I had no intention of disappearing for three weeks, but I guess that's just what I did. I've been both busy and lazy. Well, not so much lazy, just worn out from the busy. And there was a bit of a cold somewhere in that time too. Last week I decided to enter a contest at Veer.com to win a MacBook Pro. I knew the competition was going to be tough, but I forced myself to try anyway. Veer is a stock photo/illustration/design site, so most users are professional graphic designers. So the contest was to step away from the computer and recreate their logo with real materials. Multiple entries were allowed, so I did three: a mini quilt, a papercut, and a candy mosaic. 

  

  

  

The winner was pretty darn cool, and the ten runners-up were also really great. I'm still happy I went without sleep and ate too much orange candy in my attempts. I do love my papercut one, although that was my first attempt at papercutting, and it was not easy. I want to try it out with different kinds of paper, because everything looked terrible when I tried to use a blade. I ended up using paper scissors in the end. I think I'll remove the letters from the quilt and turn it into a little doll quilt, I love the bright, juicy oranges. 

I've been doing a little cooking as well, and had myself a little tea party one afternoon, while watching Howard's End. You don't really notice the food in that movie unless you watch it hungry. I speak from experience. So I was prepared this time. One of my favorite scones ever are the ginger scones I would get at Teaism, when I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. So I used a cream scone recipe and added finely chopped crystallized ginger and they may not have looked like much, but they were just perfect. I recommend that you try this sometime. 

  

My former boss is an avid fisherman, and brought back a whole lot of yellow fin tuna from a recent trip. So I decided to use some to make fish & chips, but with a little Asian twist. I cut the chunk of tuna into fat sticks, dipped them in beaten egg, and then coated them with panko crumbs. Then I fried them in a little oil (maybe a half inch deep), turning so that all the sides got nice and brown. I made two dipping sauces instead of tarter sauce. The first was my usual wasabi cream sauce and the other with a spicy mayonnaise, which was simply mayo with some srirachi chili sauce (also known as Rooster sauce), and a little squeeze of lemon. Yum! It was delicious and really easy. 

  

Now I'm hungry, and we are out of bacon, so I think I'm going to get myself dressed and head over to the local diner for breakfast. 
 
 

 
 

 

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Today I covered my camera strap with cute fabric.

 

It was a vintage wool Liberty of London tie I had squirreled away, waiting for just the right project. I really love it.

 

I was feeling like I haven't been very productive lately, but I actually have been working on some things. I'm just a little scattered right now.

 

Two little softies will be on their way to Australia this week for a new book, and I've finally figured out a pattern for the pink and brown quilt I need to make.

My new little layer, on the other hand, has been very productive. One of her very first eggs was a double yolker

 

And two last words: Greek Nachos. Yum. Okay, that was three words. 

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I like giraffes, don't you? Maybe it's because they are tall that I find them so appealing. I do not, however, have quite as long a neck.

This is from my trip to the Boise Zoo last month. It's a nice little zoo, and I had fun getting photography tips from my brother as we walked around. It was like we had our own little photo safari.

I've been working on my jelly roll quilt. 126 triangles down, 78 more to go. I've started putting pieces up on my design wall and I think I'm going to love this quilt. I really like creating my own originals, sorting through fabric and finding just the right combination, but sometimes it's so nice to just let someone else do all the thinking work, and just enjoy the patchwork zone that I get into, cutting, sewing and pressing.

Winston is laying on his back, paws in the air, and just started wagging his tail for no apparent reason. He's such a happy dog, I can't help but smile when I'm around him. Yesterday morning I was loading the car with bags for Good Will. I left it open while I went back in the house to get ready for work. When I cam back out to leave, a good 20 minutes later, there he was, sitting in the driver's seat, ready to go! I was tempted to take him with me to work, but it wouldn't have been much fun for him to lay under my desk all day.

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Too much stuff on my to-do list, too much stuff to make, and too much stuff in my house. That's the theme for this weekend, I think. I will have to clean the bathroom and do the laundry and hopefully clean out the dresser and send some things to Goodwill, but mostly what I want to do is make things, so let's just talk about the fun, creative stuff, shall we?

Actually, despite the fact that for some reason, this week I haven't done much more than come home from work and sit like a zombie on the couch while watching Netflix dvds, I have one finished project to share (finished a while ago, actually):

It's this little baby jacket from Debbie Bliss. Stash yarn from I don't even know how long ago, and a scrap of fabric for the flower. It was a quick little knit for my new niece, and I hope to see her in it this Winter. Baby knits are so perfect for Summer knitting: small, quick and portable! Which reminds me that I really need to go to the beach sometime soon, before Summer is over (the portable part of that last sentence is what made me think of that, in case you were wondering how my mind works and what knitting has to do with the beach).

I decided to be a little less lazy last night, and pulled out my orange sweater to work on while watching the last season (sniff!) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I had started the first sleeve, but stopped because extreme laziness prevented me from reading how to do the M1L and M1R stitches that I needed to do to move on to the next row. It turns out those increases were not as difficult as I remembered, and now I'm nearly done with the first sleeve. Here's hoping I'll have pictures of a finished sweater soon! One more sleeve and it's all done. Just in time, too, since the new Interweave Knits just arrived, and I really need to make a couple sweaters from it (Rosamund's cardigan and the Nordique
Swing, in case you were interested).

Besides knitting, I've got some serious quilting to do. I have a commission for a baby quilt and the only requirements were pink and brown. I can add another color and do any design I want. I have an idea what I'm going to do, but this one is a little challenging. Brown is not usually on my list of color choices. I went to the 1930's reproductions for inspiration, since I especially like those pinks, and here's what I've decided to work with:

 

I love the light brown polka dots. The plan for this weekend is to get a few squares done. At the other end of the spectrum, I picked up a jelly roll while visiting my favorite quilt shop in Boise earlier this month. Then I found this pattern, and thought it was quite adorable, and started slicing and stitching away. Sometimes it's nice to have someone else do all the work planning and thinking, and to just sit and sew.

 

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While last Saturday may have made me feel like a failure as a farmer, things are not all bad around here. Despite the  fact that the chickens continue to think my vegetable garden is their own personal dust bath spa, a few things are growing quite nicely. I harvested my first radish this week.

This is a salad rose radish, they are, obviously, a long variety. This one was about six inches. I left it for Mr. HeyLucy to eat, because radishes are one of his favorites. He pronounced it delicious and very spicy. The chickens did a bit of damage to my radish section, so there are only three others there. They grow so quickly, I'm thinking of filling in a few squares with more radish seeds, so we can enjoy a few more harvests. I'll also be adding some chicken wire covers to the garden, and hopefully that will keep those rascals at bay.

I also discovered that what was burning my plants was actually a freakishly late frost (we had frost until June 22!), so I lost my beans, a couple cucumbers, and the cinnamon basil. I thought that three of my four tomatoes were goners, but only one actually died, and the other three are looking good. My red grape tomato is huge, and there are even a few tomatoes ripening. The other two tomato plants have a ways to go, but I'm hoping we'll still get a few by the end of Summer.

Here's the whole garden, it looks pretty nice:

The sorrel is doing really well, I've trimmed it a couple times to share with friends, and I'm going to try and make some sorrel soup this week. I'm not sure if my peas are going to do much more than they're doing now. They're the four right front boxes. As you can see, they have no interest in climbing the poles I've rigged for them, but there are quite a few pods. It may be getting too hot for them, so once the pods are ripe, I think I'll harvest and pull them out and replace them with something else.

Here's what I'm discovering: when it comes to gardening, you can read and study and plan all you want, but the only way to really learn how to garden is to…garden. I know, that's so deep, but if you want to plant a garden, and you have even a little bit of space, I say go for it! You'll never be more ready than you are now, and some things will not work, and some things will be amazing. I think it helps to be out there in the dirt, as much as possible, too, and even just pulling a weed here and there is progress. It's so easy for me to look at my big garden area, where I want to plant berries and fruit trees and make about 8 more boxes and get overwhelmed, but I just keep reminding myself to be patient and just do a little at a time, and eventually I'll have my little Eden out there. 

Enough about the garden, remember how I started making a sleeve for my laptop? I finished it and used it while traveling last week. It worked out just great.

 

My laptop is my primary computer, so it's a big 17" one. I don't travel much with it, sand I have a case, but it's heavy and ugly, and it wasn't very practical. So I got myself a little rolling carry on bag, and filled it with a bunch of stuff, leaving room for the computer on the top. So much easier!

 

And it's cute!

One last thing, back to the garden. I decided to have some pretty yogurt for breakfast this morning. I picked a sprig of lavender and a sprig of mint, and added them to my Greek yogurt and raspberries. There's also a sprinkle of raw sugar for sweetness. It's quite tasty (I'm eating it right now!) and it smells so good.

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I'm getting ready to go visit family on Thursday, so this will be quick. I decided that my laptop needed a sleeve for my travels, so I can stick it in my new little rolling carry-on, rather than lugging it around in the abnormally heavy laptop case that I usually use. I was inspired by one of my favorite Japanese Patchwork books to do a little collage-y kind of thing on linen.

I added a layer of batting and quilted it, now I just have to fold it in half and sew it up. Of course I'll share when it's all done. I picked some flowers this morning, and the lavender was positively buzzing with bees!

I also finished up the little kimono for the baby that arrived today! That story is for my sister to share, and I hope to see pictures soon.

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