Knitting, Birds, and Flowers

It didn't seem to me like I knitted very much on the ragg wool legwarmers yesterday, but I did finish the decreases for the ankle.

I was halfway through merging two columns of stitches before I realized that I was merging a knit column on one, and a purl column on the other, and had to decide if I wanted to rip one back and make them match.

I can be pretty picky about these things, but this one didn't bother me. It happened because I am spiralling the two in opposite ways. They already were different, so one more difference didn't make much more, er, difference.

A lot of Michigan birds are various camouflage colors of brown, but we have a few bright-colored ones, at least in summer. This guy is a male goldfinch, Carduelis tristis, eating at my thistle feeder. In the fall he'll turn a dull olive color, but he's pretty striking today.

My flower of the day is Althea officinalis, the marsh mallow.

Yes, that's a real flower -- apparently the original "marshmallow" was made using marsh mallow root, rather than sugar and gelatin.

This is another little flower that is not very showy except in close-up. It's related to the hollyhock, Althea rosea, but the flowers are only about an inch wide or less. We started it from seeds, but it's a hardy perennial even in our uncertain winters. The leaves are very soft and downy.

And speaking of flowers, that reminds me that I better get out there and collect columbine seeds for some friends of mine!