Projects

Remember my resolution to complete a knitting and sewing project each every couple of months?  Well, I didn't quite accomplish my second knitting project for April because, guess what? I learned (or re-learned, more accurately, since I first learned in grade three) how to crochet!  I took a class from the very creative Robin at one of my favorite local stores, Yarns Unlimited.

So, I'm half way through a pair of socks for ds#2 but I've also started on a crochet project that is waaaaay over my head.  This is how much I've done so far:


And this is what I'm trying to make (from the Amazing Crochet Lace book by Doris Chan).

Why, yes, I was dropped on my head a couple of times as a baby; why did you ask?

Close-up of the funky yarn:


I'm not nearly as ambitious on the sewing front.  I made a gift bag for one of my kids' dear friends.  Sam's birthday is coming up and we're giving him some Star Wars themed gifts in this Star Wars themed bag that I made.  Bet you can't guess what Sam likes.


Speaking of sewing, the one piece of equipment...well, two, really...that I am very glad I bought are the rotary mat and rotary cutter.  These have made cutting fabric so much easier.  The photo below shows what I used to trim the sleeves on my FIL's shirt.  He wore the elbow out and asked if I could turn it into a short-sleeve shirt.  Piece of cake with my rotary mat and cutter!



"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Secret garden?

Hubby went out this afternoon - between periods of thunderstorms; boy, are we ever having crazy weather! - and picked a huge bag of kale!

I'm looking at it thinking "where the heck did this come from when last I looked at the garden, all our seedlings were under 3 inches tall??"

But here's this amazing kale, with leaves as big as my hand:

Yet the stems were tender:

Does hubby have a secret garden I didn't know about?  As it turned out, this was kale that self-seeded in the greenhouse and had grown up over the winter months.  I was in the greenhouse watering the seedlings last week when dh was at a conference, and I didn't even see the kale.  They don't call me Sherlock for nuthin'!  D'oh.

Hubby also picked the cilantro that had self-seeded in the greenhouse:

And we had both for dinner...wilted kale in an Asian marinade and a cilantro sauce for our home-made wontons.  Yum!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Food, glorious food

Yes, folks, we had our first asparagus of the season this past weekend! It was a small harvest, but it was so tasty, my mouth still waters thinking about it.

I've seen some other blog posts of people's gardens and I have to say they look a lot better than ours, but I still think ours is lovely, if only because it's the one we get our food from. :)  Ds#1 took these photos and didn't zoom in as much as I'd like, but you know what they say about beggars.  This bed has beets and spinach.

This one has a variety of lettuce and frisee:

The garlic is looking mighty fine!  We mulched them tonight with last fall's leaves.

 

And the strawberries are blooming:

A close-up of the pretty lettuce:

Asparagus, pre-picking:

Some broccoli and cauliflower (we don't usually grow cauliflower in the spring).  I'm going to convince dh to grow some purple cauliflower for me after reading about it at My Kids Eat Squid.

Celery was never my favorite veggie, but it does kick up egg or tuna salads.  There was an article on Care2.com recently which talked about the health benefits of celery, so now I'm glad dh grows it.

This looks like a stray onion that over-wintered by accident.

More strawberry blooms...

We moved the chickens out of their usual fenced area so the grass can grow back.  After a whole winter cooped up there, they had cleared out pretty much all the green stuff.  We moved them over to the east field where they feasted on lots of lovely grass and violets.  I love our electric fence.

This is the &^%$ rooster.  He's a bit of a dweeb. We've not had a really good rooster since Don Juan, who was "trained" by our friend, Jami. I think instead of running her lovely business, My Edible Eden, she really should go into training roosters to be nice chickens because she has a real talent for that!  :)

I've been toying with the idea of closing up this blog and focusing on my "official" blog. I know that I should write every day to keep my writing muscles flexible, but my writing muscles are actually a little bit sore and I'm starting to realize that non-fiction is not my thing to write even though it's my favorite thing to read.  Just a little warning in case you show up one day and the blog is gone.  :}


"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Winners!

For some reason, the title made me start humming Steely Dan's Deacon Blues.

Seems that Alina is the only one who wants a Juggling kit, so she's the winner of that first giveaway. ;)

As for the second, here's what the Magic Eight Ball (Random.org) picked:

The Blonde Duck! Since there were multiple comments from the same people, I just assigned 1 to Blonde Duck, 2 to Robin, and 3 to Alina. My sis, Epicure, doesn't count. She only wants the soaps and socks I make, silly girl!

So there it. I know, that's about all the excitement I can handle in one day too. I'm off to notify the winners, and then I'll take a nap.

Have a lovely weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

If juggling isn't your thing - giveaway, take 2

I thought that since only Alina wants a juggling kit, I would offer a second giveaway more suited to a wider audience. And it's exciting too! See?Who wouldn't give his/her left arm to own this Scholastic set of Writer's Desk Reference and How to Spell Like a Champ? Well, now you don't have to give up your left arm; you can win this instead, and save your left arm to fist-pump the air when you're holding this delectable pair of books in your grubby right hand.

I'll do a drawing for this on Friday right after I pretend to do a drawing for the Juggling kit and award it to Alina. Heh. So leave a comment, say anything at all (just keep it G since it's a family-blog), but be sure to have some way for me to find you to tell you you've won.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A giveaway!

Spring cleaning is a wonderful thing. It allows you to come across items that make you scratch your head and go, "what the heck was I thinking when I bought this??" Nothing like feeling like an idiot who has wasted money to put me in a mood for a giveaway, I always say.

So for all you who are juggling so much - kids, jobs, hobbies, etc, etc, I have the perfect thing for you: a brand new Klutz juggling book and balls kit! (What the heck was I thinking when I bought this?) Not only was that a fun play on words - juggling...*giggle* - but it could relieve your daily stress by helping you focus on a new and different activity. And if that doesn't work, you can wing the balls at the person who is annoying you (please note that the book probably doesn't recommend this).

To enter, please leave a comment about what you normally do to relieve stress, e.g. learning Klingon swear words. Please make sure I have some way to contact you (unless I already know you and know where to stalk you) when you leave your comment - blog addy, email, direction to send smoke signals - so I can notify you if you win. My mind reading skills aren't what they used to be.

I'll be consulting with the Oracle at Delphi - or if I can't get a flight to Athens, I'll use Random.org instead - on Friday afternoon to pick the recipient for this amazing (snort) prize. Bonne chance!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Will it ever be Spring?

What comes to mind when I say "Spring"? I hope you said "horseradish harvests!" because then you'd be right. Dh and the boys harvested the previous weekend and then dh made a nice batch of horseradish sauce. Here are the roots they harvested:
Our favorite way to eat horseradish sauce is to put it on top of fried eggs, but it also makes an incredible veggie dip when mixed with sour cream (our horseradish sauce is pure horseradish roots and organic vinegar). Jars of the stuff:
We keep the jars in the fridge and freezer and don't can them. I'm not sure that they can be canned, if you know that they can, please let me know!

Dh started some seeds - spinach and lettuce - outside before we left for Spring Break. Right after we got back, he started seeds indoors - bib lettuce, various onions, and various tomatoes. Here they are all cozy and happy on their heat pads and under the grow lights:
He also started some stuff in the greenhouse, but darned if I can remember what. *sigh* And because these are totally not enough, he also stopped by Mays Greenhouse for more seedlings and White River Co-op for seed potatoes.

Mother Nature must have heard my whining because it is starting to feel like spring these past couple of days. Yay!

What have you started from seed?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams