More odd sock yarn dye lots

 These are the newest socks on the needles.  I was rather surprised when I wound the skein into a ball/cake and found a large band of gold nestled in at the halfway mark.  I didn't think too much about it though as the white bands were fairly large too.  That is until the second sock and I started knitting it.  I kept knitting the gold and realized that I'd have a a rather massive gold stripe, probably enough to have gold down past the heel turn.   I debated this, because I really don't like to have a yarn join in my socks, if I don't need to.  However, I cut the yarn and wound off the rest of the gold to a point just before it switche colours.  The resulting ball of gold yarn fits in my palm, so that I can just barely touch my fingers around it.  That is a large section of gold!   I could have ripped it out and maybe had enough to match the stripes, but I wasn't sure, so I left it in and kept knitting.   It's nice sock yarn to knit with.  The colours are interesting blends.  This is my third pair of socks with this yarn.  The first was speckled and pretty, but a bit plain.  The second had two totally different coloured socks as there were no repeats that I could find in the yarn.   This one is pretty bizarre too.  However, that it knits nicely and slides off the needles effortlessly makes it lovely to knit with.  Plus, I don't really mind the odd colour combos and dye jobs.   It does make it interesting to knit.  If it were a different colour than the gold, I would probably just left it as is, and not wound it off.

I made a raised pork pie for supper.  It was pretty good. I wasn't fond of the hot water crust pastry, so will try a different recipe next time.   The filling was good though.  Next time I'll make a gelatin gravy to add to it, as a moistener.   I'll also make them smaller.   This one took over 2 hours to bake!  

It's been a good year in the garden for cucumbers!  I've eaten one for lunch for the past couple of weeks.  Plus we've been harvesting English cucumbers as well, which are more supper oriented.   I missed a couple of the small ones, and they are huge.  This could be a problem, as cucumbers often die off once they've set a fruit that matures enough to reproduce.   The tomatoes are just starting to ripen.   The plants are loaded this year.   If they ripen enough to harvest, I won't have to purchase many for my canning marathon.  The Lemon Boy plant that my son in law gave me is particularly delicious!  It has bright yellow tomatoes that are nicely tomato flavoured but not overly acidy.   He also gave me a green cherry tomato plant.  Those are interesting because they have a strong tomato flavour, but figuring out when they're ripe enough to harvest is interesting.  I can't tell by colour, so I'm having to do a gentle squeeze on the fruit to see if they're soft enough.