The Trouble With Multi-Tasking

As I've mentioned before, I frequently start new knitting projects before finishing others. I'll set some projects aside, to work on whatever I'm feeling good about that day. I knit for fun, so I try to keep it fun; no rules.

Well, remember this sweater?

I started it long ago, set it aside for a while (about a year), then almost completely forgot about it. Well, I pulled it out again a couple of weeks ago, and now I have this:


Yay! A finished sweater! I love it, but it is currently too hot to wear it. At least I finished it in time for the state fair.

Countdown to the State Fair

Summer is upon us. This means that I've been busy and my knitting has been sort of neglected. But I can't do that any longer, because it's time to prepare for the state fair!

You probably remember that I entered several items in the fair last year. I really had fun and I'm excited to enter again this year.

I have quite a few works in progress that I plan to finish before the drop off deadline. Last night I finished these two:

Rainbow Wool Eater Blanket - This was mostly finished for quite a while. Unfortunately I ran out of the red yarn on the very last round. I finally bought another skein, finished crocheting, and weaved in all of the ends.

Furry Green Monster - This guy has been sitting around my condo without a face for months. I finally stitched on a face. I think he's adorable!

I'll be finishing up some more items in the upcoming weeks. I don't know how many fair entries I'll end up with, so you'll have to stay tuned!

They Are (Not) Who We Thought They Were

I've got what you've all been waiting for: Another worm post!

I've been composting for about 4 months, and the worms have been doing remarkably well. The population has boomed, we've taken a batch of finished compost to the garden, and the bin can now process all of the compostable food scraps that we typically generate in our house.

But there has been an interesting development. It turns out that I've got a mixed species worm bin. When I purchased my worms, I thought I was buying a bunch of these guys:

Eisenia fetida (Red Wriggler)

They have a striped appearance and the band around their bodies (the clitellum) is very pronounced. It actually looks like it is swollen. They move around relatively slowly and they are ideal for composting bins because they tolerate temperatures between 40 to 90 degrees F, they prefer about 70 to 80 degrees F, they do well in confined spaces and they eat approximately half their body weight per day.

I've definitely got Red Wrigglers in there but, after composting for a while, I started to notice these guys:

Perionyx excavatus (Blue Worms)

These guys don't have the striped apprearance, their clitellum is flush with their bodies, and they have an iridescent blue/purple shine in the light. They tend to be longer and skinnier than my Red Wrigglers. The biggest difference that I've noticed is that these guys are fast! They also like to be between 70 to 80 degrees F, but they can't tolerate temperatures below 50 degrees F. They multiply very quickly, which is probably why I didn't notice them at first. I probably started with just a few, but now I've got a bunch. They're also good composters, but they are supposedly more prone to wandering. I haven't had this problem yet, so they must be reasonably happy staying inside the bin.

So where did they come from? Apparently worm farmers typically have their worm beds "contaminated" with these little guys. I use the word "contaminated" because there is some debate in the worm composting community (yep, it exists) as to whether or not these guys are good for a worm bin. People who keep outdoor bins don't like them, because they die off below 50 degrees F. Other people have trouble with them escaping the worm bin due to their wandering nature. A few people are just "creeped out" by how fast they crawl around.

So these guys must have tagged along with my worm order. As far as I'm concerned, no big deal. My bin won't drop below 50 degrees F, my blue worms have been staying inside the bin, and people who are easily "creeped out" by some worms probably shouldn't keep a box of them anyway. As long as they're keeping some of my garbage out of the landfill, and giving me free fertilizer for my garden, a little biodiversity is fine with me.

More Gardening!

I have great news to share! Greg and I will be able to do more gardening than we had expected, because now we have more space in which to grow things! We recently learned that the Community Garden has a limit of two plots per household. Not one, but two! As long as you have the time and desire to garden a second plot, and you wait for your fair turn on the waiting list, you can have a second plot. Oh, happy day!

So far, all we've done is pull some weeds from the second plot. It will still require a little bit of preparation before we can plant things. Then we've got to decide what to plant! We spent months planning our first gardening plot, but now this one has landed in our laps right amidst the growing season. Should we grow more of the same crops that we've planted? Should we pick out some new crops? Too many decisions!

First Harvest

Sunday was an exciting day. We arrived home from a fun weekend away, then decided we should check on our garden. Things are looking really good and I'm happy to announce that we actually picked a small handful of leaf lettuce. It was only half an ounce, and it's gone already, but it was a wonderful beginning to what I hope will be a productive growing season!

Why I Garden

As I've probably mentioned, my husband and I live in a third story condo without an inch of soil to call our own. Knowing that, growing a garden doesn't seem like the most logical thing to do. So why the heck are we doing it?

First off, how are we doing it? Well, the Parks and Recreation department of our city has a Community Gardening program. After a short time on the waiting list, we were assigned an 8-foot by 12-foot plot. The garden is about a 15 minute drive from the suburbs, so we make a trip downtown several times a week to tend to our little patch of growing space.

But why? There's plenty of food at the grocery store, right? Of course there is. There is no shortage of produce. It doesn't matter if it's completely out of season or if it's some tropical crop that could never grow in Iowa. There it sits in the produce case, just waiting for us to take it to our kitchen.

If you start examining the stickers on that produce, you'll see that there are some rather well-traveled fruits and veggies out there. Did you know that Chile is over 5,000 miles away from here? Compared to that, driving to a garden downtown doesn't seem so troublesome.

Nothing against Chile, but we've got great soil right here in Iowa! It's capable of producing so much more than grass and commodity crops. So I'm happy that we are able to take 96 square feet of space that used to be covered with grass and turn it into beans, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, spinach, and so much more fresh, local food for our own kitchen.

I can't say that we never purchase produce from the grocery store. But armed with a tiny garden of our own, a great local farmer's market, a pressure canner, and a chest freezer, maybe we'll be able to change that sometime soon.

What I've been up to...

Wow, time has really flown by since my last post! Let's see what I've been doing.

Work: Too much. We were already short staffed, and then another person quit. Fortunately we'll have a new intern start in a couple of weeks. Until then, I'll be just trying to keep my head above water.

School: My class this semester hasn't been terribly demanding. In fact, the class that I'm taking is down right easy. This is a wonderful thing considering my crazy work schedule. I'm taking the final exam this week, then starting a summer class in early June.

PE Exam: Getting ready to reapply for the October exam date. Then I'll start the stressing out and studying all over again.

Knitting: Mostly socks. Don't really have the attention span for larger projects at the moment. I had some big plans for the state fair, but I'm not sure how much I'll actually get done.

Gardening: We have planted several cool weather crops already. The garden is filling up with tiny radishes, spinach, kale, chard, peas, onions, carrots, and lettuce. Loving the opportunity to go get my hands dirty for non-construction related reasons.

Vermicomposting: My worms are doing exactly what worms are supposed to do. They've been eating, pooping, and making more worms. I've just started filling up my next tier with food scraps and allowing the lower tier to finish decomposing. The worms should start slowly migrating to the upper tier and leave the finished compost behind. These guys have been thankfully low maintenance.

Geocaching: Greg and I have been getting outside to collect a few geocaches a couple of times a week. We're really having fun and getting some exercise at the same time! We're even doing some biking again.

So, as you can see, there hasn't been much time for blogging. Oh well, you all understand, right? ;)