I've Got Pocketses

Still posting directly from Blogger. :(

So. You'll be able to tell that I'm obviously still not back to sewing yet. I've been completely obsessed with knitting and having a ball - winding balls! Also stalking Ravelry and putting together yarns and patterns. Yes, I've purchased a few patterns. But I consider that a very small expense considering that I mostly knit from patterns I already own or from free ones. And I haven't spent any money on yarn. Succumbing to spinning fibre at Fibres West recently doesn't count. Heh. Especially since I've spun half of it up already. And look! I'm actually knitting with it too!

The Alpaca Tweed Cardi is currently my only knitting project and I'm challenging myself to put pockets in the Larch Cardigan pattern. It's a mind-bending puzzle! The sweater is knit bottom-up so first I followed the pattern and knit up 4" to the beginning of the sweater opening. Then I divided for the pocket openings and knit up just the centre-front pieces, decreasing for the slanted openings as I went and put the stitches on hold:

The rest of the fronts and back waited until I had knit the beginnings of the pocket liners up to the bottom of the opening:

Next step is to join the liners to the main needle so I can continue to knit the piece up to the height of the pocket openings:

One liner goes at the beginning of the main needle and one at the end. They'll eventually tuck behind the front sections. Knit-knit-knit (working hip shaping at the same time!) up to the top of the pockets:

I'm nearly there. Then the whole shebang gets joined into one again and I'll carry on with the rest of the pattern. Later I'll stitch down the liners at the back and pick up and knit some twisted ribbing along the opening to finish it off. Easy-peasy, right? The things I will do for pocketses.

When I unravelled my Ribbon Sweater I ended up with about 866 yards of fingering-weight 2-ply wool. I'm calling it Black Raspberry:

This is after I washed it to freshen it up and try to take all the wrinkles out. You can't really see it in the photo but there are several shades of red, black and kind of a forest green. I still haven't been able to track down the wool information. I don't even know if I dyed it myself or if it was a commercial colourway. Bad damselfly. However, I have decided what to make with it: the Low Tide cardigan from Tin Can Knits.

The other yarn that comprised the Ribbon Sweater was this:

The actual ribbon. After having been knit and living in a sweater for 10 years it has softened and scrunched. I washed all the sweater yarn plus some that hadn't been used yet to see whether that would also soften up. Not so much. There's 2 skeins in the photo: used on the left and unused on the right. In a hunt through the stash I found 5 1/2 more unused balls:

It's Lion Brand Incredible in the popular Copper Penny colourway. It's now discontinued but I have more than enough to knit a whole sweater. I thought I would try swatching for the Garter Stitch Swingy Sweater by Jenn Pellerin. It's a free pattern for an asymmetrical cardigan in garter stitch which could look cute. The colours blend really well in my wardrobe anyway. More on that when I get to it.

What else? Oh yeah. I balled up the Blue Star Ranch mohair yarn:

This yarn came from our late friend Max and his wife Hilde's farm from many years ago. It's been lurking around in its natural white state while I've never found anything I wanted to knit with it. There's 660 yds/255g and I've finally dyed it blue with indigo in honour of Blue Star Ranch. It's a little too prickly for around the neck even for me and I'm not particularly sensitive. I thought maybe a pullover knit on larger needles to layer over other clothes so it's not touching the skin. I'll try swatching for the Mohair Minimalist Top by Anna Kuduja and see what the fabric looks like. This free pattern is in only one (small) size but I'm sure it will be easy to adjust since again it's knit top-down.

The queue is getting quite long now! I need to learn to knit faster, huh?

Mia Tunic On Me!

Since I'm still stuck (perhaps forever) using Blogger's horrid post interface, here's a short one for you.

This was me a couple of days ago in my Happy Place reading Jenny Balfour-Paul's Indigo book and knitting madly away on my Mia Tunic:

Note the glass of wine close at hand. Only drink wine while knitting uncomplicated patterns! Sage advice, yes?

So when all the knitting was finally done, blocked and dried, and I got to try it on:

You have to see the cute back detail:

Sorry it's not more clear in this photo. The natural colours of the yarns aren't showing the gathering and seed stitch "tail" as well as I'd prefer. But trust me, it's adorable.

After I wore the tunic for a little while I realised that the armholes were still a wee bit loose even though I skipped a lot more stitches with the crochet edging than suggested in the patten. Undaunted I took a needle and matching thread and just gathered the first row of single crochet stitches from the back a little. After a hot steam press with the iron it looks much better. Though I think the picots are going to be folding down a little under my arm. Oh well. Absolute perfection is never truly attainable anyhow.

My conclusions are that my Mia Tunic is very comfortable and a great use for this combination of weaving yarns. I'm sure it will get lots of wear this summer. Great pattern! Thanks, Jennifer Wood and Knitty.com!

On to other things. I've started my Alpaca Tweed Cardi and my addition of pockets to the Larch Cardigan is going pretty well. I hope to get a photo of this brain-bending process for you soon. Meanwhile, it's time to go out and play in the garden. There's weeds growing and green and red things to pick.

FOs & Frogponds

Wow! It’s sure been awhile, hasn’t it? What has that damselfly been up to? And where does the time go in such a goshdurn hurry?

Well first of all, I've been having trouble with Windows Live Writer, the no-longer-supported program that I use to post to this blog. It refuses to connect with Blogger. Grrr...Which means that I have to use Blogger's terrible-horrible-no-good-online composition page. It sucks. So please pardon any wonkiness.

I finished the Mia Tunic finally! Full details on Ravelry here.

I think it turned out OK though I really should have given myself a little more ease in the body. However I’m certainly not going to be ripping it back! That was a stinkin’ LOT of knitting right there. Here’s a detail of the neckline:

I think it’s delicate without being too cutesy, don’t you? After I blocked the tunic and it dried I had to steam the side folds out because they were just too obvious. I probably should have moved the knitting around more as it dried and refolded it differently each time. All the ingredient yarns (linen, silk and rayon) tend to take a crisp press – not exactly what that nice sweep of the hem calls for. I’ll try to get another photo on me. Eventually. Or if nothing else, on Debbie. I need to show you the cute back feature.

So the other things I’ve been up to are somewhat destructive. The constructive part comes later! First I took all my knitting and crochet books and magazines off the shelves in order to rearrange them. This was just over halfway through the mess:

Note To Self: I have way too many books and magazines! Nothing more comes in unless something else goes out.

This took 3 days to finish cleaning up. Books are heavy and my hands got tired so I took frequent breaks. There’s still a small pile of miscellaneous vintage magazines that I’m trying to decide what to do with. I suppose most of them will probably end up in the recycling. The late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s styles are awfully hideous and there’s not much in the way of real information in them anyway. I have to draw the line somewhere! My shelves are full.

I’ve also been taking a few things to the frog pond. I knit this Ribbon Jacket in 2006:

It’s handspun wool and ribbon yarn. The pattern is by Sally Melville from the book “The Knitting Experience: Book 3 Color”, originally entitled Little Squares (in Ravelry here). I never wear this anymore because it just feels too huge and sloppy and the collar never stays flat. I should have stitched it the other way so the other side showed when folded back. But silly me followed the pattern. Doh. Flat pieces. Seams. Yuck.

Anyway this dip-stitch pattern is quite interesting especially with the wrong side as the public one. It’s easy to knit too even though it doesn’t look like it. This photo shows both sides before it went bye-bye:

There are a few good tidbits like that in this book from 2005 but the patterns are decidedly “Knitter’s magazine style” which isn’t surprising given that it was published by XRX. You’ll know exactly what I mean if you’ve ever seen anything from them! (Though somehow they managed to skip that ubiquitous model this time. You know – the one who used to have short platinum hair and more recently has gone brunette? How did that oversight happen? Was she not available to go sailing off to Santorini for the photo shoot?)

But I digress. Back to the sweater-jacket. I picked out all the seams and am now winding the two yarns separately into balls. Later I’ll rewind into skeins and wash them to straighten out the kinks and clean them up. I know – I could have just chucked this in the thrift bin but, hey, my handspun is worth saving! I’d like to use it in a new sweater but I’m not sure yet if I have enough for the one I have in mind. We shall see. There’s a lot of ribbon yarn here too (Lion Brand Incredible, colourway Copper Penny) but I have no idea what to use it for even though it has very pretty colours.

And even more frogging happened when I sadly gave up on the tea cosy I was making for Milady Daughter:

I was liking the multicolour and bluish-grey together very much but the knitting of this was killing my poor overworked hands. To make the corrugated texture you have to pull up tightly on the yarn float when you switch colours.The whole thing ended up being under some tension and even though I experimented with needles, nothing made it slide or knit any easier. Maybe the trick is to use softer yarn instead of the good sturdy wool. Dunno. I was definitely avoiding working on it and didn’t get far before I called it quits. I have another pattern in mind now but I need different yarn as well. It calls for a bulky yarn and I don’t think I have anything suitable in stash. BTW, I discovered this pattern while I was heaving all those knitting books around on the floor.

Obviously I still haven’t gotten back into sewing yet. My cutting table is covered in yarns to be skeined instead. The garden is down to the basics of picking, watering and weeding so it’s much less work now. The weather has been warmish but cloudy so it hasn’t really needed too much watering yet. Somebody has been snipping the tops off my beans just as they come up. Squirrels, crows, something else? They aren’t eating them just decapitating so I put some of my fine black netting strips over them to see if that discourages the Red Queen (“off with their heads!”) wannabe. It works for the peas so it should work for the beans too. Sheesh. Can’t anything just grow happily unmolested? Guess not.

I’m currently knitting on my Alpaca Tweed Cardi based on the Larch Cardigan by Amy Christoffers while rereading Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans by Jenny Balfour-Paul. The second time through the historical and cultural information makes a lot more sense to me now that I’ve had more experience with several kinds of indigo and made different types of vats. My original hardcover copy of the book is personally signed by the author! However there’s a new updated paperback edition of this book now available. I also discovered an interesting interview with Jenny here. As well, I’ve been listening to podcasts while ripping out my old knitting and winding skeins. Current faves are KnitBritish, pomcast and woolful. Off to do some more now.

The End Is Nigh

Today’s gardening chores included some actual work in my studio as well as in the dirt outside. I needed plant hangers for my disocactuses so they could enjoy their summer vacation without being chomped to death by slugs and bugs. We bought some hooks from the dollar store and Thom screwed them up to the side of the garage for me. We even bought some new heavy ceramic pots for them. They need heavy pots because when they aren’t hanging up they are really top-heavy and tend to keel over like drunken sailors. I also fill the top of the pots with pretty rocks to help weight them down.

Of course back in the day I learned how to do macramé. Such a ’70’s cliché, huh? But I didn’t want to spend too much time on this project making lots of knots and being precise. I just wanted to get the plants hung up. So I used this online tutorial for a simple version. Yeah, I know the site is in Dutch but the diagrams are annotated in English! And it’s pretty easy to just wing it with the idea. Anyway, I used some hemp string (which is probably not heavy-duty enough so I doubled it for the second hanger) and some of Thom’s lampworked beads for decoration and now the cactuses are happily hanging in the shade:

There’s only one flower bud showing this year. The disos (aka orchid cactus) got pretty badly damaged last summer and sadly I even had to compost the original plant. So I’m not really surprised that they are acting a little peaky this year. The other Christmas and crab cactuses are sitting below on pedestals and I moved the planter out from behind and filled it with begonias for colour. Thom has been decorating with his turned wooden spheres (he put them out after I took the photo) and a little wicker rocking chair. So now the Cactus Patio is ready for the season.

Now there’s only the front garden to finish up and then we’re down to maintenance level for the rest of the summer. Which is a good thing because I’m needing a break from all the heavy work! I’m pretty fit but this marathon over the last few weeks is leaving my back crunchy and my hands achy. I need those hands for other things! And anyway I’m sure you all are tired of hearing about my gardening ups and downs too, right? Moving on to other things.

Take A Load Off, Granny

I’m exhausted! For the last few days we’ve been making a major push to get the majority of the garden dug, weeded, composted, planted and generally readied for summer growth. Thom & I are finally over our recent colds and have our usual amount of stamina back. The weather is perfect: warm and cloudy. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but we both love to garden. It’s creative and satisfying and good exercise as long as you don’t overdo it. Hah.

I think my plants are actually zombies not as badly damaged as I first thought. For the most part they’ve come back from the dead, somewhat the worse for wear thanks to the recent hail storm but recuperating nicely. Sadly the rhubarb in the dye garden is now inedible:

Hopefully it will survive to come back next year and I did get one last harvest from the larger patch in the back garden which is in better shape. The salad greens (and reds) are growing back after I trimmed off the most damaged parts. Here’s the Cimmaron lettuce:

So pretty. Hard to believe it was smooshed into the ground only a short while ago! I worked hard the last few days to get the squashes and cucumbers in and the greenhouse ready for the tomatoes:

Yeah, I tend to overplant them but I try to fertilise enough to make up for that. These are indeterminates (Juliet & Black Cherry) and grow very tall. Soon it’ll resemble a jungle in there!

The “back 40” is looking much better finally:

We really have a plethora of Welsh poppies, don’t we? They aren’t edible or dyeable but Thom likes them for colour. I try to keep them to the edges of the pathways where they won’t be in the way. Too much.

In the dye garden the Japanese indigo is growing back:

You can see the blue in the damaged leaves. Luckily they’re pretty tough little dudes and grow quickly, especially after a drink of fish fertiliser! Yum.

The single woad plant that I left to flower is starting to develop seeds:

They will turn blue-black as they mature. They look like little tongues, don’t they? Pfthhhh… This plant is taller than my head now and the flowers smell really nice. I know it’s considered a noxious weed in many places but mine are well-tamed and quite legal in BC. I’m very fond of my woad! Even if the Japanese indigo does have more blue in it.

So what else is new? I’ve only got about 3 inches left to knit on the Mia Tunic. The rows are really long (nearly 300 stitches around) so it’s taking me awhile. Plus I haven’t had that much time to knit! I also started a tea cosy for my daughter but it’s not easy or relaxing to knit. I don’t dare start anything else yet or I’ll never finish what I’ve already started! The sewing machine is calling me too but it’s not going to happen until the big garden work is done and we’re down to maintenance level. Soon!

Gallery Show

So in all the talk of indigo I forgot to mention the gallery display that Thom & I participated in is on from now until the end of June at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver. West Coast Synergies: Fibre + Wood + Metal sounds like a really prestigious show, doesn’t it? However, it’s merely a couple of glass cases and a plinth on one wall of an entry to the centre. Not to disparage it at all. There’s some delicious items displayed there! Especially if you can appreciate what went into each collaborative piece.

So if you can’t make it in person, come on the tour with me. The guitar that Thom & I collaborated on kind of stands out, no?

Doesn’t it look like it’s smiling at you? Heh. I won’t try to remember all the participants’ names (since I didn’t write it all down) but clockwise from top-left there’s a woven scarf with a woodturned clasp, the left-handed 4-stringed cigar box guitar with tabletwoven strap and kumihimo braid tie, woven crinkled shawl with a metalworked brooch, felted headpiece with beaded wireworked embellishment, and a woven shawl with enamelled brooch.

And here’s the second case:

Clockwise from top-left: woven shawl with silver buttons, felt head sculpture with metalwork earrings, woven scarf with silver brooch, handspun knitted shawl with more of the woodturned clasps, woodworked box with woven inset top, and woven napkins with copper napkin rings.

The smaller side cases were hard to photograph without glare:

Above: felted headpiece with beaded wireworked embellishment.

Above: woven shibori shawl with metalworked brooch.

Above: woven leather headpieces with wire and beads.

Above: woven shawl with silver buttons.

And last but not least, a driftwood frame with a wire lace scene:

Some pieces are for sale, some like our guitar are not. And there you go!

We had such a lovely time chatting with participants and friends at the show’s opening last Sunday. It was a lovely day so we were able to walk downtown across the Cambie Bridge. I wore a handwoven hat, dress and scarf (only the latter not woven by me but by a friend) plus handknit socks and even me-made undies – the complete regalia! And no photo. Urp. Bad damselfly.

So now best go do something useful for the rest of this lovely warm day. Back soon!

Blue Fingernails

My two day indigo dyeing marathon went really well. The first day I set up a vat both for practise and to do my own stuff first so I could be available to fetch and carry for my Spectrum Study Group yesterday. I dyed and over-dyed wool yarns, cotton yarn, cotton hankies, a silk/wool scarf and an antique linen damask tablecloth (complete with stains and holes). Nearly a kilo worth of stuff though not everything got a full coverage of dye.

I’m going to give you the full scoop here. Personally I love it when people share information on what works for them! The lye/thiox – properly referred to as sodium hydroxide and thiourea dioxide – vat is a pretty simple one to make. Just 3 ingredients but they have to balance just right. Interestingly I did some research and compared 7 or 8 different recipes and though most of them were pretty similar, one or two were quite different in their specified amounts. Note that in some countries you can’t get thiourea dioxide (aka spectralite) but instead have sodium hydrosulphite (aka sodium dithionite) instead. Just follow the same recipe but substitute hydros at twice the volume of thiox. Naturally in the end I threaded my own path through the conflicting information.

First I wetted out 25g (about 8 tsps.) of natural indigo:

It smells wonderfully barnyard-ish! I used half and half Earthues and Maiwa’s Pitchi Reddy indigo. (The label is mine. A huge tin was shared among a whole group of dyers.) I’m not sure if either of these products are still available though Maiwa does have good quality natural indigo “from a farm in South India”, so probably the same stuff. The adorable Pitchi Reddy himself is featured in their documentary “Indigo: A World of Blue” which is a wonderful introduction to the subject. (Forgive me if I sound like I’m advertising but they are local and fair trade and I’ve been a customer for just about forever.) But I digress.

I wetted out the indigo powder in a small beaker (which I sadly broke today when putting it away). Then in a quart canning jar partially filled with hot water I carefully mixed in 2 tsps of lye. When that was dissolved I added the indigo, washing out the beaker with hot water into the jar until the beaker was clean and the jar was full. Lastly I sprinkled in 2 tsps of thiox and stirred gently. On went the lid and I popped the jar into a bucket of hot water to keep the temperature around 50C (120F) or a little warmer:

Then I waited for about 15 minutes until the indigo stock turned greenish. Next I got the vat ready. I filled the tall bucket with hot water (not sure of the volume, I’ll have to measure it sometime) and added a little sprinkle of lye and a tsp of thiox to prep the vat for the introduction of the indigo stock. The fish tank heater keeps the vat at the optimum temperature of 50C (120F). We haven’t kept fish in decades so this heater has been used more in indigo vats! When the stock was ready I lowered the jar into the vat and let the stock out into the water carefully so as not to introduce air bubbles. Then I covered it all up with a couple of towels and left it for a little while to do its magic.

And it worked:

You can’t really see it but under that blue surface is a nice yellowish-green dye vat. It has iridescent coppery bits floating on top. From this vat I got this pile of goodies:

Plus the tablecloth which I didn’t put in the tray. Some things got 1 dip and some things got as many as 4 or 5. The brown yarn (walnut dyed) was only dipped partially in. The dark skein on top of it was dyed over gray. Very successful, I’d say. Plus I was able to keep the vat warm overnight so we could reuse it with fresh indigo stock the next day.

So yesterday we set up two vats: one re-using the vat above but with fresh indigo stock made exactly as before and one ferrous vat (ferrous sulphate, aka iron mordant, and calcium hydroxide, aka hydrated lime). I’d never made this type before but the instructions are here on Maiwa’s website. However do NOT start with “almost-boiling” water because if it’s too hot it will kill the indigo. Ask me how I know! We had to add more indigo before it would work properly. Better at around 60C (140F) or not much higher than that I think. Or you could try dissolving the iron and calx in hotter water and then add to the slightly cooler vat. After the initial start it can cool down to room temperature without losing strength. It can take awhile for this type of vat to get going so don’t be in a hurry for results right away. This one took about an hour or so to really get going. It might even take overnight.

We added some clean rocks to the bottom of the bucket to keep our fibres off the sediment. The ferrous vat looks odd:

The iron makes it not suitable for wool but this vat will last for a long time and won’t “die” like the lye/thiox vat. Believe it or not we got good colours from this one. They matched the other vat even though it didn’t look like it should. Apparently you can whisk air into it when you’re done and pour it on the compost pile.

Everyone worked hard dipping:

We immediately rinse in a bucket of fresh water before hanging things up to oxidise. Here’s the clothesline at one point:

Meanwhile I got time to unfurl my shibori pieces. My wool/silk twill gauze scarf came out lovely:

I’m very pleased. And here’s the 4 shibori hankies:

I learned a lot during our Shibori Study and found that there are some designs that aren’t really hard to accomplish. I just have to finish them!

In other news I promised an update on my garden. It’s not quite the tragedy that I first thought. Some things are starting to grow back. It helps that the weather has been very nice! But the peas are worse off than I thought and I’m not going to get any more rhubarb. It turned out that we are located in a small pocket that got the brunt of the hail storm and so suffered the worst! No wonder the news said there was no damage. Hah! I beg to differ. It just wasn’t very widespread. Only about a square kilometre that really got dumped on. The Eye of the Storm. Alas.

Oh well. Now I have zombie plants! Yes, I’m coping with humour. What else can you do?

Tenth Blogiversary & A Tragedy

Source

Yes, I have truly been blogging at you for a whole decade now! Who’d a-thunk it, eh? This is Post Number 1532. I think I’ve learned a few things about this medium of expression since I began way back then. At least I hope I have! This here blog is my personal forum for documenting my projects, discussing crafty techniques, sharing my holidays, pondering and musing about things in general, and occasionally whining and whingeing. Thanks so much for sharing all these things with me. And for being unfailingly polite and positive in your comments. I appreciate it. So I don’t have a huge following like some bloggers do but that’s not why I’m here. And of course those of you lovely people who do read my scribblings are the best ever. Even if you never comment, I feel you out there in cyberspace. Big virtual hugs!

Well here it is May 6th already and I haven’t posted since April. Bad 10-year-old blogger! I’ve been quite busy up in the study. I got a bee in my bonnet about cleaning up my library table that serves as a work station in front of the west window. It was piled with junk and hadn’t been sorted for literally years. My actual workspace was shrinking down smaller and smaller and I had to unearth archaeological layers to find anything. The side shelves are also filled with paperback fantasy novels that I was going to get around to reading, ummm… 10 years ago! I’ve obviously been distracted…

So I cleaned it all off, polished the dry wood (solid oak) and only put the good stuff back. I even joined Goodreads so I could keep better track of the books! I still haven’t tackled the little drawer though. I think I’m avoiding it. While I was at it, I also cleaned out the cupboard above my big computer desk. I recycled about 25 years worth of weavers’ guild newsletters (I was the editor for 13 of them) and a whole bunch of conference memorabilia. I saved the binder from HGA Convergence 2002, the one we hosted here in Vancouver, because I was in charge of the publications for it. I figure it’s a part of my history. I never look at the other stuff though so I’m not sad I tossed it all.

Just those two areas took DAYS to sort out. Now the cupboard has room for my projects binders because yes, I save paper printouts of all my project notes. Guess I’m old-fashioned enough not to trust electronic files forever! I have more work to do in this room still: re-sorting books, dusting shelves and generally tidying in, under and around. There are 6 full bookcases in this room as well as the aforementioned library table and cupboard, plus spinning wheels, spinning baskets and a Morris chair that is in desperate need of reupholstering. (I’ve been putting that task off for decades now.) And we aren’t even talking about the other room up here. The studio has been calling me to get back to sewing too. And finishing up the warp still on the loom. Soon. But sometimes you just have to give in to the Cleaning Bug, don’t you? Otherwise we’d be buried in an avalanche of our own possessions.

Meanwhile, I’ve been prepping for indigo vats in the dye studio. My Spectrum Study Group is coming over tomorrow to dip the shibori projects we’ve been stitching on for many a monthly meeting. It’s up to me to make sure the vat goes well, so today I’m going to do a preliminary test run and dye all my own stuff first. Then I’ll make more indigo stock and revive the vat tomorrow. We use the lye/thiox vat because it’s quick and reliable. The drawbacks are that it’s pretty much a one-use vat and it’s hard to get the really deep blues. I have no desire to be responsible for a fermentation vat though. It’s like having a pet that you have to feed and walk! I don’t dye enough to be bothered. However I envy those dyers with the skills and time to maintain what I consider a proper indigo vat. A blue high five to you!

OK. So what’s the tragedy that I referenced in the title? My garden, nearly ALL of my garden has been destroyed! I’m absolutely devastated whilst trying to maintain a zen-like calm. (Not working.) Yesterday we had a huge rain and hail storm that went on for hours! It hailed so hard that bits of gravel from the duroid asphalt roof tiles were washed down and tiny pieces of lichen were torn from the walnut tree branches. It hailed so long that there were drifts of hailstones on my porch at least 4” deep. This was only in the middle of the deluge:

And the veggie garden:

It went on from there twice as deep as this and completely covering the garden beds! It looks like snow but snow would have been kinder. My plants look like someone shot them up with an AK47! A sad muddy crushed salad. I can’t even photograph it close-up for you. Too depressing. A few things are recoverable: the peas, kale, cabbage, asparagus and garlic are scarred but not too broken. Luckily the tomatoes, squashes and cucumbers were in pots in the greenhouse and the basil and coleus were in the house under the lights. There’s a few flower seedlings safely in the greenhouse that I didn’t get a chance to transplant yet. I haven’t planted the beans either. Who knew I’d be glad I procrastinated? But the beautiful rhododendrons and azaleas are shredded, the coreopsis is flattened and my precious Japanese indigo are nothing but leafless sticks. I could cry.

If the roots aren’t damaged some plants may recuperate. I’m hoping so because there’s no point trying to replant most of them. It’s too late in the season for us. I may try again with the Japanese indigo but it needs long enough to make it all the way to seed before frost. The plants are tough and might continue to grow though they are awfully shredded. I’m not terribly enthusiastic about gardening now. Awwwww!!! And it was so beautiful! We were getting daily compliments from passersby. Sigh. Remind me why I bother please.

Oh yeah. Mother Nature tried to make me feel better with this evening sky:

Pretty pink clouds are SO not going to make me any happier!

OK. Enough wallowing in self-pity. I have an indigo vat to make. Onward to blue…