Sunflowers

I'm keeping up with my bouquet making. The latest is made with several of the densely sown sunflowers I planted in my garden. Most of the stocks are under three feet tall and they have the smallest blooms because their growth has been so stunted, but they are so cute!

These were all grown from seeds I collected last year from Sunflower Steve's Van Gogh's Fantasy Mix. Several of my neighbors grow more standard looking sunflowers so after a few years all the sunflower seeds I collect will look plain. Some of the sunflowers in my garden are going to seed and I think I will collect them, but am looking to add some fun doubles and different colors so if you have a favorite sunflower let me know so I can find the seeds for next year.

One Sock!

It's very exciting! I finally finished one of the socks! I added a frilly bind-off because a frilly sock is cute and I love cute things. The sock looks extra long, but when stretched around the foot, especially the heal, it gets much shorter and is only a few inches up the calf. Now I need to make the other one so I can actually wear them.

Bingo Progress

It's time for another resolution check in! Here is my progress so far:

Surprisingly I am one away from a bingo and I am planning on planting "everything" this fall, specifically the first weekend of October, when we have more plants to plant and the rainy season has hopefully started. It is however incredibly unlikely that I will get a blackout as I'll have to do one project a week for the rest of the year plus an extra. It is possible though and I'd feel very proud of myself if I actually did it so I better get to work!

My main holdups are my disinterest in knitting lately and the slight inconvenience of accessing the sewing machine currently. I did start knitting the socks again and hope to finish the first one today so that's progress. You'll find out Thursday if I did it!

Sunflowers and Hydrangea

The latest floral bouquet is two. More sunflowers are blooming so I cut some of them. I also cut some dahlias and two types of hydrangea then decided I liked just the yellow and purple together so I ended up matching the dahlias with some dusty miller again. Next year I need to grow more filler type flowers.

Coat Hooks

This project has been on my to do list for some time now and the worst part is it didn't actually take very long to make! As part of my bedroom tidying, I finally made coat hooks for my tote bags so they are no longer hanging on my door handle!

To make this lovely project, I used the leftover piece of wood from my floating shelf and took a router along the edge to make it look a little nicer. Then I stained it with what I thought was the stain I used on the aforementioned floating shelf, but it was much darker. This is the only part of it that I'm a tiny bit sad about, but it's mostly hidden behind my door so I don't really see it and I could sand it down and stain it again if I really wanted to. 

/div>

After the stain dried, I figured out where I would need to drill a mounting hole so it would align with the stud in the wall. I marked that line then figured out where I wanted the hooks so that one would cover that mounting screw. Once that was figured out, I drilled tiny holes for the hooks' screws and larger holes for the mounting screws. Then after this photo was taken I realized I needed to recess the mounting screws so the hooks would sit flush against the wood so I made some larger holes that only went part way down then assembled it and hung up my tote bags! Hurrah for a finished project!

Heart Fix

A few months ago, when the weather started warming up and I was looking to change out my bedding for something more weather appropriate, I decided to finally fix this bedspread that I ruined with the vacuum. How does one ruin a bedspread with a vacuum you may be asking. Well, it was dangling as bedspreads do and I vacuumed up the corner and the satin fabric on this bedspread melted with the friction. I cut off the crunchy melted part, leaving a hole that I covered in a heart shaped weaving technique.

I think it needs some more decorations, but I'm at least using it now. The bedspread had been tucked away for way to long waiting to be mended. Here is the in progress photo so you can sort of see what the hole looked like. Most of the crunchy melted part is gone, but you can see a little bit on the right. 

Astoria

Last week I was on vacation and spent some time in Astoria, Oregon. Before going on this trip, I had planned on taking photos to share here, but I am still horrible at remembering to take photos and ended up taking photos of only five things. Here are the three that I liked.

Garden Update

The few seedlings I started are still inside and wrapped up in their snails. I ended up buying some seed starts and never added more soil to the snails so they've not grown very much, but they are still mostly alive. I should send them to the compost bin to make space. The garden is growing quite well though, I've not been neglecting it too much.

Most of the vegetables are growing in straw and are doing quite well! We've got some tomatoes, two types of cucumbers, and some beans.

The peas are doing less well, I am blaming the heat and am going to start a few more plants with seeds I've collected from these plants so we can have a fall harvest too.

Everything else is growing in soil. There are watermelon, dahlias, potatoes that were not harvested last year that started making new plants (not pictured), and sunflowers! I threw all the sunflower seeds I collected last year into a small raised bed so they are quite dwarfed, but they are still blooming!

Dahlia Bouquet

Hello Again! The dahlias are blooming and I made another bouquet!

This bouquet is made with dahlias and dusty miller, both from my garden. It’s a simple bouquet, I thought the silvery leaves would look nice with the showy pink flowers. I should have several more weeks of dahlias for bouquets so I’ll need to try something different next time. 

Another foraged floral bouquet!

This one was made with the help of my niece. We decided the bouquet needed ten flowers (the greenery did not count towards this total) so she picked some dandelions and grape hyacinth from the yard. Then cut some coyote brush for the greenery and Japanese pieris for the remaining flowers. I think the flower clusters each counted as one, but we still went over our target of ten flowers. 

Seedlings

I’ve got some seedlings! The seed starting is going okay, tomatoes are growing and it might be a bit too cold in the basement for the peppers. I’m going to try to find my little heat mat this weekend and hope it helps the other seeds germinate because having only two pepper seedlings is sad. 

Speaking of seeds not germinating, my direct seeding outdoors has so far been a flop. The slugs could have gotten to them, but I think it’s probably just been a bit too cold. Maybe I’ll be surprised by some seedlings as it starts warming up. 

Another weekend task is to place the second raised bed. After a lot of digging, the first now sits in the slope. I think I’ll be postponing a soil purchase for these two beds and sow sunflowers directly in the ground inside one or possibly both beds. I should also look at my garden plan and figure out what other seeds need starting!

Cherry Blossoms

It’s Sakura season and instead of heading down to the riverfront to check out those trees, I drove east to see some other trees. This park had their flowering cherry trees lit up at night so we headed over just after sunset and snapped a few photos.

Rainbow Photo Walk

Over the weekend, I went on a little garden walk that turned into an impromptu rainbow photo walk. While walking, we looked for each color of the rainbow, starting with red. My niece was the photo director, pointing out what colorful thing I needed to photograph. She even took over the camera to take the "Green" photo. Here is the rainbow we found:

red. orange. yellow. green. blue. purple.

Yesterday was my birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday! I don’t have anything new to share so I’m sharing this birthday bear painting I made almost eight years ago! It’s pretty cute and now I’m thinking I should add a few more paintings to the series. Any suggestions?

Craft Fail

I've been wanting to make a spiderweb trellis as a gift for my friend and I finally got started on it yesterday. The plan was to use some of the leftover heavy gauge wire from my row cover as the frame and weave some smaller gauge wire to make the web. It turns out it needs much more support because the frame is way too floppy. I gave up with this design basically immediately. The next try will probably use branches for the frame. Hopefully it works out.

Basement Wall Makeover

We are working on giving the basement some 70's vibes and a big step towards that was installing this fun yellow and orange floral wallpaper!

This project has been a wish for quite some time and earlier this year I placed the wallpaper order. When it finally arrived we had to get to work prepping the wood paneling. We filled all the grooves, smoothed out the surface the best we could, then primed the wall to make sure no brown peeked through. This is the wall after the first layer of filler. 

While hanging the wallpaper I got very frustrated aligning the flowers and could only do a few panels at a time so I could calm down. There are some places that the flowers don't perfectly align, but when you step back the wall looks pretty good. I'm pretty happy with how the basement is looking so far. The next little project is painting the window trim on the wall to the left. I think that middle orange color will look quite nice!

Shorten the Daffodil

I made another foraged floral bouquet! One of the flowers even came from a neighbor’s yard (after asking permission though).

Over the weekend I noticed that the Japanese pieris in the yard was now blooming so I clipped two branches to start this bouquet. After wandering around the yard for a bit I picked a few sword fern fronds then started building my bouquet. It definitely needed a large statement flower at this point so I got up the nerve to take a daffodil from the neighbor’s yard. They happened to be outside so I got permission and don’t have to feel bad about taking their flower. 

Now that I’ve been looking at the photo of this bouquet, it would probably look better if the daffodil was shortened a little bit. I might do that, but probably won’t.

Garden Update

I’m slowly starting my garden seeds. In January I direct sowed brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, snow peas and some spinach. So far there might be one seedling that is growing. It’s very tiny and I think it looks like a brassicaceae, but it could also be a weed. I’ll find out when it gets true leaves. 

This week I did my next round of seed starting. These were sown indoors since they are tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers. I tried the snail starting method for the first time and made only a little bit of a mess. To make these soil roll ‘snails’, I took some scrap fabric added soil, folded the fabric over, and rolled it all up like a cinnamon roll. Next I watered the rolls very well and added the seeds on top. One drawback I’m realizing is that if you are doing multiple types of the same plant in the same roll it is difficult to label them. I decided to not label my seeds so hopefully I have enough of a gap between seed types that I’ll know which tomatoes are which.

Bingo Progress

Two months of the year are (mostly) gone so I’m doing a resolution check in! In hopes of getting a black out on my bingo card, I need to regularly look at what projects remain. (I had already forgot I wanted to make a photo calendar.) Here is my progress:

I’ve completed three tasks on my crafty bingo card. That’s 12.5% and we are done with only 15% of the year. The socks are still in progress which has had me feeling discouraged (knitting isn’t interesting me right now), but I am planning on marking another project from the card tonight so I’m doing alright. What project should I start next?

Not a Snow Day

This winter has been the most dry of Portland's history and while I have been enjoying the frequent sunny afternoons and clear night skies (winter stargazing is such a rarity!), I was really looking forward to the snow that was forecasted for this week/today. Unfortunately, the forecast of snow for today turned into a forecast of a mix of rain and snow which then turned into a forecast of rain which ultimately ended up being mostly no rain.

Whatever weather you are having I'm sending you a virtual snow day where you can spend some time cuddled up on the couch with a cute kitten or pup or book or whatever makes you cozy. Hopefully this sweetie will cuddle me for a bit tonight.