing her Ojo de Dios shawl. It is so beautiful! She did an extra row of mitered triangles. The colours in her yarn are stunning. They look quite South Western.

I recently found a new absolutely delicious healthy brownie recipe! It is soo good!! Amazingly enough, they do not contain squash. They are made with black beans, applesauce, dates, eggs, cocoa and chocolate chips.Goodness me, these brownies are fantastic, they taste so good and they are not too sweet at all. They are high fibre, quite low in fat and gluten free. They are quick to make but you do need a food processor to mash everything up. The recipe can be found at
 http://ifoodreal.com/black-bean-recipe/. Sooo good!!

Recently my friend Heather invited me to a meeting of a great gardening group she belongs to. Twist my rubber arm and off we went. The guest speaker, Lesley, spoke of her veggie growing with Straw Bale Gardening. We were both immediately hooked!! It is quite a popular and hugely successful gardening technique used  by our great American neighbours. It is now spreading in popularity in Canada . Basically your composting straw bale becomes a growing medium for your plants. At the end of the season, you will have great vegetables and some lovely compost. I could go into a much more detailed explanation (which I did before Blogger crashed...grrr) but there is tons of info online and many books written about the subject. It is a great for gardeners who have poor or little soil, small spaces, rooftop gardens.. etc. It is also being used a lot in community gardens.

 Our backyard is on a southern facing sandy slope and we have crummy soil. We live in a semi arid desert zone. We have literally hauled tonnes of soil, manure and compost up that hill over the decades but the soil still seems to get quite depleted very quickly. This seemed like a great method of growing our veggies with the additional benefit of producing compost on site.What also really sold me with this technique is there is very little weeding and it is very easy on your back.

Brent caught my enthusiasm and the next day we got a load of straw bales. being a city girl I didn't know the difference between straw and hay-I do now!

this guy was a great sport!

Ta dah!!!!

a certifiable silly person

So my plan is to do regular updates on this new exciting gardening adventure. Hopefully all will go according to plan. It sure has the neighbours talking, they figured we were getting goats or ponies! I could do alpacas though. For some reason I am pretty darned excited about it.

good help is truly hard to find!

The bales are in position now. Next step is the fertilizer/watering regimen.Should be interesting?!?

Keep smiling friends!

Chris