Curtains up and Farm Mat Progress

The curtain rod arrived yesterday, and we got the valence installed in the kitchen this evening. It looks nice, but the main thing is we won't see so much of our neighbor's junk now. The land goes up just outside the window, and their stuff towers over the fence. They store this stuff, supposedly "hidden away from view"; only we can see it. The valence should obscure it nicely.

I made a little progress on the Farm Play Mat, actually more than it shows since I had to start over. I made a mistake, and it is nearly impossible to recover from mistakes with this stitch. You knit into the back of a stitch on each row, which puts funny twists in the yarn, which fall apart when they come off the needle. It was much simpler to just start over.
I like the pattern though, and the stitch goes fairly rapidly, even though I'm being much more careful now. I think it looks like another plowed field. 8)