A Special Rose

Yesterday the rose bush I planted in memory of my mom bloomed.  The rose is called sentimental.  Here are some pictures I took.

 

Sentimental rose.

 

 

 

Definitely one of the prettiest roses I've ever seen.  It really stands out in the garden.  This rose makes a happy memory honoring my mother.

In the Victory Garden

The Victory Garden

Lots of delicious tomatoes!

The Victory garden is doing very well this year.  The garden is planted rather close but all the plants are healthy and some growing overnight!  The tomatoes have been the star of the garden.  Even with loosing some plants at first there are close to 30 tomato plants several volunteering from last years seeds!  There are 6 Early and Best Girls, 6 cherry 100's, a Brandywine heirloom, six random heirlooms, some odds and ends tomatoes and of course the volunteers!  They are growing so close together that it is hard to tell which plant the tomato is on!  One of the tomato plants looks like a Black Krim, it just started setting fruit so it will take a while before we know what it is!

Last week we finally had more tomatoes then we could eat so I put them in the oven to dry.  I've had good luck using the pilot light in the gas oven to dry tomatoes and afterward I froze them for the winter.  But I just couldn't wait to eat them so I put them in the oven at 250 degrees.  Then I added a handful of 5 different types of fresh basil leaves, a splash of white wine and a little Balsamic vinegar and lots of olive oil.  It came out great!  Lee spread the tomatoes on a sandwich of Havarti cheese.  So today when I harvested about 5 pounds of ripe tomatoes I cut them up and roasted them and Lee brought home a loaf of French bread!  So he toasted the bread with cheese and olive oil and then put on the tomatoes and sausage.  A wonderful dinner inspired by fresh tomatoes.  Definitely worth all the work in the garden and with organic tomatoes at $3.00 or more a pound helps the budget.

Needled

Today was very stressful for awhile.  I had gone into the backyard to water the vegetables which are doing really well.  At this point it is better too soak the plants to reduce water on the leaves causing mildew.  So instead of going in and out of the house I decided to sit under the apple trees and work on a new project, a basket.  Recently I wanted to take advantage of the millions of pine needles that fall into the yard every year.  So I found a video on www.youtube.com .  Once I understood how pine needle baskets were made I started weaving a basket to use in the yard too collect all those veggies!  The only supplies needed were pine needles, raffia, and a strong needle.  So I got out an 6 inch doll needle!  Doll needles are large, sharp and strong so that they can be found easily when making a doll.  Not something to step on!  So when I placed the hose to trickle water around the watermelons and went back to my basket the needle was gone!  I panicked!!  I've been trying to be extra careful with needles and now I had lost one of the most dangerous in some dry grass.  I flashed back to my doctor wanting to give me a tetanus shot.  The needle had to be found!  So I calmed myself and looked at the surface I had put it on and imagined were it would have fallen.  Then I had to take the weight of the needle into consideration.  That gave me two small areas to search.  So I knelt at the first spot and worked through the dead grass in layers and still couldn't find it.  The dead grass was so shiny that I was fooled several times into thinking that I had found the needle.  So I went into the house for a magnet.  I would have done so earlier but I had lost my large magnet and only had magnetic scissors.  The needle was so heavy it would never be picked up by the scissors but I hoped I would see it move.  The scissors didn't find anything but now I felt sure it wasn't in that area.  The second area was in the shade and the needle would have hit a board that was against the surface it was put on.  So the needle would have bounced a little.  So I narrowed the area and finally found the needle!  I was so relieved!  By then I had flooded the garden a bit!  But I was happy and so were the vegetables!  So much for the haystack!

Here is my pine needle basket so far.

Pine needle baskets are very easy to make.  So far my problem is not tightening the raffia enough while winding the pine needles.  The technique is just like my fabric basket but instead of fabric strips wrapped around soft cotton cording, the raffia is wrapped pine needles.  Here is a link to  by fabric basket tutorial  http://ravingsofamadcrafter.blogspot.com/2012/06/making-rug-from-sheets.html  This will never be as pretty as the fabric basket but it does give be a project to work on in the yard!

Megan's Sacrifice

Megan the orchid was loosing a flower so I picked it and drew a template from her sacrifice.  At first I was going to make a stumpwork pattern but instead decided to start with a needle painting.  Maybe this will go into the embroidered quilt.  The biggest job is finding the right colors, DMC's colors don't seem to ever have the right shades of purple!  The colors I picked out are pretty but not accurate.  The truth is that I keep changing the colors and perhaps I need to shop for some more floss!

I have been working on the needle painted yellow poppy.  I am still having a hard time with the shadows on the petals.  To little and the depth is wrong to much and the petals blend into each other.  This is a bit harder on a poppy because the petals don't overlap as much as other flowers.  So there is just a small but important amount of shadow to work.  Needle painting seems to be a type of embroidery that takes a bit more creative thought and is unique to each needleworker.  Makes be long for a painted canvas!  Not a lot of decisions to make just a lot of fun stitching!

Yesterday I started several projects.  Not exactly a great idea to start more embroideries but sometimes I have to take advantage of being able to iron the fabric.  So I started working on a Jacobean style embroidery using the wool and some natural colored linen fabric.  The other day I was trying to come up with a Jacobean design when I received yet another book from www.paperbackswap.com.  The book was "The Margaret Boyles Book of Needle Art.  There are several designs in the book that I really like and it saved me having to make up my own Jacobean designs.

A New Orchid

All of the gardening lately has helped to remind me how much I really love orchids.  Yesterday at Trader Joe's I saw a beautiful purple phalaenopsis and it followed me home.  Once an orchid decides to follow you home there is little choice but to surrender!  The new orchid is the same kind as Sally but unlike Sally it is really large.  All of Sally's flowers fit in one hand but the flowers of the new orchid are so large that each flower is as big as my hand.

Purple phalaenopsis.

Closeup of purple phalaenopsis.

This lovely orchid was only $12.99 and was grown in Salinas CA.  I plan on studying the two new additions to the shade garden.  It will make a lovely embroidered square for the needle painted quilt.  It will be a challenge making up a pattern.  I hope to get started after the wild pansy is done.  But before either of these projects I need to write an article for the Bishop's Peek EGA newsletter.  Lot of stuff to keep me busy!

A Secret Garden

The last few days Lee and I have been working on a beautiful shade garden.  Lee has done 90% of the work and I have been doing the easy stuff like starting seeds and planting.  Yesterday I planted a lot of violets, spearmint and apple mint.  Now that the area has been mulched I've been thinking about growing mint as a ground cover and naturalizing some bulbs for next spring.  There are a lot of paperwhites and narcissus to replant from the Spring.  The amaryllis has baby bulbs to replant too.  I would appreciate any suggestions.

The victory garden is really doing well, the weather has been so lovely and the tomato plants are getting full of fruit.  Usually we don't get tomatoes this early because there are so few bees.  But this year with have both honey bees and bumble bees.  They are still enjoying the lavender plant I planted 12 years ago.  It has grown into a beautiful plant but it needs to have the old flowers removed so it will bloom again.  Once I cut back the lavender the bees should be more interested in the vegetable.  The green beans are finally coming up and should take off in the beautiful Summer we are having.  A new section of the yard is almost finished it has taken me a long time to get it ready.  Lee worked over the soil but I want to make sure the weeds are out of the soil before I start planting more seeds.

The wild pansy embroidery is slowly taking shape.  The leaves are almost finished.  Getting the right angle of the stitches has been difficult and it seems to be an important factor in needle painting.  Tomorrow I hope to have some pictures.

I Like My Coffee and Cotton Kona!

The other day I bought some white Kona cotton to finally start on an embroidered quilt.  The embroidered designs will be from Trish Burr's book "Needle Painting Embroidery".  No more wasting the embroidered lesson or turning them into small projects.  The cotton is a medium weight and will take many launderings.  Lee preshrunk the fabric for me and I have copied lesson 10 wild pansy onto a 10 inch square.    The idea was to make embroidered centers with smaller squares surrounding them.  The problem was that the embroidered designs are very diverse in colors.  So how would I find colors for the smaller patchwork squares and have the design look balanced?  I was working on a square when I had what I hope will be a really great idea.  I was feeling guilty because I hadn't finished the yoyo quilt and here I was starting a more traditional patchwork quilt.  So I decided to put them together.  A 6 inch embroidered square padded and with a simple quilting pattern surrounded by purple yoyos!  Here are some of the layout pictures for the quilt.

Yoyo quilt with 6 inch embroidered centers.  This pattern is
Wild Pansy from Needle Painting Embroidery.

Test layout.

There is still a problem with color to work on.  The purple yoyos are great but will they look right surrounding a peach colored rose?  So maybe just embroidering purple flowers would look better.  Another idea would be to make yoyos that match the embroidery colors and do a kind of staggered rainbow.  Whatever colors I decide on I do want to work some green into the yoyos area.  I was thinking of adding green leaves by using the pointed petal tool by Clover.  Just a little reshaping should make it look like a leaf.  I am getting very excited about this quilt.  My estimates are 20 embroidered blocks and 600 yoyos.  Lots of fun or work which ever way you look at it.

This morning I planted some interesting plants we found at KMart.  Orange mint, red geranium and a pink brandwine tomato plant.  We also got a bee balm, greek oregano and fern leaf lavender but I haven't found the right place to put them yet.  The bee balm is a Monarda which is very invasive so it may go into a large pot or planted on the edge of the yard.  The flowers attract butterflies and bees, we have very few of these visiting so hopefully we will see a lot more.

Fern leaf lavender.  It has very tiny flowers.

Greek oregano and bee balm.

The clematis is finally blooming.  So very pretty and longer blooming then I hoped for.

Another clematis flower.

Fuchsia in the shade garden in front. 

This Last Weekend

Actually had a really nice weekend.  Saturday I went to the EGA meeting.  They were teaching how to cover candy tins and how to twist embroidery floss into cording.  Instead of attending the class I started a bargello needlepoint in pink and green wool.  This was the first needlepoint that I had worked on in over 30 years.  It wasn't that easy to get started but it got easier as I progressed.  The trick is to copy the pattern line and then repeat it making sure that you are going over the correct number of threads.

 

Bargello needlepoint.

 

The pattern is so easy that it only took me three days to get it finished.  Needlepoint doesn't have the appeal that it once did but that doesn't mean it isn't pretty and useful.  This piece is probably going to me made into a pillow.  Today I got out all the needlepoint books I have which is only six.  The book "More Needlepoint Designs" by Lou Gartner is very interesting.  The author's goal is to teach needle workers to chart or paint their own designs.  To trust in their ability to stitch without a specific "this color stitch goes here".  It is an interesting book and it has a lot of pattern outlines to start stitching.  It also has color photo to help determine colors and shading.  It is a lot like painting with a needle.

 

Sunday I put in beans and watermelons into the garden.  The garden is slowly it is getting bigger and we now have several tomatoes.  I also started some cantaloupe seeds sprouting.

 

 

Tomato plant.

 

Here is a picture of a new orchid.  Sally is a lovely pink shade.

 

 

 

Sally she is small but lovely.

 

 

Flowers pots in an wash tub.  This was to disguise a drain in the yard and be easy to move.

 

After weeks on a wheat less diet I had pizza from the best deli in town and watched "Red Dwarf" on Netflix.  I should have been eating toast but I love pizza more!

Yet Another Day

Went out in the early morning and fertilized and watered all the tomatoes.  Our first tomato is growing!  We usually don't get them started this early because the bees are still fertilizing the lavender.  The tomato plants aren't very large yet but they are getting flowers.  So with some luck we will be getting a large number of tomatoes by July.  I like to dehydrate the extras in the oven and free them for winter.

Yesterday we went to the local OSH store and got some beautiful purple pansies and mixed colored cosmos.  This is the first time that I have had this much ambition to have a flower bed in many years.  Usually there are hundreds of four o'clock plants in the flower bed.  So to fit other flowers in I've been weeding out a lot of four o'clock plants.  So I decided to plant the cosmos to feed other small birds.  The tiny finches like to sit on the cosmos and eat the seeds directly, sometimes upside down!  To say the least we see a lot of humming birds with all the four o'clock plants.  We also have a purple flowering bush that attracts humming birds even more than the four o'clock plants.  So there will be plenty of nectar for all visitors.  I've left some four o'clock plants in with the other flowers to fill in the back of the flower bed.

The little finches seem to have used the supply of coconut fibers I left them.  Perhaps I will put out some of the small ends left from silk ribbon embroidery.  Those finches will have a really cool nest!  Most birds in this area have three nesting seasons so they are very busy!

Last week I had a run in with a spider and spent 5 hours in the emergency room getting antibiotics.  Good thing I got up around midnight and looked in the mirror.  My mouth was so swollen and twisted that I couldn't form works.  It took 6 days for the swelling to go down and I have only started to eat solid foods again.  I was to tired most of the time to craft.

Just a couple days ago I started working on a cupcake.  The idea is to make some for an Altrusa tree.  Here is a picture of my first try.

 

 

 

Close-up of cupcake.

 

The cupcake is made from felt with a decorated satin top and has a red velvet bottom.  Then the icing on the side is made from a sheer white ribbon stitch in zigzag runching.

 

A Day in the Garden

Today I worked on a very small garden, weeded and planted 6 tomato plants.  Fell and hit my knee and hip both of which are trying to persuade me not to move tomorrow.  Think I will listen to them both! 

In the evening I saw two tiny finches.  One was in a tree and the other was tearing apart one of the hanging baskets!  It took a minute then I realized they wanted the coconut liner for nesting.  So I tore up some extra liner and left it for them to collect.  Now I know why some of the baskets have holes!

Haven't done any crafting at all today.  But I did find an out of print pattern book called "Weldons Flower Embroidery".  It is a really nice little book with patterns for shaded embroidery, cross stitch, and wool.  Lots patterns and instructions on flower and bird embroideries.  I intent to read it tonight if I can stay awake!

Don't Know Where to Start

Here it is June 1st already!  A whole month without posting, I've just been feeling quiet lately.  Sort of a brain vacation.

Usually this time of year is full of working on the fair entries.  I signed up and then decided to drop out.  Usually I redo the entries thinking they aren't nice enough and end up ruining the projects.  So instead I'm leaving them alone!  That leaves me a whole month of working on something new.

The garden is full of tomato plants.  The trees have lots of hanging baskets of herbs.  The basil and catnip are hanging out of the way of snails and cats.  Lee bought a clematis for me and I started it growing on the wisteria. 

 

I've also been working on a small potted garden under the olive tree.  So far I have two miniature roses, two fuchsias, snapdragons, violets, peppermint, lilies, white potato vine, hollyhocks, narcissus, gladiola, and three orchids.  I only had two orchids but they needed to be split.  The one was so pot bound that all the wood chips had been consumed.  So with some ambition and a heavy knife I worked on seperating it into two plants.  Even with the roots curled they were over 30 inches long.  Needless to say $8,000 and an emergency MRI later I now have them separated.  Thank goodness I have insurance again.  Still the copay would have bought a lot of orchids.  So no more wrestling with huge orchids.  Yesterday I pulled out some irises to make a small herb garden.  Hit myself hard in the head with the unpointy end of a pitch fork.  Happy about that!  So now there are herbs closer to the kitchen.  Now to find homes for the displaced irises.  They are small, 18 inches tall, and a beautiful deep purple.  They even bloom twice a year with extra care.  They are prolific and all my friends are trying to get rid of extras from irises I gave them years ago!

 

Embroidering has been my main hobby lately.  Working on surface embroidering mostly and slowly working through the needle painting book.  Just like painting it takes time to get the hang of shading and highlights.  But I am getting tired of working small pieces.  So I am considering making embroidered quilt squares, just need to find some nice fabric.  My butterfly  making has gotten better.  Using finer wire and cotton and silk sewing threads together seems to be the best combination.  I made a butterfly to put on my name tag for EGA meetings. 

 

 

Stumpwork butterfly.

 

 

Butterfly closeup.

 

A friend found a great deal on real French bias silk ribbon. She got me four rolls for $24.00 and the rolls have 28 yards each and are 1 1/2 inches wide.  Also the YLI 4mm silk ribbon was on sale for 50 cents.  I've never had an abundance of silk ribbon to play with before.

 

 

French bias silk ribbon.

 

 

Green and pink striped silk ribbon.

 

The green and pink ribbon was a challenge to work into a flower.  At first I didn't think I could use the ribbon.  After looking at ribbon flower books I decided to tried making it into a carnation.

 

 

Silk ribbon carnation.

 

The ribbon works beautifully as a carnation making it's own calyx with it's green stripe.

 

The carnation looks so real it is hard not to sniff it.  The other ribbons will make lovely roses when

I get some time to work on them.

Currently I am working up samples for a beginners embroidery class.  Hopefully I will be able to help someone learn to embroider.

Six Cherry Tomato Plants

Early this morning I planted 6 cherry tomato plants so there are 19 tomato plants in the garden.  With some luck I will be able to plant the last 6 plants and start some lima beans.  Gardening is a wonderful way to exercise and feed yourself.  After Lee softens the next area of ground I'm hoping to start some watermelons.

Didn't do much crafting today but I did get some fabric at Beverly's and said hi to some friends.  They have a 40% off flat folds on Wednesdays so I bought some more curtain fabric for scarves.  I also showed off the crocheted doll I was making.  It is fun to look at what everyone is making.

Well I need to get back to the Mount Mellick pillow, it is going to be done in time for the Fair!

Tomatoes

Today was cool and a bit drizzly so I worked on our vegetable garden.  Lee softened the ground and I weeded.  The last few years we have tried to have a garden but the plants died from neglect.  But this year we are determined to have fresh vegetables!  So far we have a space cleared about 4 feet by 8 feet and 13 tomato planted.  We have had a warm spring so we took our chances and started the garden two weeks ago.  Lee went to the hardware store and came home with the last batch of tomato plants, some cherry tomatoes.  So we need to clear some more space for another 12 plants.  Will 25 tomato plants be enough?  I also planted several hanging baskets of herbs.  The basil plants do very well in a basket and it confuses the snails.  Then I planted catnip plants and hung them on a tree, that confuses cats.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a nice day to work outside.

A day off

I've been having a wonderful day off from work playing in the garden and planting. Today I planted astillbe, bleeding hearts, cala lilies and hanging pots of herbs. Last year I hung several pots of herbs under the almond trees in the back yard and they were incredibly beautiful and tasty.

The backyard is full of fruiting trees, we have three apples, peach, nectarine, lime, cherry, two almonds and an apricot. In the front is a huge olive, guava and pecan. This spring has been beautiful with all the blossoms. A pair of birds having nested in the olive tree and chipped at me the whole time I was planting in front. The olive tree has created an opportunity to have a shade garden. I have planted ferns, maidenhair and china doll, The china doll is huge! Also there are several orchid plants, cymbidiums, Phalaenopsis, Cattleya and Laelia. They love this area of california and can live outdoors with protection. Only the cymidiums are blooming right now and they are beautiful shade of pink. I smile everytime I see them.

As usual I have to many crafting projects to count. Currently I'm working on a ribbon embroidery project. It will be a scrapbook cover for her forthcoming baby so it has to be perfect. I've been practising my stitches because it has to be perfect! I've also been decorating a silk ribbon box. It is traditional to have a beautiful box for storing silk ribbons and supplies. It is a paper-mache hatbox I got at Beverly's Craft store. I painted it turquoise and then sponged it with silver ink. Today I printed out scans of japanese prints to decorate the sides of the box. I think it will be pretty. The original prints were purchased in Japan when my SO's father lived there before WWII. They are so lovely and this is a way they can be enjoyed and the originals safe.

Tonight I am going to read a book from the library "Romantic Silk Ribbon Keepsakes" by Mary Jo Hiney. It has some flower techniques I haven't seen in other books and I'm excited to start reading it. Tomorrow I start seriously stitching the baby album cover.