TUSAL, fishes, gardening

Here is my April TUSAL! Just look at all those threads! There is lots of DMC from cross stitching, there is the plastic lanyard from lanyard making on our vacation, and lots and lots of cotton from weaving in the ends of fishes. I think I'll need a bigger jar for my TUSAL soon :o)

What you see here are 4 stacks of fish that equal 96 fishes. Why am I showing you all the same fishes yet again??? Well.....these fish have all their ends woven in! You betcha! I sat down and wove in all the ends one right after another - now, I am weaving the ends just as soon as I finish a fish. I absolutely do not want to have to go on another end weaving binge again, EVER.

I was also busy planting. I love spring so much! We planted strawberries...

radishes, tomatoes and eggplant (there are now three different kinds of lettuce in this bed now as well)...

crookneck squash and zucchini (there are also 2 artichoke plants here now). Boy did we have fun!! Mostly the 6year old and myself, but everyone did a little bit. You can bet they are all going to want to eat our harvest :o) I also want to plant some sunflower seeds, some gourds and a few pumpkins from our pumpkins last year. Why are there only 24 hours in every day???

TUSAL & 2011 KALendar mystery shawl

This is my TUSAL for April 1st. The larger bits are from the fish I am knitting. All the other threads are from various cross stitch projects.

It's kind of cool to drop the ends of my threads in and watch the beautiful color changes! I finished clue 3 of the 2011 KALendar mystery shawl. I am really liking this knit and also knitting from a chart once again. I had forgotten how fun it is to see your stitches take shape like this.

We had the option to add beads or nupps. I chose to do both. I was having an awful time with the nupps. I found a way that worked for me where on the row that I had to knit all those little stitches together, I used a size US0 needle - that worked, but was really slow. Then on ravelry, one of the other knitters knitting this shawl posted a link to a youtube video for the Easy Peasy Nupp! This method worked wonders for me and is how I finished up the nupps without going stark raving mad.

It is now big enough to move it to circular needles which is what I did and I have actually been working on clue 4 so am a little farther than this picture shows. It's so nice to be knitting something a little challenging and to be learning something new in my knitting!!