Monthly Archives: January 2009

Crafting continues

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I don’t know if you could really call it nesting, ’cause my house is in shambles and I’m not really ‘creating a nest’ for the baby, but all I want to do is sit on my butt and make things. Really, it’s been going on since last Fall. So, I think this baby has some serious crafty genes that are coming out through me!

So, inspired by a little felted gnome that I got from Kristine
leafgnome

I decided to make a leaf blanket for the baby. I got some green fleece (on sale! Yahoo!) and made a pattern on large construction paper. Then, using some of Kaia’s washable markers, traced the pattern on the fleece and cut it out. I also cut out a triangle to go at the top of the leaf for a little hood. Then I marked a vein pattern on the leaf and sewed thread on top of that. Came out cute, eh? From tip to bottom, the leaf is a little over 3 feet, so it should fit for a while. I have a magnetic snap that I might put on after the baby comes and I see where it will fit best… or I may use something that is more adjustable for the baby to grow with.

leafblanket1

leafblanket21

Of course, now Kaia wants one, but I’m tired of the needle work, so, maybe I can just make her a hooded cape like thinging without a leaf pattern….

And once you open up the leaf blanket to reveal the baby, you might see these:
babylegs

I knitted up some baby leg warmers for the little one…. They turned out really cute, but much too big for a newborn (maybe 6 months to a year). So, I plan to knit a much smaller pair once I find the right yarn (man I love yarn 🙂

Kaia took the leg warmer and put it over her hands and said “Look mom! It’s a perfect hand warmer!” So, since I can’t stop, I knitted her a muff out of some fuzzy yarn from my stash. It turned out really cute, but man was that fuzzy stuff hard to knit with!

muff

All else is cruising along here at the homestead. The chickens are all laying again (except the younger ones), the guest house is livable though not complete (needs finish work and for the water to be run), and my belly is getting ever larger! Anytime in the next month we will finally get to meet this little one!

Kaia’s Unicorn

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unicorn7
Here’s my latest knitting project. I started working on it a few weeks ago and it was amazingly easy (considering how hard it looked). There was an insane amount on increases and decreases in order to make the feet, knees, shoulders, hips, etc. So, I couldn’t do anything else when I was knitting or else I’d mess up. I learned how to do a mattress stitch to sew her up for stuffing, and the patternonly used 2.5 skeins or yarn (not six like it called for).
Kaia picked out the yarn colors and asked me to add a horn to make her a unicorn. She hasn’t seen the finished product yet, though. I’m going to slip it in her bed with her tonight…

ready to be sewn up
unicorn1

getting stuffed
unicorn2

Unicorn meditating
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Unicorn wary of cameras
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Unicorn at rest
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Modeling headshot
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The most Amazing night

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henna1

We’ve had the most amazing 48 hours! Thursday night, our friend Julie came over to paint henna on my belly. She was hired as a birth gift from another friend. Julie is an amazing henna artist and actually did henna on our hands before Toby and I got married. So it was very fitting that she do our birth henna.

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Here’s my view from above 🙂
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And the finished product (with the lemon/sugar mix on it)
henna4

Kaia chose a peacock design for her right hand.
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Isn’t it beautiful? She also had part of my belly design done on her left hand.
henna6

Toby got a part of my design on his left hand too
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henna8
henna9
henna10

Then, last night we were given a beautiful Blessingway to welcome the baby into the world. It was absolutely wonderful! We had an amazing group of friends come out… they brought food, set up a lovely birth alter with candles and art work, photographs, herbs, and more and gave us blessings. Then after eating I was given a salt foot rub and herb foot bath while we all watched a belly dancer honor us with a dance of birth and family. It was all so amazing!!
blessingway1

Do I look relaxed??? 🙂
blessingway2

The beginning of her dance was done with a basket balanced on her head… she also used scarves and candles. the pictures were taken with a flash, so it looks bright in there, but the lights were actually off, so she danced by candle light. (Kaia was enthralled!)
blessingway3

Then, today in the mail, I got a wonderful gift box from Kristine that had some wonderful treats along with a beautiful birth goddess statue and a hand crafted tin filled with birth art and positive affirmations! Thank you so much Kristine! These have a special place on the birth alter!

birthalter

Old World Booties

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I found a fantastic baby bootie pattern from Knitting Daily and had to buy it. The info said it is ‘intermediate’ knitting level, and I’m definitely not there yet, but they were too cute to pass on.

I’m very happy with how they turned out and proud of myself for making them 🙂 It was a great learning pattern for me. I went to knittinghelp and watched lots of videos to learn some of the stitches the pattern called for. I learned how to knit two colors with ‘intarsia’ method, learned the difference between stockinette stitch and seed stitch, learned how to kf&b, ssk, p2tog through back loop, and how to make an I-cord. They knitted up really fast considering all the new stuff I was doing. I basically worked on them two evenings and a day.

Here I am… large and in charge:
bootiesinprogress

This is what the pattern looked like before I sewed up the sole and back of the bootie:
bootiesinprogress2

Here they are… the knitting is done and they are ready to be felted.
bootiesreadytofelt

I’d never felted anything before, but the ladies at the yarn shop told me you couldn’t do it easily in a front loading washer. I did a bit of research and found that, though it is possible to felt in a front loader, it takes 3-4 cycles in the wash…. seemed like a waste of water. So, I looked up how to felt by hand and that seemed pretty simple. We keep our water heater set on 120 degrees, and I wanted it hotter for the felting. So, I boiled water hot enough that my hands could still stand it, poured it into the sink (with the drain closed) added a tsp. or so of dish liquid, put on some rubber gloves and went at it. I kneaded and rubbed roughly for 5 minutes then took them out to see how they were doing. I also rubbed them up against an old cutting board that has lots of texture to it. Then I shocked them with cold water and put them back to the hot for about another 10 minutes of rough treatment, and they were done! They should fit the baby’s newborn feet.

bootiesfelted2

bootiesfelted

Gardening 2009 – 1

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I’m very excited to get back into gardening, but I’m also very nervous. I really want to make my time and efforts count and be able to grow as much as possible to feed my family. Still, I feel like there is so much that I don’t know. Everyone seems to have their own ideas of the right kind of soil mixture, the right way to fertilize (or not), the proper way to get rid of or live with pests, etc…. So, this year, I’ve decided to document all of my gardening endeavors on my blog. Then, I can take a good look and what worked and what didn’t. I am planning on using organic and bio-intensive methods, including gardening by the signs, crop rotation, and companion planting. I’ll be following The North American Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar .

So far, I have my garden space planned out. We have built some raised beds and have about 270 sq.ft of gardening space. It’s not much, but we have lots more rocks to build more beds in the spring if possible. Moving all the rocks and dirt has become impossible for me in my third trimester, and Toby is already working his butt off. So, once the weather warms up and I’m feeling up to it, I will try to double our gardening space.

By late winter, I need to:
-finish filling the raised beds with composted dirt
-clean up the established herb and strawberry beds
-transplant the hops (’cause I’ll be using that space for onions and lettuce now… we are going to plant the hops in front of the cabin so it can grow up the building)
-transplant the passion flower (I’m going to move it to the grape area so it can use the trellises)
-prune the fruit trees
-place and fill the 8th raised bed box

Garden needs/things to make (that I can think of);
–rain gauge (I had one, but it’s been beat up and trampled to death)
–bird flash tape (I found that this worked really well when I used it in my last garden in 2005)
–labels for the seedlings/plants
–mini greenhouse for starting seedlings (I’m planning on using plastic bread trays to hold the soil blocks. They stack easily with some head space and I can put them in front of my south facing glass doors. Then I’ll cover them with plastic to keep the warmth and moisture in)
–soil block maker (my brother-in-law has one he said I could borrow, but I imagine we will both be needed it at the same time and often through out the year. So, I may try to order one, or make one)
–Ingredients for my seedling soil mix (following Eliot Coleman’s spoil block mix, I will need: peat, lime, bloodmeal, phosphate, greensand, I already have sand, garden soil and compost)
–trellising (I plan to grow ‘up’ as much as possible. All the vines will be trellised)
–limb spreaders (I will need to work on opening up the limbs on all the fruit trees we just planted so that the sun and air can reach as much of the tree as possible. These can be expensive if you need a bunch, so I may try making some… in my spare time! Ha!)
–Metal rods for floating row cover (I have a large amount of floating row cover, but no rods to support it over the plants. I’d like to use the cover for season extension as well as pest control)
–fertilizers/pest control (I have none of this stuff… whether it’s fish emulsion or organic pest controls (like ‘surround’ or diatomacious earth), all of it got lost/tossed/destroyed over the past 3 years of moving and building. I also don’t know what I’ll do about the fertilizers… all of the natural and organic stuff has a strong smell to it and Suki digs up anything I put it on. Last time I used a seaweed spray, she dug to china trying to find the fish under the soil)

So, I’ll get started on as much of this as I can in the next month or so… seedlings (onions and leeks) get started indoors here in mid. Feb (right when I’m due!), so I want to be sure everything is in place and ready to go.