June Bug.

Summer haircut.

Some of the summer wardrobe that has been in the makes.

Trying to "girly" up some cargo shorts passed down from big brother.

Making this dress happen from scraps and a bed sheet. 

This fabric was once a king size flat sheet and it is the

softest cotton! Perfect for hot weather! 

I've made so many muslins out of it, it's finally getting smaller.

Twirly skirts, for a birthday gift.

Lazy gardener salad thing. Gifted to us by the 'rents, it's a big sturdy plastic barrel with holes all around. It's pretty cool, you can compost in the center core, and I think it comes with a stand if you wanted to put it indoors.

This is the guy that's been putting holes in everything. 

I was fascinated and yet appalled when it was hissing, so of course I teased it till it flew away.

Here you are May.

Guess me trying to do monthly updates failed miserably!

(and I guess it doesn't help that the weather has been so nice either!)

Here is what kept me so busy last month.

We were trying to get the garden in shape to plant some things, and we found these! Here is super long asparagus (was so good and tender), and some bitter greens that we harvested really early. 

A special request apron.

Cactus pincushion family. Made by Marzipan pattern.

Shop bags.

Birthday dress for #3. Which I did a week before (shame!) I am suppose to be planning projects months ahead of time! In my defense though, sewing is a lot faster than knitting, so I'm still in the clear.

It's August!

Seriously? It's already August. What the heck. 

Last year here, you'll see that we are "surprise gardeners". What surprised us this year?

Butternut squash, cantaloupe, strawberries (but they get drowned out by the bigger plants), tomatoes (plum and a beefsteak), sunflowers...we planted, ( threw in the dirt, actually) potatoes, and a bitter green mix.

I'v started the "pink baby tweed" which is in this book. It's a gift for my new niece.

And I've been practicing my crochet by making dishcloths:

I love these so much better than a sponge!!

I think my sewing mood has finally returned. Maybe it's been the autumn-like days that have been happening.

baby onesie romper thing

dress for my new niece 

fleece coat, with pink corduroy collar
(this is the start of a back to school wardrobe.)

Mantis, Mantes, Mantises

Having any kind of plant growth in your yard means you're going to be home to lots of little critters. And when you have a garden, your door is open a lot wider for things like this:

Back yard nature at it's best with that one. Does anyone know who those eggs belong too?

I let them out of the jar after their photo shoot, so don't worry. 

My favorite thing to find in the yard has got to be a Praying Mantis.

It's really special to spot them, and scoot them back to the grass.

And then find them when they're gigantic, l O O king at you for crashing through their home.

So cool. 

Gardening

It's that time of year when almost everyone boasts about their garden, "I can't believe I just harvested a 50lb egg plant." Or canning all sorts of things like pickled carrots and sugar syrup blah-blah in my pressurized canning oven. So I'm going to show you my garden, in all it's neglect and laziness.

 Squash blossom

Purple basil

Uh, this is the mangle of tomato plants.

And this, no-no-no, it's not weeds! It's our salad greens patch. It looked really good for the first month, in fact the whole garden looked really good. Then you realize that taking care of a garden requires constant weeding, pinching tomato vines, trimming basil. What do you think food just grows itself??

Actually, yes, yes it does. See those tomatoes there? Buried in crab grass? They were a surprise. We had about 7 or 8 surprise tomato plant pop up. We do compost, and I guess we threw out a lot of tomato seeds...

and cantaloupe seeds...(see that baby cantaloupe there?)

and squash...

and more squash. I kind of like this surprise gardening thing.