RAH! Robot monster!
G'day all!
I've been knitting madly on my robot monster. I think he is wayyy cool but he doesn't have a lining yet and his gussety sides are not put together or even completely knitted yet. He is meant to be a back back.
Here he is before I picked up eleventy-billion stitches all around the edges (oh dear, a certain bit of B5 music from the end has started playing and I always get a bit sniffly when it plays. Yes I am a nerdy geek and proud of it).
I am hoping to have him done by the Maker Faire this weekend. I even lugged him on the bus to Joann's today on my quest for a) foam to put in his arms and legs and head knob and b) 5 replacement blades for my rotary cutter. I got the first but the latter were sold out cos they are only $20 instead of $32. Sigh.
Anyway, the knitting is nearly done. Another hour and he'll be cast off. Then I have to make the lining (am hoping Bobbin's Nest has a robot theme material cos I don't at present) with TWO zippers and also make the straps so that I can wear him as a back pack.
After our trip around parts north of here, and not finding a plant nursery with natives suitable for our patio, I rode off to the Wednesday farmers' market. It isn't as good as our local one but given we only had carrots and broccoli and it is just under 3 miles away I am not fussing. Better than buying from WholeFoods. But it does have something *fantastic.* To me at least.
A native plant nursery! Native Revival. And even better, he had one of the plants I could not figure out at all from last weekend's trip (doesn't help that I don't have any form of taxonomic key now that I took the excellent Californian desert wildflowers book back to the library). After I'd done a little shopping (very small selection of vegies today but if I wanted raspberries, strawberries, apricots, cherries and even peaches!!!! I was fine), I bought a couple of plants and brought them home on the bike.
OK, the plants are not completely native in that they are hybrid selections but at least their parentage is native. That is a start and it also means they will be much more suited to container gardening. A lot of natives straight from the bush don't do so well in cultivation - the fertilising regime, the water, the lack of really deep roots in pots etc knocks them around.
(Oh great. Someone has set off their smoke alarm and it is beeping high then low. But they seem to have worked out how to make it not beep at all. Hooray.)
I miss having a garden (links to housesitter's flickr account with pic of garden out front and Cheshire our trannie puss). Our garden at home is doing surprisingly well even though the rainfall total for the year to date is the second lowest ever. We reuse the shower water in the front yard, we have quite a bit of water storage capacity for when it does rain, dunno if our house sitters are using the washing machine rinse water out the back on the fruit trees - hope so cos they will be doing it tough without it. I like to potter in the garden, pull out weeds, encourage the plants I like - grow, GROW! Oooh look at you you little beauty! wave the camera at particularly good specimens - and generally hang out in it. I have some plants here - I am daily encouraging the climbing beans up the strings of their climbing frame. The corn isn't doing as well as the beans prolly cos it hasn't gotten big enough to get good sun. I have some ornamental plants but I try to focus on things we can eat. We've got corn, beans, lettuce, capsicums (bell peppers), some extremely sad strawberries (cos someone planted them out on the weekend that hit 100F almost...oops), basil (I think), some badly munched bok choi (thanks to the snail that ate the sluggo LAST and the one caterpillar that mowed what the snail didn't get) and some herbs.
There's talk of mandatory water rationing here this year. You know what that will mean? People will only be allowed to water their lawns every second day! Australians will laugh themselves silly over that. Wherever water rationing has been introduced in Oz, the first thing that is made illegal is watering of grass and use of a hose to wash a car or a footpath (sidewalk)/driveway (concrete does not grow!). Then they ramp it up - in Melbourne, gardens are only allowed to be watered for two hours on two days of the week I believe now. There's talk of banning all watering of gardens but I think there'll be a citizen's uprising first. Given that Australians are pretty blase about stuff, that is saying something. The gardeners amongst us are very keen. I think that Americans would rise up and overthrow the government if they were not allowed to water their lawns.
Which reminds me - I must tell the apartment office that one of the sprinklers here is broken and is shooting water halfway up the enormous liquidambar (sweetgum).
Enough rambling. Must finish the knitting on the monster so I can sew him up tomorrow when it is light and I can see.
anon!
I've been knitting madly on my robot monster. I think he is wayyy cool but he doesn't have a lining yet and his gussety sides are not put together or even completely knitted yet. He is meant to be a back back.
Here he is before I picked up eleventy-billion stitches all around the edges (oh dear, a certain bit of B5 music from the end has started playing and I always get a bit sniffly when it plays. Yes I am a nerdy geek and proud of it).
I am hoping to have him done by the Maker Faire this weekend. I even lugged him on the bus to Joann's today on my quest for a) foam to put in his arms and legs and head knob and b) 5 replacement blades for my rotary cutter. I got the first but the latter were sold out cos they are only $20 instead of $32. Sigh.
Anyway, the knitting is nearly done. Another hour and he'll be cast off. Then I have to make the lining (am hoping Bobbin's Nest has a robot theme material cos I don't at present) with TWO zippers and also make the straps so that I can wear him as a back pack.
After our trip around parts north of here, and not finding a plant nursery with natives suitable for our patio, I rode off to the Wednesday farmers' market. It isn't as good as our local one but given we only had carrots and broccoli and it is just under 3 miles away I am not fussing. Better than buying from WholeFoods. But it does have something *fantastic.* To me at least.
A native plant nursery! Native Revival. And even better, he had one of the plants I could not figure out at all from last weekend's trip (doesn't help that I don't have any form of taxonomic key now that I took the excellent Californian desert wildflowers book back to the library). After I'd done a little shopping (very small selection of vegies today but if I wanted raspberries, strawberries, apricots, cherries and even peaches!!!! I was fine), I bought a couple of plants and brought them home on the bike.
OK, the plants are not completely native in that they are hybrid selections but at least their parentage is native. That is a start and it also means they will be much more suited to container gardening. A lot of natives straight from the bush don't do so well in cultivation - the fertilising regime, the water, the lack of really deep roots in pots etc knocks them around.
(Oh great. Someone has set off their smoke alarm and it is beeping high then low. But they seem to have worked out how to make it not beep at all. Hooray.)
I miss having a garden (links to housesitter's flickr account with pic of garden out front and Cheshire our trannie puss). Our garden at home is doing surprisingly well even though the rainfall total for the year to date is the second lowest ever. We reuse the shower water in the front yard, we have quite a bit of water storage capacity for when it does rain, dunno if our house sitters are using the washing machine rinse water out the back on the fruit trees - hope so cos they will be doing it tough without it. I like to potter in the garden, pull out weeds, encourage the plants I like - grow, GROW! Oooh look at you you little beauty! wave the camera at particularly good specimens - and generally hang out in it. I have some plants here - I am daily encouraging the climbing beans up the strings of their climbing frame. The corn isn't doing as well as the beans prolly cos it hasn't gotten big enough to get good sun. I have some ornamental plants but I try to focus on things we can eat. We've got corn, beans, lettuce, capsicums (bell peppers), some extremely sad strawberries (cos someone planted them out on the weekend that hit 100F almost...oops), basil (I think), some badly munched bok choi (thanks to the snail that ate the sluggo LAST and the one caterpillar that mowed what the snail didn't get) and some herbs.
There's talk of mandatory water rationing here this year. You know what that will mean? People will only be allowed to water their lawns every second day! Australians will laugh themselves silly over that. Wherever water rationing has been introduced in Oz, the first thing that is made illegal is watering of grass and use of a hose to wash a car or a footpath (sidewalk)/driveway (concrete does not grow!). Then they ramp it up - in Melbourne, gardens are only allowed to be watered for two hours on two days of the week I believe now. There's talk of banning all watering of gardens but I think there'll be a citizen's uprising first. Given that Australians are pretty blase about stuff, that is saying something. The gardeners amongst us are very keen. I think that Americans would rise up and overthrow the government if they were not allowed to water their lawns.
Which reminds me - I must tell the apartment office that one of the sprinklers here is broken and is shooting water halfway up the enormous liquidambar (sweetgum).
Enough rambling. Must finish the knitting on the monster so I can sew him up tomorrow when it is light and I can see.
anon!
I love your monster. I know what you mean about pottering. I love to potter and it does sounds like you are growing a lot where you are.
ReplyDeleteIf you dont find robot fabric at Bobbin's Nest there is a bead/quilt shop in Los Gatos (I think it's called Bead Experience or something similar and it's on N. Santa Cruz near the plaza). They have a pretty good selection of fabrics too.
ReplyDelete