Handspun swap package

See what I got in trade for a skein of my handspun yarn? Woo-hoo! Sarah was destashing and traded me all of this for one big skein of turquoise merino handspun (over 500 yards).

• Smooshy sock yarn from Dream in Color in Spring Tickle (450 yards). I may knit another leaf shawl out of it. It would have to be a little smaller in size, but is still do-able. Sarah may regret having traded me this one now that she's seen my shawl pattern.
• Koigu Painters Palette Merino - My friend Elizabeth recently made a beautiful Koigu floppy jacket. (It's available as a single pattern or in the book Knits from a Painter's Palette.) I'm seriously thinking about knitting it and have been collecting Koigu for it.
  
• Socka Cotton Color - I'm not sure what I'll use this for but I doubt it will be socks. :-)
  

I mailed the package to Sarah on Monday with a couple of surprises in it. I'm waiting to hear if she's received it yet. I hope she is as happy with the trade as I am.

The word is getting out about my Cascading Leaves shawl pattern. I email the pattern pdf out as soon as I receive the orders. For those of you who have ordered the pattern, if it has been more than 24 hours since you ordered and the pattern hasn't arrived, let me know. A few people have had difficulties receiving the pdf file due to the spam filters.

I'm taking a break from knitting and returned to spinning. I'm back to working on the lime green and royal blue superwash I started some time back. I'm not sure if it's the project I will take this Saturday to the Fiber Frolic at Charlotte's farm or not. Have to get together the things I want to trade or sell to take along. And, of course, what food I'm taking to share. We usually have a good spread since everyone brings something to contribute.

The zucchini and summer squash plants in our organic vegetable garden are really pumping out the squash. I've been freezing cubed zucchini for pasta and soups, shredded zucchini for breads, and making zucchini bread with some of the monster squash that get missed in the garden. I made some killer zucchini bread the other day from a recipe off the web. It has no eggs and less oil than most recipes. I baked it as mini loaves so it wouldn't take as long to bake in the hot weather. Hubby and I managed to polish off an entire loaf in one setting. It's dangerous stuff! I'll have to post the recipe for it and the orzo pasta with zucchini that I make. As you can tell, I have a lot of zucchini recipes. LOL! We eat a lot of it when it's in season and I give a lot of it away too.

I don't know how much longer we'll have fresh squash as the squash bugs and vine borers are working on the plants. I refuse to use any kind of chemicals and pesticides in my garden. It kills good bugs as well as bad and isn't good for humans either. Sorry, I feel pretty strongly about this.

Our cucumber harvest has been sparse. The ground hogs living nearby are eating most of them. I'm growing a number of different varieties that they seem to find tasty. At first they ate the leaves and vines. Now, they've moved on to the fruit. When I go to pick them, all I find is a little bit still attached to the plant---the rest has been bitten off! Ground hogs don't know how to share. :-(

Hubby finally picked the first ripe tomato on Monday. He got the plants in really late this year. I'll probably freeze a lot of them and make sauce during the winter. The skins slip off easily from the frozen tomatoes. Processing them in the winter, I appreciate the heat cooking them generates much more than when it's 90 degrees out in the summer.