Carpinteria Flower Farms

Each year, the flower farms in Carpinteria open their doors to the public for one day. The article in the newspaper made it sound worthwhile, so I grabbed my camera and headed south.

The exterior of the greenhouses were unimpressive . . . grey, cheap plastic.

It was a different story when they opened the doors though; it was beautiful, colorful and alive.

We  visited 4 different nurseries, two orchids, one rose and one gerber daisy. All of them are completely computer controlled. If it gets too hot, the roof opens, too cold and the heaters come on, sensors control the water and any excess that drips out get recycled. It's pretty amazing.

And look at the flowers!

Look close at the top of the photo. See all the hand cutters hanging from the overhead pipe. Apparently, orchids get a disease that spreads through infected hand cutters. They learned (the hard way) that it's cheaper to buy thousands of hand-cutters than to loose an entire nursery of orchids.

Scarf Redux

Thanks to the wonderful advise of Teri and Lisa, I ripped the offending scarf apart, and proceeded to knit it on circular needles. Unfortunately, nobody warned me that if you weren't careful, you could knit it together into a circle. Okay, stop laughing, it only happened twice! Now I have a pretty good idea how to make a hat. Seriously, it's so much better now. Thanks Ladies, great save!

This is my favorite scarf to date. It's knit with a yarn called Knit One-Crochet Too Cotton Ty-Dy. The lacy stitch makes and cotton yarn makes for the perfect CA scarf. LOVE IT!!

And here's a close up of the lovely lacy stitch. Another new knitting adventure!

The last post showed the orchid that was in the exhibit room. These are photos of MY actual plant. I absolutely love the visual texture! Isn't it gorgeous?

You're probably sick of reading about flowers and scarves by now. Next post will be about quilting, I promise!