Spronging

April is the kindest month. April gets you out of your head and out working in the garden. -- Marty Rubin

This is the first weekend when it feels like spring is starting to... spring? Spring is spronging? About to spring?

Well, it's warmer and a bit sunnier. The birds are singing a lot in the evenings are a lot brighter. That's what I mean.

I've been walking around the yard and looking at the shrubs and plants and deciding what is going to grow where and when. It's an exciting time of year for those with gardening ambitions. I don't think I'll ever be a gardener, but I do like digging around and snipping at things overwatering and underwatering stuff. Sometimes I imagine that my plants tremble in fear when I approach, but I haven't outright killed anything... yet...

I am attempting to grow more herbs this year. I have a couple of rosemary plants that have been ravaged by my rosemary-loving hubby and by the wet and cold winter we have had. It's difficult to grow much of anything in our yard because we have so many trees and therefore a lot of shade, but I bought a couple of new rosemary plants which I am hoping I can coerce into decent rosemary shrubs. They are verboten for picking this year, so here's hoping they get nice and big and strong before I unleash the hubby on them:

I also got a couple of sage plants, because I like sage as much as the hubby likes rosemary. I am also keeping my itchy fingers off them to give them a fighting chance. The plant in the background is some Hellebore which was planted in the ground but seemed to be getting chewed up by the wintering insects that live in the leaf litter. I'm hoping it likes being in a pot on the deck and that the leaves get a chance to regrow.

I bought some dahlia bulbs from a church plant sale a couple of weeks ago. I put them into pots to get them started, and I think I might have checked them every ten minutes for the next two weeks to see if they were doing anything. I looked away for a day, and it looks like they were brave enough to sprout when I wasn't looking. I'm excited to see if they will amount to anything:

As the weather gradually warms up, I start looking at my dog and wondering if it's time to give him his summer cut. It's not quite warm enough yet, but he did get a bath today, about which you can see he is quite enthused:

On the fiber front: I am still working away at some alpaca/camel/merino/silk roving. I finally figured out that I make more progress if I split the roving into four or five chunks and spin that amount each time rather than trying to spin for an hour or so. It's the same rhythm I have for my paints and for my knitting, so it stands to reason that it would also be best for spinning. I am very pleased with my full bobbin. I am hoping to have a second one to ply it with in the very near future:

I am also working on an experiment with my Scheepjes Skies Light Colourpack. I've been treasuring this box for the past couple of years, opening it up like a jewelry box to admire the colours before squirreling it away in my knitting basket. I figured it deserved to finally become something:

I am attempting to knit a lacy cardigan by altering an almost-circular shawl. I was inspired by a pattern I saw in Interweave Knits a few years ago. I keep stopping to lay it out to figure out where I am going to put the armholes, but I'm really not sure if it's going to work out. I may chicken out and just make the shawl, but I'm going to have a few more cups of tea and look at it for a while longer before I decide what to do. In the meantime, I am enjoying watching the colours come together as I knit. If anything, it'll be a lovely thing to look at:

Speaking of: it's time for a cuppa, and maybe a snooze on the couch. All of this spring productivity is tiring. Have a great week!