I Listened!

Friday evening and Saturday provided lots of quality knitting time. I listened to myself and finished the center square on the wedding stole - photos tomorrow, hopefully. THEN, I cast on for Sprössling! Ann Hanson's version looks like this:

Mine is looking (unblocked) like this:
A friend has also started on hers, but is using a different yarn that feels a bit more substantial than my BFL -- this is going to be a light, airy sweater. Right now it mostly appears to be pleated fabric and I can't wait to see it blocked. I've made just a couple of modifications -- first, making it about an inch shorter to fit my short waist better. Second, when I got to the part of the increase where I would have a little block of stockinette stitch (like the one I got in the decrease area), I simply switched the stitch on each side of the marker to a purl stitch and that broke up the block nicely. I'm not going back to change the decrease areas, but will use this strategy on the front in both the increases and decreases.

One weekend highlight was the blooming of our Parlor Maple. This plant was outside most of the summer, and when we brought it in it was covered with aphids. Luckily we have no other inside plants that attract the critters, but this plant was certainly suffering. I convinced my DH to carefully wash off the leaves and stems and we used a product called, I think, Merit, which doesn't kill aphids, but does make it impossible for them to reproduce (you dilute it and put it into the soil -- we spent $29 for the bottle, of which we needed to use a tablespoon -- but it worked!). We've been rewarded by a steadily recovering leaf production (beautiful speckled leaves) and this:
And this:
Within another week, we could have a dozen lovely blooms!