In the spirit or not?

Yesterday, totally not in the spirit of the "7 days" challenge, I went shopping.

But... yes you knew there would be one of these didn't you ... I'm going to claim that I didn't violate the spirit of my commitment. Part of the shopping was to increase my likelihood of sucess with the Victory Garden challenge. You give a little, you get a little (or maybe in this case "you get a little and you give (in) a little").

Yesterday, S and I wandered over to our regional nursery chain (not exactly a L(plant)S, but close) and checked out the veggies. We are so on our way to having that square foot garden. We found peppers and tomatoes and butternut squash and corn (and something else I can't remember right now). We also went by a national chain to look at lumber to build our raised beds. We didn't buy any lumber or plants there but they had onions and eggplant and cauliflower and all kinds of fun stuff (unfortunately their plants looked a little worse for wear so even though we might have been tempted to buy veggies there, we didn't).

Last night my square foot garden book arrived and I spent time before bed reading up on the idea and plotting my veggie harvest. This is very exciting. I think we plan to build the boxes (our plan is for 48 square feet of garden) on Saturday and to slowly start to fill them up. Next shopping trip, lumber and soil constituents (vermiculite, compost, and peat moss)!

Now if that was my only shopping I might try to argue that I didn't fall out of my "7 day" compact (after all veggie plants are practically food... just in the baby stages right?), but that is not where I stretched the limits. You saw the photo up top didn't you? Yep, I found some fabric to line my doctor's bag with. Now to defend myself, I did call an exception for this when I signed up for the challenge and I did go to my local goodwill first to see if I could find something "used" to work first. Of course, despite all that, I did put something new "in my cart" -- well I didn't actually use a cart, does that mean it doesn't count either [snort].

Now about this fabric, this fabulous fabric, this is more boisterous than anything I own currently. Crazy hmm? Given that it will be the inside of the bag, I am very excited about it. It should provide quite a bit of cheer when in use. I'm still just 30 rows away from knitting the body ... all this reading and garden planning is really cutting into my knitting time (not to mention my blog reading... I think it's become an addiction). Soon it will be done though. Then I'll need to block, cut lining, sew lining, and do some finishing work.

I've never looked forward to finishing work so much. Get a thermometer ... I must be sick!

Oh... and guess what I picked up from the library today-- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle -- more fabulous reading on sustainability... maybe I won't be finishing that bag all that soon after all [laugh].