Garden Seeds Ordered

I've ordered my seeds for this coming year's gardening, have you? The seed catalogs start coming in for the new year and every January I love planning my garden. I evaluate past years' gardening. With my short, cool growing conditions, Johnny's Seeds, in Maine, develops seeds that produce well for me. I have garden drawings and notes going back over many years (this is the longest I've ever, in my lifetime, lived in one home - wow ... twenty-six years!). Every year there's things I tell myself to never waste my time on again!



Speaking of Johnny's Seeds ... In Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Johnny's is mentioned amongst many others as having seeds from Monsanto. When you do the research you find that Johnny's is owned by the employees and any seeds that had been used from a source that got sold to Monsanto are being phased out.



I'll be starting seeds in the greenhouse pretty soon. This winter I've successfully got lettuces, green onions, and herbs still growing. A fig tree is looking beautiful and tomatoes are setting fruit! I'm going to have to vacuum the brown grapevine leaves, as it'll be putting out new growth soon. We froze most of the grapes, but left some to dry as raisins, and guests love finding them and eating!



Speaking of guests, it's been another week of men underfoot! - geology related. Rick's an investor, owning coffee shops in California, but I'm not letting him make me coffee any more! He uses three to four times more coffee grounds than me - I buy them freshly roasted at my local store - I thought I had enough for a month! His coffee keeps me awake all night!!! No wonder he's a bundle of energy!



They all left for the airport an hour ago. One to Virginia, another on to Vancouver, and Rick back to California. We had Italian Monday night with spreading pesto on chicken breasts and rolling them with prosciutto - I thought them too dry and salty. Tuesday lunch was a potato leek soup with Kielbasa; supper, lasagna. Sourdough pancakes were served for a breakfast with raspberries from our garden (in the freezer) and homemade yogurt, - and since I make extra, liking them as a snack with almond butter and raspberry jam, they ended up sticking them in the toaster for another breakfast. Then of course there's always my homemade bread. I wasn't going to be around, and them doing other things off and on for two days, so the lasanga and soup were great for them to have leftover. Today's lunch was fish tacos. I marinated mahi-mahi in 1/2 cup each Tequila and lime juice with some chili powder, sugar and salt - then smoked/grilled it.



My food and our hospitality is greatly appreciated and even with winter's garden dormancy, the beautiful rock garden walls, fencing, bamboo ornamentation and dried stalks all add to our home's wonderful retreat atmosphere where people like to hang-out. Again, our wonderful Velveteen House!

Dieting

Every January 1st you hear people talking about, "I ate too much over the Holidays", and it's time for New Year Resolutions which always seem to include eating better, exercising, and maybe dieting. I'm never too much overweight, but I'll put on some extra fat and sometimes my metabolism is sluggish, even tho I'm doing a lot. Like I always figure I'll lose over the gardening season when I'm way more active ... 

I'll occasionally walk, lift weights, do the treadmill ... but I'm not regular at anything, and traveling and company disrupts me totally! and that's the story of my life!! My friend Marty though, kept raving about T-Tapp exercising, "And only 15 minutes a day!!" Now that's something I COULD do! The problem with me is I've got so many things I'm wanting to do in my day, that an hour of exercising is not what I want to do. I checked into T-Tapp. And I'm regularly doing it. If it keeps me firmed up and it's something that I'll regularly do, cuz it's easy, then it's better than nothing! I like her 'hit the floor' exercise DVD too.

Good recipes ideas when attempting a diet are a must! Probably about twelve years ago my mom gave me the book "Protein Power" saying it's like the Atkins diet idea. I read it to understand the philosophy. I found a great cookbook that followed the low carb idea and that book is still a favorite of mine - The Low-Carb Cookbook, by Fran McCullough.  It, and that whole diet idea, helped me love veggies. I'd never been a veggie lover, and preferred the starchy veggies over others. When pregnant with my youngest I started enjoying salads. Then when trying the low-carb dieting idea, I fell in love with veggies. Rather than focusing on protein, I still to this day focus on veggies, and a lot of them in a raw salad form.

When you read the T-Tapp literature (Teresa Tapp), she talks about a God-made, Man-Made food plan - several days of God-made foods with a one day man-made food day in between. So 2-3 days of whole natural foods then an allowable one day of processed, preservative laden, fast-foods eating day. When you think of it, most diet and vegetarian foods are processed. I cook from scratch so I have control over my ingredients. I now think nutritive, phytochemical rich food.

So ... when making food choices, think simple (like few listed ingredients rather than the typical 30+!) and whole, close to the way God made it. And think COLOR - a wide variety!!!

Dyed Christmas Gifts

Everyone is starting to expect gifts of dyed shirts with matching bamboo socks all the time. I did it again this Christmas. Last Christmas, besides the shirts and socks, everyone got a tie dyed apron. This year besides the shirts and socks, all the couples got a Bidet! For the Grandsons I dyed shirts, and warm rompers, matching bamboo socks, and then some hats. I was going to dye ties for the guys, as the girls got machine felted polar fleece purses - but I didn't get to them. I'm feeling a little daunted with silk ties, but will do them eventually.

The munchkin hats are adorable!

Hand-dyed had from Dharma Trading Company

December Color/Design Challenge

"TEMPERATURE" was the next classes' challenge. Heather Thomas said, "we want to feel either hot or cold when we view your piece!" Visual temperature is controlled by color. The color wheel can be divided in two halves, one warm and one cold. The cold colors tend to recede behind warm colors. Red-violet, red, yellow-green, and green are temperature neutral colors, tending to behave like their neighbors. Adding black to colors warms them. Adding white actually cools colors down. Colors have moods.

I initially printed some of Dawson's photos and photo-image-transferred a white deer with it snowing. I heavily thread painted it and it puckered. My teacher of the class, Heather, said, "when I'm going to stitch the hell out of something, I print two, cut out the heavily stitched image and attach it to the background." I still need to do that and finish it. I want to frame it and give it to Dawson.

What I did was look thru all my stash of material and lots of unfinished stuff. I chose a weaving project I did, feeling it cold. I'd previously knit and felted a black bag I didn't like cuz lint and stuff showed too much. So I attached my woven piece to the purse. I also looked thru my stash of trims and ribbons, hoping for something to embellish the purse. I found some daisy trim that could have come from my Grandmother. Over the years I've collected lots of trims and buttons from yard sales. Sometimes at a second-hand store I'll buy a shirt for it's buttons if they're cool. Then I found some coordinating material for lining and making some buttons. I wanted a brighter lining material as I've found it's hard to find things in a dark bag!

Felted purse with attached hand-weaving, trim, and homemade buttons

Knitted Dishcloths

Knit Dishcloth - a pattern from an old-timer's homestead home

In the wool felt over homemade soap bars post, I mentioned I knit round dishcloths, and the need to post a picture. So I took a picture this morning of my current knitting. An artist friend is having an ongoing open house for a week for gift shopping from a variety of artists. I've given her the felted soap bars and dishcloths, felted purses, ornaments, necklace earring sets, and tie-dye shirt sock set (I've posted about all these but the felted necklaces).

I usually use size 10 short wood needles

YEARS ago while visiting Monte's parents in Wisconsin we were in the home of one of their friends. These people, folks, were old-timers living on their homesteaded land, having come from Sweden. Much of Monte's relations still live on their homesteads and we've been handed down some of this land (I don't know if we'd ever live there! ... ). I might have been knitting something  while visiting (I've always got a knitting project along where ever I go, from small to large). Myrtle pulled out an old sheet of yellowed paper with faded scrawled handwriting for the knitted round dishcloths that I've now been knitting all these years and giving away as we visit people, and selling. The pattern is ingrained in my brain (as well as the socks I'm forever knitting).

Laid on napkin so you can see the BO3s and YO pattern

The circle is made up of 7 triangles. Starting with 15 cast-on stitches, and always knitting (no purl). It's always K3, yarn over, for the 'hole' pattern - then knit 11 and back. Once three of these are done you bind off three and begin next third of K3, YO, K8 three times. Bind off three. Last third is K3, YO, K5. Bind off three, K to end and back and start over with next triangle made up of threes from the 11 to 8 to 5. Leave a tail and whip stitch circle closed, closing center circle too.

Cotton is so absorbent and they are my favorite kitchen washcloths. Sometimes I've used the cotton yarn varied colors to dictate cotton thread colors for weaving matching dishtowels. I've got some, in a very absorbent honeycomb pattern on one of my looms now. Should finish them.

Occasionally I stick my wet dishcloths in the microwave - on high for 3 minutes - to disinfect them of any bacteria build-up. But DO regularly change out your washcloths, towels and sponges - like every couple days, depending on your usage.

Needle-Felted Christmas Wreath, etc.

WOW!!! I've not posted in a long time. But I've been busy and taken pictures of lots of doings, so I'm going to back-date posts from here for catching up with projects closer to their date. For awhile there was lots of garden/yard clean-up as Fall carried on with a longer growing season before frosting out. And I've now got tomatoes, lettuce varieties, radishes, beets, carrots, green onions, herbs and snow peas growing in the greenhouse that's connected to the house.

We have XM Serious Radio in our house (alone - we don't have Dish or Direct TV - only Satellite radio) and I'm currently listening to Christmas Classics as I'm typing this post on my Macintosh computer, eating a Macintosh apple.

The MOPS group of which I've been a Mentor Mom for ten years had it's Christmas Brunch fundraiser yesterday. I dyed some long-sleeve T-shirts with matching bamboo socks for it. I also made a Needle-felted wreath - all a part of an auction. Now I need to make a felt wreath for ME!

The wreath is about 12" made over a styrofoam wreath form. I've found needle felting over foam does not work on the smooth foam. I learned that last Easter when I did some egg shapes. I made some ornaments I'm back posting about, and going to make more.

At my weaving guild once a year is a large sale and I pick up varieties of wools. What I used for covering the styrofoam was some junky dyed green wool - still with lanolin that's gone sticky and I'm betting dyed with Koolaid - well I'm finally putting it to use. Then I wrapped it with some yarn. I separately needled the leaves and then needled them onto the wreath. I wet felted the berries quickly with bar soap and my hands standing at the sink, squeezed them out in a towel, and almost immediately glue-gunned them onto the wreath, straight pinning thru some. (Running out of time ... last minute stuff.)

Homemade Soap with Wool Felted Over

These are called several things - like even "wash cloth covered soap".

I make homemade soap every year (I need to make more soon) for our bath/shower/hand washing needs. I even make a shampoo bar soap too. I've not bought soap in years, nor shampoo. I could use it for laundry too, but don't. (I even make my own face lotion.)

I used older leftover soap for these felted soap bars. I knit circular washcloths (most people use them as doilies)(I need to take a picture of them) and chose colors of wool that would coordinate. I wrapped wool tightly around the soap, dipped it into a basin of hot water I'd put Dawn dish soap in. I had a sandwich plastic bag for initially rubbing the wool covered soap in - it sticks to the hands too much until it starts felting. I have a handmade bar of goat soap at the sink and would add it to my hands for further felting of the bars, adding more hot water to my hands. Using the sandwich bag for rubbing all around the soap works great!

GrandKiddos

Emery and Bea awaiting Mom's return home!

I've been getting pics emailed me from my kids of their kids and wanting to get them off my desktop and posted.

A year ago on my old blog, Karey's Contemplations, I'd written of being often in Wisconsin as Monte's Father Emery was in the hospital. As Em was leaving this world a baby was born and our son Travis, and Sarah, named him Emery. So now Emery is approaching his first Christmas and birthday.

Also on my old blog I posted lots about Heather and her eHarmony found husband Bill, and on to their son Will. I posted about Bill being deployed for his fourth time (he's now a major and hopefully retiring with no more deployments!). So I was there for the birth of my first grandchild. Then Heather and Will came and spent most of that year living with us. So go to my old blog for more pics and stories.

Will wearing a shirt I dyed for him

They'll all be here for Christmas.

Luminescence - Shiva Paintsticks; & Needle-felted Ornaments

My November's color/design class challenge was luminescence.

I've been buying shirts and jackets at Goodwill with the plan to over-dye them, creating whole new creations (I've done this since high school, on into having babies, and now for whole family). One shirt was bright yellow with stripes, so I thought it might be good for this project. I originally did a lot of basting along all the centers of each stripe strip, pulling the stitching tight. Well the over-dyeing didn't turn out as I was wanting - should have used a waxed string for a better resist. I over-dyed it some some more.

I've been wanting to use the Shiva paint sticks ... I have some pieces of textured wallpaper I saved. That was the under texture for rubbing a black Shiva stick over. Then I used another flowered texture made for using with the paint sticks rubbing an iridescent gold over - that created the luminescence! I used the paint sticks stenciling leaf designs on the back yoke and down the button placket.

I'd also gone to Hobby Lobby looking specifically for luminescent possibilities. I wanted to make Christmas ornaments using styrofoam balls and needle-felting wool on. I came home with ribbons, embroidery floss and sequins.

I'm going to make more, trying different sizes. These are the largest I'd make. Monte wouldn't mind a tree full of these!

Thanksgiving Tree & Needle-Felting

This day at MOPS was "Share Your Wares" with tables set up around the room perimeter for anyone wanting to display/sell whatever it is they do. So I set up a table with all the variety of felting I do - from my sculpted people, landscape pictures, purses, hats, slippers, etc ... along with selling my cookbook.

I also did the Devotional for the day, showing one of my Thanksgiving Tree posters from a past Thanksgiving, and talking about it -

I often get frustrated at the Thanksgiving table when I ask what people are thankful for. Usually someone says something silly and then everyone else does. So now on a large piece of paper I draw a tree, with lots of branches and no leaves, to hang on the wall. I cut a variety of leaves from colored construction paper and leave them sit on a counter with a pen and glue stick. If this is done a week or so before Thanksgiving everyone who comes to our house can write something they're thankful for on a leaf and glue it on the tree. Then by Thanksgiving, we've had time to think beyond tangibles like food, family, God, friends, pets etc to intangibles like Truth, Love, integrity and then beyond to firemen, police, doctors ...

The rest of the time I sat felting wool flowers to go in a vase I made from 'material' I made with my needle-felting machine. The vase's foundation is craft felt with dyed cheesecloth needled on - the design is created by needling from the back and the front. Needling from the back forces the black felt color to the front or whatever colored felt piece I put on the back. I added beanbag pellets in the vase as a weight. At home I'd wet felted green wool around pipe-cleaners, then I could just needle the flowers to them.

I'd put together some needle-felting kits to sell too. The purses I was selling used fleece material as their foundation material I used their design as the guide for machine felting yarn on for more textile interest, creating a whole new fabric. Some had purse handles made from braiding fleece strips and yarn together, sewn on. Some smaller purses had zipper closures.

Fleece/Yarn machine felted purse (holding my knitting)

Machine needle-felted material from yarn on craft felt - made into zippered purse

  

One of the fleece foundational designs with yarns to embed by machine felting

One of the finished fleece machine felted purses

Needle-felted flower added to a wet-felt hat with crocheted edging