wanderings: Needles & Roses

All this sweater ripping has yielded lots of thinner yarns from cobweb weight to sport weight, so yesterday I took a bike ride over to The Bobbin's Nest to pick up some much needed knitting needle sizes. Visiting my local yarn store always makes me feel totally motivated to knit. I love that.



Afterwards I rode around and ended up at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden. It's kind of a weird place, a bit off like much of San Jose. Located near the San Jose Airport, there are always planes roaring overhead. The surrounding area consists of open lots with dilapidated roads which the SJPD uses occasionally for training exercises. All that aside, the garden is really cool.



I took a cutting of Orange Sunblaze, and after reading this rose propagation article (among others), I'm attempting to get it to root. It's my first time trying this, so we'll see how it goes.

crafting: More Recycled Yarn

I harvested more recycled yarn from an old aran I thrifted quite some time ago. At the time I liked the colors, but I never wore it. After pulling it apart and washing it, it yielded quite a lot of sport weight wool. I dried it in the sun and hanked it up into glazed twist donuts.

illustration: Savagery Wallpaper

I was messing around with Savagery lastnight and made a wallpaper.
The image I used is from century_boy_too.
Click the image above for the 1024x768.

crafting: Keeping Store-Bought Basil

The last time I grew fresh basil the plants got eaten alive by pests and died slow deaths. Allowing my backyard to grow wild for years must have invited all sorts of aphids & slugs, but I'm slowly working to remedy that whole situation.

In the meantime I buy packaged fresh basil at the Ranch 99 down the street, but apparently I've been storing it improperly for years. I can admit that after reading this eHow article I found a few days ago.

It's really pretty simple. All you do is take them out of the package, cut the bottoms of the stems (just like flowers) and stick em in a jar of water, changing the water every day. I bought this basil about 5 days ago, and since then the sprigs have straightened out and are as rigid as if they were potted. They have that great smell, and keeping them in plain sight motivates me to cook with them. This sure beats having a ziploc bag full of sludge in my fridge.

photography: Another Backyard Resident

Today I noticed another Backyard Resident. There were three of these doves poking around for bugs in the backyard. They saw me on the other side of the glass door, but I guess they still felt safe. I was able to grab my camera, pop on a zoom lens, and get a great shot.

I love the warm and cool grays in the plumage. There must have been lots of bugs to eat out there because these guys hung out for a while.