Elemental Stitches

This Weekend

Photos from my weekend.

First day of Kindergarten!  I thought I would freak, but I am actually enjoying the free time.  I was able to do things completely uninterrupted.  What a thought!

I am finishing up my dress, are you?  Post yours before Sept 6th!

Collecting

I went to Goodwill this weekend and came away with an entire school wardrobe for Brae, a pretty new plate, a picture frame, and a blouse for myself.  Not bad for my first trip!  I cant believe it took me this long to find the Goodwill out here.  There are a few thrift and antique stores around San Jose and I hope to start visiting more of them soon.  This Goodwill was surprisingly good.  I usually have low expectations of Goodwill but most of the clothes I bought looked brand new!  I don't think anyone ever wore the blouse I bought and all the clothes I got for Brae look completely perfect.  Score one for me!

The garden also heaped its bounty upon me and my new plate offered to hold it for this photo.

Have you ever seen corn pollen?  Neither had I until a couple weeks ago.  It blossomed on the tassels of the corn plants in a cool purple color.  We made sure to shake the corn around a lot to help pollinate them.  Then we collected a little bit of the pollen for our nature table.  It seems to have worked because we have several ears of corn growing on the stalks.

This week is the beginning of lots of changes in our house.  Brae is starting Kindergarten and I am going to start working with Tom and the falcons more often.  Its the end of late mornings and schedule free days.  I guess this time has to come around every year eventually.

Simple Tomato Sauce

My little one will be off to Kindergarten in a couple of days.  I wanted to spend some extra time together so yesterday we turned the last few days of tomato harvest into yummy sauce.  It came out so good that I wanted to share our recipe.

-5 lbs of ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped.  Keep the juice!

-6 cloves of garlic

-1 small onion

-salt and pepper to taste

-1/4 -1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes, to taste

- 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary

1/4 cups extra virgin olive oil

Spread tomatoes on a cookie sheet, drizzle 4 tablespoons of olive oil over tomatoes, sprinkle with salt, pepper and half the rosemary.  Broil tomatoes about 3-4 inches from the broiler for 15-20 minutes making sure they do not burn.  

While that is cooking, heat the remainder of the oil in a large stockpot.  Add onions and cook for 3 minutes.  Add garlic and cook until onion is translucent.  Add red pepper flake and rosemary.  Stir to combine and cook another minute. 

Add the tomatoes to the onions, juice and all.  Stir to combine.  Next you want to  process everything in a food processor until smooth.  Its best to do this in batches.  I blend about 75% of my sauce and leave the rest a little chunky.  

Simmer the sauce on low heat for at least an hour.  Two hours is better.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Allow to cool then freeze in freezer bags or containers.

Enjoy!

Pattern Review - Fetching Fingerless Mitts

These mitts are Fetching indeed.  I can't say I love the way the color banding ended up, or the picot edge, or the thumb, but they are cute anyway.

This pair is made with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted Multi in Lakeview.

I love the cables on these gloves.  The pattern is written so the cables coordinate.  Can you see how they twist away from each other?  That was clever.

One thing I did not love so much was the thumb.  Essentially there is no gusset.  You knit your thumb opening stitches onto a piece of waste yarn.   When you are done with the rest of the mitt, you come back take out the waste yarn and pick up those stitches to knit the thumb.

This is definitely not my favorite method of knitting a thumb.  It doesn't seem to lay as flat.  I would much rather knit a gusset.  I think the mitten feels much more comfortable on the hand that way.

The other part I am not thrilled with is the top.

I do not like the short amount of fabric after the thumb.  My fingers are barely covered at all and I do not like the picot edging. 

If there ever is another Fetching in my future I will knit a 2nd pattern repeat at the top and a fourth at the bottom.  I would have to add a thumb gusset and I would bind off with a plain edge.  Actually I would just use these pattern mods by Kelly-Ann.  She took the words right out of my mouth.

You want to see my Ravelry page for this project?  Click here.

Pattern Review - Cafe Au Lait Mitts

Love, Love, Love!  This pattern rocks!  These are the Cafe au Lait Mitts by Paula McKeever.

I found this beautiful pattern on one of my late night computer binges.  Late at night seems to be the only time I have more then 5 minutes to look at the computer.  Ever since my daughter learned how to play games online its an everyday fight over computer time. 

There is a group on Ravelry called Fingerless Glove Fanatics and this pattern was chosen for a knit a long for August.  This month there is a random drawing for those who finish before Aug 31st.  There is still time if you want to try it.

The pattern is easy to follow, forgiving and interesting.  I need patterns that are interesting.  Too much monotony is not good for my brain.  I start to get bored and I want to move on to something new.  The cool thing about this pattern is that it is forgiving.  I made a couple of little mistakes and they vanished into the busyness of the pattern.  I cant find them now.

I made this pair with Knit Picks Swish DK in Eggplant.  I used the entire ball with only a couple feet to spare so be careful you don't waste your yarn.  It would suck to run out of yarn with only a couple rows left.

These are destined to be a gift.  Bummer for me.  That just means I will have to knit another pair for myself!

If you want to see this project on my Ravelry click here.

In the Garden

So I forgave my sewing machine.  It really wasn't at fault for my lack of mental acuity yesterday.  That was likely caused by a lack of tea.  The needle was my fault too.  Sewing through too many layers, with a needle that was made for finer fabric, and it was old and probably pretty dull.  It was asking to be broken.  I am just happy it got caught in the fabric and didn't fall into my machine. 

What I really hated was being defeated by a pillow when I know I can sew way more complicated things.  Its like having my grammar corrected by a Kindergartner.  Of course that has happened too...

Anyway, enough about my defective sewing brain.  We are just entering my favorite time of year!  The garden is bursting at the seams.  If you look over at the column to your left you will see what has been brought in so far.  Yesterday we were at almost 14 pounds harvested.  Today my harvest brought that up to 17.76 pounds!  All organic.  Organic tomatoes at my local farmers market are selling for about $2-$3 a pound.  There is so much starting to turn red that I am starting to worry about eating it all.  Tom said that this might be the year I learn to can tomatoes.  Why yes Tom, that is a great idea!  Just remember that it was your idea when I need to buy the canning equipment okay!

My largest tomato so far was 1 3/4 pounds!  It was delicious!  We turned it into a cold tomato sauce called Checca Sauce which ended up on everything from pasta to tuna steaks.  

Many more tomatoes have been eaten on sandwiches like this one.

It is a simple turkey & ham with mayo, mustard, sliced mozzarella dipped in herb oil, lettuce, and of course a Cherokee purple tomato.

I even harvested this little knit tomato.  Must have been left by a knitting fairy.  Wink Wink.

There are two humongous tomatoes that will be ready in a day or so.  They are destined to demolish my current heavyweight record.  Any ideas on how I should eat those?

Pillow Fight

Today I tried to sew a pillow cover.  A simple task.  It's just a square after all.  Alas, it was not to be.

It's not like pillow covers are hard.  I have tackled them before.  

I must have misplaced my brain because I sewed the first seam with the wrong side facing the right side.  Dug out the seam ripper and redid that.

Next I sewed the side seams... with the wrong sides facing each other.  Again with the seam ripper.

I am already feeling like an idiot at this point.  I mean come on!  I can't even put the right sides of the fabric together today!

The final straw was when I broke my needle. 

I told my machine, "I hate you" and left. 

Knitting Pattern Review - Lets Go Shopping Market Bag

I finished a few projects that I haven't blogged about yet, so my next couple posts will cover those and my thoughts on the patterns. 

I finished this bag a while back.  This is the Lets Go Shopping Market Bag by Linda Skinlo. 

It can be found on Ravelry here. 

I used about 3 balls of Lily Sugar'n Cream cotton for the larger version.  I absolutely love this pattern.  It is very easy and knits up very fast.  It only took me a few days of knitting to finish it.

The large size can fit a massive amount of stuff.  It would be great for the beach.  You could fit a blanket, everyone's towels, a couple books and lunch in this thing!  Next time I want to make the smaller version.  I think it would be the perfect size for a farmers market trip.

I made some slight changes to the pattern.  The original directions say to do a garter stitch top edge and handles, but I was afraid it would be too stretchy.  I decided on seed stitch instead and I like how it looks.  It is sturdy and not too heavy on my shoulder.  I hate when heavy bags dig into my shoulder.  This one has wide straps so there is none of that.

I am a little tired of the bright colors I used.  It was the beginning of summer when I started this project and I was loving bright stuff then.  Now I am wanting something more muted, darker, & richer.  I think the cooler weather we have been having lately is making me think of Autumn, rain, burgundy and thunder gray, warm cozy mittens and hats...

If I were living in the high Desert of So Cal, where I grew up, we would be just starting the hottest part of the year.  But up here in the Bay Area, Autumn is just around the corner.

T-Shirt Transfers

This morning I was browsing my Bloglines and I came across this transfer project by The Long Thread.  I have been itching to try something new and this was perfect for us!  The best part was that I already had everything we needed.  Brae's only blank white tee was hopelessly stained, but we used it anyway and covered the stains with the transfer.  It worked out perfectly and her shirt has a new life with Chase's pretty face.

Please excuse her Nutella face!

This project took a whole 30 minutes start to finish!  It might take a little longer if you are not used to Photoshop, but that part is still very easy.  There are a couple links to Photoshop tutorials over on The Long Thread or you can use this one that I used.

Artist Interview With Laura Barrella From Ginger Louise Clothing

As promised, Laura Barrella from Ginger Louise Clothing has answered a few questions about her process.  I hope you enjoy!

1. Your Name? Laura Barrella

2. Your websites?

www.gingerlouiseclothing.etsy.com

www.gingerlouisepatterns.etsy.com

www.gingerlouiseclothing.blogspot.com

3. Where do you live? NYC 

 

4. How did you learn to sew? I begged my mother to teach me to sew when I was 7, now looking back, that is when she seemed the happiest! I was also offered a store in 1990, I was a doll maker at the time and knew I needed to sell something other then dolls, so I taught myself how to make children's clothes.

5. What made you jump into pattern design? I always loved pattern making, and doing sewing tutorials will let me design even more because I won't have to make 100 of the same item:)

6. What inspires you when designing children's clothes? everything, life, the streets of NY, once I get started it just keeps inspiring itself, oh and also beautiful fabrics, its an obsession! 

7. I love the colors and pattern combination you use on the clothes you sell in your shop. Is there any advice you can give to sewers who are trying to coordinate fabric for their projects? Design from your heart, so that customers can spot your style, stand out from the crowd.

8. Do you have any tips on sewing clothes for girls? For me, it was always comfort and intention. Somehow the clothing is always more special when I am designing for a specific child. They can almost "feel the love" sorry, corny but true! And kids like comfortable clothes. 

 

9. What has been the most rewarding part of being part of the crafting community? I knew nothing about this community until 2 years ago.. Being in this business for 20 years, I never met anyone else that sewed, actually I have 1 friend that sews for her girls. I was shocked that there are so many woman in the USA that sew. I have met the nicest, sweetest woman online. And I love all the support that everyone has for each other. I love it!

10. Are there any upcoming patterns? Tons, some knits and hoodies and costumes. I am also going to set something up for pattern requests.

If you are feeling inspired follow Laura's blog and she will send you a free copy of her skirt tutorial!  Or check out Laura's Etsy Shops to find all of the items I have shown here or click on their picture.