bunnies | Love Is All You Knit

May 30 2014

Antics, baby knits, bunnies, Dogs, Family, Hats, knitting, Music, Texas, travel

Insta-May

A round-up of my Instagram pictures from the past month.

I started my first ever container vegetable garden this spring- I planted tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, carrots and cantaloupe. I have enjoyed watching my little plants grow and am amazed at how much they have grown in just the past month. I just noticed the first tiny zucchini forming and am over the moon with excitement at the prospect of having my own home grown veggies this summer.

My sweet blog friend Kim of Hand Eye Crafts has been commissioned to knit doggie bones for inclusion in a bark box type of product, and she sent Henry one and it is the cutest thing ever. I have to constantly stop him from bringing it outside because he loves to dig and bury bones. This is his indoor only bone.

Joey and the band played a show at Suburbia Music festival and it was a bright, hot and dusty day, and we had an absolute blast at the show. It was the inaugural year for this festival in Plano and I hope to see it continue next year.

It’s almost summer and I’ve re-ignited my attempt at becoming a runner. Running is still one of those things that is very difficult for me and I am working on my stamina so I can keep up with Joey. My goal is to be able to run 2-3 miles at a decent pace without walking.

We still have our backyard bunnies and Joey even witnessed a mama bun nursing a burrow full of baby buns one day just feet from our back door. He said it was the craziest thing he’d seen in a while. I usually spot a bunny or two (or three!) almost every afternoon from my kitchen window. I love spying on them.

The third week of May was international mail week, as the baby sweater package I mailed to my friends Tim and Liis in Switzerland finally made it to them, and the very next day we received a package from Johan and Anna in Sweden, sending us a vinyl copy of the Basko Believes album, Idiot’s Hill, which we recorded at Joey’s studio in Denton last June.

We took a quick weekend road trip up to Indiana where Joey is originally from for a family memorial. I loved the cool nights and crisp sunny weather and oh, the green! It is lovely there. I can’t wait to go back when we can spend a little more time. At a pit stop in Illinois, I picked some daisies to decorate our dashboard for the drive.

As soon as we returned from Indiana, Joey geared up for another few rounds of touring. Festival season is upon us, and I will again become a ‘tour widow’ for the next few months. We celebrated his departure by indulging in some Tex Mex while trying to determine the number of countries he’s visited in the past few years. I’m just watching those frequent flyer miles add up and thinking of the next big trip we will take together. Mexico, Iceland, and France are on my list.

Aug 31 2013

Insta August

August brought me a little bit of downtime to finish up a design that I’m very pleased with and time to start plotting my next few designs. I’ve been looking at lots of yarns online and trying to keep myself from always picking heather greys, though they are my favorites. Joey had a two week trip to Europe with the band and I got to watch one of his shows that was live streaming online. I watched it with another of the band wives and we clapped and cheered and even snapped a few pics of our husbands onscreen looking like badasses and it was almost like we were there. I even snagged one of Joey’s instagrams to share here—just look at that crowd! Once he was back home we had a couple of lazy days together, strolling around town after a nice brunch and later him puttering around in the studio while I sat within earshot knitting. I’m hoping for a similar couple of days this weekend!

Aug 23 2013

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Antics, birds, bunnies, squirrels, Texas

Flora and Fauna

One of the things I missed most while living in NYC was nature. I will always love and miss the busy-ness and energy of living in such a city, but there is something about being surrounded by beautiful plants and trees or looking skyward to catch a glimpse of a bird in flight that makes me feel centered and peaceful. Our little house in Texas is surrounded by plenty of trees and plants that are home to many different animals and I get such a kick out of spying on them from my windows.

I’ve mentioned our bunnies before (rabbits, actually) and Joey and I continue to keep tabs on them and their goings on. We don’t have a vegetable garden (though I dream of someday having one), so the abundance of rabbits in our area is more of a joy than a bother. I may have even bought a bag of rabbit food to leave out for them on occasion. I’m not putting out so much food that they will come to rely on it, but just enough to get a few extra fluffy cottontail glimpses every now and then.

We also have lots of birds that make their home in the trees and bushes that surround our neighborhood. There is a cardinal pair that we see almost every day, chirping happily to each other as they flit from branch to branch. And Joey recently brought my attention to a dove and her two babies, who have been flapping around in our bushes lately. I decided to put out a bird feeder to further entice these feathered creatures to enjoy our area, and since then I have seen daily visits from the cardinals, and even spotted a woodpecker!

I initially hung the feeder from my back porch and within 20 minutes I was getting a few interested visitors. By the second day the feeder had already been emptied, with a huge mess of seeds having been tossed out onto my porch. I knew it must have been a squirrel, as no bird could have had the strength to completely knock over the feeder and create such a mess. I even spotted the culprit in a nearby tree, waiting for me to refill the feeder one rainy day.

I’ve since moved the feeder to our front porch just outside our picture window, thinking it may be slightly harder for the squirrels to reach it as it hangs far from the edge of our roof. Not that they haven’t been trying, though. I came home the other day to find that they’ve overturned a small potted cactus and completely strewn potting soil (and birdseed) all over our porch. I righted the cactus only to find it overturned and further trampled the very next day.

The last straw came this week when I came home to find that my little cactus-sproutling, the very one I had been so enamored with a few weeks ago had been mangled by what I can only assume were those crazy ass squirrels. I usually enjoy a good squirrel scamper, but I’m so sad that they attacked my little cactus!

Apr 30 2013

Insta April

This April, Joey and I were up to our usual escapades and getting out to enjoy the pretty spring weather a little more. I bought some pretty yarn for a new knitting project, enjoyed some wine on a Friday afternoon at work, and spent some good times with good friends at our favorite bar. We spent a weekend at the Ranch and met my parents’ sweet new cow dog, Camo, and had a fabulously fun time at a Louisiana-style crawfish boil with the band. My friend Felicia and I did a woodsy photoshoot for my new knitting pattern and we came across a snake while trying to get a good shot. I started up my new knitting project while sitting at Redwood Studios and listening to some really great violin being recorded for one of Joey’s new projects. We have had plenty of new bunny sightings in our back yard and one time Henry even sat next to me, the two of us spying on them together. Joey invented a delicious new apple flavored New York Whiskey cocktail for the bar that I named The Big Apple Sour, and I got to listen to a sneak preview of the new Midlake album that is coming out later this year. I marveled at the prettiness of brown speckled eggs in my new egg tray, and had an epic fail when I attempted to bake my own pizza dough. Joey bought me a pretty gardenia plant to cheer me up after the pizza incident, and we spent many an afternoon on the tennis courts having a blast and enjoying each other’s company. And as always, love was all around us.

Tagged cooking, crawfish, dogs, knitting, pizza, tennis, wine, yarn

Mar 28 2013

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Antics, bunnies, wool

Bunny Love: A Wool Story

I’ve shared stories before about the cottontail rabbits that live in the area near our house. Joey and I are constantly seeing bunnies in our yard or in our neighbors’ yards, and we get such a kick out of all the bunny sightings. Earlier this week Henry, our disinterested rabbit dog/lazy basset hound was sniffing around out back and he snuffled upon a bunny nest!

About five or so teensy babies were cuddled together in a little burrow covered with dried leaves and grasses and bits of bunny fluff. It has still been pretty cold in our area the past few nights and my heart was melting thinking about these tiny little buns in their nest, when I came up with an idea. I remembered reading (and thoroughly enjoying) the Yarn Harlot’s stories about the wool-thieving squirrel that kept running off with bits of her freshly washed fleece any time she would leave it outside to dry in the sunshine. I thought that if a squirrel appreciated the warmth and comfort wool could provide, that perhaps this mama bun might appreciate a little wool on these chilly nights as well. After scouring my yarn cabinet for a colorful bit of wool roving, I quietly and carefully left it sitting near the nest. All day yesterday while at work I was thinking about the baby bunnies and wondering if mama bun would appreciate the little wooly gift I left for her. As soon as I got home, I snuck a peek:

The wool had been appreciatively snuggled down, insulating the entrance to the bunny burrow. I lifted a leaf that was laying on top and got a glimpse of warm snuggly baby buns and my heart melted again. Fellow wool-lovers, we’re on to something.

Tagged bunny, rabbit, spring, texas, wool, yarn