Our Weekend: Harry Potter, Mudballs, & The Garden

It has been pretty much your average weekend around here.  Food.  Pool.  Family.  I thought I would share a couple of quick snippets with you.

First off: Tomatoes in the garden.  Actually, it is just tomato, singular.  As a native Californian, I just can’t bring myself to water during a drought.  I figure anything that can’t make it on its own is just going to have to return to the earth.  But look at this one lone little tomato, surviving through drought and some kind of nasty looking wilt.  Isn’t it beautiful?

Next up:  Mudballs.  Ellie and I sat outside with my mother in law yesterday and worked on mudballs.  Really.  To be more exact, we were experimenting with the ancient Japanese art form dorodango.  We were both fascinated by pictures we saw of balls that we first thought were glass, or maybe ceramic or even metal.  But they turned out to be mud.  Our first attempts were by no means anything like the photos we saw, but we have yet to burnish and finish our layers.  One of our unfinished little balls is pictured below, but you have really got to go and see the real thing.  Simply incredible.  You can find instructions and photos here => http://www.dorodango.com/create.html if you want to try it.

Finally, Harry Potter.  I actually know people who aren’t obsessed with the countdown to the exact moment when the book will be available.  People who don’t plan on seeing the movie the very first day it opens.  Let me tell y’all, my whole household is obsessed with both events.  I decided to dye some Hogwart’s House Colors-themed yarn this weekend, and came up with a cool little Slytherin moss and gray.  Although I can’t imagine any possible weather that would permit this to be worn in Alabama in July, I still intend to knit up a neat little Slytherin scarf.  (The Judge is undoubtedly a Slytherin.)

Nearer and dearer to my own heart is this Hufflepuff sock yarn.  It makes me think of bumblebees, or maybe even of Uma Thurman on her yellow motorcycle in Kill Bill I.  But the colors are undoubtedly Hufflepuff and I am hoping to find a few quiet moments to knit myself some socks to wear while watching the movie and lounging around the house reading the book the following week.