Chronicle Books Haul-idays!

Hey everybody, Chronicle Books is having a really great give away right now, and they have so many great crafting, art and other DIY books that I couldn't not enter! The basics of the give away is this:
Post a list of Chronicle Books valued at up to $500 that you’d like to haul in, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing to WIN your list of books! And, one of your readers who comments on the post will win the list too!

Awesome right?

So here is my list of books, and if you leave a comment here you could win it too!

Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free

Lotta Jansdotter's Handmade Living

Ramayana

Garden Anywhere

DIY Fashion

Witch Craft

America's Doll House

Let's Bring Back

Lost States

Fast, Fresh & Green

I Love Macarons

Tea & Crumpets

Picture Perfect Knits

Holiday Knits

Soil Mates

Weekends for Two in New England

IDEO Eyes Open: London

MoMA Make Art/Make Mistakes

Eco Fashion

The Map as Art

Lists

You can find out more about the giveaway here.

Gnome Costumes!

It may come as no surprise that I love costumes. Not only do I enjoy making them, but I really love wearing them too. Wearing a costume just gives you a little different outlook on the world, and a peak into what it would be like to be a different person. I also really like to do my costumes right. No store bought costumes or slapdash things thrown together at the last minute for me. The problem with that is that every year when Halloween rolls around, I am very busy and only get a few hours to actually sit down and make my costume.
This year my husband and I decided to be garden gnomes, because, not only are they awesome, we knew we already had the big clothing pieces we would need for the costumes. We made the hats, apron, beard and belt, but everything else came from our closets. I was very pleased with results (especially for how easy it was), and now I have a great gnome outfit should I ever need one again!

The wedding dress!

So, remember how I posted about making a wedding for a friend several months ago? Well, due to some delays in getting the fabric and my busy schedule, I ended up doing all the sewing about two weeks before the wedding. I was in such a hurry to get it done that I didn't take any process pictures, but I finished it with time to spare and it came out beautifully if I do say so myself!

Here are some pictures of the dress on the day of the wedding.





This one is a little blurry, but it seems to be the only picture I got of the dress from front.

I am back!

Whew! Life has been busy, but good since I last posted. I got a new (to me) car, lots of family came to visit, and the biggest event of my summer- my puppet show of the Pied Piper of Hamelin! The show was very well received, and we are looking forward to performing it again soon.

Here is one picture of the puppets from the show. Please do check out our puppet blog too. It is all set up now, and I posted pictures of the whole puppet making process!



Now that the show is complete and I have had a little bit of time to relax, I am getting really excited about fall. I still have a few weeks until I start back up teaching this fall, though, which is good news since I still have a wedding dress to make! I will be going fabric shopping later this week, so look for my first dress making post sometime next week. Hopefully I will have some garden update pictures too, we got several tomatoes already, but there are lots of green ones still!

Garden Update

Hello! It seems to me that I am overdue for an update on the garden. I am very pleased to say that between what we learned from experience last year, and the better weather this year, the garden is doing pretty well. I haven't picked anything yet, but I have lots of photos to share.


Here is the view from one corner of the garden- you can see a little bit of most everything.

Pea plants and a pretty pea blossom. There are a few pea pods almost ready to pick, I think I will go back for them and a few other things this weekend.



Radishes! They don't look ready yet, but seem to be better this year since we spaced them a little farther apart.


Cucumbers- the plants are still a little small, but seem healthy. We probably won't have cucumbers until August.



Mixed greens lettuces- I am definitely picking these this weekend and making a salad. I also plan to plant more seeds afterward so we can get a second crop.



Green beans- these are also basically ready to pick!


Green Peppers- as you can see we have a blossom on one of the pepper plants, and they both look healthy.



Chamomile- It is growing! I was not sure it would there for awhile. Now I just need to find out how to make it into tea . . .


The tomatoes- Four of the five plants are doing wonderfully. The small plant in the second cage there has some wilting and yellowing leaves. I really hope it is not blight. It may just be over watering- it doesn't really look like blight yet. I am giving it until this weekend to get better, but if it doesn't I might have to get rid of it so the others don't get infected. There are lots of green tomatoes that need protecting!




Last but not least Zucchini- The plants are looking good, and there are some blossoms. I just hope we actually get some zucchini this year, last year we had tons of blossoms but none ever fruited.

Ribbon Bags Ahoy!

I finished the ribbon bags last night, and I am pleased with the way they turned out. It also means I have completed two big projects this week, and have a nice feeling of accomplishment.

Clean Studio!

Hooray! I finished cleaning and organizing the studio yesterday morning, and wanted to share pictures of the results. It is kind of a tour of the space as you walk in to the room and turn around clockwise.



After the cleaning was done, I spent the rest of the day working on the ribbon bags, drinking tea, and enjoying the room.

In the Works . . .

School is out! June 11th was my last day teaching after-school classes for the year, and as much as I enjoy teaching, I am really excited to have a little more time and not have to spend my evenings planning for the next class. It has only been a little over a week so far, but here are the projects I have been working on:

I have an order of several ribbon bags for a wedding party. I have finished weaving the ribbons and am now working on the bag construction. Here are a few in process photos.


The puppet show is my biggest project of the summer. I don't have any exciting pictures yet, but I did get the puppet blog all set up and ready to go. You can check out the design now, and I will let you know when the first post goes up.

The other thing I am working on is FINALLY getting our little studio all unpacked and organized. The story here is that we had a HUGE studio space before, but we moved out in Dec. because the building needed lots of repair that the landlord couldn't/wouldn't take care of. We decided the best choice for now was to move our studio into our spare room, which is pretty small. Lot of stuff + small space + no free time = still not all unpacked. I am determined to get it done in the next few days though.

Here is a picture of the room at the start of the day yesterday. I should have thought to take a picture at the beginning of the week so you could see how disorganized it was to start.


Here is a picture now- it is getting better everyday. I will post again when it is all done and beautiful, and maybe have a little party for myself when it is finished!

First Strawberries of the Season

Here they are- the first ripe berries of the season and the first thing to come from the garden this year!

Cactus News!

So, this is my last week of teaching for the school year and I am really excited because that means I am going to have a lot more time to devote to my big summer project- a puppet show! My husband and I are putting on a puppet production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin in August, and it is our first full scale we are doing all ourselves as CactusHead Puppets. I will finally be getting my puppet blog up and going soon, and I will share pictures of the puppet building process and anything else related to the show there.

In other cactus related news, I went to a good friend's bridal shower last weekend and made her this knit cactus as a gift. I have a few I made for myself, and they are a lot of fun to knit, and of course very low maintenance house plants.

The garden is planted! (finally)

Hooray! My garden is planted and that means (to me) that it is officially summer. This year I did things a little differently and did not start any of the seeds inside, because lots of the plants seemed to struggle after being transplanted last year. This year it was all seeds straight in the ground or older seedlings from the nursery. I also planted more of each kind of seed but fewer different kinds. I had hoped to plant a couple weeks ago, but every time I was free to plant it poured rain. Hopefully all the plants will do well despite the delay.

The strawberries I planted last year are doing better this year, and it looks like we will actually have some to eat! I also sprinkled a few zinnia seeds in the corners of the strawberry bed, after the strawberries are done for the season I will have big bright zinnias to enjoy.



These are my tomato plants. I have three varieties of regular tomatoes and then a Roma tomato and grape tomato plant. I love grape and Roma tomatoes, so I am hoping for tons of tomatoes in a few months.

I bought two pepper plants this year, since last year's peppers that I started from seed never really went anywhere. The bigger one is a yellow bell pepper (it already has a bloom!) and the
other is a bell pepper that is supposed to grow both red and green peppers.



















I planted a whole row of peas this year, and they are already up! My nephew helped plant these and there is a random mix of regular and sugar peas.



The other seeds aren't up yet, but I planted a row of radishes, a row of romaine lettuce, a row of green beans, two rows of loose leaf lettuce, a row of cucumber hills, one watermelon hill, a row of zucchini, some chamomile, some aster seeds, and cilantro, chives and catnip planted in pots. I can't wait to post pictures of everything as it comes up!

Spring!

Happy Spring everyone! I have today off, and I am going to go out and finally get my garden planted and enjoy the weather, but first I wanted to catch up posting my projects here!

This is the knitting package I sent my penpal Mercy for March/April. (I forgot to take a picture before I mailed it, so I used the one she took.) The theme of the package was a place you want to visit, and I chose England and included some crumpets and lemon curd along with the things in the picture. The teapot towel is double knit, so it is reversible. It was my first time doing double knit, and I liked the finished product, but it took me awhile to really get a hang of the technique.



This is the package Mercy sent me. It is spring themed, and I love how it all coordinates. The little knit bag is great, and I have been using the project bag to carry my knitting around with me. The little bundle tied with the ribbon is stitch markers, and I am very excited to have real stitch markers! I have been using paper clips, which works fine, but these are much nicer.

Finally I wanted to share a great recipe I made today. It is for homemade ginger beer, and it is amazing! I love ginger, and highly recommend it if you do too. I found it on the blog Lottie and Doof, which I also recommend. Everything I have tried from there has been excellent, and the photography of the food is beautiful.

My ginger beer and some fresh spring flowers-


I hope to have garden pics to share soon!

March- the washcloth month

Hello,

March has been a busy, but good month around here. Spring is finally here, and while I miss the prospect of having the unexpected day off for snow, I am very excited to get out in my garden soon!

This month has been spent knitting washcloths for my soon to be sister in-law's wedding shower. It was actually the first time I have made washcloths, and I was surprised at how fun it was. It is a great quick project to try out new stitch patterns.

I made these pig washcloths (she likes pigs)-




and these three with a tweed stitch pattern.




I found both patterns on Ravelry, and am looking forward to trying out some other patterns washcloth patterns they have in the future. For April though, I think I am going to make it my goal to finally finish that shrug!

Felted Flowers for February

Ok, the title of this post is a little silly, but I love alliterations, and I couldn't resist! Sorry I missed posting last week, but I've been working on my first package for my Ravelry penpal and I didn't want to post pictures until she got it so it would be a surprise. I decided to knit flowers for her, and I used this pattern for the flowers, but I didn't like the leaves it made very much. So, I used this pattern for the leaves.


Here are the leaves all felted and ready to go. I did all the felting by hand rather than in the washing machine, because I just find it easier.



Here is the flower all knit, but not rolled up or felted yet.



The flowers are rolled and ready to felt here.

The flowers after felting.

Here is everything all ready to assemble. I knit I-cord to cover dowel rods for the stems, instead of using knitting needles like the pattern calls for.

Penguin supervised the assembly, as she does with any projects that involves yarn and thread.


Complete!


Not much else to report. The shrug is coming along well. I am almost done with the chevron and ready to move into the second ribbing section, but I won't get it done this month like I hoped. Oh well. The next project I have lined up is knitting fun washcloths to use as wedding shower gifts, and I will post those as soon as I get started.