I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

2011 has been a great year for Loops of Love.  We recently did an inventory of all the items made in 2011, and it was quite an impressive number of items.  In case you aren’t aware, Loops of Love is a charitable knitting and crochetting group I started in cooperation with Richmond Church of the Brethren and Unwind Yarn Shop.  We meet the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month from 5 to 7pm at the yarn shop, and we donate handmade items to a number of local organization including: Birth-t0-Five, Salvation Army, YWCA, Genesis Women’s Shelter, Reid Babies, and Nobel Women’s Circle.

Photo Copyright Jim Hair

Our tally of donated goods for the first half of 2011 is:

Baby Hats: 33
Kids Hats: 23
Adult Hats: 15
Baby Blankets: 19
Chemo Caps: 7
Washcloths: 10
Mittens:3
Baby Sweater: 1
Scarfs: 9
Booties: 7
Slippers: 1
Shaw : 1

A big thank you is in order to all the people who show up every week to knit or crochet, all the people who don’t attend but donate completed items, all the people who donate yarn and needles, and especially Unwind Yarn Shop for hosting us each week.

I can’t wait to see how much stuff we create in the rest of 2011.

When I was blogging more regularly, I did a good job of reporting my knitting accomplishments.  However, during the eight months I was not blogging, I have completed a number of project that haven’t been accounted for.

Lest anyone fear that I have given up or slowed down on my knitting, here is what I’ve gotten done in the past eight month, give or take a few projects even I have forgotten about.

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With my new bike, I feel more capable of carrying things around town, and I decided to test it out last Thursday.  After work I brought home a box of cereal, Popsicles, a can of crushed tomatoes, and  a bag of frozen french fries, on top of my normal purse and lunch bag.  I don’t yet have panniers, so I had to stuff it all in my backpack.  Despite nearly not being able to zip my backpack closed, I didn’t have any trouble.

I didn’t even notice the added weight. This just would not have been possible with my purple bike. The basket upfront wouldn’t have had room for all those items, and if I had somehow fit it all in the added weight would have made steering difficult.  Just a another reason why, I LOVE MY NEW BIKE!

Now just to get some cute accessories!

I am putting this down as my “Carry a load on your bike — groceries, etc.” for Part II of the LGRAB Summer Games

I am also reading a fabulous book right now as part of “Read a book about cycling” for Part II of the LGRAB Summer Games.  I am reading “Along for the Ride” and I love it.  It is a great combination of a coming of age tale, romance, and bikes.  I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good readfor any reason and double recommend it  for anyone into biking.

Thanks for the recommendation Dottie

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!

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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.

As promised, here are a couple of photos of my new bike from this morning before I left for work.

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.

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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…)