We did it, there and back.

We got there in good time Friday afternoon. It was raining hard and steadily. There was nothing to do but light the fire and sit beside it, reading and (in my case) knitting. Despite our considerable ages, we don’t spend afternoons like that, and it was rather delicious.

Yesterday morning was dry, although precariously so. I got the chores done while my husband was getting up and breakfasting – fixing some netting under the apple tree for the apples to fall on:

…getting the vegetable harvest in, the clothes line down and stowed for the winter, a couple of other things.

There was even less harvest than I expected, because the deer have been down already, early for them. They had taken the runner beans, and made serious inroads on the broad beans, and nibbled the Jerusalem artichokes and bunching onions. They were completely indifferent to courgettes and Good King Henry. Deer usually arrive in our garden only after those things have disappeared for the winter, so I didn’t know that. They also left the real artichokes.

But the big news is – the vegetable cage works:

Deer, like rabbits, love anything brassicacious. The Brussels sprouts and cabbages (to the right) were planted before I had the vegetable cage;  most of the cabbages exceeded the dimensions and couldn’t be included. They are utterly gone, root and branch.

There are no sprouts on the Brussels sprouts – should I worry? I bought the plants at the Blairgowrie Farmers’ Market in May and have no idea what variety they are. But even if no sprouts ever form, the tuft of leaves at the top of the plants will be delicious, in a brasicacious sort of way.

Knitting

Woolly Bits, you will be the ruin of me – or the salvation.

This is the time of year (golly, we haven’t even reached the equinox yet) when stash-building-temptation is at its height. I love my madelinetosh dk scarlet with so passionate a love that I have pretty well decided to proceed from Thomas-the-Elder’s electric red “Brownstone” sweater straight on to an “Effortless” for me.

I have had my eye on that pattern for a while – I bought it and printed it goodness-knows-when. It is written for madelinetosh dk. Talk about fate. Talk about fourth-quarter temptation.

I am pretty sure, from Google, that there’s no such yarn in Britain. Yarns Apart, in Amsterdam, from whom I got the scarlet yarn, is closing her doors and moving to London. She’s having a closing-out sale, and she still lists quite a bit of madelinetosh, although only a few dk’s.

So I had just about decided, despite all my virtuous restraint over the last two years, to order an Effortless-worth’s of “Bark” from her yesterday. Then, when we got back in the afternoon, I read your comment, and visited the wollbox page, and bookmarked it, and thought maybe I can leave the ordering until nearer cast-on time. Is that wise? Or should I make my move now?