Some pictures:

This is the Lion Suede shawl-thing, at least as far as I've got on it:



I don't know why it seems to glow a bit in the picture, I guess the yarn caught the flash funny.

And this is the hat for the Dulaan box:



It's quite stretchy - I originally planned it for a child but I think it would also fit an adult.

Neither of those were worked on yesterday; what little free time I had was devoted to trying out the new tiller. A couple of impressions of the Mantis tiller:

It's very loud, even with ear protection. I'd've been hurting if I didn't wear ear protection. Also, even though it's touted as The Tiller Anyone Can Use! it's really actually kind of an effort. I am not (as you will know if you've seen my pictures here on the blog) a small woman, and I am NOT a weakling (I have lifted and carried 60 pound sacks of sand up flights of stairs). But the tiller was almost more than I could control - I'm not sure someone smaller or weaker than I could work with it very well. The thing, at least on my soil, bucks like an angry kangaroo. And another thing - although this would probably be true of any tiller - it kept getting tangled in tree-roots and also the tillers of the St. Augustine grass would wrap themselves around the tines, requiring me to turn the thing off, remove the tines, unwrap all the tillers from the tines, put them back on, and restart the machine. (Supposedly the tines will not turn, even if the motor is on, if you're not pressing down a lever on the handle, but I didn't risk it. I kind of like having ten fingers, you know?). At one point I lost one of the clips that held the tines on and I had to make a new one out of some baling wire I had in the garage. I'd call the company and request a new clip or two (Really, they should send a baggy of them with the tiller, seeing as you're taking the tines ON and OFF repeatedly when breaking new ground), but one thing the Mantis company apparently learned from the makers of "Barbie" and the old, original G.I. Joes is the phrase "accessories sold separately." I'm serious - there are tons of things you can buy to kit this thing out, and they're all like $29.95 or $39.95 extra. So I'd not be surprised to be told I can buy a special "Hey, idiot, you dropped the lynchpin" kit for $8.95 or something. I suppose I can take the remaining clip to the hardware store and see if they can replace it. Or just buy more baling wire.

I'm not knocking it TOO much, and I'm not going to send it back. It's just, I guess I had sort of hoped that this tool was going to be Why Didn't I Buy This Three Years Ago good, and it isn't quite THAT good. I'm going to have to go out, I think, and rake up all the chopped bits of St. Augustine, then get some topsoil, then get the tiller out again and try to incorporate it. Maybe it works a lot better on already-tilled ground, and tilling for the first time (or tilling over ground you've only hoed up) is harder.

Heh. I just realized I used the word "tiller" for two different things. The tiller is the machine, and the tillers that got wrapped around it are the long creeping stem things that the grass uses to reproduce vegetatively.