Do you see a hem on these pants? No? Good, because I have successfully used my new sewing machine to blind hem these suckers. Take that Martha. (Ok, so there's a line where I need to iron, but I did get the hem right!)
For the purpose of reusing clothes (and making new ones when I dislike the current fashions), I have purchased a sewing machine. Actually, my mother purchased me a sewing machine. (Thanks Mom!) Now that I have successfully done a reasonably difficult hem with it, it's time to go on to new, easier projects.
First up on the save-the-world-with-simple-stuff list: cloth napkins, kitchen towels, and other mess cleaners. We've already put the paper towels in a cabinet and use cloth IKEA napkins for non-toxic messes. But we've had a lot of friends over recently, and I realized we don't have cloth napkins. So we've been using paper napkins because the cloth towels we have are for dirty messes, not for wiping hands and faces with. So I'm going to try making some cloth napkins for next time!
Friday, June 12, 2009
sewing machine: HUGE SUCCESS
Monday, June 8, 2009
My camera works again!
I hadn't posted for a while as my camera wasn't loading pictures onto my computer. I finally figured out the problem though; it seems there is something wrong with the cable. Here's the weird deal though: it works fine on Saul's computer, just not mine. But when I switched cables, it worked. So whatever.
Anyway, just found this on the camera. The culprit is in the lower right.
And this one was just cute.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Preserving herbs, results from winter
Well, I did learn a little more about this. Parsley, oregano, thyme, and basil all dried well. I tried drying on the branch and off the branch; off branch was better. Somehow it was more colorful and flavorful. Plus, they dried faster.
Don't dry chives though, they were terrible. I've realized it's not worth it anyway, they were still growing in the snow and they came back over a month ago. (And with a vengeance, too...anyone need chives? I have like 7 plants now.) I was only without for a couple months, so no big deal.
It's Spring!
Ten days ago, we walked outside and crocuses were blooming! I declared it the beginning of spring and spent the next weekend planting peas, lettuces, and spinach. My neighbor says the timing was perfect; according to her, all of those are supposed to be planted on St. Patrick' Day. Nothing has germinated yet, but I'm hopeful. I think it's partly because I'm not watering it enough; you would think that it would have rained, but it hasn't really yet.
I am also not going to have too much lettuce this year. Really. I split seed packets with Emily, Kami, and Michael, so I only have .... 400 lettuce seeds....ok, I'm still going to have too much lettuce.
I'm always surprised at how depressed I am in winter and how much happier I get when we finally have some sunlight and weather above freezing. One of my neighbors was laughing because he still considers it winter right now, and I was out flipping the compost pile, raking leaves, and planting! I did try to prevent planting too much this year though. I'm spacing out the lettuce, and there are no radishes this year. That should help some.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Reducing waste
The bloggers at enviromom did a great series on reducing the amount of household waste we produce. They have a challenge to reduce your waste to only one can a month. Actually, Saul and I are pretty close already, but there's only two of us. We end up putting out a can every other week, so there's room for improvement still.
Anyway, what's really nice is that they've gone room-by-room in a typical house, listing ways to reduce waste in each room.
http://www.enviromom.com/getting-to-one-garbage-can.html
I'm thinking about requesting that Edgewood borough put this in their monthly newsletter. Besides the environmental effects, our taxes could be much lower if people didn't produce so much waste. Two of my neighbors, both just couples, somehow produce four trashcans of waste every week. How they do that, I'm not sure. I hear one of the couples has all of their dogs paper-trained, so they toss out lots of no-longer-recyclable paper. Not sure what's up with the other couple though.
Posts
