felt!

I have a confession. 
I've been having a mini love affair with felt this summer.  It's the real reason I haven't finished knitting that sweater I wrote about... that, or possibly the fact that after chasing two kids all day my craft-time has been relegated to 10 or 15 minutes stolen here and there.  I cant always knit, right?
So I've really been making a dent in the giant stack of felt I impulse bought last fall.
And I've been making Christmas ornaments.  In summer.  That's right.
You gotta get an early jump on this business when you have small kids.
I started with these (Christmas present spoiler if you happen to be one of my nieces or nephews, and can read, read no further!)

 

I wanted to make the kids a Christmas ornament every year so that when they grew up they would have a unique, handmade set of ornaments imbued with all their magical Christmas memories to put on their own tree.  I also want ornaments that are unbreakable and wonderfully soft and textured.

sooooo..made these little wool felt friends and they were so cute I decided all the kids in the family are getting one for Christmas this year...

I wont put pictures of them all yet... because I haven't finished making them.  I got side tracked in July with this birthday crown (okay, technically, it's a tiara) for my big.

 This might also be a new birthday tradition for nieces and nephews. 

Then I got side-tracked again with these fun matryoshka dolls to depict the seasons.  This has been a collaborative effort between Sadie and I.  She is picking out all the felt and thread colors for me.  I like her taste, I must say!

so far we have done summer and autumn.

 

Now the pressure is on to finish up winter and spring.  Sadie is worried I might not get them done in time for Christmas. She has her felt all stacked up and ready to go, and my embroidery floss is all in a tangled pile, or as Sadie says, "all raveled up."  As you can see, my embroidery skills, are um, rudimentary.  But I'm learning as I go.  And my audience is very forgiving.

 my two favorite little sewing helpers.  They keep things lively for me, that's for sure!

 

dyed in the wool

 I'm knitting a sweater right now.  This one.  I started it in April, and I am a little over half done with it.  Its slow going with garden season being in full swing, and thanks to all the hot weather it really hasn't been a knitting summer for me.  But I am loving that sweater, and I know I'll finish it, eventually.  In the meantime, I felt like I needed an instant gratification project that involved wool.   I read an article about dying wool with common garden plants, so I decided to dye up a couple skeins of natural wool I had lying around with some of the many marigolds that are growing in every raised bed I planted. August has brought us some much cooler weather and the idea of manning a boiling pot for several hours seemed more palatable than it did a few weeks ago.

I was expecting yellow, but what I ended up with was closer to chartreuse.  I'm not complaining... I love the greens.  The one on the right was the first dye batch, and the one on the left was using the same dye and doing a second dying (hence the lighter color.) I wonder if the resulting color is because my marigolds are mainly red? The dye bath looked very red.  I used alum as a mordant.  It was a simple process--one that I fully intend to repeat with some other plants...soon....but first I need to finish up that sweater.  I can see how fiber dying with found plant material could become an addictive habit. It has a certain alchemical element to it that is hard to resist.  The colors are so rich too... lovely lovely.  It's going to be hard to not start up another knitting project before that sweater is finished....hmmmm....maybe just a simple little shawl?  I'm sure that would be quick and easy to knit up between rounds of kid wrangling and laundry folding right?

August in the Garden: Flowers and Squash

 

August is a good month to stop and smell the flowers.

Zinnia Green Envy, Love Lies Bleeding, Rannuncula, Baby's breath & Nasturtium

If I could give awards for the strangest & coolest looking thing I grew this summer it would have to go to the Bells of Ireland,

Accumulator of most biomass in one growing season goes to Borage, as pictured with Sadie for scale.

The sunroom porch is now officially a flower jungle.

Out front in the fern garden is Astilbe, more pink Rannunculas, Zinnia, Calendula, Nasturtium, and the most riotous hot pink geranium I have ever laid eyes on. 

Begonias, Astilbe & more Begonias...plus enough strawberries to make this an edible landscape for little grazers.

  

 

A wiggle of rannunculas and Papaver somniferum.

 The lovely blue of delphiniums by the front porch.  Pretty even when they are tipping over because you forgot to cage them up...oops.

and out back it's a pumpkin party (top) plus a good bed full of brassicas and some winter squash growing with nasturtiums, rutabega, sweet allysum, and bee balm.

This summer has been ridiculously hot, sunny & gorgeous for Alaska.  I had no expectations of what this gardening adventure would bring, so honestly I feel pleased as punch with what we've come out with so far.  We have enough lettuces and greens to feed an army of rabbits, we have been enjoying broccoli, kale & chard, and will hope to have a few tomatoes and zucchini soon. Sadie constantly grazing on carrots, so even if we don't end up with any big ones, it makes me happy that she is experiencing the marvel of pulling those perfectly delicious little orange baby ones out and munching them as the day goes by.  She is such a wee forager, if she isn't eating carrots you're sure to find her in the raspberry patch. Next year, we are going to get a little more serious about the business of putting food up for the winter.

 It would be amazing if we actually get some squash, or one of our tiny pumpkins grew into something substantial...but hard to say if they will.   There is just a whisper of fall in the air these days.  The fireweed has almost bloomed to the top.  Here and there a golden cottonwood leaf is falling.  How can it be August already?

but August is always my favorite too... So much energy to savor the last and sweetest drops of summer and busily plan for the cool months ahead.

Hard to believe that just this same time last year we were eagerly anticipating the mystery baby:

And now he's nearly one... full of wonder and sweetness, toddling all over the place, saying half-words and starting to look more like a little boy than a baby. 

My oh my, how the seasons do fly.

three times around the sun

There are a lot of things I could say right now--about how exhausted, and braindead I am from the kids crazy sleeping (or lack there-of) that's been going on for days and days, or having my husband working long hours and extra days, and basically doing the single parenting thing, or how busy things are this summer, and how I can't seem to check even one thing off my to-do list without at least three new ones cropping up, but looking at these pictures of Sadie... gosh.

Amidst all this chaos somehow my baby turned three.

 

This girl melts my heart.  

She is so sweet, and independent, and curious

and messy, and bossy

and profound.

Sometimes the conversations I have with her just blow me away.

Sometimes they are hilarious, like when she says out of the blue,

"Mom, I think when I grow up I'm going to find a nice man who likes cats and have a wedding."

or asks me to turn off the radio in the car because "the guy sounds like he's crying."  

(It was John Denver, and she's right)

Then there's all the questions about death and the afterlife.  

"Mom... I'm going to brush my teeth, and eat healthy food, and get lots of sleep and then I wont need to die. I don't want to die."

 This one offers me much to ponder, 

and yet she is also so spontaneous and bubbling over with joy.

Even on the hardest, most tiring days when she is a demanding tyrant, "NO. my door needs to be open all the way so it touches the wall" or "I don't want these stirred up eggs, I want the cracked kind" she still has this great sense of humor.  

I guess, what I'm trying to say in way too many words is that every moment spent with Sadie is truly a gift.  I feel so incredibly rich to get to watch her finding her wings...  to glimpse who she is and how she looks at the world.  

I don't know what she wished for when she blew out those candles, but my wish is the simple one that every mother wishes in these moments--the gift of time, 

of many, many happy birthdays to spend with this sweet girl of mine.

{and that someday, in the very distant future, she finds that nice man who likes cats, and he is kind and smart enough to know what a treasure she is.}

garden journal: Medicine Plants

 This week I am on round three of harvesting chamomile.  This is the german chamomile I planted here and there in my raised beds.  

 

 This is the wild chamomile that grows pretty much everywhere else in the yard.  Is it funny to cultivate something that grows wild all over your property?  Yes and no.  The funny thing about wild chamomile is that it loves to grow in all places where heavy foot traffic beats it down.  For us, that means that there are probably also four-legged furry friends that pee on it... and possibly, on occasion, a toddler or two.  So I'm harvesting this tall chamomile that is growing in my raised beds because the flowers are way above pee level.  You can laugh at me all you want. 

 This is another funny instance of growing something from seed that grows wild.  We call this part of our salad rainbow "fairy lettuce"  it is very delicious, and when I was describing it to my mom to try to figure out what it is (still need to go sift through my European Salad Green sampler to find out what they called it) she suggested chickweed.  I didn't think so at first, because it is much bigger than chickweed, but after looking at the patch of chickweed growing under the hose spigot....

yep, pretty sure this fancy-schmancy fairy lettuce is indeed a variety of chickweed---chickweed on steroids.  Still, it's beautiful, delicious, organic, and unpeed on by dogs, so it can have some space in my garden too.

Up next on the harvesting list is Calendula.  This is one of my all-time favorite flowers and I planted it all over this year.  It makes for wonderful balms and salves.  It is my go-to remedy for all skin irritations.  I use it so much on the kids that Sadie even recognized what it was when she smelled the flower.  Smart cookie that one. 

And if anyone wants to stop by and fill up a bag with salad... please do.  We have a plethora of greens, and while none of them are medicinal plants per se, they do say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  So eat your greens; we certainly are!

summer delights

Some things about summertime are just perfect.  Fresh fruit, for one.  And Sadie's new favorite dessert is just another perfect excuse to eat berries (like you really need one). 

Pavlova--it sounds much fancier than it really is.  I made a similar version to this on Saturday using this recipe, and using a home-made custard (to use up the egg yokes, and because I didn't have whipped cream). I thought it was good, but a little too sweet.  I wanted to try it again with less sugar, and the suggested whipped cream.  Its better this way.  I cut the sugar in the recipe by half, and used barely sweetened whipped cream.  I think eventually you will run into problems with the texture of the meringue if you use too little sugar, but I'm going to just keep making this recipe whittling the sugar down in increments until it doesn't work.

It's still plenty sweet with half the sugar, and it fluffed up just fine. 

Like eating a cloud...says Sadie.

 

It's so pretty too.

Although, my amateur foodie photography doesn't really do it justice.

I don't think I'll ever run a perfect food photography show on this channel because 

1. I can't devote kitchen space to all the fun little props that make your photos really shine, and

2. I only have 30 seconds to take pictures before this happens:

 

 

Anyway... Pavlova--just do it.  You won't be sorry!

still life with after-dinner dishes

The after-dinner dishes looked so pretty with the late sun filtering though the window that I felt compelled to take a picture instead of clearing and washing them.