Garden update

The garden has grown like crazy lately!  I can't believe how great it looks!

The corn has been corning...

The zucchini has been zuchinifying...

The applies are appling:

The potatoes are potatoing:

The carrots are a little lost in weeds:

And thanks to the bugs for all the help pollinating!

We have 2 cherry trees that produced this year!  These should be ready REAL soon!

And unfortunately we lost two trees worth of peaches to the frosts this spring.  But Brian found TWO peaches just thriving... so hang in there two little peaches!!!

Summer Friends

Last summer we had a tarantula living in our front yard.  It took care of all the crickets at night.  We named her Tortuga, and we would sometimes capture bugs for her to eat.  It was amazing to see how fast she moved.  If you put a bug near her home, it would be gone in seconds!  If you blinked, you missed it!  We miss Tortuga this summer.

However, when Brian was out pruning an apple tree, he found a dove's nest!  So this is our new friend this summer!  Welcome pretty little dove and baby dovettes!  We shall find you all appropriate names soon.

front of nest

back of nest

Sewing lesson #3

My student took some squares home with her last week to work on and today we were able to finish sewing all the blocks for the quilt and arrange them the way we liked.  Next time, we will work on sewing the quilt together and putting on boarders.  Maybe we'll have time to get the backing done and then it will be ready to send off to the machine quilter!

It's so pretty and pink!

Weavings from around town

On our recent trip to Utah, we went to a cute little village area and founds some neat stores.

This store had a few woven things that I thought were interesting enough to take a picture.  By the way, the owner gave me permission to photograph her store, which I thought was very nice!

First, I love the use of the warp in this rug and I wonder how I could do that!  Second, I love the colors!

This was basically a basket weave with several threads in each section.  It was very thick and made a nice placemat.

A Utah weaving find!

My sister found a weaving store for us to go to during our visit to Utah!  It was called Three Wishes Fiber Arts and they had some cool stuff.  I picked out a few cones and asked the lady how much they would be and she said she would make me a deal I couldn't refuse.  Typically when someone says that it's time to turn and run the other way!  But she was right, it was a deal I couldn't refuse!  In fact, I went back for a few more cones...

The colors I got match each other really well, except this one.  I picked out this yarn for the thick and thin qualities it had.  I thought it would be fun to work with!

I think the above colors would look really good in the P2P2 project, this picture in particular:

I might have to explore this avenue further!

Our camp-like experience

We found a beautiful spot in Utah to have a fun evening hotdog and smores roast!

 

There was only one major burned marshmallow in in the whole evening!  And amazingly it was by the kid who called himself "The Marshmallow Roasting Champ"...
 

 


Here's a very appetizing picture showing how sticky the smores were!  We forgot the graham crackers so it was really just marshmallows and chocolate!  Yum!

I can't believe how green it is there!  While driving back to the AZ desert, we certainly missed all the green.

 

The rivers were so full and gushing with water.

Good thing we only came for the campfire!

What a fun and relaxing evening!

Utah fun and beauty!

While in Utah last week, we visited the Timpanogos Cave and it was beautiful!  The hike up was quite intense, but the beautiful view was quite worth it!

Inside, the cave was very cold and dark and confined.  It was so cool!

It was tempting to touch and feel the texture, but we were not allowed to touch the walls of the cave.

It smelled like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

We also drove up to Park City.  It was  neat little ski town.  I stepped in a pile of dog poo and stank for awhile until I found a bathroom to wash off my shoe.  Sick!!  Pick up after your dogs!!

This car was so cute!  My nephews got a kick out of it:

Passing along the weaving bug!

When my dad and I went to Utah last week, I made sure to bring some weaving supplies with me!  I had a fun time teaching my nephews how to weave using the Ashford Inklette loom.  They had a fun time picking out the colors and deciding what order to put them in.  My youngest nephew liked this loom the best.  It kept his attention for quite awhile!

 

 

The older one tried some cardboard weaving, but crafts aren't really up his alley, so we played some Monopoly Wii instead.  He is super good at that!  He won big time!

Pioneer Museum

My dad and I spent last week in Utah visiting my sister and her family and had a great time going to the museums and local sites.  We were able to take pictures in most places but one museum, and that museum happened to have the best spinning and weaving stuff there!  Oh well, here are a few fun spinning and sewing related things I found around town!

A spinning wheel used by pioneers when they came across the plains:

 Some very well used sewing supplies:

These looked like little string games made inside of a jar for the pioneer kids to play with:

Can you imagine using a sewing machine that looked like this?  It's foot-powered just like my looms and spinning wheel!

Sewing instruction: Week 2

Here is the quilt so far after 2 weeks of sewing!  My 11 year-old student is doing an awesome job.  She even bought her own sewing machine last week!  We're about half way done with blocks for this top.  Then we can sew the top together, borders, and then send it off to be machine quilted.  Then I can teach her how to do binding.  How exciting!!!

Corn

This is what I call beautiful yarn:  1000 yards of Handpainted 5/2 Egyptian mercerized cotton!  (Found here!)

Another pillow for my dad

I don't want to make my dad seem too feminine with all these pillow requests.  I mean, he is a macho guy.  But it just seems that lately he's had a lot of pillow-needs.  I made the honeycomb pillow for him back in March, and he loves to use it while watching TV.  But his pillow needs were still left unmet.  You see, my dad is SO tall that no lawn chair really fits him just right.  And we found some really neat lawn chairs on a special trip to Texas last summer.  They're fun to use during family picnics, however his REALLY long legs are always hanging over the edge and he feels uncomfortable.  So he put in his request for an ankle pillow.  Like the last one, I wanted to make it special with something handwoven. 


I always like to weave to the end of my warps and try and find some use for the fabric somewhere.  On the Huichol blanket, I knew that this little leftover piece would be just what I was looking for.  So I saved it for this occasion.  But  I wanted a new look to it.  Instead of switching colors for the weft, I just used the electric blue.





Here is the cloth fresh from the dryer.  It has a very neat look to it and it's different enough from the original draft:















I wove an inkle band for the straps to tie onto the chair.

With a little sewing, it all came together nicely! I put two bands on the back to tie to the foot bottom and when I tested it out, it turned upside down so I decided it needed more stabilizers.  I sewed two more bands up towards the top to tie to the side bars.

And the final project:

 Happy Father's Day, dad!  Now you can really enjoy your lounge chair with comfy ankles!

Our garden update

We got the garden planted much earlier this summer than last year!  We did the potatoes first, it seems like a long time ago now, and they are huge!!  There are 17 potato plants:

The Beets:

Zucchini:

Corn:

There are a few more that haven't started coming up yet.  Maybe by next week we will see the red bell peppers and some carrots.


I'm most excited about the 3 trees of apples!  Our first summer in this house, the buds all froze in April and we were so sad.  But this year, they survived the spring frosts and so we shall have applesauce, apple slices, dried apples, apple pie jam, apple pie filling, apple fruit leather, and more!  YAY for apples!!!!