Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Just a quick catch-up post because it's been so long since I posted. ;) Here's the last quilt top I've been working on. I'll put one more skinny yellow border on, then a thicker blue border. Here's the link with the pattern:

  http://www.ucquilts.com/bomjune2012.htm



And my tomatoes and banana peppers are growing great. I've been having a little trouble with birds pecking the ripe tomatoes, so I think when the next batch starts turning red, I'll have to put some netting on them. Here's evidence of a different kind of visitor to my garden on a misty Monday morning:


And finally, I received my author copies of Sweeter Than Tea. I love the cover they picked, and it's a real thrill to see my words in print. :)  Toby was just excited to have a nice box to sit on.  What is the attraction with cats and boxes?

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

End of June update

Picking lots of tomatoes (I ate the cherry tomatoes hot off the vine, before they even made it in the house with these larger ones) plus green beans and banana peppers. Not counting the cherry tomatoes, I'm eating at least one tomato per day. Do you think a 'mater per day will keep the doctor away?

 

The tops of my taters had died back, so I dug down to see what I had . . . BIG crop of eighteen Yukon Gold potatoes. That doesn't sound too bad of a crop for six tater plants, until you realize that I ate six of them with my green beans last night, they're little:

 

I spent last weekend at a quilting retreat. Yes, we all take our sewing machines and fabric and cutters and rulers out to a lodge in the woods and do nothing but sew, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I took piles and piles of blue and yellow batik fabric all pre-cut into wedges and triangles and completed this top. It's a pattern from Bonnie Hunter's website, www.quiltville.com called Starstruck. This will be a kingsize quilt, for my bed:

Friday, June 01, 2012

Sweeter Than Tea

I'm about to be a published author, folks! I have a short story in the book "Sweeter Than Tea" that'll be coming out soon, from Belle Books. Here's the cover:

Vegetable garden update

Lots has been going on in my new raised bed this year. I've been picking lots of snowpeas (the ones in the dirt produced MUCH better than the ones in the windowbox) and the Bush Blue Lake beans were a hit, I wish i'd planted more.
My first ripe tomato was a Park's Whopper, but the Big Beef tomatoes aren't far behind. Both bushes have grown taller than their cages, and are loaded with green tomatoes of all sizes.
The snowpeas will be coming out soon, to be replaced with green beans (but pole beans, not bush beans) because these squash will be getting bigger and taking up the room where the beans were:

Friday, March 16, 2012

Plarn Bags

I've discovered plarn, yarn made from plastic bags. I was teaching myself to crochet, from videos and pages on the internet. First I made some square dishcloths, practicing my single, double and half-double crochet with cotton yarn.

Then once I'd learned the stitches, I was eager to apply them to making a project more complicated than a cotton dishcloth, so I went hunting on the internet for simple patterns. That's when I found this:

My Recycled Bags

It's a very cool site, with every kind of recycled-plastic item you could imagine. She has tutorials showing you how to cut the plastic bags into loops, and chain them together, and the sidebar is full of free crochet patterns. First I started on a totebag, made with khaki colored Kroger bags. I added white and blue stripes made from Walmart bags and newspaper delivery plastic sleeves. Then saw a messenger bag with flap and liked that one better. And I wanted a thick strap that I could put on my shoulder, so I ended up with this:


Then since I'd also been collecting white bags from Walmart and Walgreens and Family Dollar, I had enough cut and rolled up to start this bag, trimmed in pink yarn leftover from a previous project. I plan to put a huge pink and white yarn flower on the side:


It's been fun, and a very low cost craft to get into. People have been happy to donate their plastic bags to me—and I was shocked when I learned that some of these plastic bags take a thousand years to biodegrade. Wow. I've started working on another bag using mainly the blue newspaper plastic sleeves, and have been very pleased with the feel of the softer plastic they're made of. And I really like the color too!
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