It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

The remnants of Hurricane Hanna arrived on Saturday afternoon, after a dreary, humid, and unpleasant day. We mostly get hurricane remnants in my area, but they can cause flooding, downed trees, and loss of power—making me realize first hand how precarious things are for people in the direct path. So I imagined what the evening would be like, trying to knit by candlelight and hoping that a huge tree wouldn’t crash through my roof. I don’t know how Abe Lincoln did it, but my Mr.-Magoo-like eyes can’t manage without a blazing Ott light to illuminate my work. Although the rain was heavy (a reported 4+ inches), my power remained on. In fact, it turned out to be rather a bonanza for Bee Fields because the rain disturbed my satellite signal and I wasn’t able to watch any TV at all—I had a marathon knitting session from about 7 to 11 PM, and got very far on the middle Bee Swarm section. I polished it off on Sunday, despite stopping at 10 for Mad Men.

So here is another picture of my incremental progress since the last picture.

This does make me smile because I’ve reached a milestone. And I do love looking at the pattern. In fact, I’m wondering if blocking will make it look less bee-like when the knitting is flattened out and that nice rounded shape for every bee is gone.

It really is possible to finish by the September 21 KAL deadline. Although I have never worked with drop-stitch patterns, Anne gives such great directions that I don’t think I’ll have trouble with the final Bee-in-Field section. Most of the wrong-side knitting is just purl, and it might even go faster than the middle Bee Swarm. So I feel energized, and after the separating rows of garter stitch tonight, it is on to Section 3.

It didn’t seem as if we got terribly strong winds, but when I checked the garden on Sunday, I found four of my twelve tomato plants blown over.

I had staked some and caged others with old stakes and cheap bent cages, mostly because planting this year was unplanned and I didn’t really think through what would happen when the tomatoes grew tall. Ed is at work now making me heavy-gauge wire tomato cages for next summer (and he is at work making compost bins and laying out soaker hoses also). We managed to get the tomato plants upright, losing only a few. The rest of the garden enjoyed the rain immensely. All my seedlings have sprouted, and my beans are ready for harvesting.

I hope at least one of my 200 green tomatoes will get jealous of the beans and start turning red.

Comments

[Luni]

Wonderful progress on the shawl. At least some good came from the storm. Your beans look yummy.

[Dorothy]

Lovely beans! We tried growing tomatoes in our sun room (too cool to do it outside) and harvested our single lonely tomato yesterday. It was delicious! Next year I need to start earlier, fertilize and prune judiciously. Bee Fields is looking lovely as well. I do need to put that on my "must do" list - but only after I finish the two shawls I have started already.

[Linda M]

Your shawl looks great, I'm so glad you are feeling better about it.

And I'm also glad the bad weather didn't do any real damage in your area. We keep dodging bullets in Tallahassee though we are still cleaning up from the flooding after Fay.

And it was kind of funny that a local (non-hurricane related) lightning storm opened up right above the FSU stadium just before game time Saturday evening. They delayed the game two hours... and FSU still destroyed the sacrificial lambs from Western Carolina.

Linda

[Robin]

Bee Fields is looking great!!

[Jenny]

Good looking beans! My co-worker that has a garden just started bringing in tomatoes last week, so yours should be turning soon!

[tiennie]

The shawl is looking great! Glad Hanna didn't do too much damage!

[Dave]

I knew you could do it -- it looks wonderful!

And jealous tomatoes -- LOL!!