2010 Garden: Week 6

This post is a bit late, but here is the garden update from last week...


The good:
- The weeding is getting much easier these days (probably due to our summer drought right now)

- The pole beans took off. We put in taller bamboo stakes last week and the beans have grown higher than the stakes already. I am definitely growing pole beans next year! They take up so little space and yield lots of beans.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but on the left side the beans were halfway up the 4 ft trellis and on the right they are off the 6 ft poles.


- Our peppers are growing, slowly but surely! Jon and I are pepper-holics, so we planted 14 plants this year. We could eat these forever and never get tired of them (raw with hummus, on sandwiches, in salads, in stir fry, roasted, and so many other ways)


- We got our first banana pepper. I love the color of these.


- Our kale is looking so big and leafy. We made kale chips last week and they were surprisingly almost like regular potato chips. If you do make them, make sure to cook them long enough. The longer you cook them, the crispier they get.

- I finally got around to planting more seeds: 3 rows of radishes, 1 row of spring onions, 3 Swiss chard, 4 bush beans, and 1 row of mesclun. I'm trying to fill up some of the empty space in the garden.

The bad:
we lost a few plants (spinach, mustard greens, mesclun, bok choy) due to bolting. This happens every year and I never seem to find the "perfect" time to pick plants that can bolt. I'm afraid to pick them too soon because they might be too small so I end up waiting for them to grow fully and miss out on them completely.

The unknown:
Are these beans too small to pick? They are long already but super skinny.
 

The misc:
- We added two new plants to the garden last week, a nasturtium (for a spicy salad kick) and an heirloom chocolate cherry tomato. It's a little late for the tomato plant, but we had a spot open up in the garden (thank you, bolted bok choy) and added it to the mix. The tomatoes will be small, so hopefully we'll get a few by the middle of August.

The links:

- We tried roasted radishes last week (instructions seen in the NY Times here). They were so delicious! I'm hoping our new crop of radishes grows soon so we can have these again.

- Check out this gorgeous kitchen garden. I'm drooling!
- Martha Stewart has a free printable label for frozen fruits and veggies.
- have you heard about Basil Blight? I'm checking on my plants every day now.

- preserving herbs. I'm going to miss having lots of fresh herbs to choose from throughout the winter.
- a gorgeously photographed local foods recipe blog, Straight from the Farm

Drifty hat and mitten(s)

Mandy @MyZigZagStitch, designer of the amazing End of May hat and mittens (my version here) put out the call for test knitters for her upcoming ebook, The Red Collection.  The book comes out later this fall and is filled with such adorable patterns for hats, mittens, and handwarmers.

Test knit? Yes, please! I picked out the Drifty set to knit and got to work.

(I recently discovered Knitcast and was able to listen to quite a few podcast episodes while knitting these up).


I still need to knit mitten #2 and embroider the cardinals on each piece, so finished and modeled shots are forthcoming...

The stranded colorwork in these makes me want to get to the yoke of my Icelandic sweater already! Just one more sleeve to go before I can begin.

I saw this version from another test knitter, and I love the deep blue she used for the sky.

Binky Patrol

A few weeks ago, my local Modern Quilt Guild branch, the Brighton Modern Quilters, had a charity sewing day to make some baby quilts for Binky Patrol (found via the book, Quilting for Peace).

I went on super sonic mode and pieced, basted and quilted both of these quilts during our afternoon together.



This one was made with scraps from my hedgehog quilt and backed with pink faux bois from Joel Dewberry



and this one was made with a charm square set from Joann and some Amy Butler mod dots. (Did I forget to mention that we visited the world headquarters of Joann in Ohio while we were visiting Scott and Melissa over Memorial Day weekend? Did I also forget to mention that Scott works in the warehouse? I think I did. The store was amazing, btw!)
Here are the details:
5"x5" charm squares
8 squares by 8 squares
64 total squares for each quilt
36" x 36"
4 width of fabric 2.5" strips of binding fabric
38" x width of fabric for the backing
This particular "design" is so easy to duplicate with any scraps you have in your stash (or pre-purchased charm pack + extra solids).

hits and misses

I started my second weaving project last weekend. I was so excited to use this Noro Sakura yarn for the warp. Sakura is so pretty in the skein. Some parts of it are wound tightly and look just like friendship bracelets and other parts look like bi-color handspun.

I meticulously wound it on my warping pegs (extra long for good measure).

I got Jon to help me wind the warp on my loom - evenly and with cardstock, too.


And then I started weaving. My selvedge edges are much better this time around thanks to Angela's tip to use 2 threads on each end of the warp instead of one.


After a few cranks of the warping peg, a few warp lengths started coming
unraveled. While the scarf looks okay in this photo, it's much worse up close. Let's just say that Noro is not strong enough for warping and double knots or scotch tape will not fix broken length of warp!  I should have given up when I first saw that scraggly threads coming through the rigid heddle, but I kept going.

After a few days of staring at this project, I've decided to rip it out and save the weft yarn (my precious Plucky MCN Sport!) for another project.  Fortunately, I got the Sakura on super sale at my LYS, so I'm only out about $5 and a few hours of crafting time.

I will happily mail the unused Sakura off to anyone who wants to use it for a craft project of some sort (there's about 70, 3 yard pieces of this stuff). Just leave a note in the comments and I'll mail it off.

Garden 2010: Week 5

We are slowly getting to that time of the summer where all of our hard work in the garden is paying off.

(I decided to weed the garden again on Sunday and now it's blog presentable once again).

Exhibit 1: Radishes!


Exhibit 2: French Breakfast Radishes!

You haven't lived until you've tasted radishes fresh from the garden. They are nothing like bland, store-bought radishes. They're super crispy and extra spicy and so delicious. I like to eat them like potato chips.

Our plants are starting to properly trellis...

pole beans (may need to bring out taller trellis poles for these)


cucumbers (on an upside-down tomato cage secured at the top with twine)


butternut squash


Zucchini (I'm afraid that we planted the non-trailing zucchini and squash varieties, so perhaps the right side of the squash trellis won't be used this summer).

All of the plants that we started by seed are popping up, too. We did
lose some leeks and green onions, but for the most part, everything is
doing well.

beets, parsnips, turnips, onions, carrots and purple carrots


The swiss chard, kale and okra are coming along nicely as well (I accidentally weeded 2 swiss chard plants that I need to replace soon). I've never eaten okra before...I'm accepting any great suggestions for okra dishes if you care to share!

And I finally cut into my row of precious basil...

...and turned it into fresh pesto for this delicious pizza we grilled:


topped with pesto, pine nuts, tomatoes, red onions, broccoli, mushrooms and roasted garlic. (Next time we'll make sure that the bottom doesn't char! oops!)

As you can probably tell, it's been a great week in the garden! The garden and I are back on good terms after last week's depressing post. :)

this and that

I won this embroidery pattern giveaway from Rosamaria earlier this year (I'm too embarrassed to go back and see how long it's been!). She and her sister started up this darling etsy store, Mi hermana y yo, that sells bags, pillows and embroidery patterns. I got to pick my favorite embroidery pattern and I went with the Frida Kahlo pattern (of course, as I'm a big Frida/Mexico fan). The embroidery pattern came with three designs, and so far I've stitched up the first design in the set.

I patterned my Frida after this photograph and my favorite part of this design is all of the flowers in her hair and, of course, the unibrow. I think I stitched her nose around 8 times before stopping the madness and calling it good. I'm planning on turning this piece into a tote bag to house one of my crafting WIPs, so stay tuned!

It's been quite a while since I've done any embroidery, but I think it's such a fun warm weather hobby. I still want to do some more embroidery this summer and I even have a few Sublime Stitching patterns ironed on to some tea towels and in my crafting queue already (I'm thinking the Sexy Librarian pattern is definitely appropriate now considering my new degree). Plus, I still want to stitch up this adorable buffalo pattern.


I finished up my first woven scarf on Saturday night. I'm glad to have my practice scarf out of the way as the sloppy selvedge edges and uneven tension are bothering me a bit. At least now I know what I need to improve on for the next project, right?

(All of the details for this project are in my ravelry project page if you're interested).

Garden 2010: Week 4

Not much to report this week. We planted marigolds and ignored the weeds. For this week, I want to tie some of the squash branches to the trellis, weed and plant more radishes and mesclun.