Windowbox Gardening.
Hello how is everything. Today I'm going to talk about gardening. Basically I'm knitting a fine gauge sweater that fits me atrociously and I'm in the process of sewing a handbag out of **upcycled** pajama pants which takes planning to get the print all lined up with such a limited amount of fabric. I've been cooking a lot, some failures and some successes but not photographing it and this week the herbs for my herb garden have sprouted. I've never grown anything before - even in kindergarten when you plant a bean in a styrofoam cup mine didn't even sprout - so this is very exciting for me. I planted sage, thyme, parsley, basil, dill and cucumbers (for making pickles!!) and I purchased peppermint starts from Portland Nursery because they don't even SELL mint seeds.
I planted the seeds last week in cups I had left over from my anniversary party. Basically, and nobody has reacted positively to this, but I dumped all the seeds from the packet in the respective cups and covered them in potting soil or whatever. It's a Darwinian approach to gardening. I assumed the seeds would compete with each other for nutrients and water and only the strongest and best seeds will prevail, giving me the strongest plants.
Until it gets warmer, the plants are growing on my windowsill, which I lined with maxi pads to absorb the water drainage. My windowsill is too narrow for a tray, plus I don't have a tray. Pads are perfect because one side is adhesive so you just stick them on to the windowsill and fold the tabs over to secure them, and they'll keep my plants dry, protected, and confident.
So far only the sage and the parsley have yet to sprout, and those can take between 14 and 21 days. The thyme was the first to come up but the cucumber seed is my favorite to watch because you can look at it in the morning and in the evening and notice a change.
Thyme
Basil (looks a lot like Thyme)
Dill
Cucumber, my favorite thing to watch grow!
I installed a window box onto my railing which took three tries and tens of dollars mostly because of the windowbox brackets. First I ordered a really expensive windbowbox holder online that failed to specify it was for 2"x4" or 2"x6" railings (my railing is 1.5" x1.5" square) and the difference was really too great to put a shim in it. THEN I went to Portland Nursery and they sold me a really cheap set of brackets that I destroyed trying to adhere it to my railing but it wouldn't have worked anyway. THEN I went to the hardware store and got a cheap window box holder intended for 2x4 or 2x6 railings AND spent an extra $2 on two bolts, two wing nuts and two washers to secure the whole thing in place and basically I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. The bolts are long enough such that they won't cause my window box to tip over when it's full of dirt and the whole thing is flush as can be against my balcony railing even though it doesn't look it in the picture because of the angle of the sun and the extra bulk of the wing nut.
28 February 2010 Comments (0)
Sequined Bowtie For a Cat
This past weekend I threw an Anniversary Party celebrating my first year in Portland. It was important to me that my cat, Face, outdressed all my guests, and thus I had to make him a sequined bowtie.
Ideally the sequins would have been silver or black to match his coat, but red was my only option; a little on the nose, but for a cat in a sequined bowtie who'd really criticize?
Here's an approximate tutorial on how I did it (I really don't feel like doing it again, plus it's so easy I'm sure you could extrapolate):
Materials
Felt the color of your bowtie
A strip of sequin the color of your bowtie
A strip of elastic the color of your cat's coat
Glue Gun
Scissors
Seam Ripper (optional; you can use scissors)
Procedure
1) Cut two identical triangles of felt. Make them smaller than you think the final product should be, as the sequins will add bulk. My cat weighs 12 pounds and here are his bowtie pieces to scale.
2) Overlap and glue the two triangles together such that you get a symmetrical bowtie shape with parallel outer edges. Don't make me get all geometrical. Do a search for "bowtie shape." Make it look like that.
3) (This is where I used the seam ripper) Starting at the outer edge of one triangle, drape and secure a length of sequin with a little bit of hot glue. What I did was drape a length, glue, drape another length, glue...working your way to the inside. I stopped short of the second triangle piece.
You can see here that I cut an excess length of sequin and stripped the ends. I glued the bare ends to the back of the bowtie. This keeps the sequin from unraveling. The reason I did it this way was because to wrap the sequin to the other side would make the bowtie too heavy. You only want sequin on one side of your bowtie.
4) Repeat step (3), mirroring your work on the other side. When you get to the point where the triangles overlap, use individual sequins to keep your work neat.
5) Measure a length of elastic comfortably around your cat's neck. Glue one end of the elastic at the center of the bowtie and glue the other end flat against that, making sure not to twist your elastic. This will form a collar.
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Please don't let your cat wear this accessory unsupervised. He (or she?) may get the elastic caught in his mouth, ingest some sequins, or it might agitate him. I have a perfect, well-behaved cat who was a good sport, but this may not be right for your pet. Please use common sense.
Also here is the table of foods served at the party! We have handmade whipped cream, slices of baguette (in the covered steel bowl), roasted chickpeas (in the other covered bowl), lemon, lime, and mint, M&Ms, halvah, hummus, salted avocado, three tyes of crackers, strawberry and peaches, an additional type of cracker, compote made of strawberry, raspberry, peach and plum, and a plate of olives, capers and papadew peppers. Thank you to all my guests!
28 September 2009 Comments (0)