13 posts tagged “crafty”
Sooooo, last week was a bit of a whirlwind-- a very very full workweek, including several days out and about in the state, followed up by seeing the parents in DC and doing one of my shifts at Artomatic. Which would have all been quite a bit to start with, but when my usual two hour drive to DC turned into a five hour odyssey on the way up and a four hour one on the way back, it really put a capper on a very long week. Which is why I'm trying to think about my garden and stuff instead....
I've also been working on some hats as well-- these are meant for wee heads.....
Lastly, I finished up something that I've been making for a friend... the theme is very much up her alley....
Hope she likes it!
So, I've been working on a few projects lately... including a few things that I'm contemplating putting on Etsy. I'd love feedback-- do these look like something you'd be interested in?
I've been experimenting with some placemats:
Sadly, yes. Many of the things I planted in containers this year are either a) dying or b) failing to thrive. It is a sad sad story, which I am rather upset about. Suggestions from gardening forums have included: 1) overwatering; 2) underwatering; 3) bad soil; 4) bad plants; 5) bugs; 6) not enough fertilizer; and my favorite, 7) gardening is often frustrating, so try again next year.
For the second year in a row, plants in the garden have failed to hit full growing steam prior to the heat wave, which seems to stunt certain things. I planted a full month earlier this year in response to this problem last year. And what happens? The brussel sprouts very excitedly began to finally grow last week. Today it was 94 degrees and they are looking all wilting.
Much more worrisome is that I have not seen a single bee-- honey, bumble, what have you-- since April. The peas are finally coming into their own, as are some of the tomatoes, and all of those flowers are going unpollinated. No bees, and not even really any butterflies. Nor hummingbirds. And I don't have the time to perform plant sex activities on these things. So we may not get much in the way of food this year.
On the upside, we did manage to have one salad out of the garden last week.
I also ended up making another container using the same materials and colors, although I added some handles to that one....
Finally, I experimented a little with some scrap fabric that I have had around, literally, for years. It's actually scraps going back to my first attempts at sewing a quilt, which I did my first year at grad school, now more than a decade ago. (I thought it might relieve some of the stress of grad school. It might have done, if I hadn't skipped the part where you take a class or at least read a book. Instead, I just bought a bunch of fabric, cut it up, and started sewing it all together. I still have some of the blocks, and it isn't as bad as that sounds like it should be. Although it's probably okay that I never quite finished that project). In any case, I used the scraps to make an oval shaped vessel, and to try out making a lid.....
I was in town this week-- a whole week!-- which means that I got done things at work that don't get done when I'm away. I didn't quite get to things at home, so of course the house is still a mess and the bills are still in a pile on my desk, waiting to be paid. Blerg. But, on the upside, I did manage to finish the most pressing issues at work, including putting together two public talks on two unrelated topics and then giving both of them, in front of people and stuff. Which isn't that big of a deal (I've never had a problem with public speaking), except that I had to give them on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, and on Monday had nothing prepped except for some research on one of the topics and an idea about what to say. On the upside, the talk on the topic that is nothing I really know much about was short. On the even more upside, the long talk was on Cambodia, which is what I wrote my dissertation about. (Not the same topic exactly, but the talk was more or less all the background stuff I needed to know to start doing dissertation research, so stuff I know pretty well).
Even better, my travel time for a while is winding down. A bit more through June, and then I should be in town the majority of the time. Whoo-hoo!
We've been getting a lot of rain lately, which is advantageous in some ways, however, the way our house is situated and all the trees in our yard (which I am not complaining about) mean that the garden gets precious little sunlight as it is. Part of it gets about six hours a day, part of it gets more like five. It seems like most vegetables want six plus, so we'll see how this goes. With all the rain they've been getting more like negative two, which might explain why all the peppers look so sad and stunted. At least that's what I tell myself. We went for an evening stroll a few days ago around the 'hood and there were a whole bunch of pots in front of one house, each one with giant tomato and cucumber plants crawling up through tomato cages. These pots were under large trees where I know they weren't getting any full sun eight hours a day, but they were huge, and I was so jealous. SIGH.
The one thing that is growing full bore in the garden is bugs. Chewing, chomping, seedling mowing down bugs. So far I have found earwigs chomping on a sunflower seedling (and more scuttling around everywhere, including our mailbox), slugs chomping on another sunflower seedling, and have lost all of the bok choy, spinach, some beans, and some romanesco seedlings to cutworms. I also have birds doing damage, and squirrels and chipmunks digging things up. In fact, we had a chipmunk emergency yesterday. In an attempt to get strawberries from the strawberry plants this year, I covered them with bird netting (birds had already gone wild and ripped apart about half of the green fruits). I was weeding yesterday and moved over to the strawberry patch where I saw something moving. I moved aside some leaves and there was a chipmunk. But he wasn't going anywhere... I looked and he had one of his back legs caught in the netting. I'd freaked him out by coming over to the patch where he'd been eating one of my strawberries (I found the gnawed fruit later) and had gotten himself tangled in his attempt to escape. Phil managed to get him out, cutting through some of the netting. Poor little guy (though he shouldn't have been eating my strawberries, damnit).
I finally managed to finish the top of this quilt. I really like the way the diamond and diamond + sashing quilts look, but boy howdy are they a pain in the butt. I have the *worst* time trying to get things to line up.This one just goes into the pile of quilt tops awaiting quilting (which I don't like as much as the piecing, and thus tend to avoid, which is why there are three tops waiting at the mo).
I also took a short class to learn how to make containers.
It was pretty fun, though something of real size would probably take quite a while (I did, however, learn a really need trick for making bias tape).
I also got to use one of the shop's machines, which was a bit of a revelation. My machine is about a half step up from a treddle machine. Actually, it's more or less an electrified treddle machine-- options are limited on what it can do, and there's a lot of manual actions involved. The shop's machine, however, was all kinds of fancy schmancy. It was interesting using a much more upscale piece of equipment than I have. (And also a little intimidating. I wasn't sure I was every going to figure out how to thread the thing, or to wind the bobbin).
Which was more or less what I did this weekend... and now I'm sooooo sore. We have some things blooming, which is nice. Especially considering that the squirrels and chipmunks dug up all the new bulbs I put in for the spring.
On the upside, one of our predecessors planted some bulbs that have continued to bloom (and a whole lot that have stopped blooming-- I have bazillions of non-blooming irises all over the yard. Lots of leaves, no flowers). So we have a few pretty things popping up around the house. But only a few so far...
I did some soil testing this weekend, confirming that yes, our clayey soil really is acidic. Shrug. It's pretty much what I thought, and the soil is so clumpy and clayey that I've needed to add to it just to be able to work it at all, but I guess confirmation is good. Also, it means that I'll go easier on the pine bark in the pit when I finally plant that rhodedendron that I picked up at the nursery to replace the one that the retarded squirrel killed.
Soil tested, I prepped the garden and planted the early stuff now that we should (I hope) be past having hard frosts. Radishes and lettuce and some more brussel sprout seeds to keep the ones that resprouted company.
I had a couple of little lettuce sprouts pop up as well-- black seeded, from last year, that must have self-sedded. I'm also trying soaker hoses this year, as watering was an issue last year.
P went at the space next to the garden with the tiller that his father gave us last year, so the garden has doubled in size-- whoo-hoo! I'm holding off on planting the second bed until it gets a bit warmer, as most of the other stuff I'm planning for the year want warmer feet. I'm also going to try to do some raised beds-- one I got on sale, and the other one I'm making out of bottles as per a suggestion in an organic gardening magazine. Recycling good, right? Of course, I ran out of dirt, as P thought I would, and had to stop part way through the process.
I'm actually in town this week, which is exciting. Especially since I'm going the two weeks after, solid, and almost half of May to boot.
But not exactly warm yet...
Also-- this is awesome. :)
So, on Monday, we got a snow day.
Anyhoodle, in these parts, this is like Armageddon. As a result, I got the day off. wheeeeeeee! I spent the day doing crafty stuff and laundry, which was very good, as I've been home so little lately that we were out of clean clothes. Schools around here were canceled for two days-- and in some places three days. Let me repeat that-- seven inches of snow in central VA = three days of no school. In Massachusetts 7 inches wouldn't have gotten you a two hour delay. I have one word, people: WIMPS. All right, all right. I admit, part of the problem is that there are like two plows for the whole area. They never did plow our neighborhood. We have a sharp hill of a driveway, and then a hill to go up to get out of the 'hood, and we spent Monday watching idiots slipping and sliding up and down that hill, almost losing it in the lady across the street's yard more than once. Also, people around here apparently believe that the best way to deal with packed snow over ice while in a vehicle is to race over it at quickly as possible. SIGH.
Now, this is the first real winter weather we had this season. Today, this is being wiped clean with predictions of temps this afternoon in the high 70s. It's meant to hit 80 tomorrow. From 9 degrees to 79 degrees in three days. The snow is gone, all melted.
WEIRD.
I can't decide whether I should do anything in the yard or not. I almost did last weekend... and then was glad I never got around to it with the snow. Maybe I should just take a nap.
Also, I get to go back out to the boonies all next week for work. Oh, joy!
Mostly because we gots no monies this year. Soooooo.... well, everyone's getting something I made. There are a whole lot of homemade cookies currently in circulation as last weekend was the great bakefest of a low bank balance Christmas. (I'm bringing some home, too, Mom, so don't bother baking anything!) The last couple of months have also been chock full of craftiness, with my niece coming in as the winner. She's getting a dress I made earlier in the year (hope it fits!), and a Princess Quilt:
It being a crafty Christmas, I thought I'd deal with our lack of stockings for Santa:
Everything is packed up and ready to go... we're heading for Massachusetts tomorrow (assuming-- ha!-- that we don't get stuck at the airport like everybody else in the country, apparently. I went to the library yesterday to stock up on books to read while waiting for our plane to show up). Hope it won't be toooo long of a wait....
Okay, trying not to think about my retirement account, because that would just be depressing. Sooo, I'm going to think about my garden, which may be the only place we're getting produce in the coming year.
***
We've also got bean coming in.
I've also been sewing, as it's become obvious that no one is getting a gift for xmas unless I can make it, as we were white knuckle broke, before the melt down.
We've also had some rain lately, which has made the zinnias in the front yard, heretofore rather unhappy about being here, very happy indeed.
Well except that people keep sending me links to those Katy Couric interviews with Miss Thing. And, uhm, she can't name a single news publication in this country where she might have gotten some of her, ahem, foreign policy information. Not one. She couldn't even conjure up a name, like, say, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times.... I mean, I get being busy-- jeez, I'm crazy busy but I still skim the headlines of the NY Times, the WaPo, and the Guardian of London every day. Sometimes I take a peek at Le Monde, cause, hey, good to know what other countries are paying attention to.... I don't read everything in them, but I certainly know what their names are. Do you get the sense that she was hog tied by not knowing exactly who the ideologically correct media outlets approved officially by the politbureau were? (Pssst, try the Washington Times-- aka the Moonie News-- and the National Review. Say you read news on Fox's website, as it is the media branch of the politbureau). Or perhaps (and this is just mind blowing) that she just doesn't read anything or pay that much attention. I know it's tough to fit in world affairs between aerial wolf hunting sessions, but hey.... (which, as she has time for that pasttime, one would think she could fit in a little headline skimming). Oh, and if I hear one more time about Todd and his crazy snowmobiling, I AM going to throw up.
It's funny, when you're a kid you're all kinds of excited when your birthday comes... and then you get older and it kind of sucks. So yeah.... my birthday.... again....
But I got an awesome gift (as always) from my dearest P...
Coooooooool, yes?
