Posted in Instagram, Our House

Gardening

This is a pretty busy time of year for us on the Hretz Homestead. We’ve added 7 new chicks to our backyard flock. All the seedlings have been planted. The flower beds have been extended, as have the gardens. An additional two truckloads of mulch dispersed. Plus planted new flowers and 10 tiny trees. If you want to know more about garden prep and such, check out my previous garden post here.

Lantanas are some of my favorite flowers we have planted. The flowers themselves are tiny clusters of fairy size bouquets. I prefer the yellow and pink variegated ones but they also come in other colors and solids as well. These plants get big and bushy with flowers all summer long.

We first had these in New Mexico, where they came back every spring. In Virginia it must be too cold so I had to replace them all. I guess that simply makes them an annual.

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A Rose by any other Name

We also added lots of roses this year. Some were found on Craigslist for a cost of digging them up ourselves. This added about 8 new-to-us-roses to the flower bed behind the house.

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Posted in Instagram, Recipes

How to make French Press Coffee

I’d like to share how to make french press coffee with you. Making French press coffee is easy and inexpensive. It’s also delicious!

Supplies

This post contains affiliate links. If you click on my link to make a purchase there will be no additional charge to you. I make a small commission from your purchase that helps keep my blog going.

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Posted in Instagram, knitting, Ravelry knit projects, yarn

River of Dreams

Don’t talk to me until I’ve had coffee

The first thing I do in the morning is let out the chickens and clean the coop. Then coffee. Always coffee. River of Dreams is perfect to knit while my brain is absorbing caffeine from the coffee to wake up. Usually, I have Instagram stories playing. I knit about 10-12 rows a day. true too, is i move a little slow in the mornings. So now you can understand why it’s taking so long to finish.

You will remember from previous posts, the pattern River Of Dreams by Lauren Rene, was written in conjunction with the anniversary of LYS Flying Needles. I love that this shawl has a playful mix of colorful stripes throughout. The yarn I’m using was a kit from the shop created for this shawl. It also included an exclusive color, River Of Dreams, there are five colors in all. I’d say I’m about 75% done with my shawl.

Some changes I incorporated

I decided to work a garter stitch border rather just Stockinette as the pattern is written. I knit 10 rows of Garter giving me 5 ridges, then 5 stitches of Garter on each end. It’s my preference that the edges to lay flat. Which is why I went with the garter stitch border.

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Posted in Instagram, knitting, Ravelry knit projects

Knit on

I am super excited to be partaking in the Find Your Fade KAL with the Flying Needles Yarn shop. Unfortunately the weather was bad the night of the cast on party so it was canceled. I cast on at home as did others or they cast on at the shop on other days, posting to social media via Instagram, #flying needles2018KAL or Facebook.

I tried to find a moment or two each day to add a few rows. I started knitting on my color 2 four days into the project. As I was knitting along on Color 2, Madelinetosh’s Tosh Merino Light in the color Plaid Blanket, it hit me. I’m using Color 1 as color 2. [Insert image of me hanging my head head in shame here] I mislabeled them when I put the yarn labels together in order 1-7.

You can see I did it almost from the beginning, before I even took my official photos for my Ravelry project page. I guess I had a brain fart. I new what the swatch order was so I cannot explain it. Today I will be starting over, in the correct order.

Just for the official record the color order is as follows;

  1. Black Elephant, Acheron
  2. Tosh Merino Light, Plaid Blanket
  3. Malabrigo Mechita, 866 Arco Iris
  4. Tosh Merino Light, Coquette Deux 341
  5. Malabrigo Mechita, 5 Aniversario
  6. Dragonfly Fibers Pixie, Middle Earth
  7. Black Elephant, Sunflowers

At least this way I get fun extra knitting on this project. Really get my money’s worth out of the yarn by knitting it twice. Get the chance to start the KAL again! Just trying to get enthusiastic about restarting…..

Happy Knitting.