So, lots of summer fun going on here. Last week my sil and bil and their kids with their SO all came for a visit. Our house was host to our neices Rachel and Tara. I managed to get some pictures of all of them at the little party we had for Tara's 19th birthday.

Here is Rachel and her girlfriend Dee:

And Tara and her boyfriend, Ian:

Of course, I had to do a *younger cousin* picture too! Here is Sean, Micah, Asher and Ahren (Micah and Asher are Sean and Ahren's cousins):

I've been largely busy with the garden and moving mulch - we got another big load of it last week and I've been working on getting it in place to help get those darn weeds under control. Here is about 2/3 of the pile I've been working on:

I have been doing some knitting. I started the Cabled Sweater from Debbie Bliss, Knitting Workshop. I really like the design and the fact that the pattern is written without charts. Here is a picture of my progress:

Although I did realize that I did the ribbing incorrectly and then learned that to eliminate (or lessen) the ladder effect just after a cable, you should purl in the back of the stitch. Because of those two things I think I will end up ripping this and starting again, but in the meantime, I decided to start Pete's sweater. He has wanted me to knit him an Aran Sweater for sooo long, but my fear of charts and cables prevented me from even thinking about attempting it. But now that I have found a new pattern that doesn't use charts and I seem to have the hang of the cables. I'm giving it a whirl. Pictures will follow.