Best.Investment.Ever

So this week alone I've had the following items through my sewing machine: 2 quilts (or parts thereof), a fabric lunchbag, landscape fabric for potato growing bags, tyvek mailing envelopes for topsy-turvy tomato growing bags, elastic and polarfleece for pirate eye patches, and a repurposed dryer sheet for a lavender sachet. So what are YOU sewing on???

It's Tomato Planting time again - GIVEAWAY

Remember my topsy turvy tyvek tomato bags??  Well - it was time to make some more...  and I got a bit carried away and made LOTS.

I will be planting a few (ok - more than a few) around here - but thought I would have a fun little giveaway.  I will give away at least three bags - one each to three lucky gardeners (may be more if I don't use all I have made)

To enter - answer the following question:
What is the most unusual thing growing in your garden (vegetable or otherwise) right now?

Please be sure to give me a way to contact you - "no reply" entries will be discarded.

Happy gardening!

 

I'll put ANYONE to work

So Jill is here visiting - and after spending Friday chatting and shop hopping with Shellie and doing a bit of sewing - I broke down her guard...

And on Saturday I had her out in the garden - working on the addition to my veggie beds.

Smothering the space between the tree and the garden.

Now I have been smothering the grass in the area around my existing veggie beds (6 raised boxes) for a while -with tarps and cardboard.  I needed more boxes since we were expanding our rhubarb from one box to two, and since I added Jerusalem Artichokes into the mix as well.

Newly divided and transplanted rhubarb.

The grass smothering was something of an adventure.  I should have started that last fall when I first concocted this hairbrained plan - but I didn't, so the grass was already up and growing before I covered it.  The cardboard worked well for this project - the tarp not so much. Imagine my surprise to find that not only was the grass underneath the tarp as green as what was around it, but that it had grown and the dandelions had even bloomed and gone to seed underneath!   As much as I try to avoid chemical use - I attacked with the round up and soon had it under control.

So we finally had a weekend that Hubby and I were both ready to get these beds in place - the weather was good, and we had Jill as extra labor.  I was afraid if we waited much longer, the water on the tarp would be a mosquito breeding ground - plus I need to get soil into these boxes so I can get my summer squashes and pumpkins and a few other things planted for the season.

For someone allergic to grass clippings (Hubby had just mowed the lawn) and some of the other pollens floating around the yard - Jill was a real trooper and a huge help.  It was also a bit hot and humid - and our new A/C got quite the workout. 

But it looks AWESOME!!!!

View from upstairs - the grass is dead!!!

After putting down landscaping fabric and mulch around newly built planter boxes.  The cardboard is in the boxes until we can dig out the rest of the dead grass and add our topsoil in.

So what was 6 is now 9 - with a container of potatoes growing in the foreground.

LEGO rules!!!

In my house - in addition to all the quilting and sewing and cooking and gardening that happens - there is also a lot of LEGOing (it's a word - right?)... Munchkin was introduced to LEGO at an early age and has quickly added many new sets and bricks and minifigs to the sets he "inherited" from his parents.

Other members of my family are also LEGO fiends - and my brother Bill shared this set with me today:

(Lots of other great detail photos on the site so click through to the link.)

So he has a little bit of bias and good reason to share this - he is Adafruit Support for this company - and was told the following:

“please get everyone know to do the same. this is a good use of social networks - an adafruit workshop inspiring young kids to share this electronic maker adventure is wonderful goal.

 plus you'll all get LEGO versions of yourselves if we get this.”

Regardless of his connection - I think this is a cool set for so many reasons!  It shows a really cool, very realistic tech setup with a great female role model for those who like technology and science.  It's cool for girls AND boys AND parents.

So the way this works is if 10,000 people support this model, LEGO will review it and potentiallly put it out as an available set.

What do you say ?  I know there are some LEGO loving bloggers/quilters/crafters/gardeners/people out there...  help spread the word.

Here's the link:  http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/17491
 
Lots of other great LEGO ideas out there - you do need to register with the site to vote, but it's easy!

I'm here... I'm here...

Sorry about that... I AM here, I AM sewing and gardening and doing SOME things that are worth writing about... I just haven't been writing...

I DO need to clean off the memory card on my camera - i discovered the other day that i have 43 photos left to be able to take... WOW!  I have not cleared the card since last year... not good!

So - on the sewing front I have nearly completed the quilt I was working on HERE,  and finally tackled a "bargello" kit that was supposed to be a graduation quilt for LAST June.  What happened?  Well - the kit came with 2 1/2" strips, and instead of following my instinct to use one of the tutorials for strip pieced bargellos, I followed the pattern that came with the kit - cutting ALL the strips into MANY MANY 2 1/2" squares.  Then I got so muddled on how they wanted me to reassemble them that I put it aside... way way aside.

I finally got up the gumption to tackle it -and do it MY way - which was sewing 37 squares into 31 identical strips, then sewing those into loops and unstitching them as needed to create the "wave".  It's been slow and steady, but I have about 4 seams left and the entire top will be assembled.

My goal is to send it back with Jill at the end of her visit (she will be here in FOUR days!!!!!! and stay for FOUR days!!!!  so excited) - and then Jill can work her quilty magic on it and I can finally gift it to the graduate.

Plugging away on the gardening - there is still over a yard of mulch yet to be moved, but the spring planting has begun - lettuce is in, rhubarb is divided, a blueberry bush is planted, some lawn has been eliminated and a few other things have been moved around.  Once that camera card is clear I will have to go up to the attic and take some pictures from that window so you can get a birds eye view of the whole thing.

Just don't hold your breath waiting on the post - it may be a while!  :-)

Quilts in Progress

During FNSI and today, I worked on my version of this quilt.  The picture is the version from the quilt pattern -but other than the color brown for the sashing, nothing in mine is the same.

Mine is bigger (generous lap size)
Mine will have wide borders (again - needs to be generous lap size)
Mine is not flannel

I can't show the fabrics because I don't have any pictures and can't find it online - it was a bunch of "charm squares" that I purchased from a major chain fabric store - and I found yardage at another major chain fabric store -but neither has them online.

Think brown, tan, teal, aqua, and shades of orange.


 

Dirty Tales 2012 - the season begins

It is a new gardening season - after a very strange winter.  On the first of March, I was outside in shorts and able to do a lot of cleanup work.  Then we had snow on the 30th.  Then shorts weather again - then a hard freeze.  Luckily it looks like nothing major got nipped -but I don't know what the raspberries may do.  They are my only fruiting plants to worry about.

This year's plans include some veggies, some new perennials, some moving plants around, and a LOT of mulch.  We took last year off and did not mulch, and lost a bit to the post-reroof cleanup, so I just placed an order for EIGHT yards!!!

I've also set to work on reducing the size of our yard  - by adding 3 more 4x4 raised beds and the path between and around them.  The space is currently tarped in an effort to kill off some of the grass and weeds beneath before we start digging.  I've also got some "hardscaping" in mind with a trellis fence project.  Our front porch is rotted out, so redecking that is also in the plans.

It's looking to be a busy time, but enjoyable!!

 

So Go Sew!!!

Too many evenings of late when I have not made it into the sewing room. Boys are playing Wii - I am heading upstairs.