First blossoms!

Lookie Ma!!!!  I got BLOSSOMS!  Now, none are mint (LOL) but this is even more exciting (I just found them maybe half an hour ago).  All three are the plants I bought at Lowe's as my "cheaters" but they survived the hard frost two nights ago and more than two weeks in my possession, so I am chalking this up in the WIN column, especially given previous history.

Roma sauce tomato blossoms

Big Bonnie (TM?) slicing tomato blossom

Ozark Beauty (everbearing?) STRAWBERRY blossom!!

Now I have a real plant to match my little cross-stitch strawberry-and-blossom motif I did over the winter!  I use the pic of the motif on a couple of sites as my avatar because I love strawberries and think the pic and motif both turned out so pretty.  Even better - I think a couple of the stems-with-roots strawberries are showing some life from the ten-pack I got from Tractor Supply.

Canned spiced apple rings

I was both brave and feeling pretty good today, so I took the plunge to try out my new waterbath canner, transforming a little under 3 pounds of Jonathan apples into spiced apple rings ... well, they were supposed to stay as rings.  I guess they were a smidge too ripe since the rings broke during cooking.  Technically, I have canned spiced apple ring bits.  LOL

canned spiced apple rings

I left out the red food coloring for them, as I just don't see the point.  I licked my finger after filling the half-pints, so it will definitely taste good.  All seven half-pints "popped" within half an hour of pulling them out, so I did it right!

Goodbye Green Blankie

It's finally dead, Mom ... that green blankie Katie gave me when I was four or five.  It had gotten so thin I only used it during the summer, and this time it did not survive a winter of feline attention.  Thirty-four or thirty-five years of love in fiber form - I think you tried to retire it back when I was a teenager.  I even smuggled it to a field problem or two, and it may have hitchhiked to Kuwait and Iraq hidden in my issued gortex sleep system.

I suppose one of my very last pieces of fiber from childhood will die next ... the Linus pillowcase from Mom.  I wonder if my brother still has his.  I used it to make my oversized pillowcases last year, but the fabric is getting very thin also.  Interestingly, hubby says he had that exact one as a kid as well.

I feel a little like Linus right now ... I just threw away an old blanket I've been carrying around from state to state for over thirty years.

Starting seeds

So, I have decided to try my black thumb at the garden box idea.  I figured with our wacky weather again this year, perhaps I should start my seeds indoors, and the tray with seeds was set up Wednesday (14 Mar 2012).  I snapped a pic on Saturday of the little seedlings peeking out:

seedling tray, 17 Mar

I've been faithfully following the instructions about indirect sunlight, leaving the shades down in the east-facing window until right before lunchtime, and turning the tray a quarter-turn when I remember so they don't grow sideways.  Yesterday afternoon, after hubby remarked about how well they had grown just while he was at work during the day, I joked that in a day or two we'd wake up to find the beans had lifted the lid and were clamoring, "Feed me, Seymour!"

Note to the beans: that was a JOKE!!!  It was not an assignment, nor a goal!  Holy ****!  This morning, the lid was indeed lifted, as the beans doubled in height overnight.

bean sprouts doubled overnight

seedling tray, 20 Mar

So now I need to go Googling to find out how to transplant the beans this soon, since I can already see the roots wrapping around the cell in one of the four.

Meanwhile, outside ... neither the thornless blackberry bush nor the ten strawberry starts have taken off.  The supposed-to-be-compost potatoes are sprouting again with the warm fronts.  For some real fun, the "bad" potatoes are all over the bottom of the garden box.  If all else fails, we'll have potatoes and green beans ... if I add bacon to the mix that makes "Mulligan's stew" which Dad always made the first evening of camping.

B4419 in progress

I had shown y'all the black wool shell for Butterick 4419 hooded cape, and did sew up the linen/cotton lining ... then a funny thing happened when I pinned the two layers together.  While they matched up in front, the back lining was hanging more than an inch lower in back.  I didn't snap a pic, but I did leave the two pinned layers hanging on Matilda while trying to work out how I would solve this.

It appears gravity has done a decent portion of the work on this fix.  Most of the hemline is now matching up a good week-and-half later.  A few pics this morning:

B4419 hooded cape front

B4419 hooded cape back

The only place the hem still isn't hanging evenly is between the side seams and the center back seam, and I am wondering if I pin each side and let it hang for another week if it won't "fix itself" like it did in the middle of the back.

hems still uneven on the back curve

I figure it's worth a try ... the weather decided to get with the calendar and we've had beautiful sunny days in the 70s and 80s, with no real cold fronts behind the storms recently.  We could still get a freak frost between now and May - it's happened before - but it's a lot less likely I'll get a chance to wear this before fall.  That should give me plenty of time to hand-embroider it.

So I'll check the hems again next week.  I've already decided I will hem the layers separately then hand-stitch them together after I attach the layers, so if gravity doesn't do the whole job for me I can still adjust it that way.