Which of course has now put seeds and gardening in the front of my mind. I have a couple of seed companies that I want to support. Adaptive Seeds has been closed since last October and just re-opened for orders today. They have five seed varieties that have been on my wish list for years that I have not been able to track down anywhere else. Bunny Hop Seeds is a small but amazing seed company with such a jaw-dropping assortment of rare and unheard of varieties. I put together a quick wish-list from both companies, but my grand total between the two is just over $100. Yikes! I have to talk to my dear husband about investing this much into the collection. Yes, I do plan to get back into gardening, and yes, some of these varieties are virtually unknown and difficult to find, but do I need them right now? I think I do, but I may be biased.
I'm still working on the crocheted blanket. Rather than a long back and forth, I'm making smaller panels that I will then stitch together when I've got them all done. I finished the first skein of "Wizard" (Mandala, Lion brand) yarn, and started on the second skein. I only have the two. I had originally hoped to get some variegated yarn for each rainbow color to do one panel of each rainbow color with a variegated pattern, but it turns out finding variegated orange and variegated yellow is kind of tricky and I could only find them in cotton or hand-dyed (expensive) varieties. This wouldn't be so bad, except the panels are all the same size, and I'd have to adjust my hook size and stitch count for thinner or thicker yarn, making it so it won't line up as well when I need to stitch the panels together. So I scrapped that part of the plan and looked at what I have on hand. I have two different skeins of black/white/grey variegated (both different), so I think instead of going for fully colorful, perhaps I will go for contrast and do every other panel being the colorful Wizard yarn and then a panel of black/white/grey yarn. It might be a bit busy, but it might turn out well. If nothing else, I can count it as a learning experience, and I'll still get a nice handmade blanket out of it.