The View From Here...

This was my view early Saturday morning from my chair on the deck:



The blob of blue to the left is an Old Town canoe that Dory-Man is restoring - the deck is the only dry spot large enough to hold it at the moment. The blackberries are in bloom and there have been plenty of bees out there doing their thing, so I have hopes for berries this year.

Some of the garden flourishes - the cabbages are getting huge, but not heading up yet:



The peas and chard ripen faster than we can eat them:



This round of squash has actually survived the slugs, but the plants are still quite small and I doubt they will produce baby squashes this season:



And the potatoes are in bloom:



A few other things are nearing bloom, too, like this lovely red poppy, which put out it's first blossom today:



This Lady's Mantle is an odd, low-growing mound with buds under the leaves - they have yet to protrude above the leaves. Looks like it's coated in ice, doesn't it? It had rained the night before, so most of the plants had a covering of very fine water drops:



I'm anxious to see what this Curiosity looks like when in bloom:



It doesn't seem like the flowers will be purple, as what is showing so far is decidedly burgundy. I have three of these plants that I started from seeds and all are doing quite well.

I stopped at the Farmer's Market Saturday morning and picked up a few more flowers for the garden because they were going for $5.00 or less - large, fully grown plants in very good condition - one each of sunflowers, datura, dahlia, and calendula since my seeds didn't germinate. Picked up a few more herbs, too. No idea where I'll put them, but I had to have them. I'll post pictures of those when I get them in the ground.

Anyone local to me need oregano? I've been growing it in a large pot for the last couple of years (it overwintered very nicely) and this year I put it in the ground, breaking it up into four bunches, and it has gone totally crazy! I guess it likes the cooler Coast weather. Who knew? I'm up to my ears in it now and would love to share some. Chard, too as the leaves are getting a bit tough but I can't bear to just toss them and the bunnies can only eat so much before they start to have digestive upsets...

That's all for now.

Independence Days #6

I've gotten a bit behind with my Independence Days updates. Hopefully I'm back on track with the weekly updates.

1. Plant something - Radish, carrots, beets, toy choy, cukes and broccoli seeds for a Fall/Winter harvest. We still aren't getting Summer temps here at the Beach, so who knows what will happen with these seeds, but I'm giving them a chance. The cukes are supposed to be ripe in 55 days for pickling and people back East are just planting them now because many areas have been flooded out, so I'm hopeful that our Maritime climate will be kind and let me get a decent harvest.

2. Harvest something - Blackberry leaves, chard, spinach for the rabbits, beet greens and peas for the people, angora rabbit fur from Rachel the Red Bunny.

3. Preserve something - Strawberries in vodka and strawberry jam.

4. Reduce waste - can't think of anything this week.

5. Preparation and Storage - Re-filled the 5-gallon water storage containers, did some sorting of stores.

6. Build Community Food Systems - nothing this week.

7. Eat the Food - Made sauteed greens for the first time. Yum! Raw, the leaves taste rather bitter (and the chard is ready to be pulled up as the leaves are now quite large and the stems are fibery and tough) but add a little butter and gentle heat and they are fab! We'll be doing more green sauteing as the season progresses and things grow up a bit in the garden. Greens of all kinds really like this climate, so if I can't get a ripe tomato, we'll eat greens!

Finally! Some Knitting

See? Knitting does actually happen around here!

First up is a pair knit with Andes 100% wool in color 34, a nice, mellow variegated yarn.



Next is a pair knit with Deluxe Worsted Magic yarn by Universal Yarn Company in color 901, shades of orange.

Both yarns are very soft and lovely to work with. Both pairs of socks are my Easy Worsted Weight Socks pattern with a 3-needle bind-off. I tend to block my socks while on my feet - saves so much time that way and puts off the annoying dry-time after washing.



I even have another pair on the needles, these using the old standby Cascade 220 in color 9826. I'm at the heel and will make a short row heel from my Standard Pattern, probably with a 3-needle bind-off as well, as it's easy and the ridge doesn't bother my toes - try it some time!

Worsted weight socks are my "mindless" knitting and I try to carry a project in progress around with me if there's a chance I might be idle for awhile. These were knit in those spare moments when I was packing or waiting or just brain dead with the recent house move.

Speaking of the new homestead - we had Summer at The Beach today! It was a glorious 4 hours this afternoon - perfect temps, just a slight breeze, sunshine - altogether perfect! I hope we get a repeat tomorrow. I groomed bunnies and dogs and played a bit in the garden, trying to enjoy every minute before the dew fell and it got too cold to sit on the deck in only two layers ;-)

Garden update to come. Check out the bunny blog (click the pic of Steve on the right --->) for shearing stories. That's right, it's shearing time again!

The Boat Cushion Project

This project is not for the faint of heart - vinyl covered foam boat cushions. I meant to take a "before" picture, but the old cushions were so moldy and nasty that I tossed them without documentation. These particular cushions were made up on a deadline for a Toledo fisherman, and they were a bit of a trial. I've covered boat cushions before, but never sewed vinyl. With piping.

Foam was purchased at The Foam Man in Corvallis and was it expensive! Luckily part of the Foam Man's service is custom cutting so that chore was taken care of. Cutting 3" foam is not easy if you don't have the right equipment.

The vinyl is Marine Vinyl from Jo-Ann's, believe it or not. It's not cheap, and they were the only game in town. I had no time to order online, and it worked out just fine.

The most important thing to know about sewing with vinyl is that every hole shows, so be sure to measure twice, cut once and sew once. It really looks like crap to pull out stitches and if you end up with a cushion that's too small you're out of luck and have to start over. Ask me how I know...

So, on to the good stuff!

The foam was cut and I used it for a pattern to cut the vinyl 3/4" bigger all around. Should have been 1/2" - learn by my mistakes! The edge strips were cut at 4.5", again, too large, but I figured a larger seam allowance would be easier to sew and I could tighten up the seams if I needed to. I allowed more for turn of cloth than I had to, making the end result a bit looser than I liked.



Here you see the first seam. That's 5/32" cotton piping sandwiched in a folded 1" piece of vinyl being held so that the seam is 3/4" from the edge (RS up) of the side piece. Pins aren't possible with this fabric, so I winged it. I was able to cut long 4.5" strips for the side pieces, so I sewed on the piping for the whole cushion in one seam. A zipper foot will allow you to get close to the piping and make it nice and tight.

The next step is to sew the side piece to the flat top (or bottom) of the cushion. In the picture below the row of stitches you see is the WS of the side piece where the piping is sewn on. The piping is sandwiched between the layers -



At this point I switched to a split foot on the machine because the zipper foot wouldn't grip enough surface area of the fabric and it was being pushed to the left. I tried to stay as close to the stitching line for the piping as possible to keep things neat on the RS.

The corner approaches -



You can see that I've started to turn the bottom layer of fabric to turn the corner. I did this in four stages, two stitches each stage, hand cranking the machine -





Almost there -



Continue around, turning each corner the same way until you end up back at the beginning -



Leave a good 3" open to make it easier to match up the ends -



Trim one side, being careful to get the cut perpendicular to the edge and leaving a 1" seam allowance -



Unpick 2" of the seam holding the piping in and line up where the seam should go, being careful that everything will lay flat. You don't want to catch the piping on either side in this seam -



Turn the whole thing RS out and see how it looks -



At this point, only the flat sides have been joined - the piping is loose and there will be a hole where the side joins the top. Turn to the RS again and topstitch close to the seam -



Time to close the gap - turn back to the WS and fiddle with the piping to get it to lay together like it's continuous and finish the seam joining the side to the top -



And here's the finished seam -



Nice and neat!

This particular cushion was mounted to a board, so no zipper was needed, but the corners still need to be trimmed and graded. Here's what it looks like on the inside -



Cut the straight (side) piece in several places around the curve -



And trim a notch out of the square corner (top) like so -



And here's a (bad) picture of the finished corner -



The black cushions were constructed the same way, with zippers being applied to the side pieces before the piping -



The pictures of the zipper installation are total crap, so I won't be posting them ;-) but I can mock up something if anyone has questions - just leave me a comment - I like it!

In the end we wrapped the foam in a layer of poly batting to make it fill out the covers more firmly, using spray glue to hold it steady while it was stuffed in and zipped up. The batting made it easier to slide the foam into the covers, but it was not easy!

I learned a lot about sewing with vinyl on this project -

* It's stiffer and stickier than you might think, but easy to pierce with a regular sewing machine needle.

* It's much heavier than you might think, hard on the hands and wrists to move around on the machine.

* Ripping stitches is a total pain and the fabric tears easily so care must be taken lest you find yourself making a last-minute trip to Jo-Ann's for more fabric.

* Sewing with the RS of the fabric against the feed dogs will tear the coating right off the vinyl - better to sew the piping to the side pieces by eye than to construct the piping separately, and use a zipper foot for that part.

* Switch to a split foot for the main construction, using a firm hand to keep the project from scooting out from under the presser foot.

* Sew slowly - there's no going back!

Here they are in the boat -



Huh. Maybe this is better -



Not really better, is it? Well, fishermen have no patience for staging for blog photos and he needed to get the gear back in there, so I took what I could get. It's done, anyway, and everyone was happy with the job, so I'll call it well done.

Tomorrow - socks! No, really!

Saturday Miscellany

The peony we thought didn't make it through the especially harsh Winter is now in full bloom. The blooms smell surprisingly like roses, sweet and very lush. The bush is well over two feet tall after having died back to the ground over the Winter. We're glad it came back!

Tomorrow - Socks!

Sunday:: Rest

It's been a very busy couple of weeks adjusting to a new schedule, but things are leveling out now and regular posts shall be resuming.

The garden has finally taken off and is looking like we may harvest some food out of it before Summer's end.

The Columbine has been flowering profusely for some time now -



The Rainbow Chard is going great guns and the rabbits get a leaf each every night before their dinner -



Bull's Blood Beets, Spinach, Kale, Potatoes, and lavender are really putting on some growth now that the weather is a bit warmer -



Tomatoes, tomatillos, onion, garlic, cabbage and cauliflower are all growing well despite the proliferation of that Gardener's Menace - slugs!



So far we've only lost a few plants to the voracious slugs and I hope that with warmer and drier conditions they will disappear until next year.

Independance Days #5

1. Plant something - Planted the peas started from seeds last week in the garden. The slugs are still out in full force and they seem to especially like anything squash related, so the squash are still in their pots until they get bigger. The artichokes that I gave up on are getting new growth, so maybe the slugs didn't totally kill them off.

2. Harvest something - Blackberry leaves for the rabbits, chard and white radishes.

3. Preserve something - nothing this week.

4. Reduce waste - Hauled the gross foam from the boat cushion project that I haven't blogged about yet to be recycled. I suppose I used enough gas to offset the recycling effort, but still...

5. Preparation and Storage - Still packing to move. I'll be picking up the truck on Thursday. If it don't fit, it ain't going. I am so tired of this already!

6. Build Community Food Systems - nothing this week.

7. Eat the Food - more meals out of the pantry, no new recipes. Trying to use up some supplies before the move.

Corporate Panties

I have a confession to make. I needed new glasses so I took a trip to the next town to see the eye doctor at Binyon's in the mall. Sigh. I know! But glasses in an hour? You gotta love that. So. My glasses were going to take 2.5 hours (they were busy and I dithered about choosing frames) so I had some time to kill.

Now, I go to the mall about twice a year and actually hadn't set foot in there for many, many months. A couple of the stores have gone out of business in the last few months so I took a little stroll to see what I could see. I avoided the food court and went into Target. I know! But, you see, I needed to get some new panties. Oh, sure, I can make them, but I'm short on time and my need was dire, so I popped in to have a look. The selection sucked - thin fabrics and expensive prices for what amounts to very little fabric, but I actually plunked down some of my hard earned cash for Made in China undergarments. I know! Call me a hypocrite.

There's more.

I hadn't eaten breakfast, so I was hungry. Across the street from the mall is a Burger King. I had a Whopper Junior. My digestive system is not happy right now. The worst part is that I know BK food makes me feel ill for days, but when I'm at the mall having my brain sucked out of my head the most absurd things seem perfectly reasonable. You know how it is, right? I'm not the only person who is affected this way?

I'm happy to report that I only bought the panties and nothing else. I think. Maybe I should check that bag again...

Monday : Washing

It's really hard to get any fleece dry around here with this kind of "help."

Independance Days #4

1. Plant something - Started squash, pumpkins and more peas from seed in 4" pots. Now that it's warming up by the time these are ready to plant out hopefully the slugs will be fewer and they'll stand a chance. Planted bean and corn seedlings and tiny turnip, beet, chard and spinach plants in the beach garden.

2. Harvest something - Dandelions and blackberry leaves for the rabbits.

3. Preserve something - nothing this week.

4. Reduce waste - washing fleece outside with cold water and dumping the water on the lawn and plants. Ew, I know, but it's full of all kinds of good things! The fleece is getting cleaner than I thought it would. This is a great method for those on a septic system who don't want to dump dirty sheep dirt down there. I'll be posting on the process soon. Making arrangements to give some things to Harley and his friends who will be moving in together (oh, please cross your fingers!) soon.

5. Preparation and Storage - Still packing to move. Getting ready for a garage sale on Thursday and Friday. Harley will run it and the staging in the garage has begun.

6. Build Community Food Systems - nothing this week.

7. Eat the Food - more meals out of the pantry, no new recipes.

These updates are looking pretty boring, eh? Well, my life is turning in a new direction and so my focus is towards downsizing, de-cluttering, de-stashing and firming up arrangements for the next phase.

We have an offer on the Valley house. If all goes well, we could be closing on June 12, which means I have to get my stuff moved out in the next couple of weeks. The Boss and The Other Boss have agreed to get me set up as an independent contractor so I can telecommute from South Beach.

Expect blogging to be light for the next few weeks. I'll be taking pictures but probably won't have time to post.

Dreams do come true!