The Bible According to Mel

Spring has sprung in Illinois - 5 days of record setting temperatures and no end in sight. And so as is the case every year, my fancy turns to gardening. I'm trying something completely new this year, Square Foot Gardening - a rather revolutionary concept in home gardening - or at least it was when it was first introduced in the 1970s by Mel Bartholomew. He's back with an updated book and we are drinking the Mel kool-aid. The concept is simple - really simple and easy - which appealed to me. You build 4x4 foot boxes, grid them off into 16 squares and plant x number of items per square (depending on how much spacing the plant needs). Last weekend we built 4 boxes and this weekend we filled them and actually planted! I'm crossing my fingers that the weather holds, but we put in the traditional early Spring crops, spinach, shallots, peas, lettuce and strawberries, etc. When they sprout I'll post some pics. It's gonna be a great growing season!

Works in Progress

by Kelly

Here's the afghan I'm making with the Super Simple Hexagon pattern from a previous post. What do you think?

I've discovered there are two problems with this kind of afghan. First of all, there's the seaming. It's kind of a let down after all the fun and easy work of making the hexagons, to be confronted with a lot of boring seaming. Of course, you could connect them as you go, but that limits the spontaneous nature of the hexagons, because now you're chained to a full blown afghan project again.

And aside from the seaming, there are the gaping voids along the edges. Lots of people make half hexagons. They aren't difficult to figure out, if you have a picture on hand. Of course, that still leaves a pointy side edge.

Or maybe I could just put a border around the whole thing, like Adi Keren did:

via Flickr

Check out her Flickr stream here for other goodies, including a sweet baby blanket made out of tiny crochet flowers.

I'm off to see if I can create half-hexagons. Heigh, ho.