Rain Forest

I’m sure I would tire of the rain eventually, but it seems like it’s been so long since we’ve had a nice stretch of rainy weather that I’m really enjoying it.

[The husband reminded me that we’ve had stretches of rainy weather this spring, but the rain was white.]

Everything is nice and green and even though I know it means that I will be mowing a lot of grass and doing some weeding later this week, I’m thrilled that the garden is looking so lush.

The rain has also given me some bonus sewing time. My obsession with knot tops continues. I hemmed—finally—the prototype Liz Claiborne top that I reverse engineered. The fabric is a teal rayon/spandex from the clearance bin at Joanns:

And then I made another one:

This striped knit is a polyester blend that the quilt store south of town had in stock; I can’t remember the manufacturer and I don’t feel like digging out the remnant to see who it is. What is interesting to me is how the different fabrics behave in the same pattern. This stripe is lighter and drapier.

I like both. I’ll wear both—I think I am going to wear the striped one to teach my Serger 101 class today. The tops are long enough, but I plan to lengthen the pattern by an inch or two on the next one.

The couple of weeks that elapsed between making the teal one and making the striped one was just long enough that I had to stop and remind myself what the steps were for putting this together. I’ve got it to where it makes sense in my head, although I probably should write it down . . .

And I found another knot top pattern:

This is the Sinclair Azalea top. I went to SewingPatternReview.com and looked at the reviews. They were overwhelmingly positive. As a bonus, Karina Trinidad at the Lifting Pins and Needles YouTube channel did a video detailing the (very clever) construction of this top. When I went to purchase the pattern, I discovered that Sinclair Patterns include TALL sizes in every pattern! Yay! I won’t have to lengthen it!

********************************

I bought another hummingbird feeder at Lowes last week. I need to pick up big bag of sugar today. The hummingbirds are draining the feeders every other day or so.

While I was at Lowes, I bought the husband a present:

We all have our idiosyncrasies, and one of the husband’s is that he prefers all the hoses to be the same size. He has a collection of 3/4” diameter hoses, and one of my jobs every spring is to hunt down more of them. Most of the stores here carry 5/8” hose. We looked at Lowes when we were there on date night a few weeks ago but didn’t see any. As I was wandering through the garden center in search of hummingbird feeders, I spotted two of these in a bin—the only two in the bin—so I grabbed them and bought them.

Sometimes that 1/8” makes all the difference, LOL.