Daisies

"What are you doing?", asked me my husband the other day.
"I thought you were knitting a blue cardigan ...?"

Well, I was, and it was coming out very nicely. Until, I suddenly felt an urge to
do some cross stitching. I simply fell in love with the wild flower panels by John Clayton,
I want to have them all! But first - I've started with the daisies. Probably, because
I see them every day through my window in the garden in front of our building :)
Aren't they just beautiful after the short rain yesterday morning?

Avocado

Though it must have been on the market for some 15-20 years, avocado is still a very exotic vegetable in Bulgaria - almost none of my friends, relatives or acquaintances eat avocado, even our children hate it. And because of the low demand, avocado is rather expensive here, sold by the piece. Still, my husband and I enjoy its exotic creamy oily taste, especially in a lettuce, tomato and avocado salad.

So - on February 13th I decided to start an experiment and grow an avocado plant from a pit. Following a few video clips on youtube, I placed the pit in a glass of water with three toothpicks stuck in it to prevent it from total immersion.

Nothing happened for more than a month. And then at the end of March a small root peaked from the bottom of the pit (March 26).

The root began to grow and a month later the first leaves appeared (May 08):

Now the plant began to grow fast (May 15):

And here the happy story ends. I suppose I should have planted it in a pot, but other issues occupied my time and mind, so I left it in the glass to grow, until it suddenly began to whither and died in the course of a week. I'm sure I must have mentioned it earlier, but I really lack the green thumb that other people, like my mother, obviously have. Luckily killing your own plants out of negligence and incompetence isn't criminalized yet, for I'd be claimed a serial killer :(
Still, I think the experiment was partially successful, and I might even try it again ...

Blues

I've been having the blues lately ...
A few lost battles with (governmental) windmills and a bunch
of wrecked nerves can give you that.
And in unison with my blue mood my blue knitting has failed me too:

 I fell in love with zipi's Bronze and decided to knit one in the round, using Camilla 100% cotton:

Only a couple of inches into my knitting I knew Camilla was the wrong yarn and I was not that much into the pattern either. So I started Cobalt:

Halfway through the back I felt this was not the pattern for my ropey shiny cotton, and anyway I wanted something more lacy. So I cast on a new Japanese pattern I found on Ravelry:

Several days later a creepy suspicion made me measure the knitting, only to find that my gauge must have been off and the sweater was coming too narrow. Further sampling and I came with this final modification, adding one purl stitch between every two triplets:

So far I'm loving it. It's a slow process with all the cables and lace,
but I hope it'll be worth it ...

Pancharevo Eco Path

After three weeks of rain, hail storms and an earthquake - 5.9 Richter shook Sofia on May 22nd, followed by several secondary quakes (what a month of May it was!), yesterday's sunny Sunday was a rare gift. So, we shouldered our rucksacks and hiked the path above the Pancharevo lake in the low Lozen mountain.

The children, as always, were mostly excited by the various bugs and birds and lizards we came upon - a songbird (a nightingale perhaps), a short-legged lizard, that moved like a snake (and two big green lizards with blue heads, but they were too quick for us to take a picture), a heart-shaped mushroom, a stork high in the sky:

Copper Christina

Pattern: Christina by Kim Hargreaves from Whisper
Yarn: Madame Tricote Camilla, 100% mercerized cotton
Needle: 2.5 mm edge, 3 mm
Time to knit: 12 days
Mods: actually, this is the s-size stitches and rows of Joy, combined with the texture and
decreases and increases of Christina, knit seamlessly and to fit my small stature.

I know, this happens to me quite often after I've just finished a project, but I regard Christina as the best thing I've ever knitted :) The design is gorgeous and in my favourite style, the yarn, with its silk sheen and twisted thread, is the perfect cotton for textured cardigans, the color is a luxurious hue of copper orange/brown, though it looks somewhat brighter in the pictures. I love it!