Poor 'Biscus

i know, i know...it's been a while. I'm terrible at this. there are so many things i've thought of posting...what i did with all that yarn from my last post, where you can send money to help the people of Haiti, a great photo from one of my more recent visits to the APL, hundreds of photos of the cats, but this post is about my poor, poor Hibiscus plant.
I fell in love with this plant. My neighbor had gotten the plant from a customer of her's and i flipped out about it so much she told me if i could manage to divide it and repot her half i was welcome to the other half.
It thrived all summer, huge blooms appeared almost overnight.

see? so pretty.
the weather turned colder, as it tends to do here in ohio, so the 'biscus came inside. i did some plant re-arranging and gave it a spot smack dab in the middle of the window in the living room. the flowers kept coming, not like when it was outside, but enough.
Then one morning i noticed what i thought was dust, or string, or cat hair, or spider webs. Then i looked closer. bunches of little somethings were crawling around on the webby looking threads.
i quick search of the interswebs revealed the invaders. spider mites.


ugh
one of the reasons i wanted one of these plants in the first place was becase we could feed the flowers to Bosch. so i looked for a way to try to kill the pests without chemicals. back to the intersweb i went, and was happy to find (from several different sources) that the best way to kill the mites was to soak the plant in hot water. perfect. so 'biscus got a bath.
and the damn things came back.
bath number two.
things seemed to be going well. the plant even had a growth spurt. and the damn mites came back again.
bath number three, and here is where we stand.

poor, poor 'biscus.
i'm hoping most of the leaf loss is from too much water. the tops seem to be continuing to grow. i've resigned my self to trying chemicals on it, and that Bosch won't get to have any flower treats. Being winter its proving hard to find the right spray (Bayer 3 in 1).
poor, poor 'biscus. i'm not giving up on you get buddy.

Let the Holiday Knitting Begin!!!!

Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture, but the regular camera is being cranky.

I Like to Make Things: the Project Linus Blanket

Project Linus Blanket Pattern

I LOVED this project! Sam's sister wanted something to give a co-worker as a baby shower gift, and asked if i would knit something. This pattern came to mind immediately, having seen it in the book Knitting for Peace. Mom-to-be was described to me as "kind of a hippy...and a vegan." So i wanted to keep that in mind choosing a yarn, plus the fact that it is for a baby. Babies that poop, pee, puke, and spit on most everything. So a machine washable yarn it had to be!
Knit Picks to the rescue!!! I went with their Simply Cotton in the worsted weight. I thought this would be a good choice because, yes, it was machine washable, and organic with no dyes used. The yarn knit up soft and squishy, perfect for a baby blanket! I'd heard that some folks had problems with the yarn splitting, but i didn't. Not even with my extra pointy metal needles.
The only problem i had with the pattern was swatching. I couldn't seem to get the lace sequence to come out right. I was working with the pattern out of the Knitting for Peace book, but the link (above) from the Project Linus website explained that it is worked over multiples of eleven plus one. Mystery solved! It's an impressive looking result that is EASY!
One of my favorite knitting projects to date.

the continuing saga of the bathroom

I don't think either Sam nor i ever thought it would take as long as it has to actually re-do things in the house as it has. (did that sentence make any sense? i haven't had enough coffee.)
So back in March Sam started to tear down the wallpaper.



Behind the mirror there was a different square of wallpaper. We both agreed that if this was the paper in the whole bathroom we would have left it.



This past weekend was the grout work. After a first failed attemp at mixing the grout things went well and i think it looks great.



On to painting next!!! Picking the color was MUCH easier than i thought it would be, Sam had his heart set on painting it orange. At first i thought some of the colors he liked were too bright and would look too heavy at the top of the wall. I wanted the tone/hue/value????? (i'm forgetting color theory right now....like i said, not enough coffee). We went with Sherwin Williams Orange Blast. Who knows when we'll actually get around to painting.

Toad in the Hole

Second only to sleeping in, the best part of the weekend is a good greasy breakfast. I decided to tweak things a bit and made 'Toad in the Hole'. Someone (Jimmy D) mentioned that this is also called Bird in a Nest, which makes more sense, but i like the toad thing better. All you need is bread, butter and an egg.







MMMMMM...what more could you want? The correct answer to that question is, of course, bacon...which was on the table, but not pictured here.

Hi...remember me?

Poor blog...i spend so much time tweeting, facebooking and Ravelring(?) that The Bunker gets ignored. I promise to try to change that. So...lets take look around the back yard shall we?
I won't mention the vegetable garden...once again not much luck, so on to te flowers.

The clematis was out of control. It was just a huge mass of tangled dried stems. So back in early April i hacked it down.



Sam was a little worried that it wouldn't have as many flowers....

Two months later....


and this is NOTHING compared to how many flowers are there now!

When we first moved into the Bunker these two sad little lilies popped up. The pink one was so wobbly we had to prop it up....


Well, two years later, we may be in danger of being over run.


It's hard to see in the photo, but the count was 19 flowers on the pink plant and 10 on the white!

First Signs of Spring

No Socks.....



and even better than that...the daffys are coming up!



i know, we haven't seen the last of winter....but just enjoy!