Garden update and CSM trouble

 We've had 2 lovely summer days which were cool enough at night for good sleeping, and not hot, humid nor windy during the day.   It's been such a nice change from those crazy warm days.   It's been so hot that some days, it was too warm to fuss with weeding the garden.  While I normally water the garden beds mid afternoon, so the plants have time to dry properly to minimise the risk of powdery mildew, blight or other diseases, there was one evening I actually watered the garden beds because it had been so hot I didn't think the plants would survive the night without water.    We've had a bit of rain in between, so mostly I haven't had to water a lot this summer.   

Due to the blight issues last summer, I only planted a single tomato plant this year.   I'll hunt around at the market or see if there are local farmers selling their extras when I want to put them up.   Not my favourite way, but it gives the garden a break this year.   So the single tomato plant I chose was a sweet 100, a cherry tomato type that I plant for both use in salads and for just eating out of hand when I'm working in the garden.  While all the plants in that tray had little plant stakes declaring that they were all indeed Sweet 100, this one obviously was mislabelled.   These are not cherry tomatoes!  Nor do I have any idea what variety I might have here.  It's fruiting already though, so that's nice.

I planted more pepper plants than I usually do.   There wasn't a lot of variety choice this year, unless I wanted to spend half a day hunting through different garden centres.  The large one at the grocery store had minimal choices and they weren't looking all that happy.   I usually just go to the feed store up the road and get whatever they have unless it's something special that I really want.  So this year I planted Hungarian hot peppers, Jalapeños and one plant without a tag, in a tray with several different varieties.  I planted no sweet peppers because they are easy to find locally during the summer.

I have baby cucumbers too, from some old seed I found in a packet from a year or two ago.   It's some fancy variety I think, but since I couldn't find any cucumber seeds at the shop, I thought that it was worth the trial.  I had 4 seeds and 3 plants grew.    I also did zucchini that way, from seed in a packet that I seemed to have ripped off the variety.   I had 2 seeds and lucky me, I have two plants, one already flowering.     I planted onion sets but they need weeding desperately but I've held off due to the number of mosquitoes in the cooler evenings.

I took apart my CSM (Circular Sock Machine) to clean it.  It took several hours getting the cylinder clean due to yarn fuzz.   Then I put it together wrong and had to put a call into my mentor to send her videos of what it was doing, which she diagnosed over the phone, told me how to fix it.   It took me 5 minutes to fix, since I just put something in the right place, but the wrong location, if that makes sense.   Anyway, everything on this machine, a Legare 400, needs to be set up at 6 o'clock to be in the correct location - crank hand, yarn carrier and making sure the ribber stop is also correctly places.   So I'm going to see how it works by making my daughter hiking socks for her birthday.   She liked the shorties I make for myself for the summer, but wants them just a little bit higher to fit in her hiking boots.

I can't believe I forgot to post!

I've been spinning an awful lot the past few weeks.  I have spun about 1300 yards according to counting yardage on my niddy noddy.  It's not totally accurate because it doesn't account for the stretch that is difficult to eliminate while winding the yarn on the niddy noddy.   I finally dragged out my jumbo flyer to get larger skeins.  The downside to that is that the bobbins are double the size, or almost, and it takes a lot longer to fill them.   I do like the larger skeins though.  Anything in order to have less ends to weave in!  I still need to wet finish all these.

I've made a few pumpkins for Westfield's pumpkin day.  I don't think it's called pumpkin day anymore, but it's autumnal, we cook with pumpkins and the whole village is decorated with pumpkins and has pumpkin crafts and activities.   Some of these pumpkins are knit on the sock machine, and others are hand knit.   I have a small cylinder on the sock machine right now, and had been knitting with a fairly tight gauge, so the machine knits socks are fairly small.  Usually I've used a 72 needle cylinder with a looser gauge so the machine knit pumpkins are much larger.   The hand knit ones are colourful using yarn I purchased from a guild silent auction or had leftover from another project.

We took a walk by the Thames river while waiting for a play to start.  We got there early to get free parking, but there was a soccer game, so parking was in short supply. We ended up having to park at the end of the parking area.   It was a perfect evening though, so walking wasn't a problem.   Walking back from the theatre though was interesting because of course everyone else who had parked there was leaving too.  The lack of sidewalks on the parking side of the road meant you either walked on the road, or the grass.   We chose the grass, because neither of us were wearing light coloured clothing and didn't want to risk not being seen in the dark.   We could have crossed the road to the other side, where there was a sidewalk, but didn't think of it until we got to the car.

I poorly planned our theatre trips this year, mainly due to seat sales and not thinking about it properly, so 3 shows are crammed into 5 weeks, and 1 saw one in May with my daughter.  We're seeing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels later this summer.

  Sense and Sensibility was well done, fun and fluffy.  It was enjoyable.  They stuck to the story quite nicely and the characters were believable.  

  Anne of Green Gables made me wish we'd gotten tickets to the show in Charlottetown last summer.   It was really well done, but the ending bothered me a bit because they modernised it and moved it to central Canada. I still got teary when Mathew died though.  I know it was part of the Children's programming, but I'm a traditionalist when it comes to Anne of Green Gables.  

 The last one we saw was MacBeth - yes, the one with motorcycles -  When I mention it to anyone, that's what they say,  Oh the one with motorcycles? Yes, MacBeth was moved to modern times, with e-bikes decked out to look like motorcycles, a grungy motel and a modern motorcycle club.  The not traditional setting worked really well.  The performance was good but also very nicely enhanced by fabulous stage settings and dressings, incredible special effects both visual and audio.   

With careful planning and watching the Stratford Festival website and social feeds, there are enough really good ticket sales to make it an affordable outing.   I was really a bit dismayed though by the partially filled theatres.   I've no idea how many there were for the Anne show, because we were near the front and I didn't look backwards, but MacBeth had a lot of visibly empty seats, and I bet Sense and Sensibility was less than half full.   That was sad.  I hope attendance picks up because all the shows were worth seeing, despite the late 8 pm starts which gets us home closer to midnight.   If you are only going to see one, I highly recommend That Scottish Play, with Sense and Sensibility coming in a fun and fluffy second place recommendation.