Late again!

So, Wednesday was a bit of a rest day for me.

I was recovering from both being the last-minute entertainment at MKG on Tuesday night (okay, I knew I was going to talk about my experiences dyeing with madder root but I didn't know I was going to be the only one!) and my last heavy duty biking before the Saint Paul Triathlon on Sunday. I am not very good at tapering off before a race (today was swimming!) so I just took the day off.

I chose to spend it running errands and getting some back-to-school shopping done.

I bought two skeins of Panda Soy Sock Yarn at the Double Ewe Yarn Shop in Circle Pines. This is a little out of the way for me (it's in Circle Pines, MN) but I needed to drop off some material for the MKG and the color was just lovely. A deep, shiny (in a good way!) purple called Grape Soda. It's a present for Oldest Daughter - she very kindly took Youngest Boy to go see "G-Force" so I didn't have to go!

Afterward, I took her out to lunch and shopping at Kohl's in Roseville where we were detained for about 45 minutes thanks to the tornado warnings. At least we got to browse the "home" department while we were waiting . . . and we were safe.

Yesterday evening, I finished knitting Youngest Child's Wizard Hat but I need to go get some boneing to make it stand up.



I repeated a line or two of decreases so mine is a little more tapered than the original but I think it will be fine. Also, we picked up "The Tales of Beetle the Bard" to delve into after we get through "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

Today, we had a houseful of small children playing with trains, watching cartoons and playing Wii games because of the rainy weather. Two things made up for the dreadful weather:



The birds spent the day swinging on the plants in my garden. It was like a bird playground for a while but most left when I stepped outside to take the photo. Imagine a small brown bird swaying on each of the flower stems in my garden!



I got the first two ripe tomatoes from my garden! I have mostly yellow pear tomatoes as well as a few Lemon Boys for slicing.

I have a jungle out there with lots of green tomatoes but nothing else ripe enough to eat yet. I think the paste tomatoes will be ripe by next week - right when I'm out of town! - but they'll be fine for making tomato sauce the following weekend.

My belated Cool Wednesday items are pretty lightweight. Just the right kind of thing to cheer you up on a rainy day!

Wicked Halo has an article about the "Twisted Princesses" of artist Jeffrey Thomas. Now, I love "real" fairy tales and find the Disney versions pretty silly sometimes. These ones seem much less likely to need rescuing!

And I think I've mentioned Ysolda Teague's patterns before? No? Really, they are lovely, I hear the patterns are written well and her hedgehogs are absolutely adorable!