Life's a bowl of...

Cherries.

If I thought that last years crop was a substantial problem, then I can't even begin to tell you about this year.
There are millions. I feel confident about that number. Millions. This year I am spared having to pick, pit and cook them all (which is good, since it almost cost my my sanity last summer) since the extreme heat and humidity of Toronto's record breaking summer has spoiled the crop, almost literally steaming them on the tree. One day they were almost ripe, the next they had rotted on the tree. There was simply not time to get them in, despite my best efforts. (I admit that my best efforts were, considering that it was 42/107 degrees outside, sort of pathetic. Mostly, this effort consisted of going outside with a bowl, raising my arm above my head, then trying to remember why I was there, then feeling faint and having to go in. Hard to make progress.)

The front garden is entirely covered in a fine layer of cherries past their prime, much the way that snow blankets the country side. I have managed to delude myself into thinking that the cherries in the garden are "compost". They are not. What they are is 10 000 cherry pits that will make bold attempts to grow into trees over the next year. Hundreds and hundreds will sprout up and I will pull up all but five.

I will have no intention of leaving those five, but somehow they will manage to hide under perennials in the garden until suddenly one day, while I am weeding tiny little cherry trees, I will see these five, which have grown in magical seclusion until they are the size of volvos.

I will, naturally, be unable to pull them up. I will get the shovel and I will maul half of my miniscule front garden to death engaging in a battle of epic proportions to get a young cherry tree with roots that clearly go below the crust of the earth out from beside my rose, my phlox or my lilies. I will cut them back to the ground and dig out bits of them and fight with them and pick all of their leaves off out of spite. I will wish that I could poison them, since several years of this means that my front garden is slowly becoming a cherry orchard. ( I know at least one of you guys is going to tell me that it's ok to use such a tiny amount of a herbicide, but there's not point in trying to convince me. It is not my usual tree-hugging softness that keeps me from poisoning them, it is Toronto Law. "Roundup" and other chemicals like them are illegal. I've contemplated doing a little selective "importing" on one of my trips to the States but aside from me being too pretty to go to prison, it turns out that the evidence that it kills more that plants is undeniable.)

In the end, confronted with several large bushes in my front garden I will have no choice but to do what everybody does.
Hang knitting on them for blog pictures. (What? You know you would).

This is still the Highland Triangle Shawl from Folk Shawls, and it is still striping. I'm onto the second ball of yarn, and the rows are longer...I'm almost done this part actually, and it is still striping. Even though the laws of geometry say that this is impossible, I have decided not to think very much about the striping and what it means and to instead be very relieved that the universe respects my need for order enough to give it to me, even when I attempt to reject it.

On another cherry interloper,

Tuesdays are for spinning and these rovings for Joe's gansey are fresh off the carder. I'm also spinning the solid colours so that I can stripe the border of the Highland Triangle (how ironic is that?) but I won't bore you with a picture of it. (Hint. It is almost identical to the last time I showed you.

This young cherry tree holds the socks I began in Memphis.

These have been resurrected, since I could no longer live with the stupidity of having an unfinished pair of socks around when they only need one stinking toe. Who waits months to knit a toe? Seriously. Just a toe? It's like...22 ever decreasing rounds. Who quits then? It's embarrassing. This has got to be proof that Margene is right, and knitting is about the process...since I obviously don't give a crap about having socks or I would have spent the half hour and had myself a pair of socks months ago. I don't mind being the kind of knitter who has a lot on the go, which is good, because I can't seem to come up with fibre monogamy (read the title of the blog) and I really don't need another way to disappoint myself, but I really have to wonder about what's going on with my psyche when I bail out this close to the end. How embarrassingly close to the end of something have you gotten stalled? Why?

Finally, I give you this. It would seem that certain people in this house, have discovered a way to wear the unbearably darling ladybird bootees even though they have feet the wrong size. These people have been wearing various little insect shoes in this manner for days now, and have only been deterred from this practice by the threat of open blogging of their behaviour.
Remember. We have no idea who these people are, and as long as they don't put their hands on my little shoes again, there will be no reason to reveal them for the bootee stealing maniacs they really are.

We will never speak of this again.