First Colors of Spring

We have been watching eagerly the past few weeks for the first blooms in our front garden this year.  We had one solitary arroyo lupine last summer, and Julia and I gathered quite a lot of seeds from it as the pods ripened, "just in case," but we needn't have been concerned, as while we were not looking, it was gleefully bursting more pods and sending its seeds hither and yon.  I ended up giving most of the jam jar's worth that we collected to a local flora enthusiast, who I think (hope!) scattered them around, oh-so-fittingly, a nearby arroyo.  Amusingly, many of our own volunteer seedlings this year made the journey across the sidewalk to the parking strip, but seem to have lost their nerve once they arrived and stayed right at the very edge.  The only spot where the parking strip is now covered with seedlings is at its lowest point, where presumably the runoff from what little rain we had pooled and filled before running over the curb and down into the street.  (It will be interesting to see if anything comes up in the neighbors' yards!)  That low spot is where our first seedlings came up, in fact, and where this charmer is, which began to show color a week or so ago.  This morning, as I was stepping out onto the porch, I saw a glint of bright orange through the greenery and thought, "tch, someone's left a bit of trash on the sidewalk," but it was this --

It will be interesting to see the effects this spring, as clearly the arroyo lupines, California poppies, and lacy phacelia seeded much more rambunctiously than the others.  I did help it along a bit, with another Payne's #1 packet and also their Hummingbird mix -- because we did the whole area this year -- so watch this space!

In other news, I have been plugging away at the New Boro quilt, piecing a back out of the scraps from the front along with the remains of the coffee-brown Kona, which despite my numerous calculations -- overly generous, surely! -- left not enough to bind the thing, unless I am willing to piece it every few inches, which I am not.  Well, it isn't at that stage yet, any way, as I am still wrestling it into the sewing machine for the quilting part until my arms get tired and I need a break.  When I do, I join a few more squares onto the Granny Sampler afghan --

I decided not to do the central rectangle arrangement that Blair used, but "free-form" it, which is probably much more fiddly, but I'm actually enjoying the randomness of it, contrary to my usual Germanic tidiness (which alas only manifests itself in my knitting).  But if you're going to make a crazy afghan, just go all-out crazy, nicht wahr?!

There are some new squares in there, as I decided that I hadn't made nearly enough, and so looked around for some other patterns, and now I'm going to make another batch of the small three-round squares for filling in the gaps.  I'm using two of the numerous join-as-you-go methods, both of which make granny clusters, one of which goes in a straight line across the edge of one piece while reaching up to grab (via slip stitch) the other piece, and the other of which essentially flips every other cluster's bottom edge up to attach the second piece.  The set of four squares just in from the lower left in the photo uses the first method, and you can clearly see even from this distance that the "chain" across the top of the row forms a distinct chain ridge (in the middle here because I worked clusters around one square before joining the second square to it).  The two newly-married squares (one is a rectangle, actually!) next to it are joined with the second method, which leaves the chain ridge in the middle instead of the top, but because of the flipping back and forth also makes the ridge noticeably less distinct.

I am amused to find myself much more comfortable with crochet now -- which was my actual goal here, the afghan is a bonus -- but I still am not quite sure why my first stitches of the flipping method (no, maybe I should call it something else) don't sit straight, so I am beta-testing, as it were, a slight modification.  Instead of "ch3 in corner of first square, DC3 in corner of second square, DC3 in next ch space of first square," I did "ch3 in corner of first square, DC1 in corner of second square, DC2 in corner of first square, DC3 in next ch space of second square," then continuing to alternate clusters as usual.  Maybe part of this is because here at least I'm not joining corner-to-corner, but corner-to-middle-ish -- that I don't know.  Well, I don't mind the slow progress today, as it is a lovely afternoon, with puffy white altocumulus clouds gamboling across the sky so that the sunlight where I'm sitting in the living room is now pale, now bright, though occasionally I do set down the crochet to go out and admire the way the tops of the camphor trees echo the lacy fluffiness of the clouds.

Comments

[Toffeeapple]

How wonderful that you have Lupins and California Poppies. I have tried Lupins here but they attract Wooly Aphids which cover the flower stems, so I have given up on them. There is not much in bloom in my garden, other than Wallflowers, Daffodils, Hellebores and the odd Rose. It is far too wet for anything to last very long this Spring which makes me sad.

I don't know how you manage to do your afghan squares positioning, my eyes wobbled just looking at it, I do envy you.