What a weekend

This past weekend was so jam packed, it will be good to get to work just to slow down a tad.

We had a funeral to attend on Saturday morning. After a long illness, my sister-in-law's sister passed away a week ago. She had been in the hospital for two months but has suffered with Crohn's and diabetes for years. She was 50.

After we got home, Dave and I went to a local grower's green house to get our garden plants. We got 36 regular tomato plants (beefsteak and another kind), 18 roma and 18 grape tomato plants. We also purchased 18 eggplant and 18 cabbage, 36 regular sweet peppers, 18 Hungarian yellow and 18 Jalapeno peppers. After Dave had finished preparing the beds on Sunday (alternating between the two rotatillers), we planted. Besides the seadlings we had purchased, we also planted a bed of zucchini and yellow squash and another entire bed (although a smaller one) of green string beans. Seriously.

On Sunday, Lindsey and I joined my sister, Peg and her daughter, Amy, and grand-daughter, Allyson and we went to the Great Lakes Fiber Fest in Wooster, Ohio. It was FABULOUS. Of course, Lindsey and Allyson only went because they didn't want to get stuck having to do work around the house.

Anyway, I showed tremendous amounts of restraint and limited my purchases to one skein of Briar Rose's Grandma's Blessing yarn (1200 yards), two skeins of Trekking sock yarn, and a couple of patterns XOXO (hat and scarf) and Boxleaf Wrap and another scarf pattern from Briar Rose.

My sister spins, so except for one skein of sock yarn, she only bought fiber (some alpaca and alpaca blends and, her absolute favorite, buffalo).

After we got home, Lindsey was horribly disappointed to find out that Dave had not yet started planting. Remember, the whole goal of going to the Fiber Fest was to get out of the garden planting. However, since he had spent so much time getting it all ready, we easily planted everything within about 90 minutes. It was incredible. And, you know what, it doesn't matter if we spend an entire day or 90 minutes, my back and legs are killing me today.

On Monday, Sarah and Kyle came over, along with Lindsey's friend, Andrew. I made macaroni salad, potato salad, cole slaw (I guess I was having a salad kind of day) and stuffed hamburgers (cook and crumble bacon, saute onions and mushrooms in bacon fat, drain well; I then flatten half of the package of ground meat into a large rectangle, spread the bacon mixture on top of the meat, add slices of American cheese, top with another layer of ground meat and cut into about 4" squares, grill and serve . . . . yummy).

Later, Zachariah and I "balled" some of the yarn, including the Grandma's blessing (1200 yards is a lot of yarn). He also was going through my stash and found some Lorna's Laces in Black Watch and asked if I would make him mittens and a hat. We then wound that yarn too, along with another skein of KnitPicks bare wool.

I am exhausted.