Garden

Misc Pics Catch Up!

Realized it’s been a bit since a posted! Part of the fault is I started using instagram in… August I think and so my random pics go there and I forget to put them here. Also I still haven’t done anything about my camera :/ I know that it’s me not wanting to face if all those pics really are gone ;_; But… I really should find out.

Anyway, so I tend to take random housey pics on my ipad mini anyway. So here’s some pics from September! I’ll do October in another post.

This was probably one of my last batch of refrigerator pickles, my cucumbers fiiiinally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago (no joke, I must have gotten hundreds from those plants!) and I pulled them up and planted chard, beets, and carrots there.

Lots more after the break!

 

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Sweater Weather (not really)

Oh whoops, didn’t realize how long it’d been since I posted!

So there was a bit of a heat wave here in CA last week. It was super warm, as in even I was warm and that hardly ever happens. It was over 100 F but I can’t remember by how much.
Anyway.
I decided that it was a great time to make a sweater!

A few weeks ago my sister and I went a liiiiittle crazy with the redtag table at Joann, getting loads of lovely stripey knits to create more Korean menswear inspired shirts.
I also picked up a really light weight loose weave black and white striped knit, just a little over a yard left on the bolt.

I’ve wanted a black and white stripey loose weave sweater since I saw it on Toshiya when this picture came out:

I don’t even remember when that was now… I’m thinking 2004-2005. I can’t even remember what this pic is promoing, I haven’t followed dir en grey in years :/
(Side note, I’m also quite fond of Kyo’s outfit, the one front & center)

I decided to do a cardigan instead of a sweater, ’cause I wanted something easier to put on and take off, since this is such a light fabric I was thinking it’d be used mostly for summer days. Plus I think the last time I had a cardigan I was 13, so it’d be a nice something to add to my wardrobe.

I took a loosely knit sweater I had (bought for a River Tam costume that I never actually wore now that I think about it, but I wear the sweater quite a lot) that I like the general shape of and sort of traced it with pins onto the fabric ’cause I had no idea how to mark this.

Turned out to be good anyway, because this fabric was super shifty.

I made slight adjustments on the pins and cut!

Also this way I was able to make sure the front and back stripes would match up.
It was mostly a quick serge job, though I put stay tape in the shoulder seams and the back neck line. I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to knits, but it just seemed like a good idea!

It is actually even, I kept thinking whoa why does it look like that, but I didn’t realize until I turned it around for the back shot that the fabric was clinging to the form and there was a large wrinkle across the back.

Fixed for the pic 8D

I love how it looks on the form, it’s almost exactly what I wanted (I wanted the sashing a bit wider, but ran out of fabric, partially due to cutting it longer then changing my mind). A slouchy stripey casual cardigan. Love.
Well.
On meeeeee it doesn’t look nearly so nice!
It looks like … I don’t know, slobby instead of slouchy.

My mum suggested taking the shoulders in, we’ll see. For now I’m calling it done. But I may see if my local Joann has the fabric and try again and give this one to my wider shouldered sister.
It was just nice to make something and have it done!

Sewing aside, here are more garden things!

My lemon cucumbers are super happy, so I did a quick pickle with some of them. SO GOOD.

Seriously every time I chop up some of my beets I run and get my camera, they are just so lovely.

Lastly, my pole beans are looking pretty happy! I’m not actually sure how to cook/eat pole beans, I just thought they’d look so pretty going up my fence. Guess I should look into it!

Misc May

May is over! It was so busy ;_;
I still need to do another wedding dress post, so I’ll leave that out, but other than that I’m just going to photo dump pretty much XD

For Mother’s Day, I made Marmalade!

 WHAT A CHORE. 12 lemons freshly washed.

I followed this recipe. I’ve never done anything like this before, but my friend had made marmalade with my lemons and I really like it, so she sent me the recipe she used and I did my best!

Thankfully one of the random extra dishes my grandpa gave was this juicer. Thankfully because I hadn’t even bothered to check I had one before beginning.
I’m great at forethought.

Forever later, all juiced!
Then you have to scrape out all the insides and then slice the peels thinly.

 Then you blanch the peels three times. I really don’t know why.
Then you add back the juice and add a bunch of sugar and just… stir FOREVER. Until it sets. I didn’t even know what that meant so had to look it up.
But it didn’t set, and I got tired of waiting.

 My prepped jars. I didn’t end up filling them all though.

 Then you have to boil the jars. I didn’t read the instructions before hand, because who knows why, and so didn’t have a pot large enough. I could only do the three smaller ones, and then the two larger ones on their side.

They did actually set! Later. So I don’t know what I was doing wrong that I couldn’t tell? But it’s still delicious. Probably won’t do it again in a hurry though! The whole process took me 6 hours @.@

 So I actually made this in December, but when I made it I couldn’t find my snap press so gave it to my sister without taking pics. Then later I went and put the snaps in, and forgot to take completed pics. Then AJ mentioned maybe making a makeup bag so I took these pics for her.

 I really like this bag, my sister who’s huge into makeup says it’s great for a travel bag. So I may make one for myself.

These are terrible pictures I know, but this is the pattern I used, and bonus it’s free!

 I went to RuPaul’s DragCon in LA, it was super fabulous. But I really didn’t take many pictures, idk why D:

 These are some of RuPaul’s outfits, gorgeous.

 LOVE this dress.

 My friends on the pink carpet, they so fancy.

I didn’t dress up, I have nothing fabulous and couldn’t make up my mind in time to borrow something. Plus then I would have had to do my face aaaand, I’m just so lazy.

The signs were amazing. I should have taken a pic of all of them.
Ah well.
Moving on.

 I sorted all these blocks I got from the Northern CA Quilt Rush and then chose some to make my sister this shark pencil case she requested.

 Totally mis-measured and thought I’d only need 6 squares initially, whoops.

 All cut out!

 I didn’t read the instructions all the way before starting this (surprise! That’s become a trend with me lately, need to stop doing that…) because I figured how hard can a bag be. So I would have done some things differently.

 Like the seam in the middle there? Is to make the pouch round (and contain the upper fin), I wouldn’t have put one in the bottom, so the bottom could stay flat.

 Also it’s smaller than I thought it would be, too small to even fit my hand in, so I’d make it larger if I did it again.

But it still came out pretty cute! Oh and the zipper mouth was really hard and fiddly because of the smallness.

 Quick garden shot. The sweetpeas look SUPER cute with my roses. They took so long to come up I thought they weren’t going to, but then they exploded. Nice and fragrant 😀

Finally, aren’t my beets beautiful! 
Also delicious.

Garden!

Back to sewing later. For now, a garden update!

I can’t seem to find a pic of it totally before I started working, but here’s the section of my yard I’m focusing on gardening right now.

I was scraping weeds before putting a planter box down. D gave me several of these planter boxes! This was taken in January I think.

You can see just beyond the box there that there’s a strip of dirt, in there already my mum and I had planted some peas, beets, and raspberries.

I was positive I’d taken pics in the interim, but I can’t find any… kind of a bummer ’cause I remember taking a pic of the cute stick teepees I made… anyway, flash forward to April!

I finally get around to putting dirt in that box! And I started laying down landscaping fabric and putting bark over it.
You can see my peas are coming up nicely!

This is more how it looks now, I still haven’t put anything in the bin closest here, ’cause I need to go get more dirt.

Produce though!
This was the 3rd.

 I  ended up sauteing them with some of the beets I thinned out and some bok choy.

BLOSSOMS ON MY RASPBERRIES.
Super excited.

And on my strawberries! But I don’t expect much from them this year.

Tied some sticks together from a fig tree that was in my sideyard but was randomly cut down right before I took possession.
Planted my cucumber seedlings!

Still lots of work to be done!

 On the 8th I picked a bunch of peas!

I’m pretty sure I sauteed these also.

But!

On the 12th I saw I had even more!

I munched away on these while working on some other stuff. Yum!

So not a LOT in the scheme of things, but it was exciting to me 8D