First things first: have you signed up for my newsletter yet? If not, please do! I’m going to be launching Sunday Stitch Club on Sunday, September 6th for some weekly virtual knitting! Sign up for the newsletter to get the details, the Zoom link and password to get in, and more!
August 31st. My son’s first day of kindergarten, which feels like such a heavy and sad thing for me today. The first day of school always feels like the end of summer. I took the day off work so I could walk him to school and pick him up on his first day to have some of that special time with him. He’s been in preschool, but for some reason, Kindergarten just feels so… grown up. When we walked up to the school building, with all the staff standing outside to help get the littles into the building, he stood there. Then he gave me this long hug. Not that hard, squeezy, rough-and-tumble boy hug where he thinks he’s being funny. And not a quick, half-hearted hug. A real hug – the kind that is firm and soft at the same time says more than you realize. And then, before I knew it, he was being walked into the building by a staff member and I was standing there trying to not bawl my eyes out, and continued to fight it back the whole walk back home.
And then my husband and I went to Bob Evans for breakfast so I could drown my emotions and sorrows of my baby not being a baby anymore with coffee and carbs and bacon. Sigh.
In less sad news, I have had quite a few visitors to our little garden this past weekend. Earlier in the year, it seemed like all I ever saw were wasps (which, after finding the nest they were making on the garage, explained it). Lately, though, we’re seeing lots of bumblebees and finally some wee honey bees. I’m sure they’ve been around and we just haven’t seen them, but it’s something special to get to sit and watch them work on the flowers. For the longest time, I had a fear of any kind of bee with the assumption that they’d sting me. Now that I’m older and wiser, I’m working on passing that friendliness toward bees to the kiddo. We’ve even pet a few of the bumblebees, too! The zinnias have been my favorite new-to-me plant in the garden this year and it’s just delightful to sit and watch them do their thing to gather pollen. If you follow my Instagram, I posted a little video of that little lady honey bee doing her work. <3
Today there was even a monarch! I tried to use my phone camera to capture her but couldn’t get close like I could with the bees so the big camera and lens had to come out. But she just happily floated around the yard between the different zinnia blooms, and it made today a little more magical.
It’s also that time of year when all the tomatoes start ripening. That’s when you know summer really is almost over – in my mind at least – when you don’t have a kiddo in school to signal summer’s end. Our Roma tomatoes didn’t do well at all this year, though the chocolate cherry and pink brandywines did well. But my parents had grown San Marzanos and passed on several pounds my way, which I promptly canned up into some pizza sauce with the recipe from Preserving by the Pint. Did you know that you can cut the tomatoes in half and broil them, cut side down, for about 10 minutes and those skins will just peel right off?! I feel so silly for just now learning that, at 36 years old, but it’s LIFE CHANGING y’all! All that time I wasted in past years trying to boil, ice bath and peel tomatoes could have been spent knitting, instead!
On the knitting front, I’ve been slowly working away on some spinning. I have tried picking up my needles, and did manage to finish the 2nd sock I had been working on but… I don’t know. My wheel has been calling to me, I suppose. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to treadle and mindlessly pull some fiber for spinning than to do the thinking and calculating that’s involved on some knitting projects. I washed some 3-ply sock yarn today that I just pulled off the wheel Saturday, along with some grey and sari-silk tweed that is in progress. The first skein is about 150 yards, and I have the 2nd half left to spin, with the hopes of it becoming enough yarn for a fun little hat for a holiday gift.
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