No time for sewing or painting right now; it’s gardening season! I didn’t go as big as last year with the crazy schedules and big yields, instead trying to adapt my well-performers and self-sowers into a larger portion of the 2024 garden. Seeds were started indoors in late February as… Read More »I’m in the Garden 2024
Do you ever get the feeling that everything’s already been made? That nothing is really new or original, and our culture has been saturated by nearly every conceivable image or utterance? Even more so with the surge in AI, computers are flooding the internet with rearrangements of stolen images so… Read More »2023 Summer Gardening Season Recap
Happy Memorial Day! I hope you’re having a nice holiday weekend if you’re in the US. I’m sewing some clothes for dance, and while doing so I whipped together this twist-headband out of some scrap material. When life feels very full, quick crafts are satisfying. Good for keeping my hair… Read More »Simple Knit Jersey Headband & Gardening
The garden is expanding!! After two summers and two winters supporting our local farms by buying farm-shares, trying tons of new vegetables, learning the growing seasons and what thrives in our area, we have decided that next year, we will try to grow a much larger percentage of our own food. Farm… Read More »Vegetables in the Front Yard
Well I just took all of July off from posting, didn’t I? I did come back August 1st with a finished garment; A bridal jacket, no less. Even though it’s summer, I’ve been very busy with wedding design, gardening, commissions, work, and volunteering. This drought has my lawn looking awful,… Read More »Summer Colors
On May Day, my mother, and dear friends and bride’s matrons threw me the most beautiful Beltane Bridal Shower. I have been walking on air for days reading over everyone’s heartfelt cards, and unpacking a generous mountain of gifts. We had a perfect day of sunny warm weather after a… Read More »Beltane Bridal Shower
In the fall we harvest. We pickle, we can, we freeze. All winter, it’s baking. What garment helps with all that more than any other? An apron, of course. I’m in an apron-making mood. They are all my favorite sewing projects in one: utilitarian, good for scraps, all rectangles. If… Read More »Apron-Making Mood
Those of you that follow this blog regularly may have noticed that I’ve been taking a break from posting. I’m taking some time to reconnect with myself while the pandemic slowly loosens its grip (on the US anyway), and society prepares for a monumental shift. I’ve mostly been spending my… Read More »Late Spring Check-in, 2021
The hardscaping theme continues with another one of Jake’s creations! After building the garage a beautiful garden walkway, we couldn’t simply store our trash barrels in front of it like we used to. A stylish path requires stylish trash. To dress up our disposables, Jake built us a fancy trash shed.… Read More »Summer Hardscaping: Trash Shed
Another of Jake’s hardscaping project on the books, which I will post for the benefit of this blog because I did help a lot. Before we bought the house there was once an asphalt path that wound around the garage. Somewhere in the construction of the new house, that path was… Read More »Summer Hardscaping: Garden Path
The brevity of this post diminishes the enormity of the physical labor involved in this project. While Jake has been on furlough this summer he is going all out with the home-improvement. Several of the projects on his list have involved hardscaping for the yard, and this post features our… Read More »Summer Hardscaping: Rain Rock Garden
The earth has been good to us this season. Our raised garden beds have been a great success, we went blueberry picking, and our yard has had enough flowers to spare some for indoor arrangements. So far this year the garden has produced more lettuce than we could eat, a… Read More »Abundant Earth
Indoor projects have slowed as the weather improves and we spend more of our free time outdoors. The garden is coming along spectacularly though. All the intense labor is worth it when the colors burst forth from the dirt and stems. When we bought our house a year and a… Read More »Expending Effort Outdoors
Winter has finally arrived in the North East. With temperatures barely climbing above 0 degrees Fahrenheit today, I would like to look back on warmer times. Below is a collection of back yard improvements undertaken in the spring of 2018 and my thoughts on further improvement for the spring of… Read More »More Backyard Projects from Last Year
This is the first spring in our new house, and the yard has a lot of existing flora but hasn’t been maintained in many years. It’s been fun seeing what pops out of the ground, but very time-consuming to clean things up. Early spring brought the nice surprise of crocuses,… Read More »What’s Up in the Backyard
While I am working on very large sewing project, I haven’t had a lot of finished projects to show you. However, I did manage to find some time to harvest an early bounty from my garden and porch planter. This is just the beginning of the growing season and I am hoping… Read More »Dried Herbs
Apparently March is National Craft Month. My boyfriend Jake and I got a head start this past weekend by building our own custom plant shelves on a whim. With spring right around the corner it’s time to start some of our seeds indoors. This year we hope to grow sweet… Read More »Custom Shelves