Knitting, snow, and typical things

J's bunny turned up at kindy.  Can you believe it??  All the lessons from it being lost have promptly been forgotten.  Typical.

I finished the border on A's Auntie J blanket and she refuses to have it on her bed.  Typical.

I finished my Eria vest which I love (sorry no photo of this or the blanket - must remedy soon), and I finished J's Granny's Favourite cardi which she hates.  Typical. 

I've decided I'll make one last garment for J, something in a >gasp< acrylic as I suspect she finds wool too scratchy, and if she doesn't wear that either I won't make anything else for her, for now.  C'est la vie, right?

I keep on finding other things to cast on instead of finishing my Sauvie vest, like a granny cover for J's favourite foot stool.  I got the various yarns from the op shop for about $3 total.  Winning!



I've also cast on a really cute cardigan called Posy, in the making of which I've learned to knit from a chart. 

I still find myself doing a lot of ripping back (when will I ever get the hang of lace?!) and the other night was a low point when I spent the entire evening knitting and re-knitting the same row.  I think that was when I started crocheting the footstool cover because I couldn't even look at my knitting needles.  Stupid knitting.

I planted my sweet peas just after St Patrick's Day as I've been taught, and they've already poked their heads through.  Here's hoping they make it through winter for lots of spring flowers.

Below is the mountain last week.  Not anymore!

I can report that the temperatures have plummeted and once again I'm devoting plenty of time to worrying pointlessly about our animals in the wind, wet, and cold.  Yes, I know they're fine.  I know.

We had more than a dusting of snow on the mountain the other night when the wind came whistling straight up from Antarctica.  My weather app told me that it was 7 degrees with a "feels like" of 1 degree.

Because I'm a bit wet I took this photo below from inside A's window.  Hence it's not a great photo and you have to squint very hard to not really see that there is snow on the ranges.  But there is.

Amazingly, considering the weather, I'm still picking at least one ripe tomato every day, although I saw on Instagram that someone had pulled their plants and hung them upside down on the verandah to ripen the stragglers. 

My plants are looking very sad and sorry but there are still heaps of tomatoes on there so I might try hanging them to see if I can get them to ripen that way before the plants give up altogether.

Meanwhile I've found my favourite way to preserve tomatoes:
Roasted gently in the oven with lashings of olive oil, whole cloves of garlic smooshed under the side of a knife, plus salt and pepper.  I then squeeze out the garlic cloves and discard the skins, pour the tomato mixture into a pot and blitz it with my bar mix thingy until smooth.

Delicious!  And no fiddling around boiling and peeling the skins.  I left these in the oven for a couple of hours at about 150C and the flavour was incredible.

What's been going on round your joint this week?  Anyone else still picking tomatoes??