summer summary

every day i think, today, i'll update the blog. but then this day turns into the next: full, demanding, elsewhere, in the moment.

summer is off to a great start. . .

we went to the national zoo!

and studied the most peculiar animals!



on the way home, we stopped in culpeper for dinner. . .




we checked out the roller derby for the first time

the charlottesville derby dames won. by a lot!




we've been spending much time examining the wild mushrooms in our yard. it's the year of the mushroom, it would seem.

on solstice we visited a nearby berrypatch and picked blueberries and raspberries. it was lovely indeed. now we have soltice berries in our freezer.

there has been lots of playing. . .







and a ton of missing tashi, who is at theater camp for * two * weeks!

wishing you belated blessings for summer solstice. what will you nurture and protect and eventually harvest?

stitching, pondering

i seem to repeatedly win the sewing machine lottery on freecycle. i'm not even a very quick responder.



first there is the gorgeous old black singer that i finally tested out this past winter. it is a lovely machine with a pleasing hum, but once the single bobbin i have that fits it ran out of thread, i could not get it to wind for the life of me. sometimes hang ups like this will take me an absurdly long time to resolve. and then there is this beautiful touch & sew with the aqua panel. i think i'm in love with the aqua panel more than anything. the machine turns on, i know that. but there are a few pieces missing that i need to scour my non-functioning touch & sews for. yes, i do have a small collection of non functioning touch & sews.



and then there is this new beastie, a singer touch-tronic 2010. i jumped on it (and all the others) because my now ten-year-old most basic singer is ailing. she can't keep her tension. she smells like burnt rubber. and she has her limitations when it comes to stitch options. i would like to pass her on to tashi, and step it up a little. as a rude-ish sewing machine saleswoman said to me once, your sewing won't grow if you don't get a more advanced machine! well. her commission won't grow either, unless she sells a few.



anyway, i do pay attention when machines pop up on freecycle because a new fancy machine is just not in the budget. and oh how i would love something from here. but for now, i just have to grow with my growing collection of used machines! the touch tronic came with four (yes, i said, four) other sewing machines. i didn't want the whole lot, but the woman getting rid of them wanted one person to take the whole lot, so, that i did. two of the machines are incredibly old and gorgeous. the others are touch & sews. none of them work, that is, unless they are worked on.



so they are sitting on some shelves while i ponder the situation and try to learn the ins and outs of this new touch-tronic. except, you see, the bobbin jams on the touch-tronic. it jams. and then it's fine for a bit. and then it jams again. so yea, i probably have to take it to get serviced. something that is also not even in the budget.



so anyway, i'm trying to get little bits of sewing in, between bobbin jams, while it's 100 degrees outside. i made some shorts for tristan from the instructions on how to make trousers from a shirt, in amanda's soule's, the creative family. i used a garnet hill shirt of tashi's, now too small. i hope to make several more pairs of shorts for both tristan and tashi.





and another bib of course. it was my first test run on the new machine. the fabric is totally goofy and from a stash of fabric i also got through freecycle! tristan is really into toads lately because we have two living under the house. the bib makes him giggle.




i do have a fondness for my first machine, the one i learned to sew on, the one i am still learning to sew on. but i would love to see it in tashi's room, and i would love to see her sitting at it making creations whenever the whim hits her, a good twenty years before i ever sewed creations of my own.

a week of living

this past week. . .

i planted some seedlings in the shade-garden-in-progress, and worked on making a path for the toddler to tramp on



i potted a few flowers



it's amazing how much magic a few whimsical flowers (and a couple of cool kids) can bring to a deck







this past week. . .

i managed to spend a few hours alone with dan, drinking some wine and having a picnic at a lovely nearby winery









i had the opportunity to support some dear friends while they labored on their land (really, i just hung around and took photos while they did an awesome job together)



and then i got to spend the night in their beautiful blue ridge yurt



and wake up with their sweet daughter who was quite anxious to go to the hospital and meet her new little brother (he had a fabulous birth, by the way)







this week i got to eat fresh nasturtiums picked from our garden-in-progress



i shared in tristan's wonder, spying on a couple of toads who like to hang out in the crawl space under our house. see them?



and this past week we received an awesome (and incredibly generous) gift of toadstools from a friend



most of all, this past week i got to appreciate life, love, and the beautiful place we call home

better late than never

while it is already late in the season, i've been determined to plant some things this spring/summer. we have a scrappy area in front of our house full of periwinkle, violets, a multiplying stand of heleborus and some ailing azalea. i would so love to have a tall cottage garden there, but alas, it is quite shady. i would like at least to have some woodland flowers and edibles, and am determined to experiment. today provided a break in the recent monsoon, and i finally managed to plant a few seedlings i picked up at last weekend's farmer's market. tristan got to dig in the dirt, wonder at worms and place the young plants in the earth. i can't wait for more of this, though i do hope the plants survive!