More Hogwarts Friends

Here are two more zettified Hogwarts professors.  These are great fun to do and I'll be making them into postcards to send off to folks who are Harry Potter fans.

Potions, anyone?

Here is my take on the "I've Been Zettied" challenge over at Three Muses    
(http://thethreemuseschallenge.blogspot.com/2011/07/three-muses-ive-been-zettied.html):

Professor Snape probably would not be amused, but I surely was.  This was fun to do!

Sunday Morning

Quite a few things have gotten done around here lately.  The husband and I finally moved that ugly dirt pile and I added another garden bed and walkway:

 Not the best picture, because it was (of all things) cloudy this morning.  You might recall my ambitious plan to reclaim all that old gravel from the corner of the yard to make room for a firepit.

 Yeah.  That was a colossal pain in the butt.  So I decided to throw a hundred bucks at it and had some new gravel delivered.  The wonderful husband spent an entire morning shoveling it into a wheelbarrow and moved it into the yard.  (The gravel guys only drop it on the street, not where you want it on your property.)  Now it looks great, but it's too hot outside to have a fire.

Perhaps a small one for Lughnasadh...

 Remember the corn and pumpkins from not too long ago?

                                                                  Here they are now:

Every time I walk by them, I swear they've grown an inch.

And finally, I've picked up my knitting needles again after a long, long hiatus.  I have an inordinate amount of unfinished projects lying about. This year, one of my resolutions was to get some of them finished.  One of these is a shawl that I began I don't know how many years ago (really, I don't) based on a pattern from Elizabeth Zimmerman's book.

I got the shawl itself made relatively quickly.  The problem was in how to finish it off.  At first, I thought a lacy, crocheted edging.  Started that, didn't like it, pulled it out.  Then, aha! It's done in fall colors, so why not knit little leaves all around the edge?  Hmm...did about 40 of those and couldn't stand it anymore.  How about knitting a separate, leafy border and then attaching it?  Got about 20" of that done and abandoned it.  Really, this project has been the source of unending harassment and derision on the part of all my knitting friends for, well, seems like forever.  (How's that leaf shawl coming?  Whatever happened to that shawl you started ___ years ago?)  Last night, while watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, I pulled it out and took off all the leaves and unraveled the separate border.  Then I went back to Elizabeth and found that she had directions for a perfectly acceptable, simple garter stitch border that you knit on and bind off the shawl at the same time.  Why didn't I do this in the first place???  I'm now about a quarter of the way around and feeling so happy that I will actually be able to wear my shawl this fall instead of having it be my burial shroud.

I know it looks rather much like a pillow cover because it's on circular needles.  But once finished, it will spread out into a lovely circular shawl.  Here is a close up of the garter stitch edging:

I have decided that I'm working toward simplicity and completion.  Time to get all these things done so I can use them, rather than have them lying around collecting dust!

Coming soon:  pictures from my sketchbook project.

I can't wait...

...for July 15th!  You'll need to scroll down to the bottom and pause the music before you watch the trailer above.