We have finally finished our landscaping and herb garden in front of our house. After two long months, 39 bags of rocks, two bags of mulch, 100s of squirmy worms, and way more plants than I thought I would need to fill the space, it is finished!
Matt and I both are participating in the Let’s Go Ride a Bike Summer Games and today we completed two of the items for the Social Cycling Category.
The options were:
* Go on a group ride
* Leave a nice note on a bike, or say hi to a cyclist at a red light
* Schedule a bike date with a friend or partner — dress up!
* Recruit a non-biking friend for a ride
* Ride with your family
We chose to do a Ride with your family and also ended up doing an impromptu group ride.
For the Ride with your family, Matt (my husband) and I biked to church. It is pretty common for us to do so, but it was the first time I got to bike to church on my new bike. I am still loving not having to try so hard to keep up with Matt.
Here we are in our church clothes after returning home.
Our Group Ride turned out to be impromptu. We were heading to buy some gas cards for a friend moving out of state after church, and one of our other biking friends biked with his. We were quite a bunch. I rode my recumbent, my husband rode his converted mountain bike/commuter bike, and our friend, Kurt, rode a home-built long-tail cargo bike. It was a lot of fun and made biking up the hills seem less difficult.
Matt took pictures and video while biking behind us.
I am really enjoying participating and can’t wait to take on some of the items in the next category.
Along with my new bike, I have also found a new biking blog to read: Let’s Go Ride a Bike. It is written by two women, Trish and Dottie, who bike commute in their respective cities, Nashville and Chicago. It is quite interesting, and I find it very inspiring. Both women bike commute in stylish, non-spandex clothing and have cute bike accessories and bags, which is the type of bike commuting I am interested in. (more…)
I recently got a new bicycle, and I am very excited about it. It is a Sun EZ Sport recumbent that I purchased from a friend. I borrowed the bike a few summers back, while she was pregnant and not riding much, and fell in love with it, but alas I had to return the bike to its rightful owner at the end of the summer. (more…)
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Matt and I have decided to take on redoing the landscaping in front of our house. We are creating a space for both a flower garden and an herb garden and are taking on the flower garden first. In order to ensure we made the best use of space and selected the correct types of plants we have done a lot of research online. Through our research we learned that the “best” way to ensure you have a flower garden you are happy with is to draw out the design. So we did just that. Because I am hopeless when it comes to drawing, Matt sketched out the basic shape of our space, and I filled in blobs that were in the approximate shape of plants we want. You can see our sketch below.
Matt and I have started on a new adventure this week. After living in our new house for a year and a half, we have decided it is finally time to take on the front lawn landscaping. While we are pretty competent food gardeners, neither of us have any experience with this type of work. But as Matt says, “people do this every day”. So, we have decided to rip out the existing, unpleasant landscaping and replace it with an herb garden and flower garden. (more…)
I just finished a felted mittens class at Unwind Yarn Shop, and I am ecstatic about how my mittens turned out! This was not my first attempt at mittens, but it was definitely my first successful attempt. The class was a lot of fun, and the pattern (Snow Country Felted Mittens) was really easy to follow. I even felt confident wielding the 4 double point needles by the end of the class.
I spent a great day today snowed in because we got about 10 inches of snow here in Richmond. It was a beautiful, wet, dense snow that stuck to everything and made for some amazing photos.
I also started another new knitting project from “One More Skein“. I am knitting myself a new washcloth using the Pencil Sketch pattern. I started using one of the knitted washcloths I made for the Co-op sale, and I fell in love. It is so much nicer than using the store-bought kind, so I am making myself a second. This way I can actually wash my first washcloth 
.
I recently completed yet another in my recent string of knitting projects and while it didn’t turn out how I hoped, I am pleased enough with the end result that I wanted to share.
I had a once in life time experience when it come to knitting. I started a scarf for my husband a year & 1/2 ago using gorgeous bamboo yarn I got from Unwind Yarn Shop. I made the mistake of letting my non-knitting husband pick out the pattern so it turned out to be a little more complicated that I intended. It requires my undivided attention so I haven’t worked on it much. Sunday night I picked the scarf back up and after doing some math realized I would not have enough yarn to finish.
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