Gifting Handmade

It always warms my heart with such such joy when I'm actually able to align my good intentions, my brilliant ideas, my always seemingly scarce time, and the activity of my hands to create a gift for a loved one.  It always impresses the heck out of me when I conceive of, start and FINISH said gift by the date for which it is intended.  Witness the 5 year old unfinished tapestry project for my sister, the 11 year old unfinished quilt for my highschool bestie (this one I'm giving up on, I'm repurposing what has been sewn, putting the leftover fabric back in the stash and beginning a new project, again quilts, this time for her twin babies).  Someday this particular sort of accomplishment will cease to be a small miracle in my life and be rather an enjoyable customary occurrence.  I promise.  Eventually.

And I did it!  I succeeded.  A few days before her birthday, no less!  My dear friend Faye is mommy to two super sweet pups, and after the Yule stitching for my mom I wanted to try my hand at working off of a photograph rather than a woodblock print, so I figured this would be a perfect project!  Happy Birthday dearest!

It was super fun.  The only trick is in deciding what level of detail and which lines of contour to choose to trace from the photo.  I'm pretty in love still with my diy light table of tracing on the window.  Come winter though, I'll have to plan around the few hours of daylight midday to trace a project!  The stitching itself is tied with the gifting for the prize of Jasmine's-favorite-part-of-the-process.  

Oh, I've got so many ideas for more!  If you're as totally in love with this idea as I am, I encourage you to grab some fabric, thread, embroidery hoop, tracing pencil and photo and get started!  If you're not the crafty type but you are as in love with this idea as I am; contact me in the comments, I'd love to do custom work (and promise a firm and reasonable delivery date!) for you.

Spring Seeds

As I was driving into town today, the car's thermometer read twenty-two degrees below zero.  That's a pretty normal temp hereabouts, but even here it is a bit TOO cold for the end of March!  It amazes me sometimes, the optimism that it takes in order to build fires against -22 degrees while at the same time planning for putting seeds into the ground to grow in a mere two month's time.

On Sunday, I went to a seed swapping bruch at Maple and Me's.  You can admire my valiant restraint as you notice that I only came home with 7 packets of seeds!  I should have expected such a thing.  Faced with a table full of so many varieties of unprouted plant live, so many different beautifully manifesting hopes for the future, my "I'm not going to plant anything this year except perrenials" somehow evaporated...  You see, this summer season is about the deep preparation that will support the next few decades on our land: pigs, pastures, perrenials, prep.... and now peas!  Peas give fix nitrogen into poor soils and can be direct-seeded even this far north.  And they're yummy.  And fairly simple to grow as I recall.  So that justifies two of these seed packets.

Another three are flower seeds from a dear friend's garden in Junea (she just happen's to Maple & Me's mother): primroses, day lillies, and blue poppies.

The other two packets I managed to come home with are some beets from Pingo Farm, a local farm that has been breeding vegetable strains from Russian seed stock to do well in our Zone 1 climate.  They have sweet peppers and cantelope and watermelon and tomatoes too!!!!  Next year.  Next year.  Not this year. 

And I also brought home 9 summer squash seeds.  Assuming a 100% germination rate, that's perfect for three mounds, which can be placed away from the pig pen/garden to be, and only require hauling in a pickup truck full of topsoil and/or manure - I'll use the rest to get going on the flower bed by the house.  These ones I will start in the house just as soon as I remember to stop by a gardening shop for some good soil.  Squash plants in the 4-5 inch range transplanted in late may do well, I'm told.  We have one more year's subscription to Calypso's CSA veggie share for this summer - thanks mom! But I find that we never get enough summer squash for the mounded dinner plate full I crave once or twice a summer.  Besides which, the freeze well and are great in winter soups.

So that's the story of why I broke down and brought home seeds.  That, and despite my place-my-energy-into-prep-work-it-will-pay-off-down-the -road intentions, I really can't quite imagine a summer without something growing which means that I'll likely pick up parsley and calendula and cilantro seeds along with that soil.

In other news, hiding down here at the bottom of the post where the Darlin'Man is least likely to notice it:

There are three birthdays in my family within the next month, so I've been busily contemplating all the things I will make.  And then last night I sat down and put a dent in my man's gift.  Though, I am a little concerned that I'm losing what little hipster cred I have by opting for nicely, perhaps even traditionally, sized cross stitches as opposed to the oversized one that are popular on design blogs.