Pajama Bottoms

We got pants! H & I went to a friends house with lots of fabric and some of H's pants in tow. Then with two babies and one sewing machine we cut like mad women and started stitching to make some pajama bottoms for out loved ones. It worked out pretty well. She was a good influence on me as she likes to stitch first, ask questions later and I'm much more about asking questions until I forget what I'm supposed to be doing then change to whatever shiny thing has caught my eye. But with my friend's "just do it" vibes working on me, plus working with a currently amicable H underfoot, knowing my time would be limited, I just started making pants. I think they turned out pretty nice. A little big, so might be better in a another 2 to 4 months for H. And a little bit loud, but that's why they are pajama bottoms. Did you see the little kids having a pillow fight on the fabric? Too cute.

We both took two different approaches to making cuffs and neither was a resounding success but we both learned something (drawback to stichin' first). I used some of my friend's cute castle fabric for H's cuffs and she used some of my corduroy for the pants she made with a flannel cowboy print. I definitely want to try making some more pants. Perhaps next time I'll try something a little less loud for everyday wear.

Macaroon Cherry Tart

As referenced on my current events sidebar, I made a Macaroon Cherry Tart from 101 Cookbooks. Cherries in season and recently purchased coconut were in my pantry when this blog post popped up (gotta love RSS feeds). Very good! I substituted coconut oil for butter in the tart crust and worked just as well. Not a good dish for transporting, however. The macaroon topping needs to be pressed into the crust but in reality gravity is what's holding it there. I also used the needle nose pliers to pit the cherries. I never realized that cherries were so plum like until you start ripping them apart instead of just popping them in your mouth. Also, the cherry juice stained my cuticles. Never really knew about that side of cherries.

Seeds In!

So I FINALLY got my seeds into the ground. Starting in late March my goal was to plant seeds during the April/May planting period as suggested in Golden Gate Gardening. So I made it! Now the troubling part. I just couldn't make up mind what to plant and I had a 4'x4' raised bed. That's 16 square feet. That's not much. So I know I over did it, but we'll see how it turns out. Isn't that one of the cool things about vegetable gardening? You can treat it like one big science experiment without the peer review and grant writing. The fun part of science without the double blind tedium. You know, potatoes do better when they have more than 1 square foot devoted to them type of thing.

So here's what I put in: potatoes (All Blue), onions (White Ebenezer) for green onions, radish (White Icicle), carrot (Scarlet Nantes), mesclun (Q's Special Medley), bush bean (Blue Lake), cilantro (Sabor), romaine lettuce (Parris Island Cos), butterhead lettuce (Tom Thumb). I'll try to get a plan drawn up so you can see how little space each one takes up. Also everything except the beans and potatoes are planned to be planted in succession, so there might be one or two more rows added in three to six weeks (hrmm, better put that on my calendar before I forget).I still need to transplant the chives and parsley but those won't be going in the garden bed.

Dinner Inspired

When hanging out with one of my mama friend at the park, we have been in the habit of stopping to have a Peasant Pie. H always eats half of mine and could probably eat a whole one if I remembered to buy two. They recently had a special of cauliflower, leek, and fennel with blue cheese which both H & I LOVED. I thought that all those vegetables should be paired up more often as they are in season together and are a bit sweetish and go quite nicely with salty/tangy blue cheese. So I tried to recreate the mood of this pie with a casserole, held together with some eggs. Here's what I came up with that was pretty nice (although never as good for me as something someone else has made).

Ingredients: Bulb of fennel, 3 leeks, half head of cauliflower (I used a whole head and the vegetable ratio was off), 6 eggs, some milk, oil of your choice for sautéing, salt, 4ish oz blue cheese, bread crumbs and parmesan. Saute leeks, add chopped fennel, add cauliflower and some water, cover until cauliflower is soft, stir blue cheese in, poor into greased baking dish, poor scrambled eggs/milk mixture over veggies, top with bread crumbs and grated parm. Bake at 350 for more than 20 minutes but probably not more than 40 (I accidentally turned the oven off midway through so I' not a good judge of how long). We ate with peas since they were quick and easy and on hand. Pretty nice.

Screen Time

I thought I might make a blog entry about one of my other hobbies that isn't gettin' too much action lately, my screen time entertainment and more specifically World of Warcraft. Here's what I've built up over the last two plus (that long?) years:

On Wildhammer (PvP servers r3WL!):

• Xeby - Level 23 Tauren Shaman (haven't played in years, literally)
  
• Thystleburr - Level 70 Troll Hunter (my main if I can have such a thing - play BG's mostly and just enough to get really rusty)
  
  
  
  
• Kompost - Level 15 Undead Warlock
  
• Seby - Level 39 Undead Priest (parked at 39 and twinked to the nines for BGs - love my shadow spec)
  
• Ataree - Level 18 Tauren Druid
  
• Thys - Level 21 Orc Warrior
  
• Thystlespark - Level 24 Undead Mage
  
• Thystle - Level 15 Undead Rogue
  
• Thystleblood - Level 30 Blood Elf Paladin (my main PvE char at the moment)
  

On Ner'zhul I have three lowbie Alliance characters that I started to try out Alliance quests.

On Bronzebeard, I have Thystleburr a level 16 gnome warlock to play with some online friends.

What time I do get to myself at the end of the day, has to get divied up between all the stuff I want to do, so video game playing hasn't happened much. I'm guessing 5 hours in the last month or so. Hardly enough to get much done, which is probably why I have so many lowbie characters as its something I can get a lot more gratification for time spent. But I thought I would share how much of a geek I really am. Now back to gardening and crafting...

Watering Air

Here's how things work around my house when I try to garden. Well when I try to do any project really, but for illustration purposes lets stick to gardening. Step one, get myself dressed to garden, not terribly hard, but it does mean getting out of my pajamas and putting on something suitable for a SF spring. Step two, potty H, then diaper him (since he usually is nakey-butt), then dress him, then put shoes on, then put coat/sweater on. Usually he is not happy about something along the way (the shirt going over his head, sitting still, why aren't we outside already, etc.) so its not just doing those things, but trying to do them respectfully and not piss him off. Step 2.5 is to go downstairs with H and put on my gardening shoes. Step 3 is to head into the garage and start schlepping all the tools I need outside. For example, today I took out a shovel, a tined fork, my oversized bucket for garden debris that goes in the green garbage bin (compostables), pruning shears, organic fertilizer and humic acid, and the soaker hose and sprinkler head I just purchased. I never found my gardening gloves. And, of course, I didn't need the fertilizer/humic acid or soaker hose. And it took a few trips since I forgot some stuff the first go around. And oh, yea, never forget anything upstairs because then you have to bring the baby upstairs to fetch what you forgot and they think that their fun is coming to an end and want to let you know how they feel about it, even though you promise them its not, and they weigh 30lbs so you can't carry much in your free hand anyways, which means two trips up and down the stairs with said 30 lb baby.

Ok, finally I can get down to business of trying to prep the garden beds for planting (which I was able to get some seeds and goodies at the nursery yesterday, go me!). The garden beds are so dry that they need to be watered first before I can add the amendments (or so says the fertilizer bags). So I put the sprinkler on it and the water starts pooling on the surface. You know when dirt is so dry the water beads up then forms little puddles and if you keep the sprinkler on, small lakes. So I used my fork to "churn" the beds up and get some water down lower. I'm not really sure what this phenomenon is called or how to fix it. I'm assuming that if I keep mixing it up, it will moisten everything up eventually and as long as I keep it moist it won't be a problem moving forward. I will try running the hose again to see how it goes.

Which brings me back to how things work around here. So today was basically about watering one little 4'x4' bed and a bit weeding elsewhere before H ran into trouble with gravity and the door threshold (don't worry everything is fine, just ended our gardening a bit early). Day two of operation veggies, will probably be more watering and weeding. Day three will be work in the amendments. Day 4 will be planting (dare I hope!). Day 5 will be attach the copper tape to keep the slugs out. And so on. In other words, with a toddler, there's a lot of prep work and lots of running around, so every step of a project is broken down into microsteps. Whew! The upside is that I could conceivably blog about every microstep! Or just wait until something cool happens. Or perhaps there are gardening mama's out there who have discovered some secrets I don't know yet. How do you garden with a toddler?

Vegetable Garden

I'm working on putting a vegetable garden in. It's been a major work in progress. The idea started last summer, when I got mad about paying money for something that I knew I could grow. And I read about modern versions of Victory Gardens somewhere online, except instead of the enemy being Germany and Japan, the enemy is out dependence on foreign oil and the food miles that comes with our food. And I wanted H to know about where food comes from and feel that connection. And then Mr. Thystle said he'd help out and well, that sold me!

Back Yard When We Purchased the House, Dec. 2001

The problem has been finding time and when the weather turns foggy finding motivation to get H dressed and me dressed and downstairs. And before he walking it was where to put him and then he was putting everything in his mouth, etc. He's a good age now...to dig up all my seedlings when they pop up *grin*. I knew the spot I wanted to put raised beds in at (raised beds to help define the area I'll need to protect from cats and slugs) but we had an old pond that had been filled in with soil that we needed to remove first. As we're working at it, there are paint chips flying. So after a brief period of freaking out about lead paint, I did the right thing and tested it. Turns out we're a.o.k. Yea! But then we had to go through 4 or 5 or 6 colds.

Back Yard A Couple of Years Ago - Notice the patio as nearly disappeared

I'm using the bible for vegetable gardening in San Francisco (Golden Gate Gardening by Pam Pierce) and it suggests 4 planting times for beginners, since you can really plant all year round in SF and that gets a little intimidating. They are Feb/Mar, April/May, July/Aug, and Oct/Nov. So the crunch was on to get things pulled together in May, so I called in backup. My parents came and helped move the last bit of rubble from the pond demo and level the ground to get the raised beds in - 8" high cedar with aluminum posts from Gardener's Supply to make 4'x 4' beds. There are currently 2 beds in place, and if things go well over the next few months, I'll try 2 or 3 more beds. Four beds for each planting period (although really probably only 3 would be in production at any point and 1 would be fallow) and 1 bed for perennial herbs.

So we're getting there! Today I did a bit of bed prep work, making sure the soil was broken up and removing the largest rocks and bits of organic matter (like twiggy roots). I've made a tentative list of plants to go in this bed, and I'm really not sure how its all gonna fit. Many of the items are things that need to be planted in succession, like sowing cilantro every 3 weeks or so. So I might not end up with exactly the space I expect. We'll see. I'm also trying to figure out how to irrigate it. I think the short term solution will be a hose and sprinkler. The most important part is to get SOMETHING in the ground and then I'll worry about how to attach my copper tape to prevent slugs and what happens if the dog decided to run through the beds, etc.

So stay tuned!

Back Yard Today - My Butt Working on Irrigation and H supervising, Also patio re-emerges

Administrative

No cool finished works to share or even new photos of WIPs. Just wanted to point out that I am trying to keep the sidebars updated.

First up added a badge for Ravelry which connects to my Ravelry account which I've been amiss in keeping updated. But if you have an account you can see some of my older work.

I've been adding books that I read or am in the process of reading or that I want to read to my Goodreads account. The sidebar just shows books I've read. However, since I have about 100 books (ok, ok, more like 6) I'm reading at any one time and of those I might finish half, it doesn't always get updated that often. And I can't go to the library until I finish some of those. Yes, I'm mostly into non-fiction. For some reason, I feel like that makes me a boring person.

Finally, I have a list going of what's happening hobby-wise, whether its knitting, sewing, gardening, reading, cooking, digital projects, or screen time entertainment (tv and video games). This gets updated more frequently and the items on it may not be worthy of a blog posting, so this is a way of me sharing what's going on without having to come up with a post about how I'm starting to watch Season 2 of Heroes. Now that I think about it, I think part of the lack of blog entries is that I'm starting lots of things but not finishing many things. So perhaps in another few weeks I'll have a plethora of entries? Or perhaps, I'll just drop it and start the next thing that catches my fancy.

The only thing I seem to do more than starting something, is making mental lists of things I want to make or do or try. Perhaps if there was a slick way for me to make a TODO Queue. For knitting it would be a sweater for H, a cap for me, a scarf, something cool with the unprocessed wool J got me. For sewing it would be bean bags, and try some clothes for me and some shorties for H, and some totebags for the library. For reading see my list. For screen time, it would be WOW with my level 29 pally or some BGS with my level 39 priest. For digital projects, it would H's baby book. For cooking, nothing on my radar. Gardening would be to get my raised beds in and pick out something to plant in the next couple of weeks before I completely miss the April/May planting window here. I also have this bizarre urge to do some garden illustration and rendering with watercolors. Why?! Sigh, so much to do, so little time...

What's Cooking

Ok, so this blog is turning out to be a general hobby blog or whatever I do for fun that's not directly family related. Which means some cooking. And my favorite spot for recipes in the past few weeks has been 101 Cookbooks. Last night we had some guests over and I made some baked donuts for dessert. Not the best choice since it requires a bit of processing after it comes out of the oven and it cooks up quick so there's less time visiting and more time in the kitchen, but leisurely conversation over the dinner table don't really take place for one of the parents anyway with a toddler in the house. But they were really good and I'll probably make them again. But hoo, boy, do I have more leftovers than I know what to do with.

I've also made the Spring Tabbouleh which was definitely a keeper. Super easy to pull together and a nice spring main dish salad. And then finally I made some Black Bean Brownies which were only ok in my book. They had some coffee in them, which I didn't care for.

Emmeline Apron

Its been awhile, and I havent' been as crafting as much as I would like (my current excuse is that I've discovered Netflix's instant watch feature and am churning through season 1 of Heroes. I dare not look deeper and see what else Netflix has!) but I do have a finished project - an apron I made for my sister's birthday. Its my first go out and buy a pattern just so I can make this specific item. In the past I've made a few things from patterns that came from sewing or crafting books. But this one required shipping and no photocopiers! It's from Montessori by Hand and is called Emmeline. Its reversible. I really enjoyed making this. A note on the fitting is that its really not for big bosomed women (or probably not flat chested individuals either). It seems to be fitting my model nicely here but if you are much above 38 chest or a C cup you could run into problems. Umm, I think there should be more to say here, but I'm having bloggers block, so I'll just repeat how much fun I had making something from a pattern that was a step above totally basic but not too challenging for a new seamstress. Oh, yea, also, it had darts :)