"Lilac Time" and Four O'Clocks

Since my KnitPicks 47-inch circular needles came in the mail, I've been knitting, knitting, knitting. First I knitted the stargate off the 29-inch needles onto the 47-inch ones. Now I can stretch the pattern out a bit so about half of one end shows. (I still can't get a decent picture of these colors, though.)

Then I knitted the string one off a dozen double-pointed needles and onto my 29-inch Susan Bates Silverado circulars. (I can't believe they discontinued these - they are great needles!)

I am three rows into chart C of Marianne Kinzel's "Lilac Time", and you can just start to see the very bottom of the next round of leaves.

The weather was so rainy in October that I never got to dig up my four o'clocks, and they got hit with a frost that made the stems fall off. (They break apart at the joints and at the root.) It was a little harder to find the roots, but today it was sunny and dry and I dug them up. I think I got most of them.They don't look like much, do they? I planted a couple where my rose bush had been, and the hummingbirds loved that. Those three roots really increased in size.

Now I have to go out before it gets too chilly and rub the sand off them so I can put them away for winter. All I do is keep them over the winter is leave them in an open plastic bag, sitting on the cool concrete floor at the far end of the house from the warm woodstove. In the spring when they start to put out shoots (color coded as to flower: pinkish shoots = pink/rose flowers, green shoots = white flowers) I'll plant them out again.