Bella Vita Farm & Fiber

The St. John’s Wort is in bloom and it’s blooming everywhere on my property, especially in the full sun.

I went out and gathered a quart sized baggie this morning and you can’t tell that I’ve picked any. I’ll be harvesting more over the next several days and should have plenty to play with in my dye pot.

Later when DH gets home we’re going out mushroom hunting in the woods.  We have a state forest behind us and there are plenty of coyotes, cougars, bear, etc. that I’d prefer not to run into by myself.  If there are two of us talking we’ll scare them off before we see them.  When I walk in the woods without him, I take the dogs with me.  However, I don’t want the dogs around when looking for mushrooms because they will either trample them or try to eat them, neither are good ideas.

Did I tell you I tried to blow the house up and kill my son?  Well that was the other day, everyone and everything is fine.  That was the day I forgot I was making Feta Cheese.  I’ll have to tell you that story when I share my Feta cheese making in a future post.  Stay tuned…

Melissa has challenged me to identify a plant she showed on her blog, the prize is FREE sock yarn! How awesome is that? Well, I spent about an hour doing some research on possibilities and came up with quite a few. See, the picture she posted was just the plant showing the leaf formation, no flowers to help as clues. Well, I decided to get some pics of the plants in my garden that I chose as my top educated (grin) guesses.

Melissa’s picture

The first thing I thought of was that it belonged to the mint family, it has the opposing leaves that mints are famous for. Here’s a spearmint that I have growing.

But the leaves of Melissa’s plant didn’t look as thick as most mints do.

So, I thought for sure it was Lemon Balm, and I think that’s what it is. But someone else has already guessed this AND you never know…

The other possibilities, and also in my garden are

Bee Balm - but Melissa’s doesn’t seem tall enough

Lantana - mine have pointier leaves

Well, we’ll see if I win the sock yarn or not. I do know that I’ve already won the beautiful plants that I have in my garden. I’d like to show you the showstopper that’s blooming right now.

My honeysuckle is exploding with flowers. The other picture is the hostas that are growing just in front of the honeysuckle.

It looks like the hosta plants need dividing next year. Next year’s project will be a shade garden along the long drive. A gardener’s work is never done, it’s always a work in progress.

Summers here are short, so you won’t find me inside knitting as much.  I’m usually playing in the dirt…I mean gardening.  I get up and go to bed with the sun.  Daybreak is around 6 AM and sundown is around 10 PM.  Tomorrow will be the Summer Solstice, which means the days will be getting shorter from now on.

I snapped a picture of my Columbine that was full of blooms.  I thought I’d share a quick snap of my garden.

I’ve put the lace aside for awhile and working on my Bellatrix socks.  I have to finish them by the end of June for them to qualify for the Sock Knitters Anonymous, May-June challenge.  I started them BEFORE I started my Forest Canopy Shawl or the Heartland Shawl.  Well I’ve gotten a few more rows since this picture, but here’s how they look so far.

I also have to come up with my own sock design for the June-July challenge.   I have to cast on before June 30th.  These girls don’t let a sock knitter sit idle, that’s for sure.  You can join the group on Ravelry…come on over the water is fine….

I’ve started the Heartland Lace Shawl, by Evelyn Clark.  I got through the first repeat and now I can’t, for the life of me, get past the second repeat of the first chart.  I’ve frogged back to my lifeline three times already and maybe doing it for the fourth time.  I’m going to try tinking back first….but doggone it….I’ll never finish it at this rate!

Originally uploaded by bellavitafarm

I finally did it! I finished my first lace shawl! This was my third attempt to find a pattern that I could do successfully and finish without utter confusion and frustration in trying to figure out the pattern. I added two additional repeats but still would have liked it bigger. I had the yarn to do it bigger but alas, live and learn.