Flowers and New Stuff

First, some flowers because I like flowers. Right now I have hundreds of butterflies flitting around the gardens. I end up with so many almost every fall now. All it costs is my passion flowers - well, not the plants themselves, but all the leaves on many of them. There are some of them that the critters won't/don't touch until everything else is all gone. I have several plants with absolutely no leaves left (that'll teach coral glow to bloom - if it'd bloomed, I would have saved it!).

Anyway, here is passiflora coriacea which is very small and nondescript but has lovely leaves (batwing passion flower). The closeup makes it look much better than it does in person.
And here is passiflora kewensis. This is one of the first three passion flowers that I owned, and I always loved it. I had it for a few years before I killed it - tho I lost several the first year trying to overwinter them. I hadn't been able to find it since then, but a friend sent me a new one this spring.
And this is a saddleback caterpillar Miss M found on a passion vine. It will turn into a nondescript brown moth. Fortunately none of us touched this guy because it has the second worst sting of all the stinging caterpillars. It most likely wasn't eating the passion flower (tho someone else had been) but fell off the cherry tree nearby.
Miss S has been sick as a dog this weekend. We went to the book store after we got done at the doctors on Friday to look for a college guide magazine. We found the guide, but we also found this (Amigurumi World Seriously Cute Crochet by Ana Paula Rimoli). She's promised to make me some of these cute little guys. I found another book that I think she needs called Kooky Crochet or something like that. I'll post pictures if she ever finishes anything . . . or if she ever gets out of bed (been there since Friday noon.)
And I found this Little Box of Socks by Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrot sitting right next to the college guide. (Yes, really - it jumped off the shelf and bopped me on the head and then it ran after me down the aisle insisting I buy it. I tried to tell it that I have enough sock books, but it didn't have ears.) It has some really great patterns in it and more new things I've never done. There's a new heel I wanna try . . .
Miss S likes the green socks so I'm using the pink that Mom sent to make her either these or the basket weave socks. And I'm gonna use the Numma Numma Toasty that I won in the contest to make the Small Wings Socks for myself. I think I'm gonna use the Needlenook Nosh but I'll have to fight Miss M for it cuz she wants that color for herself.

Both girls love the Bed socks so I might have to buy some Noro and make them each a pair - maybe for their Christmas presents? And the slip Stitch Cable socks are just another pattern that I really liked.

I love the way the patterns are individual cards - so I can carry them with me. I don't have a copy machine here in the house that will copy a page from a book, so I usually end up carrying the books with me and they get scratched up and banged around in my knitting bag. Hmm, maybe I need a new knitting bag - nah, have too many already . . . . .