Extreme Measures

Last week S. was busy planting the corn that we'd started earlier in the greenhouse.  They are nice, healthy plants with a good head start on our short growing season.

Later that day Jim saw three deer already nibbling on the "new addition to the buffet."  That prompted some defensive moves on his part.

In one of the outbuildings there was a large spool of barbed wire left behind by a previous tenant on our acreage.  That would serve to protect the corn from depredation!

He found a supply of staples and got busy.  Soon the entire garden was surrounded by a perimeter of barbed wire.  That should keep them out.

Not long after that Jim looked again and, good grief!!! there was a deer munching on the pea plants.  To be honest, the beds with the pea plants are not completely surrounded by barbed wire.

The Mayday Trees are in full bloom, and theirs is a penetrating scent.  I'm sneezing and blowing full time this week.  Hope that's over when the Maydays are finished blooming!

In the meantime I've been working on those "Double Heelix" socks.  The first one is almost finished.  These socks are unusual in that you begin at the heel and then knit the foot, and after that the leg.  The directions call for a spiral pattern at the heel, using the contrasting yarns.  The toe of the pattern had just a few rounds of contrasting colour at the tip, but I thought it would be nice to echo the stripes at the heel.

The heel is worked with two ends of main colour and two ends of contrasting colour, so your first step is to make a bobbin of main colour and one of contrast colour with about 6 meters yarn. I had quite a bit of the contrasting colour left on the bobbin after the heel and thought I'd use that to make the toe.  Can you imagine coming out so exactly right?  That little light blue end is how much of the contrasting colour was left when the toe was complete.  I was sweating it!

The first sock is almost finished.  There will be pictures when the pair is complete.