the new pillowcases

I finished a little segment of the new pillowcases last night:



These will give me a chance to practice the "loop stitch," a/k/a lazy daisy stitch, which I don't use a whole lot and am not very good at doing consistently well. (The flower "petals" and the leaves are loop stitches). You do it by poking up at the "point" of the loop, going back down right next to that, and then making a small "catch stitch" at the rounded end of the loop. If you do it right, you get a teardrop shape. But it's harder to get the stitch "right" than a plain backstitch or a French knot (at least, for me, it is).

I'm using different colors than what the manufacturer specified here - partly because I just wanted to use colors I had on hand rather than making another trek out to buy more floss.

***

And giant ragweed is indeed giant. It's a different species from the common ragweed and it actually looks quite different. Common ragweed is Ambrosia artemisiifolia, this one is Ambrosia trifida (USDA "Plants" page profile here). It has a three-pronged leaf, rather than the finely-divided leaf of common ragweed.

(Actually, I wonder if the "triffid" name from Day of the Triffids could have come from this plant's scientific name)

Funny story: a friend of my mother's, when I was growing up, had a problem with it growing in her yard. She tried to keep it chopped back but one summer she was extra busy with stuff and didn't get to it right away. She came home from the store one day to find the local police scoping out her yard. Apparently someone had seen the plants and reported her for growing marijuana. I can't remember if the cops thought the giant ragweed actually was pot, or if they were just nonplussed because they had this call they had to check out, and they couldn't find the plants the complainant was talking about. (I do know my sister-in-law, while she was doing her State Bureau of Investigations training, had to grow marijuana from seed so she could learn to identify what it looked like in different stages of growth, though I don't know if a general police-officer - as opposed to someone who actually analyses drug evidence for a living - would have learned that).