More projects. Please bear with me!

This stuffy office skirt was updated with an awesome antique ribbon and button.

A plain but very artistic t-shirt from Sig Zane taken from plain to styled with an eye hole sleeve and widened collar.

4 T-shirts that were hitting the Goodwill pile, re-sewn and now I have some yoga pants!

Both of these were dresses that didn't fit, now very usable.

My owl sweater used to be Keith's but now totally MINE!  I need a really kickin button to finish it off.

This shrug just wouldn't stay on, but now with some stabilizing trim and butterflies to boot, it's totally wearable.

I thought this jacket was a little stiff, but it is more feminine now with an edelweiss touch.  It also matches the skirt with came with a lacy edging.

Okay, summer is almost over so this blitzkrieg of sewing will end, I promise... 

Here are 5 more examples of making something new and exciting out of older clothes.  I am having too much fun with this.

Upcycling

My husband laughs every time I say I am upcycling, like isn't it just recycling, and I say no, it is upcycling, because I am making something better than it was.  Or so I like to believe.  You be the judge.

A frilly crocheted hem

detail of stitched-on leaves and beads

grey silk is touched up with silk leaves

Following the arched seam design, I needle-felted in a contrasting color

Keith had this awesome koi shirt that I would not let him give away.  New dress!

Swimming fish added on with basting

More of Keith's shirts became this dress.  Hee Haw!

Silk and velvet goodwill find becomes sundress

Another goodwill find updated for the 4th of July

For Keith, for giving up his other shirts.

A plain black dress gets a little bling.

Close up of antique buttons and sequins

New suit

Skirt detailing, done by needle felting

Jacket detail, again needle felting

the night of the raccoons

I woke, around 3:00 AM, to a sound like no other.  It was a high-pitched wail, clearly not human, but animal, and alarming.  It was the sound of distress, so out of bed in a flash, my mind slowly realizing I had left the chicken coop open for the bajillionth time and this bad habit had finally caught up with me.
I stumbled down to the coop, and noticed first the swinging feeder, in motion because something large had bumped by.  Sabine was pacing, clucking and pacing, and I almost concluded that she had caused the commotion.  But no, wake up, Kim, count the chickens.  There was Sabine, and Goldie, that was it, and then the caterwauling came from the other end of the yard.  My other chickens!  I plunged through the dark bushes toward the cry and heard something rattle the fence.  A dark shape, Ethel, made her way up the hill toward me and melted into my arms when I picked her up.  She had been hurt around her ear, bit, and I wiped off the blood and took her back to the coop, where she limped around, clearly injured in her leg as well.  She seemed determined to pace the coop, Cowgirl was still missing.  I shone my flashlight over the fence into the neighbor's yard and two beads of yellow reflected back at me - predator eyes!  As I watched, the eyes turned away and a large brown body crawled over the far fence. My first thought was marsupial, like a wallaby, certainly not my first suspect the coyote.  Raccoon.  Raccoons are smart, they'll come back.  I waited by the coop to be sure.  Two yellow eyes beamed back at me from inside a tree, and I was able to make out the face mask and ears.  Then Sheeba, our cat, what was she doing out here?  When I returned from tossing her back into the house, the eyes were right above the coop, perched at the fence juncture like a gargoyle.  GIT!  I waited again.  Something was moving about at the other end of the yard, sure enough, there were two of them, one missing its tail.  They tried tightrope-walking the fence toward the coop again, and I hurled a rock at one, missed, but deterred it.  About five minutes later, somewhere near 4 AM, the birds started up and knew they were gone.  After reinforcing the chicken-wire, I fell back to bed.
The big question is do I have to sit watch again tonight.  I need a bb-gun.
I almost forgot - Cowgirl was wandering around under the kitchen window this morning.  How she evaded the invaders will remain her little secret.

Happy Chickens

Southern California has seen a lot of rain in the last week and 1/2, everything from a dense gray drizzle to flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder.  I regret that I did not get a rain water catch system set up before this storm- I would be set for the whole winter season!  However, the rain always brings up bugs, worms and fresh green sprouts of grass, and my foraging chickens are very happy.

This is Ethel, who has recently gone through a very traumatic molt, but seems finally to be emerging from the experience.  Along with looking like a half-eaten carcass, she had a nasty attitude.  We are happy to have our feathered friend back.

These pictures show the growth of my youngest chickens, Sabine (who was originally Sebastian) and Grayson (who was originally Gracie).  Grayson has turned out to be quite the gentleman of a rooster.  He escorts Sabine around the yard and hardly crows at all.  I realize this may change still, but I am very happy with this fellow so far.

Look at those gorgeous feathers!  Just for fun, I am also adding a picture of our rabbit, Bunnicula.  She is participating in a little experiment with me.  Along with teaching my 6 year old responsibility, she is supplying our worms with copious amounts of rabbit poop.  My daughter had been asking for months to have a pet bunny, but it wasn't until  I read on the Urban Homestead website that you could drop those droppings directly into the wormbin that I was won over.  The trick, however, is eliminating as much of the urine as possible before giving it to the worms, as it is too strong for them to process.   TMI you say? I will let you know if this experiment is worth the aromatic qualities of the procedure.

Transition Time

The garden is not very cheerful right now.  The tomatoes are browning and sagging, the squash is sprawling long and lean, and even the chickens seem to be slowing down.  They have slowed to one egg a day between the three of them.  Is it because they miss my attentions?
With school in full swing and the house empty from 6:45 to 4:30, it seems everything has entered a transition.  At first it makes me sad, longing for the summer and the hours of time to devote to the yard.  Then I must remind myself that it is the beginning of something new, and with a little elbow grease, I can shift into this next phase.  Rip out the old and plant the new.  The compost is ripe, the broccoli and celery seeds are sitting in their pretty packages on the kitchen counter.  It is just me who needs a kick in the butt!

Planting a New Garden

This past week, I have been planting a new garden.  Although I have spent a lot of time thinking and planning in the serene setting of my backyard, this garden will not be planted there.  This garden will be grown at my job.

I am a teacher.  A special education teacher, which, to beat you to the punch, does not mean I have patience.  I have to learn patience every year, just like my students have to learn new reading and math skills.  This year, however, I am starting out with a slightly new perspective, which involves the same patience it takes to grow a garden.  Let me explain.

A seed takes many things to grow, as we all know.  One of those things is the right soil/warmth environment.  Then their are the nutrients, the water and fertilizer.  If you follow my metaphor, the teacher is the gardener, the students are the seeds, the soil is like a classroom environment, and the water and fertilizer are the lessons.  The end goal is for there to be fruit, a harvest of skills and knowledge that will feed the growth of the student.

In years past, I have focused on the lessons I teach, practiced my delivery in my mind, wrote copious notes in my planner.  I hoped that with the right words or activities that my little seeds would exclaim, "Ah ha!!" and sprout.  And sometimes they did.  Sometimes, the right nutrients was all that was needed.  I hope this year to continue to give the right nutrients as I teach my students.  But I believe, this year, I need to attend more to my soil.

What I have learned through gardening is that setting up the right growing environment really gets things growing.  A heap of compost is like a super charged jump start.  Now I won't be heaping any compost on my students, but I have spent more than my usual time and energy setting up my environment for learning.
The fertilizer is in place, the water is automatic, so that my students and I can focus on the growth.

As with everything, there are a lot of elements beyond my control.  So I will have to regularly update you with the signs of progress, the glimmer of green coming through, or the opening of a flower.  As with everything, time will tell, and so will I, for better or worse, so that I may also grow.

Busy Week

Tried out the Perfect Pickler perfectpickler.com and it worked great - got a huge jar of pickling cucumbers together on Sunday ($1 per lb at the Farmers Market) and they were all briny and ready for crunching today.  My oldest daughter has already consumed 1/2 the jar, but we plan to set up a second jar tonight!

Then the beans came in.  They seem to be on steroids right now and we can't eat them fast enough.  So a whole bunch got crammed in a jar for later - thank you Ball Canning Bible for making this so simple!

I also picked up 5 ambrosia cantaloup for a buck a piece and made this cantaloup jam I have been dying to try.  It is truly heaven, and I highly recommend it.  The recipe comes from Blue Chair Jams, which was featured in ReadyMade magazine this month and is coming out with a new jam recipe book.  Not only is this jam very pretty, but it made 8 12oz. jars, so I have lots for gifts, if I don't eat it all!

Remember the apple pie filling that went into to jars a few weeks ago - we made apple turnovers that were to die for!  Our neighbors who shared the apples were mighty happy to have breakfast made for them that day too - they were in the midst of boiling meat for their homemade dogfood - not exactly breakfast feed.

The final achievement of the week was finishing up the larger chicken coop.  The girls seem to have settled in, although I still hear occasional squawking due to their pecking order maneuvering.  The egg laying has slowed a little, and although I put kitty litter boxes in there (on a tip from Mother Earth magazine) for nesting, they haven't taken to them.  They like laying during their foraging time, which results in us finding eggs here and there around the yard.  It's like Easter everyday!  Here is their new feeder, sleeping quarters and an antique doorstop that my mother-in-law found us.