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A little bamboo I'm making a little tank top using the purple bamboo (Lincraft Bamboozle) which was once, briefly, an Ogee Lace Skirt. Using the basic v-necked tank top pattern from Knitting Lingerie Style, and adding a lace pattern to the lower section to help the yarn go further. The lace pattern is the one from the Lacy Summer Socks pattern in the same book. It's lovely because it sits perfectly flat without blocking!

Am nearly halfway through The Book - my second quarter deadline is Monday. I'm seriously exhausted by Thursday each week, but have to keep going. My Technical Editor has started reviewing the puzzles, which is rather exciting (this is the job I did for Wiley on another book earlier on this year). Sorry, very brain dead here, can't think of anything clever or even interesting to say, or remember any news. Just wanted to reassure you I'm still alive! Nighty night!

Saturday Morning - War Time!

I'm trying very hard to set up a modest vegetable garden, I've made lovely no dig garden beds, lots of mulch, and have spinach, parsley, sage, mint, rhubarb, and so on already growing well. I've been raising seeds for summer crops inside, and when they got big enough, planted them out. Only to have them utterly chewed to bits by the next day! Aaargh!

At first I thought it might be cabbage white caterpillars ... I sprinkled with Derris Dust ... this helped a little, but didn't really stop the wholesale destruction that was now across the entire veggie garden, even the established plants were being attacked heavily! There were no shiny snail or slug trails either. See what I mean? Last night Hubby and I did a midnight raid - took our torches out and checked the beds. WELL. Bloody EARWIGS! They were swarming over the entire garden, and clearly chewing away. Every plant had dozens of the little beasties all over them! I've never seen so many earwigs in one place! This poor doomed zucchini seedling (my baby!) had 10 on the job (I've circled them in orange). So pyrethrum spray was next (yes, I sprayed immediately, around 11pm, catch the buggers unawares!). I did a bit of research online, and made a trap using oil and soy sauce, in a margarine container (holes around the top edge, put the lid back on, set down into the soil). This morning my few remaining seedlings (I think it's only the cucumbers left) are intact, hurrah! And I've caught some earwigs in my trap too.

I had no idea that earwigs could do this amount of damage to a garden, but there you go, you learn something new every day ... I had been noticing a fair few earwigs around, in the house and so on, but generally I don't worry about them too much. Obviously this 'glut' of earwigs isn't helpful for a veggie garden, though! Hopefully now I can counteract and get my veggie garden growing again!

(ETA to fix the link to Earwigs)
Posted by Denise at 9:56 pm