How does my garden grow?

I'm an excellent gardener. From May all the way through, oh, the first week of June or so. After long, cold winters, I itch to get outside and get things cleaned up. And then I get some bug bites, and I sweat off my sunscreen, and I hit the couch. And then the next year I have to clean up all the things I planted and promptly ignored once I had to try to tell the difference between plant and weed. Sigh. Such good (mediocre) intentions, wasted year after year.

My yard is quite small, and thanks to a previous owner working for the parks department back in the day, we have about....6 fully grown, park sized trees on a lot measured in square feet. This is good for finding a place for a hammock, not great for full sun exposure for any measurable length of time. Several years ago, we did a summer of landscaping where we ripped out most everything we could and are still in the process of replacing it in an intentional way. We mapped out the only patch of ground that got a somewhat decent amount of sunlight, and used landscaping blocks scavenged from other really dumb places in the yard to build a raised garden bed.

Hammock

So many leaves.....

And after! (this is from 2009 - you can see the level of shade we deal with! That's pretty much what determined the size, shape and location of the bed. That and the amount of stone we had laying around.)

 

Hey look, I was still enthusiastic about gardening in 2010!

And, well, I've fallen off since then. I've halfheartedly planted something every year, but I think last year I got about 4 carrots and some herbs, and that's about it. I guess that's the nice thing about a vegetable garden - there's always next year. THIS year, I'd planned to make things easy on myself and buy mostly plants rather than trying to do seeds, but....well I did my plant shopping on Memorial Day weekend and got totally overwhelmed. I'm not a type of person who does well in crowds. I ended up grabbing 2 tomatoes, a basil, and a handful of seed packets and walking out in a daze. (The seeds I planted were carrots, peas, beans, spinach, lettuce and green onions. I probably meant to get more or different things...but who can remember?)

Despite my lackluster commitment to the garden, I've been pretty faithful to composting. I started out cheap (like I tend to do) with a rubbermaid bin with holes drilled into it for drainage and air flow. It actually worked out halfway decent. I mean, it made dirt...it's not exactly rocket science. But after several years outside in the winter....because you can NOT move that thing when it's full, the plastic gave out. Last year we got something similar to this compost bin: (I didn't want one of the "tumbling" types, because I've read things about them either falling apart or not turning. Since it has to withstand the elements, I went for the least amount of moving parts)

Even though it's obviously super attractive, we keep it in a planting bed right outside our back door. If it wasn't steps from the kitchen, we would never use it. Or the bin in the house would get disgustingly full and we'd ditch the whole system. We planted some daylilies around it, and due to the compost juices soaking into the ground there, they grow awesome and huge and do provide a bit of camouflage. As for keeping the compost in the house, we've gone through a few systems. I know they have those bins you can leave out on your counter...but they always seemed a little sketchy and gnat attracting to me. First I had a bright idea of putting the scraps that needed to go out in the freezer, because then it definitely wouldn't attract bugs. That part of my theory was totally spot on, by the way. What did NOT work out though was the collection method. I started with a gladware type bin, which worked, but also shattered after several in-and-outs and bangs on the side of the bin to dislodge the frozen bits. Then I moved to a metal bread pan, which did not break, but did not have a lid. In typical man fashion, my husband is of the mind to keep stomping the garbage down in the bin rather than take it out a day earlier. This is not ideal when you have overflowing food scraps and coffee grounds in your freezer. Now we keep scraps in another gladware bin in the fridge, because it's much harder to overflow things that have lids which seal on tightly.

Anyway, because we just have this one bin, we don't have a place to fully age the compost. This, by the way, is the dream for behind the garage:

You know you're old when dreams include ways to organize garbage and dirt.

We use a screen that we build to sit on top of our wheelbarrow so that we can sift out the "done" stuff from the "still resembles food" stuff.

I spent several hot, sweaty hours sifting the compost, and got this:

Impressive, isn't it? It DOES help a little that the part in shadow at the bottom of the picture is also compost. But man, it would be nice to have that 3-bin aging system! Maybe I'll keep that on the list for this summer.....and then in like...3 years, we'll have excellent dirt.

Anyway, so I did plant my meager haul from the garden store.

Despite living in a fairly urban area, we also live near a wooded area, so we get quite an abundance of wildlife. As you can see in the earlier photos, I used metal fencing, which kept out deer, but the squirrels mocked me and used it as a ladder. I cut it on one side on either long edge of the garden so that I could swing it open to get in there and weed (ha) and harvest (double ha), and it had really started to fall apart after several years. This year I'm trying some deer blocking fabric mesh over the whole darn thing. We'll see how this works out. I tacked it into the ground and draped it over the fence post things I already had. It should be fairly easy for me to undo and get in there, and hopefully the squirrels don't just thank me for putting up a hammock for them if they decide to lounge on top, right before breaking through to have a nice lunch.

#operationsockdrawer

It is my opinion that there are two important milestones between being a knitter and a capital K Knitter. These milestones are socks and adult sized sweaters. By this measurement, I am not a Knitter....but I'm getting there!

Now, this isn't the first time I've talked about wanting to knit socks, having never done it before. And I've had people say, uh, don't you SELL socks?

And to that I say....technicality. You see, while sock shaped, these are slippers. They are knitted with super, super chunky yarn on size 13 needles. If pressed, I can finish a pair in 2 days. To be a Knitter, I'm talking about SOCKS. The kind that fit inside of shoes. The kind knitted on size 1 needles. The kind that, in my head, take forever, which is why they've been sort of elusive for me.

I decided to ease my way down from the super chunky to the fine, fingering weight of actual socks with a sport weight yarn, de-stashed to me from one of the lovely knitters in my group (thanks again!). I cast them on March 1, and bound off May 1! 2 months....a little on the long side, but they weren't my only project going on either. I used the basic gusset pattern from Wendy Johnson's book, Socks From the Toe Up. It went very smoothly! I used Judy's magic cast on for the toes, which was super easy, and the russian bind off, which I'm finding to be quite nice and not at all too tight at the top. I did 2x2 ribbing all the way up the leg, because I was a bit worried that the plain stockinette would be too loose.

 

It's a start....but I definitely have a long way to go before I can hope to have anything like these sock drawers...

 

These are the drawers (S - plural!!) of the lovely Susan B Anderson, who fired up a bit of a frenzy in the knitting world last spring when she posted these drawers full of years worth of handknit wool socks. I believe it was Jasmin from the Knitmores who coined the hashtag on instagram, and people have been posting their drawers and socks and works in progress ever since. (As an aside, I'm totally enamored with Susan. She's a fellow Wisconsinite, and I sort of want her to be my best friend or mentor or something. I've been watching her video podcast and I think she's just adorable. It feels a bit strange to describe someone as adorable when I'm 10 years older than her kids, but she is! She just seems so sweet and genuine, and a talented and prolific knitter and designer as well.)

My last step (I'm seriously trying to avoid sock or foot puns!) before officially calling myself a sock Knitter is this little pair of kids tube socks. Size 1 needles, but decidedly less knitting than adult socks. Almost there!

I stepped up kicked up (this is really hard) increased my skills by working them two at a time from both ends of the yarn. My goal for my socks is to make them as tallllll as possible, so I figure that's a good way to do it with the least amount of guess work. Magic looping one circular seemed fiddly, so I opted for 2 circulars, which I'm not sure is LESS fiddly, but it's what I decided to do after I found dpns were giving me laddering at the needle joins on a different project. I'm doing kid socks as tube socks without heels so that it will be a good long time before they are outgrown. This is both smart, and not my idea. I heard Gigi, also from the Knitmores, doing this for her granddaughter, and I thought it seemed like a fabulous idea. Now I didn't use up the whole ball for these as they are already pretty long, but it's good practice anyway. I started these on April 8, and finished them last night! So now my needles will be free to cast on a REAL pair of Socks for myself! ....where to begin?

(ps spot the kitty nose)

#operationsockdrawer here I come

And as for the adult sized sweater....I'll get there someday. I've got 2 baby sweaters under my belt (ugh, that's sort of a bad pun too! sorry!), and enough yarn for 2 sweaters for me, just sitting patiently, waiting for me to gather up both the ambition to cast on and just the right patterns to go with them.

Why I create

So about a week ago, I found a new to me blogger, and she wrote a post that got me thinking - why DO I create? She's hosting a link up thing, and I flipped through several of my recent posts, thinking that I have to have addressed this, but I really haven't! So here it is - get ready for a potentially disorganized pile of thoughts.

So why do I make things? A very short version is probably that I've always been a creative sort, and I like having meaningful things.

For the longer version, well here we go. I can't remember a time when I WASN'T making something. I have this memory of when I was probably about 6 years old, trying to make my Barbies clothes on a little knitting loom. If memory serves, I believe it was this one:

I don't remember if I ever finished that beautiful sparkly ball gown, but I remember enjoying the knitting. Though come to think of it, I'm not sure I even knew that it really WAS knitting, since it's not on needles like you imagine, but I thought it was pretty cool. I may have also had a sweatshirt like the one pictured on the box, so maybe my opinion of "cool" is somewhat suspect. What can I say, it was the 80's. We rented the lower apartment of a duplex for a few years when I was little, and our upstairs neighbor was an occupational therapist for kids, and I remember that she had an entire ROOM full of craft supplies. Even now, on the cusp of getting my own craft space, that seemed like such a luxury! I definitely remember making one of those puffy paint applique sweatshirts at her house!

While my neighbor was definitely a crafty influence in my life, of course the larger influence were my parents. My mom taught me to sew in high school, and tried teaching me to knit then as well. Knitting wasn't something she did frequently, so I'm not sure where I got the desire to learn. In any case, I think I sort of learned the basic stitches, but it didn't really stick. A few years later, I decided to take up yarn again, but decided to crochet, as one stick seemed easier to manage than two. I didn't know anyone who could teach me, so I taught myself from books, and everyone got an itchy acrylic scarf for Christmas that year! A few years after that I decided to try knitting again, and thankfully YouTube had come around by then. It was so much easier to watch a video than to decipher those drawings in books! While my dad isn't much for sewing (though he CAN patch all the clothes my mom would rather he toss!), he has done a lot of creating himself. My parents still have a dresser and a few other furniture pieces he's made - things I didn't even know were handmade until years later. I helped him a little with building a deck at one house, and he built a pool house himself at another. Truth be told, it was supposed to be a shed for the heater, but it ended up having a bathroom, bar and a loft. I'm not sure if this was an expression of creativity....or a good reason to get out of a house with three teenage girls.....

My mom always made our Halloween costumes herself. I'm not sure I can remember wearing anything storebought....well ever, actually. (I take that back - I did buy a Dorothy costume when I was working at a daycare in college because I didn't have a place for my sewing machine at the time.) While I do remember a few rather stressful fittings on October 29th or 30th, I always loved that she made our outfits. They were totally different than anything anyone else had, and we could be anything we wanted. I mean...one year (possibly several) I was a purple unicorn with a pink mane and tail. You just don't find that at Target. A lot of kids probably had similar experiences, as I'm not sure pre-made costumes were SUPER common 20-30 years ago, like they are now. But for me, it really resonated. When you take the time to make it yourself, you get something totally unique, just for you, and made with love (and maybe some swear words and tears, but it's all part of the process). I'm absolutely thrilled to carry on the tradition of handmade Halloween costumes.

I love that I can have things in my home that are totally unique and made with my own hands.  It makes me really proud when people ask where I got that, and I get to say, oh that? Yeah, I made that.

(The chair....not the dog....obviously)

While just buying something to suit my needs is OBVIOUSLY much faster and more convenient, I love the rhythm of the making. It's fun to remember the time in my life when I made that thing. For example, that chair came to be reupholstered over a full month in the winter time and I found myself indulging in many hours of the Kardashians. (Canceling out something productive with something decidedly not?) Or the years before we insulated our house, and my feet were cold, which resulted in these:

Or the polar vortex of last winter, which had me gravitating toward the warmest, fastest things I could think of!

Making things is so a part of my core identity that it's even what I do for a living. (While my Etsy shop is a lovely hobby, it's not my day to day!) As is probably somewhat obvious, I loved my art classes as a child. I never had an opportunity to tell her, and I suspect she's passed by now, but my decision to become an architect all goes back to my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Waldenberger. I believe it was part of a parent-teacher conference, and she commented to my parents that I was good at art, and something to the effect that you can't make much of a career as an artist, so I should be an architect. Done. Isn't it crazy, how something like that can shape your ENTIRE life? While it was never my path to be one, teachers really can make such an impact on young lives, and I was so lucky to have so many good ones. After that, I was the token girl (sometimes there were two....even three of us!) in the drafting classes in high school, and I went right on to a four year degree in architecture, followed up with a two year masters program, without even so much as a waver. It feels sort of destined. I shape space during the day, and I turn bits of string and cloth into useful, beautiful things at night. I write here, continuing a long history of hidden diaries as a child, and giving a bit of life to that fantasy of being Carrie Bradshaw, typing out stories at a coffee shop. I create because that's what I know. While I've sometimes envied the money that comes along with the finance or medical careers of some of my friends, I've never regretted my choice to land on the creative side of life. Yes, more money would always be nice, but I find that I'm pretty satisfied most days with how I've spent my time. And I suppose that's a pretty good reason to create.

Hooded Toddler Towel

You know those adorable hooded towels you get for a new baby? You wrap them up all snuggly out of the bath, and it keeps their little heads warm while you tend to the rest of the dressing and diapering done. They're great....for about 8 months. Then you've got suddenly super long legs sticking out the bottom and it won't quite close around the middle, and a grown up towel just isn't as cute. So to solve that problem, I made a super big hooded towel.

On a whim when I was mindlessly filling up a cart or two at Ikea, I saw cute towel and washcloth sets. I grabbed one washcloth, and one of those enormous bath sheets. Then a few months later, when I was finally nearing the bottom of that pile of Swedish goods, I took that towel, washcloth, and about 20 minutes to make a toddler towel.

First, I folded the washcloth on a diagonal and trimmed one edge so that it was symmetrical.

Then, I pinned the washcloth onto one side of the towel, patterned sides together, like so:

I did a couple of seams along the edges, and then flipped it right side out.

And ta-dah! Giant hooded towel.

The enormous bath sheet might seem like a mistake at first, but then you realize that you can swaddle a two year old with this thing, and it makes more sense. (I contemplated cutting off that center hanging loop that bath sheets have, but I'm glad I didn't. If you hang this up by the hood, it's likely to drag on the floor!)

It's hard to be a perfectionist when you are not perfect

So my very good friend is having her first baby this summer, and of course, I wanted to knit something for her. The only problem with knitting something intricate and complicated is that my friend is an overachiever, and she's having twins.

So while she missed out on getting, say, something like this:

http://sewuniquetreasuresandgifts.ecrater.com/p/12823933/5-vintage-baby-layette-sets-knitting

it was the perfect opportunity to try a pattern I'd been waiting to do for awhile that I knew I'd have time to make two of. (In a size big enough to fit this winter, in case the weather ever remembers that it's spring, nearly summer.)

So make them I did! I did inverse colors, so the body of one is the same color as the trim on the other. I got all the way to picking up the final trim on the second hat when I noticed something. Can you see it? How about now?

 

Now?

I must have purled where I was supposed to knit. It would have been a lot of fiddling to rip it out. My knitting group said I should just put a flower or something on it.....and maybe if it had been closer to the front....but no. No this could not stand. Not for myself, and definitely not for a gift. In the end, I decided it would be easier just to knit a whole new one, and the defective one could become a quite serviceable stuffed animal hat here.

I put the pair of pixie hoods together with some of the best blankets ever from the registry - I ALWAYS buy at least one thing off the registry. She picked it out for a reason, right? It also just so happened - seriously, by accident - that the colors matched the hats exactly. I also included a pair of books, as books were requested by the shower hostess. I chose one of our favorites and another by the same illustrator. All in all, I think it shaped up pretty cute, and now the world knows that exactly one single wrong stitch will keep me up at night.