Homemade Holidays

It's hard to believe, but 2011 is coming to a close which means this is the last desktop calendar in my Modern Homesteading series. I hope you've enjoyed them and that they've brightened your workspace throughout the year! Many thanks to Willi Galloway from Digginfood for collaborating with me on this project and for sharing my illustrations on her blog. Be sure to pick up a copy of her beautiful book, Grow. Cook. Eat: A Food Lover's Guide to Vegetable Gardening that is coming out in February 2012.

In case you miss having my illustrations at your fingertips, don't worry! You can find all twelve illustrations available as a note card set that you can find on my Etsy site. They even come with stickers and in a cute little drawstring bag. Perfect for hostess gifts or stocking stuffers!

Have fun and save money by crafting up your holiday decorations with things found in your garden. Here is a pic of one of the wreaths I made last year with things found around my yard and neighborhood. 

As always there are three sizes of the desktop calendar to choose from. Just select which one fits your monitor and click on the link to automatically download the file. I hope you have a peaceful and warm holiday season! 

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It's Knitting Time!

It's that time of year when I switch from my outdoor hobbies to indoor hobbies. Luckily our winters in the Northwest usually don't get too bad until late November or December, so I am still able to get out and do some gardening projects. Last weekend I harvested the potatoes and put in a new flower bed. Hopefully I will get around to planting some bulbs for spring blossoms.

Once I put away my gardening tools for the seaon, I will be whipping out my knitting needles and get cranking on some cozy projects. I picked up several books from the library to try to learn some new stitches—so far all I've ever knitted are pretty simple scarves, but maybe I will get more ambitious.

Here's a pic of my dog Murray modeling a scarf I knitted a couple of years ago. The needles I used are huge and I love how fast it knits up with the LionBrand 'thick & quick' yarn.

Below are the links for the three sizes of the desktop calendar. Just select which one fits your monitor and click on the link to automatically download the file, then set it as your desktop image.

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Get Hoppin'

Fall has officially arrived in the Northwest—crisp nights, golden leaves and my garden is starting to fade a bit. There's still a lot hanging on, showing off their colors like the purple asters, yellow dogwood and golden hops that grow up a trellis at the back door. The golden hops are actually more of a brilliant bright green, and right now they are putting all of their energy into making the cute little flowers that hang like lanterns in clusters. 

In my little neighborhood I have two neighbors that brew their own beer (I know, lucky right??) so I offered some of the hop flowers to see how they would brew. Today I picked a colander full and put them in the freezer as I was instructed—hopefully they make for a flavorful batch of beer.

As always there are three sizes of the desktop calendar to choose from. Just select which one fits your monitor and click on the link to automatically download the file. Cheers!

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Fall Forage

It's September and time for a new calendar! The weather lately has definitely been feeling more fall-like with cooler days and crisp nights. In the garden, I pulled out all of my summer lettuces that were going to seed and planted some fall veggies: broccoli, bok choy, lettuces, collard greens, spinach and more. Hopefully we'll get some more tomatoes before it gets too cold.

In the Northwest a lot of people go foraging for mushrooms in the fall. The forests here are a perfect growing place for many varieties. Last year my husband went with some friends and came home with a bunch of matsutakes and chanterelles—yum! The Puget Sound Mycological Society even has a Wild Mushroom show in October that is really interesting. 

As always there are three sizes to choose from. Just select which one fits your monitor and click on the link to automatically download the file. 

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Design Improv

One of the highlights of my summer was taking a two day class at Pacific Northwest College of Art taught by designer/quilter Denyse Schmidt. I've followed Denyse's career ever since I saw an article on her in Martha Stewart's magazine about 10 years ago. While I love fabric and quilts, I've never actually made one—I do sew, but consider myself a novice and generally use a 'figure it out as I go approach'. The class was a great opportunity to learn not only from Denyse, but other talented women—there were about 16 people in the class in all—some from the Northwest, but others from all over.

The first day we spent making three improvised blocks by drawing pieces of fabric from the three different bags—small, medium and large. We had to use whatever random piece you pulled which produces unexpected results and happy accidents. After we did those three blocks, Denyse talked about the components to design and things to think about as we sketched ideas for a series of blocks that would make up a whole quilt. 

 

At the end of the second day we all put our blocks up on the wall and talked about the process, what we liked, didn't like, what suprised us and where we'd take them next. Some people did a ton of blocks, I'm a little slower and got three done but look forward to doing more. It definitely made the idea of making a whole quilt less intimidating.

Detail of one of my 'garden' blocks

During this time my friend Tara Bliven from Ephemera Press had this cool idea for a project she called The Elevated Envelope. The idea was to create something fun that you could send in the mail to 10 other people and the theme was 'Summertime'. Following on the heels of my quilting class, I thought it would be fun to take the same techniques but use paper—randomly pulling pieces out of the box and then working with what I had. Again, it was so surprising to see these combinations and juxtapositions appear that were way more interesting than anything you could ever plan. Here are some photos of the envelopes I made. Because of the somewhat fragile nature of the finished envelopes, I mailed them in glassine envelopes for protection.

Stitching the paper quilts

Fronts of the 'quilt' envelopes
Backs of the 'quilt' envelopesDetail of envelope front

Detail of envelope backDetail of envelope front