bee creative

how to avoid cutting the grass and pulling weeds

1.  Felt some wool:

I love the way this felted, especially where I couched the silk yarn.

2.  Go to the farmer's market:

3.  Decide to start cooking as soon as you get home.  There was this recipe that I wanted to try from the new cook book I got yesterday, Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.

I made Asparagus Bread Pudding (without the mushrooms and with asparagus I had left over from last week).   It ended up being lunch and part of dinner.

 

Not quite 100% local since the salmon was from Alaska, but definitely in season.  

4.  Sew a cushion for the porch swing.

5.  Put the dry clothes away.

6.  Decide that if you don't cut the grass now, that it will never happen today. 

7.  Cut the grass during the hottest time of the day!

8.  Fall asleep on the porch for an hour.

The weeds aren't all pulled ( and never will be), but the garden looks pretty darn good:

a little of this, a little of that

I took the day off to enjoy the sunshine and it felt like such a treat.

Living without a car means taking some great walks:   Eva asked a couple posts back about whether the creek I had photoed looked as pictured for the whole stretch, or if it was just that section.  The answer to that is, yes, the whole stretch is green and lush with textures.  There is a trail that runs along a lot of it that can be walked until it reaches the bay.  Today I walked another favorite trail.  It winds through a canopy of trees and ends up along the water.

I am very lucky that I live a beautiful corner of the world.   I walked along this stretch of the trail up to a shopping district and went to my favorite bookstore, got a nibble for lunch and then came back to sit for about an hour or so to read.  I also started another pair of socks. 

 The garden:  As I wandered through the garden tonight, I noticed the peas had started blooming.  This is a shelling variety called "Blauwschokkers."  They are used dried as a soup pea.  This is one of the vegetables I'm going to save seed from.  

Wool quilt #2:  I decided to stitch lines across the latest square that I knit.  Tomorrow I'm going to felt/full the square and then do some additional stitching on the felted surface.  I did some stitching on a wool sweater that I fulled once and loved the way the stitching sunk into the fibers.  I also started wondering, what if I couched some yarn in stripes as well, before it was fulled?  It will have to wait for morning.

a pot full of pansies

One old name for pansies is "heart's ease."  I like that.  Thinking about what I could embroider on the wool square I knit up today. 

wool quilt #1 and #2

What if I made a lily pad and a pond lily?  What if I cut up the felt I made and used it to fill the holes in my wool quilt?  What if I cut squares out of the felt and then sewed it on to a piece of fabric I had knit and fulled, and then needle felted some circles on top of the squares?  What if I pieced a quilt with squares that were knit or woven or felted?  It would be wool quilt #2. 

I've been thinking about making a quilt with fabrics that I've made myself for the top layer for quite awhile. 

I've been thinking about definitions for quilts, blankets, and afghans for awhile too.  And tonight I'm thinking about boxes.  About what message or story is told by using geometric shapes, such as squares  (boxes?) and circles.    At what point are we boxed in?  What boxes do we live in?  What magic is held in a box (Pandora's box?).  Just thinking....

moving forward with the sweet pea quilt, plus a few other things

This weekend was really about the garden and being outside, but I did work on a few projects.  Over the weekend I've been thinking a lot about my sweet pea quilt and decided that I did want to tear it apart and do it differently. 

 

I've decided to set the squares on the diagonal.  I think I might piece a checkerboard boarder to go around the outside of the "peace and plenty" squares. 

I also did a little wet felting.  Just a little experimenting:

I had a project in mind, but I think they look  a little bit like lily pads and that gave me another idea.  It was a lot of fun and I learned some things; like that I probably haven't been using enough water while felting in my past experiments.  Also, that the washboard works great for the final stage of felting. 

And I made covers for the wicker couch that I moved out on to my covered porch.

 I found this at a thrift store.  It was labeled two twin sheets sewn together to make a king sized spread, price $3.00.  Sweet! 

things I am thankful for

That I was up and outside at 5 AM this morning (as I usually am).

That I missed the bus I wanted and decided to take an "urban hike" to run my errands today (the art store and the Re-store, my local salvage/habitat for humanity store).  I walked down a few streets I've never been down,  saw some inspiring gardens, passed by a corner of the creek that I've never seen, and burnt enough calories that I felt okay eating a hot fudge sunday.   

what a difference a day can make in the garden

This morning the garden looked like this:

And I ate my first strawberry (nothing else is even close, just this one....)

This evening it also has this:

It still needs to be painted, and I'm going to keep an eye out for cedar shingles for the roof.  But the chooks are bedded down for the night.  Of course I had to climb in the pen and shove them through the door to get them to go in.  That was after I tried bribing them with treats to see if they would go in.  They were suspicious, and rightly so. 

I know they went in the coop this afternoon, but this evening they really couldn't figure out why I wasn't taking them to the laundry room for the night....  Guess I'll check on them one more time.

garden update: May

Dame's Rocket, weedy but smells divine.

The garden in all it's weedy glory.  The covered structure in the back is my tomato hut, where I'm growing tomatillios and, of course, tomatoes.

Peas and potatoes seem to be growing several inches a day at the moment. Garlic is looking good, onions so-so, beans, squash, and corn just popping up.  I need to make something with rhubarb tomorrow. 

  I grow a lot of things in containers too.  There is some parsley, a tomato, radishes and some squash coming along in this tub.  The radishes will be long gone by the time the squash grows big enough to fill this tub. 

The chickens get their coop tomorrow.  I think they are very excited, I know I am. 

this week's bus project

I like how two threads that seem so unsubstantial on their own

Can be combined to create something with weight and body.

What if I combine two yarns, one that will felt and one that won't?  What if I felt it?  (the answer to that will be coming soon). 

living in the moment: my "clock"

  

Finished up my "clock."  The glass is fused glass my mom did.  The record is attached to an old wood box.  I used two quotes, a definition of "time" from the dictionary and a quote from Thoreau.  The quote from Thoreau:  "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in every moment." 

At this very moment, as I write this, I am sitting with my front door open, listening to the rain come down.  It would be easy to be unhappy with more rain, but I'm not.  It's what makes my corner of the world so green.  It will make the garden flourish and fill my rain barrel.

I found a very interesting lecture about happiness given by Dan Gilbert that was done for TED (via No Impact Man).  What I found most interesting about the lecture was the idea that we human beings have the capacity to create our own happiness.  That we can choose to be happy.  I believe in this.  Maybe part of this is learning to live in the moment?