13 posts tagged “sewing”
Christmas? I guess? I think I'm done Christmas shopping, which is good, since I hate Christmas shopping. I love giving gifts, but I hate crowds and shopping and the mall, and we have no money. So, I didn't do too much buying this year. I am not yet, however, done making Christmas gifts, as that is what most people on our list are getting. And this weekend is the last chance I'm going to get to get stuff done, so the sewing machine is humming.
As usual, my niece makes out like a bandit. I made a frilly flannel Xmas dress for her, and a cape. A little red riding hood cape. Only pink and fleece, which I figure will be practical in New England.
And a fancy schmancy button...
And little arm holes....
In the meantime, I've been working my way through the black and white pictures from the Xmas burlesque show. Should have them all up soon....
Last week I finished up a baby quilt for a friend who just had her first child...
I included some fabric with space aliens on it :)
In the meantime, just back from more work travel, and am ready to not travel anymore.... though there isn't a reprieve coming any time soon (like January, I think). That said, I'm pretty happy to have moved into late October without having caught swine flu at any of the schools I've thus far visited.....
The last few weeks have been crazy busy-- lots of stuff going on, including my hitting the road for work once again. Just got back last night from my first multi-day out-- the first of many to come. In the midst of all of that we had to say au revoir to our dear friend Carrie.
I've been busy making stuff, too....
And we took in what is prolly the last harvest of the year. (I had planted peas for fall, but the bunny ate all the sprouts, so no peas for us :( )
Tomatillos and sweet red peppers...
And hot peppers. I put them all together for dinner the other night....
Tomatillo and Corn soup with sweet red peppers (and a few hot ones, too). Delicious!
In the meantime, Mr. P has been busy building a person out of wood. :)
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. :)
For a lot of friends much of the change coming is going to be in the form of diapers. A significant number of dear friends are busy doing what my dear friend the Fabulous Mrs. A (due in May, incidentally) calls sprogifying.
So I've been busily making baby quilts for everyone and their expanding families.
In the meantime, big doins this week for the country, no? Makes me wish I was still living in the District. It would be great to be able to go down to the mall, see the festivities and then skip the Foggy Bottom metro station (which sounds like it was a disaster yesterday) and walk home. Weirdly, I have to be in Northern VA this week for work, so I'll be closer to the District tomorrow, but not early enough in the day to contemplate watching the inauguration anywhere but on TV. It's kind of wild knowing that we're all watching history.
