Wooly Days

I spun, dyed, knitted and felted these fingerless gloves that I hope to sell someday. I am also spinning some Cormo-Romeldale fleece that I got at a fiber festival - check out the pics. I plan to ply it and knit up some nice soft socks. The wool is so dreamy to spin - Cormo is so on my sheep wish list!
In other news, the peas are being eaten and the squash and melons suffer from powdery mildew. I plan to use enzymes to kill the bugs and spray the mildew with diluted milk - heard about the second tip in Grow Great Grub, by Gayla Trail. Great book, she also wrote You Grow Girl. Grow Great Grub is definitely more guy-friendly, and has great tips for growing organic edibles in small spaces. So, what's going on in YOUR gardens and fiber workshops?

Silly critter!

So I had seven garlic plants growing outside in a 5-gallon bucket, right? Well now there are only six, and a hole where one was. I think it was a squirrel or a rabbit. Mom says the squirrel with garlic breath is the guilty one, I say I can't catch a squirrel to check! I hope whatever it was leaves the rest alone, though! Oh, and I planted some parsley which just started to come up!

Urban Homesteading

http://urbanhomestead.org/
This website is about a family in California, where there is a year-round growing season, and they grow 99% of their produce (6,000 lbs) on 1/10 acre (4,000 sq ft)! They also raise chickens, ducks, dwarf rabbits and dwarf pygmy goats. Check it out!

Garden at last!

I was worrying about the price of pots for my ambitious container garden, well, I worry no more! My family is renting a 30 x 30 ft community garden plot at Blackacre Farm, so I can plant stuff in the actual ground! I want to grow everything!

Christmas Eve

It is Christmas Eve as I am writing this, but since at St. Michael we do a midnight Christmas service, it is as though the holiday begins tonight. We are waiting until 9 pm to leave, and we just finished Narnia and are about to put in A Year Without a Santa Claus. Fun Christmas movies, and if you're interested, Little Women and While You were Sleeping also include Christmas. Sadly, I never did finish that lace scarf. Too many mistakes. I also made a CRAPPY pair of Fair Isle mittens with numerous mistakes, so now I am making some wool socks that will probably be Fair Isle so I can improve my techniques. If you haven't read The Opinionated Knitter by Elizabeth Zimmermann (actually it is a collection of newsletters) you must if you are a knitter. It takes you to another time where most if not all yarn was wool and patterns were a thing to design yourself or share, but not sell. It is among the most charming books I have read (the other one being Barbara Kingsbury's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I am reading right now).
Strange though it may sound, as we have yet to celebrate Christmas, I am already anticipating spring! My sister accused me of wanting to have no Christmas in order to have 'plant season' year 'round. (No! I do not! Winter is what makes spring special!) But I am looking at the price of strawberry and raspberry plants online, and homemade potting soil recipes to save money. I am also cutting up grocery bags to crochet more plant pots and eagerly doing chores to make a few extra bucks before spring planting time. Well, I am off to do more knitting and plant research - Merry Christmas (Eve)!
Oh, by the way, that tomato plant in the bathroom is still alive, and I am hoping to keep it alive until spring - and also take the ginger out so it can GROW in the summer sun! And I have permission to weed and plant the abandoned church garden! Well, that's really all, this time!

Fruit Kimchi

I love Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation. I returned it to the library today but yesterday I tried the recipe for fruit kimchi. I didn't have any pineapple, grapes, pears or plums, but I used what I had on hand . . . results pending! (I did try some unfermented and it was very good.) I used two apples, a peach, a nectarine, 4 prunes and some raisins. I left out the cilantro, used bottled lemon juice and jarred garlic, and powdered ginger and chili. I also used cayenne instead of jalapenos, and the result was very spicy. Meanwhile I am trying to card and spin alpaca, reading library books, dreaming about next spring's container garden, and trying new food experiments. And one little tomato is starting to ripen! I know the plant will die before the flowers can become tomatoes, but I wonder what would happen if I took it inside? Also I am down to three radish plants, but the sweetpotatoes are doing well. If I get a harvest, what should I make out of them? Oven fries, fermented soda maybe?

How things are going (and growing) . . .

Well, it is almost September and my tomato plant (yes, singular) is finally producing three beautiful yellow flowers. Knowing the weather around here, I might get a few tomatoes before it gets too cold. This one I actually started from seed . . . outside. That's why it isn't making tomatoes yet, because I planted it outside in late June. But I've never had any luck with starting seeds indoors. Trust me, I tried.
Other things in my garden: chammomille container, sweet potato hanging bucket, and purslane planters. I cheated with the purslane and just transplanted some wild weeds of it into containers with potting soil. Hard to believe they are a succulent, considering how plump and juicy they get with lots of water. I will probably only get enough chammomille for a few cups of tea, but it will be extra special because I grew it myself. The picture up top is how much dried chammomille I have so far.
As for other things, well, good news. I don't actually have schizophrenia. Just anxiety and depression. This is such good news! Glory to God! Nowhere near as disabling! We all hope I can go off the Geodon, me included of course! And I am working on the purple section of a handspun orange, red and purple knitted shawl. I dyed the yarn with Kool-Aid, and the orange came out a bit orangey-brown, since the wool was gray to start out with. There are a couple mistakes, so maybe I can keep the shawl if I can't find anyone to give it to. And the local apartment complex crabapples are getting ripe, so maybe my sister and I can go PICKING tomorrow!

Poor radishes . . .

Well, I flubbed it again. Ok, lesson learned. Refusing to thin your radishes because you are selfish will get you ZERO radishes! If you are me, repeat that until it starts to sink in.
My radishes were not developing properly, the leaves would have been edible if they weren't so bug-eaten, and the two radishes that looked like they were starting to bolt had roots that were both underdeveloped and woody at the same time! I had to pull them all up and throw them away. Maybe next year I will try again with radishes. But for now, I am sick of them. Plants I still have: sweet potato (the leaves are bug-eaten but it keeps making new leaves and is pretty and viny in a 5-gallon bucket hanging from a plant hanger) and chammomille (lots of green, no flowers yet, but it's not even July so there is still plenty of time for that to happen) and a secret.
Do you want to know what the secret is? Okay, I will tell you. I have a tomato seedling outside (two, actually). I have never had any success with starting seeds inside, but these tomatoes are doing better outside in the summer than any of my indoor stuff ever did! I hope the growing season is long enough for the plant to mature, but if not I will try again next year!

Random little things . . .

I haven't posted in a long time! I turned 16 over a month ago and I haven't posted since then. I had a chocolate chip cookie cake and my parents made the candles say 10000 (16 in binary!) which was so cool. And I got a huge bag of Lincoln wool to spin. It was from a sheep named Mary Todd. I made a PVC niddy-noddy and dyed some yarn red with Kool-Aid. Now I am trying to knit a simple lace shawl but keep messing up. Ugh!
A couple days ago I had a sleep-deprived EEG and an MRI. Luckily I fell asleep for the part of the MRI that scared me. I woke up and didn't have a needle in my arm anymore. Lucky me :) But I had to stay up all night so the tests had better SHOW something! Please pray for me about that.
We've had a lot of heavy rain that killed my lettuce and severely damaged my radishes, but I planted new radishes, sweet potatoes and chamomille, and now when it's about to rain I cover the radishes and chamomille with garbage bags so they don't get waterlogged or uprooted. I wonder if I can try again with the lettuce in the fall, since it a cool-season crop?

Spring has sprung!

Daffodil shoots are coming up. Birds are flying north. And I already have some parsley and tomato seedlings started. I also planted lettuce in a cake pan outside, but it has yet to come up. But it is pretty obvious, in my opinion, that spring has sprung!