summertime

This is what I call a beautiful mess. Look at all these glorious books! Still waiting on 3 more in the mail that I picked up used. Our Livings Books curriculum order arrived yesterday, and I've been excitedly leafing through it, excitement building as I open each new book. I love books. I love book stores. I love that my kids love books. This curriculum looks promising for our family. It's full of living books! No dry text books written by a dozen different people, just good, entertaining, informative books, written by one author, telling a story about something or someone. I love it!

Rachel keeps running off with them and "reading" them :). She's been asking me every day for 2 weeks when we're going to start doing school again, and it's not even August yet! She's been working independently through Explode the Code, making great progress all on her own. I gave it to her a couple weeks ago because she kept begging to do school work, and I am enjoying my Summer off, as a teacher :)

How have I been enjoying it? Well, a little this and a little that... I have been cultivating my very first vegetable (or otherwise) garden! I have gained a new appreciation for farmers and the challenges they face when the rain won't come, or the rain comes at the wrong time, or the bugs come out in Biblical force. My poor little garden has suffered some hardship in its short life. I lost my sweet basil to a fungus, my tomato plants were both savagely attacked by a massive onslaught of tomato worms while we were out of town. I came home to some very sad looking tomato plants. I picked something like 45 of those worms off of my 2 tomato and 1 cucumber plants in a matter of days.

The plants have mostly recovered and we have recently planted some decorative gourds, which just sprouted yesterday. The seeds came in a mixed packet, so it should be interesting to see what pops up.

What else? Knitting. Knitting with wool. In July. Yep. That's me... I knit Christmas stockings in July. This was my first fair isle project and I really really liked it. I really want to make it in an alpaca/wool blend yarn, which is a little more expensive, but I knit a first-run in plain wool, just to get a feel for the project. I love it, though. I just finished it last night, except for the name, since I don't know who it will go to yet. It still needs to be blocked to even out the stitches and make it look more uniform in texture, but it's done! I'm in the process of debating yarn colors for the 4 I intend to make for my family. I'd also like to figure out some more quirky pictures to put on them, like a moose, maybe a sweater, coffee mugs or something like that. I just need to take out some graph paper and design my own, I think.