232. Red Scarf Finished

Finished in Salt Lake City, wet-blocked at Margene's house, and modeled by Margene's Wild Woman sculpture in her zen garden. 

I ditched the blue ruffle and blocked the crap out of it. As superwash yarn is wont to do, it grew and grew and grew, which is good, since I only had three balls to work with. I still don't think this is unisex, but more feminine. I love it anyway.

Specs 
Pattern:  Gwen's Scarf - The super-easy pattern is written in this entry.  It's a four-stitch pattern, the same on every row.  It makes a sweet scarf with lovely drape, and it's the same on both sides.  The only tricky part is the YO to a purl, which is nothing more than taking the yarn twice over the needle before the purl.  No biggie at all, once you get it.

Yarn:  Lily Chin DK superwash, 3 balls

Needle:  4.5mm/US 7

-------------------

When I got home, I was faced with a garden that had exploded.  I was only gone five days, but it seems the garden thought it was five weeks. Though I had not been able to do much in the garden for a week before I left because of my hefty work schedule, just before I left I thought I had picked the cucumbers and the beans clean. I froze a large bag of beans the morning I left for the airport, as well. How can it be, then, that I came home to some gigantic overgrown cucumbers, bushels (only a slight exaggeration) of too-old green and yellow beans, three overgrown (but still edible and succulent) summer squash, dozens of ripe tomatoes, more Swiss chard than I can even cope with at the moment, enough broccoli to freeze a bag, and to find that the Summercrisp pears were ready to be picked? What sort of mischief is this?!

I am quite sure that this photo does not convey how large this harvest, which I gathered in about a half hour after I arrived home, is.  I can hardly lift this basket, and this is not everything that needs to be picked, either. 

The pole beans must have got pissed at me for making disparaging remarks about them, because they decided to go forth and multiply. There are some lovely thin and tender ones, but there are many that are old and probably tough. I'm still going to cook them -- perhaps in a soup or make three-bean salad.  Though they are tough, they are still mine and they are (I hope) still nutritious. 

A closer look at the very exciting pears:

I am quite stunned that they are not wormy or bug-eaten.  This is the first year for this tree. I can hardly believe it, given the strange weather we've had and the fact that bee pollination activity is so severely diminished. You just really never know. 

Now back to medical school for four lectures tomorrow morning.  I'm suffering brain fog and jetlag, and I realized last night that I don't have the prep materials I need, so I did my research on the topics of melanocyte biology and disorders of skin pigmentation, fungal and viral skin infections, and other dermatologic topics, on the internet.  This should be interesting. 

Comments

[Sarah]

Welcome back, Norma!

[Manise]

Glad you're home! I leave beans and let them get to the shelly bean stage if they get too big and they are yummy sauteed with garlic and onions and chard and... well you get the picture. I had to rip all my bush beans up- a total loss while i was away :-(

[Judy]

Pears!! Chris just asked me if we should give up on our pear trees and mow 'em down. I DO have beans.

[margene]

The garden missed you! My wild woman never looked better!!

[marianne]

Welcome home, Norma. Look at that basket full of goodies! Those pears are beautiful!! Gorgeous scarf!

[kathy]

Honey crisp pears sound and look delicious. I want a pear now.

[kathy]

Oops. Didn't mean to ignore the knitting. The scarf is beautiful.

[Kelli]

Maybe I need to go away for 5 days. My garden is SLOWLY producing.

Congrats on the bountiful harvest and welcome back home. Now off to school! ~ksp

[Anne]

Glad you are home safely, even if the garden decided to kick your ass at an inopportune time.

Dermatology: Good - no call. Bad - well... people's skin ickiness. Couldn't do that speciality in a million-billion years.

[Carrie]

Those pears are beautiful. And old garden-fresh beans are still better than anything in the store.

[Joy]

Wow - gorgeous harvest! Glad you got some pears, I think the squirrels must have stolen the few that our tree had set :(

[Roxie]

Norma Pomona, Goddess of the harvest, bounty surrounds you and welcomes you home.

[Cynthia]

So glad you're back! Those pears are the most beautiful things I've ever seen!

[kathryn]

I love the Red Scarf pattern. I got the YO with purl and nothing is slowing me down. Thanks. I wish I could reach through the computer to eat one of those beautiful pears.

[--Deb]

You know, it's always a treat to read your blog, Norma. Not only is there beautiful produce (such that I never see at home), lovely knitting (the scarf is stunning), but you use and spell words like "wont" correctly. That is just such a pleasure to see!

[claudia]

Well, I am a WEE bit jealous of your hefty produce yields. Especially considering the shriveled status of my tomatoes. But I'm happy for you, just like the runner-up is happy for the beauty queen.

:)

Do I have a raised bed? Hubby was wondering.

[elizabeth]

That is one of my favorite FO shots EVER!

[Cheryl S.]

I love the scarf, and the photo with the Wild Woman is absolutely perfect! And those pears look awesome.

[Julie]

The pears are just gorgeous! My total harvest of tomatoes this year: 2. Huge plants, no bugs, no scum, no nothing. Especially no tomatoes. I garden vicariously through you.

[naomi]

Great welcome home, that.

[Raquel Moreno]

You are just a wiz at gardening, that harvest looks yummy!

Red scarf is pretty.

[evalyn]

I'm letting my pole beans go to dry beans - just leave them on the vine until the hulls are dry and crackly - shell them out and let them dry in the air for a bit, then treat like dry beans.

What lovely pears!

[Cookie]

Five days in August is like two months to a garden. Plus beans and squash are sneaky.

Love the knitting and the produce.

Welcome home!

[elizabeth a airhart]

some gardens just have a mind of thier own

have my red scarf on the needles

mine is non wool for the for please do not show me any thing
in wool people
even number as36 38
row one knit two- purl two -across= same for next row
and repeat till one has the called for 55"60"
makes it's own border = thank you

[Sue]

Those pears look absolutely, positively scrumptious. Yum.

[KellyS]

yummy!
and don't catch any of that stuff. Ew, physiology and pathology always makes me itchy.

[Diane]

Ooooh - Pear P-rn!! Those would make some fine pear crisp/cobblah/whatevah! (It looks like someone juiced the garden with manure tea while you were away!) Loved the Red Scarf too.

[twinsetellen]

Wow - I didn't know that superwash grows so much, but that explains the size multiplication I recently had on a cap for my husband. At first I was afraid it was too small, then I blocked and it was too big.

The scarf is great, and likewise the veggies.

[Wanda]

Wow, great jewelery. They might have been pushers, but I know those necklaces looked gorgeous on you!

[Wanda]

Whoops, replied to the wrong post, but the scarf looks great too.