Practical projects and crafts

Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 2)

Fall is here

Well, after about two months of getting to see what bread feels like being baked in an oven Fall has actually arrived like someone flipped a switch. It’s dark, it’s currently rainy (for the first time in 2 months!!), many of the leaves have fallen (except for the darn buckthorn…) and all the cranes and geese are booking it north as fast as they can go, like someone who overslept on a day with an important meeting or test.

It’s like the world outside is out of alignment and isn’t sure what to do about it. Like a piece that isn’t seated right or someone with a or a gear that’s shifted. It being November 3 here in the world of human things and not knowing what sort of world I will be experiencing this time next week really, really, really doesn’t help.

But I’m here and we are here and the kids are here and this is the world we have to chose how to live in.

So, November, food preservation is done, we’re getting the yard cleaned up for winter a bit at a time. There were Pumpkin Hikes and pumpkin carving and adventures with the kids. The boys did their Christmas shopping (yes, it’s early, but with the world being what it is, that’s how we need to do it). Our tiniest girl got to toddle around the yard after her brothers and help find candy and treasures during the Great Pumpkin Hunt this year. She has worn her costume every day since. 🙂

I have books to read and projects to do. We’re into making Christmas presents now. I’ve down colorwork knitted cowls for my parents and our tiny girl. And I’ve made embroidered bookmarks for the boys and my parents. That’s been fun. I knit a lot so it’s fun doing a new craft. And I can re-combine or invent the patterns and then embroider them while I’m taking breaks or watching something or listening to something. And fabric bookmarks will be durable so I think they’ll be great!

The other new one I’m hoping to do is needle felting wool and making tiny fuzzy cats for the kids’ Christmas stockings. I have about two months yet. So we’ll see if I pull it off!

Next is food gifts. I’m going to make flavored honey, and hopefully honey roasted nuts. I’d like to try flavored vinegar, but we’ll see… And maybe I’ll give making vanilla extract a try. I’ll probably make chocolates too, and I’ve gotten a lot better at candies! I made honey popcorn balls that were great. I’m hoping to make caramels and peanut brittle and some other things with honey…fingers crossed!

Other than Christmas crafts the other fun project is to make paper holiday decorations this year. The theory being, they’re fun to make and if I make new ones each year I can have fun doing it the way I want and they can’t get dusty and upset the arthritis. And paper can be recycled so it’s not a big environmental cost. I’m also planning to try dehydrating orange slices and making things like that.

Other than that the next couple of months are small adventures with the kids as the holidays get closer (driving to look at lights, going for a hike in the woods, watching holiday movies, going to the tree farm, etc). And keeping up with regular chores, and taking a break after the summer and doing small projects inside (and some outside) to make doing day to day stuff easier.

I guess that’s basically the plan all the way through winter.

And then spring will be time to tackle the yard and outside and get a proper garden set up and get the garden ready so we can have a good garden next year.

Hopefully all good plans.

Preparing for fall

Well it’s fall now, it’s still hot, but it’s officially fall. So that’s something. And the leaves are falling and the sunlight is now angled as the tilt of the Earth tilt’s those of us up north away, so it looks like fall at least!

Fall means it’s time to work on projects that will be Christmas gifts. I’ve got the sewing project done for the smallest child (yay!) and I’m working on the holiday knitting projects now. Some for the kids (smallest child’s is done already!) and some for my parents as gifts. So probably 5 in all? But being colorwork cowls they are nice and relaxing to knit so they go fast. If I finish those the plan is flip mittens for the boys. Those will be complicated which is why I’m starting with cowls!

I’ve also got food gifts planned. I have to make sure I get the timing right on those though, since they’re new. The vanilla honey is the only one I’ve tested so far…

Plus the big projects, sofa upholstery, the last of the upstairs carpet replacement, cleaning up the garden, fixing the former landscaping around the tree stump…

Plus the inside projects from my husband, shelving, underbed drawers, etc.

With three kids, one of them tiny, if one of us is doing a project, the other of us is parenting, which is a challenge… Especially since we also want to have time and energy for fun things with the kids…

But hey, there are lots of happy things, and that is good.

September, Otherwise known as July

So the weather is hot, middle of summer hot, which is not the best. Usually this time of year is in the low 70s, which is comfortable for doing outside projects. Instead we have mid 80s and wildfire smoke aloft. And sometimes less aloft which is a problem… Parts of the sky turn white and orange and everything is hazy up high and near the ground. Even the moon was orange last night like something out of a Halloween story.

So I’m not contributing much to the outdoor projects at the moment. Wildfire smoke and RA aren’t a great combination.

I have a good start on my book stacks though! I re-read The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, plus The Zero Waste Life, The Year of Cozy and The Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home. Some of these, as is probably obvious are project books.

From The Year of Cozy I finally tried both the marshmallow recipe and the flavored honey recipe. Making marshmallows with honey is a success! Doing a full recipe is way too many, so I’ll be doing half recipes, but it worked, which is awesome. And while it was some effort, it wasn’t a problematic amount of effort, so that will be a ‘special occasion’ treat, but hey, I can make them!, and that’s huge. The flavored honey is a test run to see if I can make it as gifts. I’m letting it sit and absorb the flavor for a week or two before testing it. Hopefully it works!

Re-reading The Zero Waste Life was also interesting. It’s been a little while since I first read it, a year?, six months?, and it’s interesting to see what I’ve managed to improve on. Sometimes it feels like I’m not getting anywhere but comparing the suggestions to where I am now with my projects and systems I’m not doing too bad! Still a ways to go though. Some of the big ones are just stepping up the canning. If we get 200 lb of produce and it’s a year supply it’s realistically going in the freezer or in a canning jar in order to last that year. And if it’s in the freezer that probably means ziploc quart bags. And that means plastic that’s going to be disposed of. Yes, they can be washed a few times, but it doesn’t work well and they tear and even with the best efforts they end up in the trash. Plus it’s plastic, and wow does science seem to suggest plastic is the leaded gasoline of our generation in addition to the goal of not creating trash that hangs around for centuries.

Freezing in glass containers is on the table, but that means having enough containers. Doing say, a few quarts of chickpeas I cooked in quart jars to have ready for salads, is definitely reasonable. Doing 90 lb of blueberries in one weekend, less so. Not to mention it needs to be something that won’t turn into a rock or it will be very hard to get it back out of said container. But you can can them, and I found a post from someone from an Extension office saying a simple syrup with honey is valid for canning. So the plan is to do a trial batch next year. We’re going to need more shelves though. We have a nice set of shelves for canned goods, but not enough for a-year’s-supply-of-most-produce-for-a-family-of-5 number of shelves.

And The Spellshop is amazing. It’s happy and interesting and the circumstances mirror enough of my 2020/2021 experience it helps with a sort of background healing of some of that emotional trauma. Bad Things happened, we had a front row seat to them, and then we packed up everything we could and had a hard, terrifying trip and then we were back in my childhood home. It’s our home now, and I’ve always loved it and I love being here but what brought us here involves Emotionally Complex Memories… especially since the rest of the universe is of the opinion that None of That Happened (either 2020 or the first bit of 2021). And being without a functional body or immune system things didn’t Go Back to Normal for us in 2021/2022 so yeah… emotionally complex memories/thoughts.

The wildfire smoke is (hopefully!) headed another way next week and today, the official first day of fall, a big front should switch us from nearly 90 degrees back to barely 70 degrees but it should be. Walking outside has felt like standing in a bizarre oven this month, it feels wrong and horrible and terrifying. Hopefully we get a break for a bit.

I’m ready for fall, canning happened when the farms’ tomatoes finally, finally, finally came ripe. We now have shelves of whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, pickles, and pickled hot peppers. I think that’s my limit. Next year we’ll add applesauce and learn to pressure can vegetables and can fruit in light honey syrup. And can the jam instead of freezing the fruit (though maybe I’ll drag the frozen fruit out this winter and ‘catch up’).

Sweaters are also done! These are TinCanKnits Trek pattern but converted to be cardigans. The tiniest one will have buttons, when she’s a little older and less likely to taste test them. I have them waiting, they’re silver heart buttons. This was my first time steeking and it went great! I’m doing this every time now! I thought the kids would like cardigans they can thrown on when it’s cold out or they’re playing in the basement. Hopefully they like them!

Next up is the Christmas knitting! I’m hopefully going to make three cowls (Tincanknits Compass pattern) and two pairs of convertible gloves/mittens for the boys. My other Christmas gift crafts will (hopefully!) be embroidered bookmarks (hopefully 6 of these? boys, husband, parents, best friend…). And also my food-as-gifts experiments. Vanilla bean infused honey was amazing so that’s going to be one (parents) and spicy honey (husband) and rosemary honey (parents). Flavored vinegar is also a planned one, though I haven’t tried it yet. Spiced and sweet nuts and candy are also ideas (for husband and maybe parents, we’ll see what works for people?).

Oh and I also finished the softbook for the tiniest one for Christmas. At least the sewing is done. I’m going to embroider her name and ‘from mom’ on the back too.

I’m ready for fall and winter and holidays and consistent plans and schedules. It was a good and bad, hard and productive, and hard to predict summer. We did a lot of great things (a drive in movie for the boys and their dad! I got to go to an antique/thrift store and more than one book store!) and got lots of stuff done (the moldy trees are gone, house changes make things easier/cozier/less-RA-setting-off, we canned-all-the-things) and I got back things I haven’t managed for a few years (sewing, canning, growing-the-darn-tomatoes, a garden that’s mine). So all in all, good, but exhausting. Hopefully fall is good, restorative, and happy.

Summer Books and Flowers

It’s summer! I meant to write this at the start of summer, which didn’t happen, but it is at least still summer now so I think it still counts. The above books are my summer books (plus some extras I’ve added since I took the picture…).

The bottom ones are planning fun knitting; ideas for the kids and for small summer projects and planning for Christmas gifts. I’ve also got the Edible Landscaping book for helping to decide how I want to change the gardens near the house.

I think I’ve got a good start now! We’ve gotten most of the overgrown old plants (especially the ones wrecked in the April snowstorm) out and now it’s open with more of my coneflowers and space for herbs and vegetables and native flowers near the house. The next big one will be when they come to take out the trees by the house that are dying (climate change is a thing). This process started in January but there have been so many storms we’ve been bumped down the schedule for awhile, but tomorrow should be the day!

Then we’ll have open space near the house and more options for kitchen gardens up close. And I’ll be able to see the back garden from the house, which will make it easier to keep an eye on it…

I’m also hoping to read more sci-fi and fantasy books and poems. I’ve made progress adding fiction back into my reading. Weirdly, fiction is harder than non-fiction when overwhelming parenting stuff. It’s somehow easier to read it in bits and pieces. But life has improved enough that I’ve gotten through several new sci-fi books lately (John Scalzi, Gail Carriger, Rebecca Thorne, Travis Baldree). They’ve all been really fun and I hope to keep it up.

Plus poems and old favorite fantasy books and a climate change book…

And then I found some more, embroidery and quilling which is something I want to learn, more poems and a classic conservation book. And a nice re-read of a favorite history book.

And if I finish all of those, the local used book store had some more. 🙂

Summer is a nice time for reading. Though given all the rain from the thunderstorms plenty of bug spray is required…

Time Flies

And it’s already the middle of August… July went somewhere? Well, July went by so fast it feels like it was only a couple days long, probably because there was a lot going on (as is often the case). But it was largely good and fun things. A lot of it was even things we haven’t done in a long time or things I’ve really wanted to do for a long time.

We went to the regional park and everyone got a ride on the carousel, we went to the Takoma Farmer’s Market for the first time in years, we even went to places that are ‘farther’ away be current definitions (which at the moment means the Ikea and the Lowes 30 minutes north of here…). None of them sound very big, but given how long it’s been since anything like that has been possible, those are a pretty big deal.

And there were fun things, the little guys got to see geese and a heron at the lake near one of the best parks, we went to the toy store west of here just for having a fun drive. We all got up early and walked to the ‘new’ (it’s been there for at least a year, but it’s new to us!) coffee shop. There have been a lot of good summer things.

There have also been projects, we had two weekends with over 40 lb of tomatoes each weekend that got turned into sauce and probably over 100 lb overall. We’ve gotten lots of squash, beans, hot peppers and bell peppers this year and fun tomatoes. We got lots of nice garlic, onions and potatoes too and even a measurable number of cucumbers from the garden. Oh, and the blackberries and raspberries have finally gotten going and they taste really good.

I’ve got a whole bunch of fun Christmas sewing done (everyone has homemade Christmas stockings this year!). Maybe I can do a few more things soon, like Halloween costumes and a few more Christmas decorations or gifts. I have pumpkin and astronaut costumes to make!

Knitting also has a lot of things that got done, the little guys have new hats, the smaller Patrick has a new sweater and soon there will be one for Will. After that, maybe Christmas gifts? I’ll have to come up with something fun.

And the majority of my Christmas shopping is done too. I like to do it early since then I can get them from a wide variety of places. I think the holidays will be fun this year!

And there have been a bunch of random house projects, we put up a new kitchen cabinet and shelves, moved things around in the living room, did more work on the landscaping, the grown up Patrick built the little guys a set of shelves/box for their stuffed animals, we finally got the exterior faucets fixed…just a whole bunch of random things. Hopefully before the weather gets properly cold this fall we can get some of the random electrical stuff done (maybe even an exterior outlet, I want to try holiday decorations…) and winterize some things and maybe paint the front door (I’m voting for a nice bright yellow).

I will also have a whole bunch of tulips and daffodil bulbs to plant for next spring and more fall veggies to plant too. And the updating on the playground at the park should be done soon (it’s going to be way bigger and really nice!) and the library/rec center combo building will reopen soon too. So there should be plenty to keep us busy for awhile…

Summer Sun

Flowers from the garden!

It’s almost officially summer! So it’s time to start thinking about projects and plans. I want to do some sewing, knitting, gardening and food preservation.

Sewing
I want to do some more Christmas sewing. I have 2 stockings to go (mine and the cats) and I have a fabric panel with birds and a wreath I might want to make into a wall hanging. I also want to see what I can do for Halloween this year… I have done some sewing recently. I did stockings for Will and the older Patrick. And I replaced our bedroom curtains (4 new ones) and added two to the dining room (now there are two on the back window and a new matching curtain for the back door).

I’d like to sew a dress, but…I think that’s asking too much at the moment, and I do have a nice collection of dresses. So I think that will wait until later or next summer.

I’d also like to do a summer wall hanging for the living room and new pillowcases for the living room.

Knitting
This one’s easy, I’m currently knitting a sweater for the tiny Patrick. It’s green and brown (Plymouth Yarns Fern and Fox) and it has a chevron pattern around the yoke that looks like tree branches to me. Next up will be a sweater for Will. I’m thinking probably one with color work.

I’d also like to knit myself a hat since the last one never fit right. And maybe make Matthew a new one for Christmas. And at current speeds, that should cover knitting through the end of the year…

Garden
I need to plant a couple more cucumbers, and do something to replace the arugula which is bolting. Beans are a good option, or I could wait and do some sort of fall plants like beats or broccoli. I do have space for fall plants where the potatoes are though and where the determinant tomatoes are too… So probably it will be beans.

Harvesting should pick up soon too since it’s almost time for tomatoes, peppers and beans!

There probably won’t be too much more planting until late July/early August when the fall things will go in. And then in late fall, probably after Halloween I’ll do the spring bulbs. I’m going to plant a bunch this year, and hopefully I’ll actually be planting them myself!

Food Preservation
The next round of stuff from the garden will mean it’s time for food preservation. The early stuff either doesn’t preserve well (radishes and lettuce) or gets eaten fresh (strawberries and blueberries).

  • Canning – I’m doing crushed tomatoes with the determinant paste tomatoes (I’m growing Mariana paste tomatoes). I’m also planning to do pickled jalapenos and dill pickles.
  • Dehydrating – I’m going to do cherry tomatoes, maybe some slicing tomatoes and probably summer squash and eggplant. I like dehydrating them before freezing since they freeze better and thaw faster. And I might dehydrate some herbs and chamomile too, we’ll see. And next year there should be lavender!
  • Freezing – If there are extra blackberries and raspberries I’m going to freeze them. I’m also planning to freeze beans and peppers (hopefully both hot peppers and bell peppers this year!).
  • General – I will also hopefully have potatoes, garlic, onions and shallots to store too.

House
There are always plenty of house projects. We did the big stuff at the start of the year with replacing the bathroom vanity and the roof. And this month we got the outdoor faucets fixed.

I’d really like to get some small electrical stuff done before this winter (utility size outlet for the freezers in the basement, outside outlets for yard work and Christmas lights, outlets by my desk in the sewing room and by the TV in the den). So that’s on the project list. And I’d like to get a screen door for the back door. The one that was there when we moved in was damaged so we took that off, but it would be nice to have one to protect the main door and also be able to leave the main door open when the weather’s nice and have a breeze.

I also really want to paint the kitchen. There’s not a lot of surface area in there, but it’s concrete gray (the previous owners really liked gray). And I’d like a light teal to match the dark teal tiles and set off the white cabinets. I also think it would feel more cheerful.

The other thing I want to do before winter is replace the couch and chair in the living room. Ideally, I think a new loveseat and the glider from the small Patrick’s bedroom would be nice. It would free up space and we could put a cabinet thing (like a china cabinet with cabinets on the bottom and shelves with glass doors on top) along the wall between the living room and dining rooms. Then we’d have nice storage space too. Of course that means actually dealing with the decorative half wall thing that’s there… but it would be nice when it was done I think.

General Life
I want to take the little guys to the pool (we got our pool membership this year!) and to the library. I’d also like to take walks with the little guys and the older Patrick now that that is feasible again.

Maybe I’ll even get my bike tuned up and see if I can ride it…

I’d also like to take the little guys to the zoo or a museum. Will still prefers a morning nap but sometimes he’s willing to wait until the afternoon so that might be an option now. Of course summer weather is here now too, so figuring out when would be a good time is a little tricky.

Driving up to the pick-your-own place, even if we’re not picking fruit, and just going to the farm stand and enjoying a drive could be fun too.

And it’s almost 4th of July, Patrick might be big enough to enjoy the fireworks this year, but Will is probably still too small, so we’ll have to see what might work for that.

So there should be a lot of fun things to do this summer.

Summer Rain Means Plans

So the last couple of days included a lot of rain, as in at least 4 inches of it (most of it in a couple hours). In order to deal with all that rain a lot of stuff had to happen really fast (largely because the previous owner’s drainage solution did not successfully drain since it had gotten blocked at some point).  Luckily the grown up Patrick is awesome and dug it up really fast, fixed it, re arranged it on the path he built as an alternative drain and bailed out the basement window well area.  So cleaning up involved a few towels not buckets.  Which is a massive relief, flooded basements are awful.

So everyone needed some recovery time after that.

So planning was something relaxing to do.  So there was some garden planning and food preservation planning and sewing planning…  I have the layout worked out for how I want to do the garden beds next year.  I think it’ll fix the things that didn’t work as well this year (like fights between green peppers and cucumbers…) so I’m looking forward to trying that out next year.  Also, it turns out that half of the flower bed on the property line is ours (it’s all orange day lilies on both sides).  Looking at it I knew it was ours officially, but it was all the same flowers on both sides so I thought maybe the neighbors just looked at it all as their flower bed.  Since I’m not really an orange day lily sort of person I’m glad half is ours.

I’m going to plant Cheyenne Spirit coneflowers instead.  There’s a lot to like.  They’re about the same height as the day lilies, they will fill the bed in summer, they bloom all summer without needing deadheading, they’re safe for kids, they feed the birds and while the plants live about 3-5 years, they reseed themselves in the bed.  They’re also a nice mix of colors.  So I think they’ll be great.  And that part of the yard is sunny and on a slope so I think it’ll drain pretty well.  Also, since they bloom in summer I can have tulips and daffodils mixed in too.

Also on the topic of gardens, I think I’m going to freeze and dehydrate this week’s garden produce.  Since I’ve got 18 pints of jalapenos I think freezing the next batch is a good plan, and we can freeze some beans and eggplant and dehydrate the cherry tomatoes.  The big ones are starting to ripen now so maybe next week I can can some tomatoes.  I’m going to try crushed tomatoes this year.

I also finished the tiny Patrick’s play mat with the map of the US.  I realized that I don’t have to put a binding on it (and I think it turned out nicely without one) and he enjoys it.  He likes to point at all the different shapes.  It’s also fun to tell him stories about all the different places.

Next up is Christmas stockings.  I’ve got the tiny Patrick’s all cut out and I started sewing it together.  So far so good!

Heatwave

And it’s hot, today it’s just in the 90s, but tomorrow it’ll be up near 100 (and feel like more than that courtesy of the humidity).

Of course this means it’s time to think about Christmas projects and knit sweaters. 🙂 (what can I say the AC is *cold*, especially at work!) I have two sweaters picked out for the tiny Patrick, Bowline and Campfire by TinCanKnits. I’m going to do Bowline in green and Campfire in brown I think. I’m also planning to do a new blanket. I think I’m going to use TinCanKnits Waffles pattern but expand it 2.5 times in either direction which will be about the equivalent of ~6.25 stroller blankets. It looks warm and comfy. I’m going to use Berocco Vintage Chunky in Mistletoe which I think will be a happy color.

This weekend I’m also going to see about maybe doing some canning. I’ve got 10 cucumbers waiting for me, so maybe the time for pickles is here at last… Well, I already have fridge pickles, but I really want to try canning them too. Tomatoes are coming, but aren’t ready yet, so for this weekend it’s canning pickles (hopefully!) and freezing peppers and beans. Or maybe canning peppers? There are a lot of peppers and they’re really good pickled…

Maybe I’ll make bread or waffles too. There were cookies last week after all, so I’ll have to see if I can keep up the baking!

First (Official!) Summer Weekend

So…now that I have long term plans figured out (at least a little bit) there’s the chance to think about what I want to do this weekend.

First I want to bake bread.  We’re on the last loaf of Costco bread and I like mine better so it’s time to bake more.  Maybe I’ll also fulfill my months long goal of making cookies.  It’s always possible. 🙂  And while we’re on the subject of wishlist baking, I’d also like to make waffles because it’s been awhile and they’re great.

For cooking I’d like to do something in the slow cooker.  I think there’s a pork shoulder lurking in the freezer and pulled pork sounds like a good lunch option…  And there’s another project too, pre-chopping veggies and meat and things for easier dinner preparation…  That’ll happen when there’s time and we next go to the Costco probably.

The garden also needs some attention this weekend.  There’s weeding to do and the peppers need stakes to stay upright.  There will also be beans to pick (and soon peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes with any luck!).

And I want to finish my dress, it just needs buttons and button holes so I’m almost done.  If I can finish that it would also be nice to do one of the small fabric panel projects like maybe the soft book for the tiny Patrick.  Of course it depends on time. 🙂

In terms of general projects, hopefully I’ll finally get the brakes fixed on my bike (either by following the guidance of the Internet or bribing the grown up Patrick, we’ll see…).  I’d also like to sort the kitchen, but that depends on general motivation and how energetic/tired everyone is.

And I’d like to go to the big park with the Patricks, it’s got a carousel and a train and a butterfly garden and is huge.  I think that would be relaxing and fun (it’s really close so it’d be easy to get to).  And maybe I could go to the farmer’s market, that could be fun.  If I got my bike brakes fixed or if the Patricks want to go too… Or maybe go to the thrift stores?  Those are fun.

So, there’s plenty to do, and it should be fun. 🙂

 

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