Tomatoes and more tomatoes

A friend gave me 6 tomato plants in the spring. I planted them in our side yard garden beds thinking that I'd have time to take care of them this summer. I seriously underestimated my time commitment for school, though. So with my nose in a book, the tomato plants were forgotten and left to deal with mother nature on their own. All the extra rain we had this summer kept the plants alive and the sunshine of the last few weeks has helped to ripen the tomatoes. This week we have a large harvest of beautiful tasty tomatoes. And from the look of things, we will be eating many tomatoes everyday for the next couple weeks. To give an idea of how big the plants grew, the fence in the background is 6 ft tall.

And as always, the Black Eyed Susan's add a look of happiness everywhere they grow in the yard. I love the colors of late summer.

Stump the Bookseller
Teresa and I have been trying to find a children's book that was her absolute favorite when she was little. We checked the book out from the library in Davis, CA in the late 1980's. Both Teresa and I have purchased a few used children's books on-line in the past year or two in hopes of finding this famous (to us) book, but we haven't been successful. We have added a few cute children's books to our collection, but so far none have been the particular book we are looking for. It was a wordless picture book about a little dog that would blow up a balloon at different times in the story. Teresa LOVED that part when she was little and blew up an imaginary balloon with me whenever we "read" the story together. Teresa was a very easy going toddler, I only remember her having two public tantrums - one over broccoli in the grocery story (she was very upset that I wasn't buying broccoli....not candy or a toy or anything like that, she wanted BROCCOLI!) and another time in the library when we had to return this children's book about the balloon inflating dog.

I recently found this unique web site that specializes in helping people remember a title and author of a children's book from their past: http://www.loganberrybooks.com/stump.html
I am always amazed that you can find just about anything on the web! So I submitted my search to the web master and am hoping someone somewhere will know the title of this wonderful little book and will reply so that Teresa and I can find and buy a copy of our own.

My least favorite part: the clean up

Actually, I can't think of anything I like about painting. But the walls around here really need a fresh coat of paint, so I am doing what I can.

I am still waiting for the results of my final exam in the clinical chemistry course I took this summer to arrive in the mail. It has been over two weeks since the course ended, so I am hoping the results will be here soon. The class took two months of total focus and I am really, really, really glad it is over. There is no way I could keep that pace up for very long. Very interesting stuff to study, but for me it was just to much information to fast.

Last week I pulled out my knitting for the first time in 2 months. Very comforting to knit again.

I posted my pattern for the beaded smocked dress on Ravelry. It has been over a year since I submitted it for publishing and I haven't heard anything yet. I didn't get a reply to my email inquiries, so I have to assume it isn't of much interest to the publisher. And I noticed last week that the yarn I used has been discontinued. So I decided to offer the pattern to other knitters for free. Here are pictures taken last summer of a friend's daughter in the dress:

Now that I have posted the pattern, I am panicking a bit, though. I am hoping there are no errors in it. I have decided to knit another dress to double check the pattern. I think it would be so wonderful to be a fiber artist and design knitwear. I love to create new things with yarn, but often get bogged down with the technical writing and need to knit everything more than once to figure out how to write it in pattern form. It would be so nice to work together with other people that specialize in such things. Then I could just play with the yarn.

I named the pattern "Lilah" and am making it in pink this time.

The other knit design that I abandoned when I became a chemistry student was Monroe's Puppy Love Gloves . I pulled them out of hiding, too, and plan to work on them some more.

And for some mindless knitting, I pulled out the shawl that I started a long time ago for my mom. I'd really like to get it done for her this year. It's an older pattern from Interweave Knits. It's a great TV project for the end of the day when my brain is gone and my hands need to knit.

Shasta is reminding me that he needs a walk now, so off we go. I will knit some more later on tonight - with my paint speckled fingers.