Thursday, September 28, 2017

catch up post 4 - all about the fair!

So this year for the Tulelake Fair I decided to branch out a little bit. I decided to enter Hortense the mouse and, AND a quilt!  This particular fair the quilt competition is pretty tight.  But, from going previous years I knew that my quilts are a very different style than a lot of the other entries. I decided to enter my Churn Dash quilt.

Here's my stack of goodies.

Ok, first prize was my socks!!!!  I was a little surprised by this one I have to admit.  While I do love my socks I didn't know they'd place that high!  I was a little confused at first because the tag says "mouse" and the tag on my mouse says "socks". But I think that it was the socks that did win.


Second place - my Highway 101 shawl!!!!!  Holy cow you guys!  I was competing against myself because I had entered everything in the same category!   

Poor Hortense, she did not win anything.  But, she did get to have an adventure!  And, reading back over the rules I could not have won again since they were all entered in the same class.  Which really is totally fine!  I did not expect to win first and second in the same class!  Frankly I didn't realize that until I just re-read the rules.   
Here's the exciting thing:  My quilt won THIRD PRIZE!!!!  OMG. I scoped the room as soon as I walked in and saw it across the room on the other side.  I did not expect to feel as proud as I did - I wanted to tell everyone "that's my quilt! I made it!".  Luckily my friend Jan was with me and shared the exciting moment with me.  Here it is up on the wall - and official entry in the county fair.  Mine is the one on the right.

 Jan got this fun picture of me in front of my quilt.
I had a lot of fun entering the fair for myself.  But, that's only half the fun!  The other part is seeing what everyone else is doing.  There were some beautiful hand knit entries. My friend Lilly entered a few of her hand knit baby clothes.  I also recognized some of the names of people I know on different entries.  It's fun when you see someone's name and discover something you didn't know they could do!

I'll leave you with this cute llama quilt I saw - isn't that amazing?!  So fun!

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

catch up part 3 inside edition

This post is to catch up on sewing and knitting projects.  First up, this little zipper pouch.  This is one of those projects that I had literally no choice in making. I woke up one morning, was scrolling instagram and saw a little hexie pouch in the "you might like" mish mash of recommended pictures.  I got right up and sewed the pouch right then - it needed to be in my life!  If you want to check out my inspiration it's from What Saysie Makes, and I'm also linking the blog post where she talks about it.  Her blog is beautiful as is her instagram profile.  Anyways, I obviously didn't have the same fabrics she used, but that's totally fine!  I have tons of cute fabrics to choose from!

Next up is this vanilla sock.  I know lots of people have said that they like this sock but I personally do not love the yarn.  Or, rather, the colorway. I tried a new to me pattern for the heel, it's called the OMG heel and you can find that pattern on Ravelry.  I really actually liked the heel, it was very very well written.  It was so clear and did not make any assumptions about heel knitting experience which I really appreciated.  I have knit a few knitting patterns where the designer assumes certain things are "understood" and I was the person who just didn't get it!  Thank God for google.  
I just had to include this sweet puppy picture. I woke up for work one morning and this was my Rocky dog sleeping next to me.  His ears! 

Ok so this next project is completely Kay Jones of the Bakery Bears fault inspiration.  She had talked about it on the podcast, and at first I was like - no, I don't need to knit this guy.  Then! she mentioned it again and talked about her inspiration and how she had seen it on instagram made by Lori so naturally curious I checked it out and I was like oh man I need this pattern!  It's called Sven Scandinavian.  So incredibly cute and detailed!!!  
It's a paper printed pattern so I ordered it from the website, Cottage Creations. Kay mentioned on the podcast that the service was really good and she had gotten a confirmation email after she ordered. I have to just say that she was right! I also got an email but mine was to let me know that the pattern was being reprinted because Carol, the designer, had run out of copies!  I emailed her back and let her know that I was not surprised since I had seen it on the podcast and I know there are a lot of followers both there and Lori's instagram.  

I received the pattern a couple weeks later, which I thought was great considering it had to be reprinted.  I set to knitting my version of Sven right away.

There are name suggestions in the pattern of alternate names. Carol encourages everyone to think of names as you're knitting.  I love that!  I have always felt as I make a doll, whether sewn or knitted, that their personalities develop as they are made. So, my Sven has actually turned out to be Jurgen! Isn't he cute?
Last weekend I had a baby shower to attend. The baby's room theme is cacti.  I knew I wanted to make a quilt as my gift.  I did a little google search, and found this quilt. I bought backing fabric and white on Thursday, prewashed it after work. I decided to do two rows of squares for the body of the cactus.  I pulled all green fabrics from my stash and didn't have any repeats!  I pieced the front after work on Friday and put everything together and quilted on Saturday before the shower!  Yikes! I was a bit late to the shower because I wanted to wash it before giving so it would pre-shrink.  She really liked it so that is a win!

I'll leave you with this picture of my fall mantel.  Mom, if you're reading this - that scarecrow is the one I was telling you about with the sign "no crows" and then I like to put that crow sitting next to him! ha! 



Monday, September 25, 2017

garden catch up part 2

This garden catch up is the flower edition.  These first pics are in the front yard.  The front yard is significantly easier because I have an HOA which maintains the grass in the front. I do have 3 flower bed areas that are mine to maintain but it's not as overwhelming as my back yard which is a foxtail dead zone nightmare.  But! I am slowly reclaiming it :)

 I know I've shared pics of these flower beds previously but I have made some new additions.  Home Depot had bark mulch on sale for Labor Day weekend so I grabbed a few bags to help with weed control in the front.  And it looks nice too :)  I also picked up these pretty pink coneflowers, I put one on each side of the giant rose bush. Which I still need to prune back! Yikes.
The yellow is rudbeckia. The flowers only lasted a day, then pooped out. But, the leaves are still green so I have hope the plant will live.  In the back row you can see my lavender and salvia did really well through the summer. That salvia is about double the side of when I put it in and the bees love it!

Oh man, this was a great day.  So I stopped in Freddy Meyers to pick up a prescription and the pharmacy computer was down.  What's a girl to do?  Check out the clearance plants, of course!  I totally hit the jack pot!!!  They had just gotten a shipment of mums and the clerk was marking a whole rack as clearance - 50% off!  He said the leaves were droopy and dirt a little dry but the roots weren't dry.

Well, I know from experience that clearance plants usually perk right up after they are planted, watered, and loved!  So I filled my entire cart with mums!  I was planning to buy some anyway so it was really perfect timing.


I planted them around the crepe myrtle tree in the front yard. I have quite a few different colors which are kind of fun.  I have to admit planting around that tree was not fun at all!!!!  The soil is super compacted and the roots of the tree are all over.  I wore a hole in my hand digging holes for the plants. I did manage to also put a ring of daffodil bulbs, tulip bulbs and crocus bulbs all around under the mums.  Hopefully once springs rolls around it will be beautiful!


So, a small update in the back yard. I started the spring/summer thinking that I would be able to pull out all the weeds and reseed the grass. I must of thought I was 10 people with tons of time and energy!  Needless to say that is not what happened!  I did get the hill weeded and a couple areas down to dirt.  Which then invited new, different weeds :) Boo.  

But!  This weekend I thought I'd get after it again.  My tools of choice are my rigid tine rake that I rake as much of the dead weeds out as I can.  Then I use my hoe to pull the foxtail seeds into a heap.  Then I put them in my little cart which I dump in the trash.  It is slow going.  The hill also has a bunch of rocks, for stability I imagine, that hold up the raking process.

 I did manage to claim a small victory in a corner on the hill today!  Woot!  I picked this particular corner because you can see it from the couch in my living room when the curtains are open to the sliding glass door.  I have been dreaming since I bought the house of being able to look out into the back yard and seeing a beautiful flower garden.  I put a hollyhock at the back, a blue aster that is very bee-attractive, a couple "goblin" gaillardia, a white salvia, and the last two mums. I also put daffodil and tulip bulbs along the bricks next to them.  I tried to build little dirt burms around the flowers to help keep the water from flowing down the slope. 

In the spring I plan to put hollyhock seeds along the fence. I also want to work on making the slope less of a hill.  I think by trying to put in steps instead of a slope I will have better success at growing things over there.  Next year I also want to put in my apricot tree! 

Sunday, September 24, 2017

garden catch up part 1

I think the easiest way to get caught up at this point is a few posts. This will be the first in a series of what I will call "garden catch up"! Oy vey, where did the summer go???  Doesn't everyone say that at he end of every season?  I know I do.
So, we'll start with the veggie garden. This was so much fun and I learned so much.  I should also mention this was my first real garden so I really had no idea what I was doing. I did a lot of googling, a lot of question asking, reading, etc. to get where I did with my garden.  

Some things I thought going into this: I would have bumper crops of things and be able to can as I went. I did have bumper crops of patty pan squash, which are the cute yellow squash above.  But, my cucumbers were kind of more of a slow steady trickle.  My tomatoes did not really ripen. Green beans pooped out.  And zucchini?  Welp, I am still the only person who doesn't grow an abundance.

 But!  As you can see I did get things canned.  I realized that I could just do small batches of pickles as I had the cukes.  Luckily I was able to find fresh dill at the grocery store in big bouquet form since my dill did not even come up.  I also was able to make strawberry rhubarb jam with rhubarb from my plant in the front yard.  A coworker of mine gave me a big box of tomatoes from her garden that she couldn't use and I made a bunch of canned salsa, which was a first for me.

My spaghetti squash, pictured above, did really well - I think I got about 5 very, very large squash from one plant.  

This past week was the first frost and everything died.  Well, except for a couple leaves on a couple of my zucchini plants which have a couple very small squash so I'm leaving them be for the time being.

I've started a little list of what I need to do differently next year, how I want to rearrange things, what plants I want to do again, add to, etc.  I had a great time with this garden and will definitely do another next year!

Some canning stats:
10 jars of salsa
8 jars of strawberry rhubarb jam
8 jars of dill pickles