And the winner is...

Actually, it's a bit complicated because I didn't follow good scientific practice setting up my seed experiment.

I planted some of my seeds in toilet rolls (as seen on the Duck Herder's blog), but once I ran out of toilet rolls, I just chucked the rest of the seeds into a single container all together. Which I suspect is not the ideal way to do it. And it means I have two variables in my experiment instead of the ideal one.

So what happened? The spinach all in one container on top of the hot water system sprouted first. I now have *heaps* of spinach seedlings, all tangled up together. A problem to be dealt with on the weekend, I think.

The individually planted spinach seeds in the spare room sprouted next, followed by a single individually planted seed on top of the hot water system. None of the onion seeds or the seeds on top of the barbecue have sprouted yet. Which seems a bit strange to me as the destructions on the back of the seed packets suggest that the onion seeds should germinate faster than the spinach. Presumably there is some plant voodoo reason that they haven't.

Anyhoo, in other news, I've started making another top. I managed to cut out all eight pieces of the pattern before I got a bit overwhelmed by it all and had to have a lie down. And I've knitted the whole back of a vest. I ran into a bit of trouble though when I went to start the front and realised that I wasn't sure how many rows of ribbing I'd done along the bottom.

You live and learn.

How does your garden grow?

Very well thankyou. So well, in fact, that I've had to expand.
The astute will notice however that I don't actually have any more plants. I've just spread the broccoli out a bit. I originally completely disregarded the destructions' claim that the seedlings should be planted 30cm apart on the assumption that some of them would die, making more room. For some mysterious reason, this didn't happen. As a result I had to make another trip to Bunnings for a new pot.

I also planted a whole heap of spinach and onion seeds (again on the assumption that a lot of them will die). At any rate, there is no way I'll be able to afford pots from Bunnings for all the survivors even if only half of them survive. I figured the tip shop would be the ideal place to stock up on cheap pots. Alas, this turned out not to be the case. Revolve had some plastic boxes that would have been perfect, except that they were "not for sale". Aussie Junk, on the other hand, has gone bust and is not offering anything for sale at Mugga Lane.

So what did I do? I went to Aldi. I have to admit, I don't have the knack for shopping at Aldi. They never seem to have what we want so I get discouraged and just end up going to Woolies. For instance, this time we wanted ingredients for lasagne and bread for breakfast in the morning. They didn't have any mince, spinach or bread. They did have some fresh basil and coriander though, which were tasty. And, most importantly, they had an empty styrofoam box with holes in the bottom. I was extra brave and asked the lady if I could have it and she said yes! So now I have a home for at least some of my seedlings.

The seeds themselves are currently taking part in an experiment. Some of them are living on top of the hot water system, some in the window of the spare room and some on top of the barbecue. My hypothesis is that the ones on the hot water system will sprout first because they have a fairly consistent source of warmth, the ones in the spare room will sprout second because it's not quite so frosty in there and the ones on the barbecue will languish and die. At any rate, we should have the results 10 to 21 days after Saturday the 8th.

And here is my latest creation, made with my shiny new sewing machine:

As you can see, the armholes are a bit funny. I think I'll try and fix them up a bit when I'm feeling a bit braver. I'm fairly happy with it for a first go though!

Sew far sew good

My seedlings haven't died! Not even a little bit. I'm not sure whether or not they're actually growing, but they're definitely not dead.
So that experiment seems to be going well. I haven't planted the onion seeds yet, due to a combination of rain, visitors and gin. If the broccoli doesn't die I won't have anywhere to plant them out to anyway.

As for the other experiments... The yoghurt cheese was deemed a success, although the dried apples in the apple and cinnamon one ended up a bit big. I cut the pieces up as small as I had the patience to do, but they grew a fair bit during the "cooking" process. At any rate, the principle proved to be sound.

I also managed to knit an actual thing from a pattern. Here we have crazy stripey hat:

For my next trick, I'm going to attempt a vest. But before getting started on that, I couldn't resist the temptation to try knitting two socks at the same time on one pair of needles. It doesn't actually seem that hard, provided you use a different colour yarn for each sock so you don't get them confused. I estimate that it will only take me a little bit longer than it would have taken to knit two socks one at a time, which sort of raises the question of the point of the whole exercise. I'll let you know if I work it out before I finish them.

And the last thing is a new toy!

Between the new toy and learning to knit, surely now I can conquer the world!