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Me and Susan did a swap a while back, felted slippers for earrings. The Sulu Design-er went beyond the call of duty and sent me a follow-up gift which is crazy because I was more pleased than a piggy in a hand-knitted, non-acrylic blanket with the original delivery. Oh those crazy artistic types. Thank you, Sweetie! You're too generous.
There are instructions to felt rocks in one of my felting books, I believe it's the Felting for Beginners I have listed to the right - can't check now - Mommy time's a wasting. At first I thought, so sad. Like the Christmas Tree phemnomena. You take something so pure, pristine and naturally pretty and then dress it some like a two bit whore (man, I've been using that word a lot lately for some reason!).
When my mom was here giving me sewing pointers, she saw how I was resorting to using my stapler, three hole puncher, tape dispenser, Edie to hold my pattern to the fabric she suggested I pick up some rocks from around the property, paint them and use that instead. I thought, paint the rocks? That's pretty whorish. And so I said, I'll just felt them. Then mom said, Kahhtee, just paint eet. Takes two mee-nuts. But felting them took less than that. Plus the fuzziness gives them an air of innocence, no?
There was actually seven but the seven garden tour wouldn't sound like the Gilligan's Island theme now would it? As you may notice, I added a new catagory to the left. We went on the local art and garden tour yesterday and now I'm super inspired to build us a gardening oasis wherever we decide to plant our roots. I have so much to learn but man, things grow pretty here!
This has been a month of reflection for us - flip flopping between building our little strawbale dream house or foregoing the stress of building and added expense (now that building costs have risen to $230 per square foot!) so to see all these lovingly cultured homes and pep talking with their owners has really instilled in us again the desire to make a go at the Horniman.
Either build on our blank canvass but if one of these places came up for sale... hmmmm...
Edie's been on this fairy princess kick since we rented this dancing fairy movie for her. She put on the outfit and started dancing around like a nymph and then started hugging the tree. I told her to stay put, hugging the tree, I had to get the camera. I went inside, came back out, and just like an America's Next Top Model, she was still in the same pose almost five minutes later. Oh, yeah.
This was McCall's 4887. Funny, the sweet ladies at the local fabric shop were nudging me towards a less complicated pattern but I said couldn't purchase it based on principle. The little girls in the photos looked a little too whored up for my liking.
I used the star trim my friend Dana sent me as part of a blogaversary present a while back (thank you again!). The satin's from the bargin box at the fabric shop, the wings were found at a dollar store and scraps from even years ago were used for the lining. I only had half the amount of tuile the pattern called for. Don't know how that happen but it still works. She has lift off.
The best is seeing how much she likes it. She was floating all over the yard, flapping her "wings", saying "I'm a fairy!". Yes you are my sweetpea.
Happiest of solistices to you! Enjoy the longest day of the year and the perfect time to reflect on the past whirl around the life-giving fireball. There is a huge party my friend puts on each summer solstice in his "backyard". This particular one, the tenth annual, reminded me we have been living in this special community for about exactly around a year now. Last year's celebration, I remember going home by myself, pouting because the mosquitoes were literally sucking the fun out of me and sitting in our new house by myself for the first time (on the floor because the furniture hasn't arrived yet). This year, hardly any! Yay, that means we can actually take a deep swig of breath at the Horniman without getting our sinuses lodged with the critters!
But the evening was perfect. I saw tonnes of old and one year old friends. Everyone was greeted with a hug and a happy solstice. Edie danced until almost midnight and it was warming to see how many special little kids our community houses and celebrate the reasons why we chose to raise her here. This is my happy new year in a sense. Enjoy this beautiful whirl!
Garden is coming together. At first Edie had better things to do when Mommy was banging up the beds but now she's really digging it. Already we've been enjoying salad from our lettuce and we're looking forward to embellishing them with beets and carrots.
I still have some clean up to tend to in the background but I'm pretty excited about making bigger and bigger gardens in the future. My vision's to have a seated lace coverage for shade area for tea time with all the fixins like rose infused herbal ice tea and crumpets but for now I'm just content the deer fencing is finally up and I'm not totally killing everything.
So almost as important, if not more, than the garden, it's been finally been warm and dry enough to be sporting my new gardening outfit:
It's the Edwardian Underthangs pattern from Folk Wear patterns. Check out the site, lots of cute vintage styles. I made my bloomer set from a vintage sheet. Thus the post title.
Good sheet!
Yes, I know, I'm suppose to be posting on how our building is going. We have had our share of luck, both good and bad, with this dream home building adventure business. I'll get into the bad some other time, let's just say we're direly realizing that the cost of building on our beloved Horniman is counteracting our whole intention of moving out here to live out a simpler life (less work, but more real work in terms of growing our own produce, perhaps animals to milk, pursuing other interests, not just me). Anyway, the dream's still on but we're exploring other options just for reality check's sake.
On to the good news! The Kootenay Permaculture Institute selected our property as one of their sample cases for the students of their 2007 summer intensive to study. It rocked. The students all met us at our property and me and Craig talked about the story of our dreams and intentions for the land and all the students (from all over, including the Southern States, a long lost Do Be Clean employee and one girl from Brazil!) hunkered down over the weekend to scheme up designs for our land that will best suit our needs in a permaculture kind of way. I blabbed on about goats, sheep, chickens, yoga studio in the forest, little playground area next to the garden and wouldn't it be cool to have a meditation nook next to the shores of the Horniman Brook (that's how we got the name incase you didn't know)? Craig was a little more stoicly Debbie Downer style and shared how we are confronting expensive issues with septic, water and just generally dealing with the craziness of bureaucracy, new codes and the increasing cost of building. Still, this has been too cool because we have been reading up on permaculture for years, we have even wanted to take this program this year but thought we would be busy building, and it was nice to get some trained eyes on our situation and site potential. Here's some of what they came up with:
Ahhhh, permaculture. Something about the philosophy of the lazy man's approach to gardening and stewarding the land speaks volumes to me. This study embraces working with nature as oppose to wrestling her into dust to reap some Gaia booty (pirate booty, not Beyonce booty). Thanks for visiting the Horniman, you guys and I'll leave you with a quote from Wikipedia: " Renowned environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki has stated: "What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.""
I can't take credit for the clever title. There is an artist here who is trying to pull together an apron show showcasing different interpretations of aprons and what they represent. To me, it represents a handy dandy wipey thing to wear while soap making with a starry pocket to keep my ipod close to me. Thanks again to Patricia for the fabric and pattern!
Speaking of ipod listening, these are some of the ones I'm super hooked on lately (they help keep the earworms at bay because the Littlest Munchkin cannot be in the car without listening to her "Fiddlely Dee" CD):
Craft Lit: a podcast for crafters who like book but have better things to do with their hands and, uh, eyes
Cast-On: the mother of all knitting podcasts. She's very cool and has great links to other fine listening with ears pleasure
Geek.Farm.Life: I just started listening to this. Two geeks from the city bought land in the country and are making a go at it. Sounds somewhat familiar...
Those are three I can comfortably recommend. Some I like but in weird ways. Like sometimes I like watching Full House reruns kinda weird way - (edited to remind you we don't have a tv - Full House has never seen the light of day in this house. Really). Guilty pleasures I suppose. (Edited to remove somewhat negative comment - who was I yesterday?). To end on a positive note, there are a whole bunch I like but don't have time to listen to on a regular basis. I also comfortable love/recommend, now that I slept on this post, that was comfy too, Sticks and Strings, It's a Purl Man, Material Mama and Creative Mom. Have a positively smashing day!
I attended a fun little celebration this weekend. It was a birthday party of sorts. An elder here turned 84 this week and so there was a festival marking the occasion on his property. Part of the festivities included a herbal salve making class that was pretty fun. It took place in this really rustic circular strawbale cottage, a couple of mah ladies in attendance while Edie and Craig had fun with other kiddies and daddies running around the compound.
The salve class really tickled my fancy for learning more about herbal healing, an interest of mine for a long time. I'm considering (once again) taking the Rosemary Gladstar correspondance Herbal program. I know a couple of my friends have done so in the past. Anyone else out there tried it? Anyone wanna do it at the same time as me? That would be fun. I'm just feeling the importance to embrace the power the plants offer us, especially living out here where a lot of medicinal plants grow so abundantly, being a mom and somewhat skeptical of conventional medicines and pharmaceuticals being so heavily pushed. I have lots of alternative health support around me but I think I'm ready to delve in to more of a personal practice. An empowerment thing, ya know?
I leave you with a message brought to you from the birthday boy's lens.
Look at me! I got a new dress. I've been sewing up a storm but it's been too cold to model the other outcomes. They all have one thing in common: good from far but far from good. This is a spring pattern from the Built by Wendy series from Simplicity 3835. I'd share the pattern number but I'm way too lazy to get myself downstairs to check for sure. Okay, okay, I went downstairs and checked as you can see.
See how much better it looks in this shot; 20 feet further away and five feet off the ground? It was so fun to have my mom stay with us last month and to see the contrast between us when it comes to satisfaction levels on our projects. I'm so tired, are those the right words? I mean the standard we set for ourselves when it comes to the outcome of the garment. Of course, I'm a total rookie compared to her (she is a professional and has been at it ever since I was a baby - almost twenty years! Okay, a little longer than twenty). It was so nice to get pointers, short cuts and sewing maxims from her; for instance; an article of clothing should always look just as good inside out as it does outside in. Something like that.
I'm more on the Wabi Sabi camp - the Japanese philosophy of the beauty in imperfection. I love that head space, makes things everything a little purtier. Sabi about that mom.
Speaking of which, this segment may come under the heading of Too Much Information, but when Craig and I were, ahem, "fresh", I woke up to a note on the table with a poem entitled "Wabi Kathy". I still have it in my box of special specials. I love my special specials.
