Month: December 2024

So, if there’s a new year coming, there should be new projects to plan for!

Sewing

There’s definitely plenty to sew…first up, the sofa slipcover. I have two cushions done so two cushions to go and then the main part of the sofa. And then really, I should do the other sofa too… It’s not exactly fun sewing but it’s a big improvement! Mostly it’s very careful geometry and then cutting and sewing and measuring big bulky pieces of fabric. So, not fun, but worth it…

I also want to make chair cushions, specifically ones with wool padding. This I think would be fun. I want to learn how to make good wool cushions and small chair cushions seem like a good place to start.

I also want to get back into sewing clothes. I have fabric for a dress for me and fabric for clothes for the kids. That’s fancier sewing (so harder) but also more fun. Here’s hoping that the tiniest child will be old enough for that to be workable. I like sewing clothes and when I can do it regularly I can make them pretty efficiently and I can adjust patterns to fit way better than clothes from the store.

Also, making your own stuff (as long as you have time to stay good at it) is a great way to be more environmentally friendly. You have to go more slowly when you make your own clothes. The hardest part is just finding good quality fabric, otherwise they wear out faster than I like or fade too quickly.

I also want to sew small fun things for the kids for their birthdays and Christmas and things.

Embroidery

So this year I made bookmarks as Christmas presents with different pictures for everyone. Next year I want to embroider a cool Christmas picture because it looks awesome and fancy, I think I have to work my way up to that though…

I also want to make nice embroidered napkins using some of the extra green linen I have. I think it’d be fun to have fancy napkins for holidays and birthdays or just to be fancy sometimes. The goal would be to make 8, that way we have 7 for family get togethers plus an extra.

I’d also like to come up with some other fun embroidery for holiday gifts (I think the bookmarks were a pretty great idea!)

I’d also like to embroider clothes, like make a solid colored dress and embroider the color or cuffs. That sounds really fun.

Knitting

Well, there’s going to be sweaters for the kids. I’m currently deciding between making another set of cardigans or a set of Bumble sweaters. I’ve made those before they’re warm and stretchy and comfy, so good for kids.

I’d also like to knit flip mittens/gloves for the kids kids and me, and maybe as other gifts. That’s going to be a lot fancier knitting, so we’ll see!

That and I’d like to finish the blanket I’m knitting. I’d like to make a few more wool blankets over the next few years. The kids are big enough now they can hijack the ones we’ve got, so I think it’s time to add a few more.

Garden

Well, this will be a big project this year or more accurately big projects. There are three big things, getting the main vegetable garden into production for real this year, planting a whole lot of native flowers in the front (and back and elsewhere) and fixing things up so there are good paths connecting parts of the yard and cleaning up the area that was under the pine tree that came down this year.

So those aren’t really complicated projects, they’re just big ones.

The vegetable garden will be pretty straightforward. This year I’m going to plant:

Hot peppers
Jalapenos
Slicing tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes
Cucumbers
Peas (probably snap)
Onions
Bush beans
Lettuce and salad ingredients
Pumpkins (and mini pumpkins!)
Summer squash
Winter squash
Basil
Potatoes
Tomatillos
Bell peppers
Garlic
Dill
Parsley

I’m also going to try to start as many as possible from seed. I think the plan for that is to not start them too early. The last few years have had cold springs which just makes everything a mess trying to keep seedlings from over growing their containers.

I’m also going to try and start perennials from seed for the front. That’s going to be:

Echinaceas
Rudbeckias
Asters
Coreposis

Plus probably some annuals:

Cosmos
Zinnias
Marigolds

Ideally the whole front will be flowers and herbs and some vegetables in a few key places and the back will be a big vegetable garden.

And the former pine tree will be nice grass. I think if we take the edging out and put down at least some grass seed it should take care of itself, based on how quickly the grass got everywhere else…

Canning and Food Preservation

Food preservation plans are like last year but more. I’m hoping to try a batch in the pressure canner since I want to learn how to use that. And I want to add more pickles and tomato sauce. And actually can the jam as we get the fruit. Plus canning just straight fruit too. And add some pre-made stuff like salsa and ketchup. Just a few goals. 🙂 So that’s:

Tomatoes, whole
Tomato sauce
Pizza sauce
Salsa
Ketchup
Peaches
Blueberries
Applesauce
Pears
Plums
Strawberry jam
Raspberry jam
Grape jam
Apple butter
Plum jam
Blueberry jam
Pickled hot peppers
Dill pickles
Canned corn or peas or beans

And I want to keep doing roasted tomatoes, probably freezing at least some beans, corn and peas until I know if the canning works and freezing some fruit. I also want to do a better job dehydrating herbs and catnip this year.

And set up good cold storage for potatoes, onions, garlic and squash. We have ok cold storage, but we can make it better I think.

New Skills – Felting, Quilling, Soap and Candle Making

Then there’s new skills! I want to be able to learn to felt wool to make fun things for the kids for gifts and also make wool cushions. I want to learn quilling to make cards and things. I want to make lotion I can use and candles for fun and gifts. And if I can make those then I should be better at making more household items, cleaning mixes and other things….

Home Projects

And there’s still stuff to do here for the house, there’s the last two areas of carpet to replace, lots of bookshelves to make, basement work spaces to set up, the greenhouse to set up, doors to put on the kitchen and closet storage to improve.

So that’s at least a year’s worth of things to do.

It’s December and to me that always feels like the time to think about how has this year been and what do I want to try to make happen next year. I really like to know where I’m aiming to go on New Year’s Eve, kind of like being at the start of a race or the top of a hill on a bike, ready to go.

So how was 2024? My main goals were to find good ways for us to interact with the wider world and go places were my main goals. And some of that happened and some of it didn’t. Life likes to have surprise challenges after all. We didn’t go as many fun places as I’d hoped (tiny children + immunocompromised state + health things to manage = a whole pile of hard to overcome each time) but we did go places. And we’ve done all the big family things I’d hoped. Not always in the ideal way but we made them happen.

And the kids had a lot of playing outside and reading books and just good kid stuff. And we didn’t drop family traditions, which definitely matters. So yay!

Next year’s goal, more swimming and working on our yard and more hiking.

One silver lining to things this year was that we ended up picking up projects and things I wouldn’t have thought we’d be able to do. There are 200 lb of tomatoes plus some pickles and things all successfully canned and hanging out in the basement. Which is awesome!

Next year’s goal is to take that and make it more, can the jam as we get the fruit, and can fruit and veggies directly. And double the tomato sauce, because really good tomato sauce on hand is the best. Also, canning isn’t at risk if we have a power outage, which is a big deal.

One thing I tried to do this year was add more of the world at large to what I think about and what I see and do. And….yeah….I only managed some of that, and honestly I don’t think it works exactly for me. The world is headed in other directions for awhile and there just isn’t enough contexts where someone like me can participate for that to be workable. It’s not like I want to give up on the world it’s just that I need to be ok, and I need my family to be ok and honestly I need to be functional.

The efforts of the Everything-is-Fine! crowd and the Everything-is-Doom! crowd and the efforts of big companies pushing both of the above just doesn’t work for me. So I’m going to look for online communities I can be a part of which works for the health stuff and the immunocompromised stuff. Hopefully some low key ones where there can be participation but at a level I can manage. This was a thing I did more as a teenager and in college, but parenting and working and health things don’t leave a lot of time. Also being an introvert applies to the Internet too. Got to be something out there though!

Some of the seeing the world was good though. Just have to find a way that works for me. I got to go to a couple of bookstores and an antique/thrift store. I want more of that (when workable) and more going outdoors, both here and hiking. Some of that is hard with kids, but hopefully we/I can add more of that next year. Part of the hard part is people are stressful (I mean, they’ve always been stressful on some level, but the fact that they could wreck my health or life at any moment really takes that stress up to 11…) but I’m sure I can find places to go and ways to do it that work.

And I think for my projects, yarn, books and things like that my new challenge will be finding ways to get the things I want from places that exist here. I think that will help with focusing on my community here and make sure if I’m getting things it’s things I really want and need which is important for environmental and sanity reasons. If I can source a very high percentage of my food from here I should be able to do something similar for fun stuff. 🙂 This is probably made easier by the fact that “fun things” are books, yarn, fabric, garden seeds and plants, puzzles, board games and the occasional video game. So seeds, plants and wool textiles are definitely available here and made here! There’s a local bookstore and game store and puzzles are certainly around a bunch of places so that covers a lot of ground. Fabric is harder, especially since I want fabric for clothing, that’s probably going to involve going online. There are fabric stores here but they’re really mostly for quilting. And I like quilting, but clothing is my favorite.

The other thing I want is to focus on here as in what’s around me and what I’m doing here. Which at the moment means my home and the space directly around me. I have lots of projects and a big yard to turn into gardens and happy spaces to be. And I have food to make and books to read and skills to learn to make and do more things. And movies to watch and games to play and kids and cats to hug. And really, the world at large is constantly trying to push it’s way to the center of my attention and really I don’t want that. The Internet or the world or companies or ads or whatever always seems to want more attention and more focus and worry and thought (and presumably more money as a result of that) but it eats up so much there’s nothing left for what I want especially after work, parenting, health stuff, paperwork, chores and the rest. So I want to turn off the distractions and just be me for a bit. Hopefully get to read books I like and make things and focus on here.

I’m not going to hide from the world and the terrible things that are out there. I have a couple of reliable news sources that update 1x per day to read and there’s public radio to listen to and magazines to read which are great sources of information (yay science! and textiles! and history! and gardens!) But it doesn’t need to take over everything I think about because I have people to take care of and things I need and want to do. And there’s a lot more happiness and fulfillment from that!

I’ve decided this post should have the sunny picture with the blue skies. The other was snow with dawn just coming out of the gloom. Sunny blue skies seemed like the best choice to focus on though.

There are 3 weeks between now and the holiday break. The holiday break is 2 weeks off this year, yay!, but there’s a lot of ‘looming concerns’ in the wider world. So….yeah.

But home is nice. Home has cats cuddling in sunbeams (sudden, actual cold weather will do that!) and tiny children with cozy wool blankets and piles of books. And there are gardens to plan (really, actually for real this time!!!) and small projects to do and it is fine here.

I think that’s the most important thing to focus on and make true. It doesn’t have to be perfect or flashy or anything, it just needs to be fine and content and happy. Those are what I want to work on.

Small children mean big projects and ideas are not super feasible (except canning 200+ lb of tomatoes, or replacing the floor or other things that were huge to do and then disappear in to a new, but better!, status quo). But small and medium projects can happen a bit at a time and those are good.

Maybe we can replace some remaining bits of floor, build bookshelves and canning jar shelves and I can recover another two sofa cushions.

And there can be fun kids things, get a tree from the tree farm, decorate cookies, drive down and see the lights downtown at night make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, watch the nutcracker and other good things.

And for all of us, read lots of books, make tasty things, make small projects, pet cats.

There, those are good holiday goals. 🙂

Oh, and all the holiday gift making is done and it’s only December 1. I win this year.