the cutest herb garden

I love the idea of container gardens for city-dwellers. Since last summer (our first summer in this apartment, and my first summer not living in a dorm or with my parents), I have desperately wanted a garden. Last summer we had a window box filled with herbs but they never really yielded enough herbs to do anything with, and since I sprouted them from Meijer seeds they were really nothing special.

This year however, I decided to maximize my space and commit a little more energy to a garden, starting with revamping my herb garden. I recently found I was accepted to a VISTA summer program in Kalamazoo called "Parent Involvement Makes a Difference" working with the Kalamazoo Promise, which means two things for my living situation: I will be living in Kalamazoo at least until August 14th; and I will only have to work 32 hours a week, meaning I'll have more energy than last summer when I was working 40 hours a week, and then on my thesis. With that in mind I bought several herbs from the People's Food Co-op yesterday, and came up with this adorable garden.

How to make your own city-dweller herb garden:
1. Look around at the multitude of possibilities to plant things in. To date I have planted lavender in a broken stein, and an African violet in a cracked French Press. I also have a rusty colander awaiting some herbs. I was frustrated by the amount of dog food cans I had, so I decided they would be my garden.

2. make sure your containers have ample drainage. I poked at least 5 holes in the bottom of each can, simply using a nail and hammer.
3. Spraypaint/decorate if you'd like. I had a can of old spraypaint left over from another project, and gave each can one of each.
4. Decide if you'd like to hang your cans/jars/containers. I used about 9" of wire, and wrapped it around each can at the top, then twisted it into a loop. Really simple, and fairly foolproof.
5. fill bottom with gravel/rocks or other drainage. Half of these are filled with broken glass, since I'm thrifty to a T.
6. Fill bottom with potting soil.
7. Plant your herbs!


8. Configure them the way you'd like. For me this meant getting Eric to nail 6 nails into our porch while I eyeballed the distance and hung herbs from them.
9. Water and enjoy!

I can't wait to see how this works out. I also planted some other vegetables in containers, but I'll blog about that soon. For now, I'm going to get the dirt out from under my nails, and say goodnight to my new garden before having a beer!

Roo, meet your adoring public

A week ago on Wednesday we brought home the newest member of our little family. Our elderly cat, who we had been taking care of while her mom (and Eric's mom) recovered from cancer, had enough of our two-bedroom college apartment, and let us know by gaining a ton of weight, screaming incessantly, and becoming depressed.

I was depressed to see her go, but apparently she is much happier back with her mom, who is also happy to have her back in Lansing.

But there was a kitten shaped hole in my heart, so without more ado, I introduce...

From Winter 2009

The wonderful tabby-cat, Haruki Murakami, or "Roo".

He's a rescue kitten, and he couldn't be more loving or fun. Or cuter!

From Winter 2009

He also thought that my camera was the coolest toy ever, making most of the pictures blurry.

Roo was born in August, and lived in a garage with his brother until January. Luckily, before the temperature plummeted here in Michigan, the Kalamazoo Animal Rescue snatched him up, and placed him with a wonderful foster mom. And now he's in his forever-home, and we love him!

From Winter 2009

More housekeeping

I am so exciting. More housekeeping on the blog, because cleaning and organizing is all I want to do lately. I even spent a good chunk of time a few nights ago organizing the photos on my computer.

I need a life.

But, instead of a life, I have lots of knitting, and that's good enough for me! I have rewritten the Cabled Goodness Beret pattern, and also put that up as a free Ravelry download.*

Boy that pattern needed a lot of work! It was the first pattern I had ever written, but it was sloppy, and confusing. And yet people have knit it. I feel sorry for them!

I am much happier with it now that I spent the night tweaking, rewriting, and formatting. I'm sure there is still a mistake or two, but not such glaring ones as "Continue decreasing at each marker EOR until X stitches remain", which I kid you not, I somehow missed in the first draft of the pattern. Bad knitter! no cookie!

That's really all here. Surprisingly, I haven't had the urge to knit. The weather in London has been beautiful, and I've been spending my days running, reading, and feeding ducks. And, actually, finally doing some writing. Hopefully I'll soon have some knitting to report, but for now I am more than content to plop down with a good book, and some music.

The Ravelry download is here if you want to see the fruit of my housekeeping labours, and for those of you in the Midwest, please do stay warm. The weather reports look dreadful!



*Again, I am really sorry to the people who aren't on Ravelry yet. I am more than happy to email you the oh so purty PDF if you'd like! Just email me at c.b.herzog@gmail.com, or leave a note in the comments.

Housekeeping

Today has been all about housekeeping in the Flat Le Skeins and Steins, much of it in the virtual sense. (also vacuumed and dusted, so there was some real housekeeping too!)

That's why I am excited to announce that I started moving my two (soon to be three) patterns over to Ravelry, as a free Ravelry PDF download. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, but hadn't gotten around to.

I also rewrote the Slouchy Cabled Beret pattern, and worked out all the kinks, especially around the decreases (hopefully!). The first version was quite sloppy - I'm hoping this one is easier to follow. I also renamed it: now it is the Slouchy Springtime Beret, because the birds are chirping and I'd like spring to hurry up. (See? Photographic evidence of me reworking the pattern!)

So by all means, pop over to ravelry and check it out! If you aren't on ravelry yet,and still want to knit the "Slouchy Cabled Beret", just email me and I"ll send you the PDF.

P.S. I wore my new sweater (which needs a name!) out to see Sweeney Todd, and had a blast. Not only was the movie amazing, but I felt very chic and fun in my little tunic! I'll post about it later, maybe even tonight!