Sunprint Pillow

On designsponge I saw this tutorial for a photogram wreath wall hanging.  The tutorial uses inkodye, a photosensitive dye to make an image of an evergreen wreath on a piece of fabric to use as a wall hanging.  As a kid, I remember making lots of sunprints of various plants on sunprint paper but I had never seen the process on fabric.  I immediately bought the smallest jar of the blue ink from the manufacturer's website.  Of course, a few days later, they were selling larger bottles of it on Fab.  I wish I had gotten the larger bottle because the process really uses a lot of the dye.  There are all sorts of amazing things I could have made with this stuff, but I liked the image on designsponge so much, and wasn't feeling too creative, so I stuck pretty closely with the tutorial.  

I painted the dye onto a piece of unbleached canvas fabric which I binder-clipped to a piece of cardboard.  Since evergreen clippings are not so easily come by in Southern California, I collected California poppy leaves from the garden and arranged them into the shape of a wreath.  When I made Easter/Passover eggs this past spring, I discovered that California poppies made the best leaf impressions of anything in our yard.  In the tutorial they just pinned down the branches onto the cardboard, but mentioned that you could hold them down with glass for a clearer impression.  I took the glass out of a picture frame and placed it over the leaves.  The glass didn't lie completely flat over the leaves because of the binder-clips however. If I did this again I would use something else to hold the fabric in place over the cardboard so I could hopefully get a clearer impression. 

When you paint the dye on the fabric it is almost clear, but after a few mins in the sun it starts to turn purple.  In the designsponge tutorial they weren't super clear about which picture was from which stage in the process and in the comments people were asking how they got this purple colored dye since inkodye only comes in red, orange and blue.  This is just the initial color that the blue ink turns in the sun.  I left mine in the sun for about 16 mins.  After taking the whole sandwich apart I washed the fabric in the washing machine twice to get out all the excess dye.  After washing it it turns blue.  

I sewed the sunprinted fabric into a pillow, using plain unbleached canvas for the back and an Ikea pillow insert as stuffing and gave it to my Mom as a Christmas present.  

Curry Plant Wreath

Curry Plant Wreath, a photo by krakencrafts on Flickr.

My curry plant (which looks like rosemary but smells like curry) was getting out of control so I used the cuttings to make a wreath with a wire coat hanger and some floral wire.

Baby Pumpkins

Baby Pumpkins, a photo by krakencrafts on Flickr.

I've had quite a few volunteer squash plants pop up in the garden this year. Most of them turned out to be butternut squash, but it looks like this one, that is growing in a pot underneath a tomato plant, is a baby pumpkin. I did have one decorative baby pumpkin last fall that I ended up tossing in the compost after it started to rot. I guess this is one of its progeny.

Stinky Succulent Flower

I've had this Stapelia gigantea succulent for I think at least five years.  I grew it from a small pinched off cutting and it has, very slowly, grown into this still not super giant plant.  I have been hoping it would flower at some point because they are supposed to have really gorgeous starfish-like flowers.  Last year it produced a small flower bud, but it ended up shriveling up and falling off.  Earlier this summer, I was pleasantly surprised by this huge bud. 

 Little did I know it would turn into a really really huge bud.

After a lot of waiting, this weekend it finally started to open.

And yesterday it opened completely.  The plant is sometimes called carrion flower and is rumored to smell like dog poop.  I believe it's primary pollinators are flies (you can see one on the picture below) who seem to enjoy the smell of those kinds of things.  This one definitely smells a little off, but not in a disgusting way.  I think it smells a little like bonito flakes or maybe kimchi.

Anyway, I wanted to document the flower, since it is already starting to wilt and I don't know how many years it will be before the plant produces another one.

Hops Harvest

This year we grew four different kinds of hops, Cascade, Nugget, Magnum and Centennial.  We ordered the rhizomes from the thyme garden in Alsea, OR in November and got them shipped to us in March.  They all started out doing about the same, and the Magnum even started climbing up its twine first, but the Cascade and Nugget ended up being the only ones that really took off.  

Supposedly, in the first year, you shouldn't expect to get any cones.  So I was pleasantly surprised when the Nugget bine started to produce burrs.

Which eventually turned into really big cones.

It was hard to figure out when exactly I should harvest them, so I ended up just harvesting a few of the drier and more hoppy smelling ones and leaving on some of the wetter greener ones to harvest later.  

It isn't too big of a harvest, but there are at least this many still left on the plant for a later harvest.  The Cascade bine also has a few cones on it, but literally only 4 or 5 of them, so I'm not sure they will be worth harvesting. 

 

I'm drying them in the garage on top of an old screen door with mesh fabric covering them so they don't fly away.  Once they are dry I'll put them in the freezer.  Nate should be able to use them for at least one batch of home brew.  And next year, we should hopefully get a bunch more cones and maybe the other varieties will start to do a little better. 

Keita's First Camping Trip

We took Keita on her first camping trip this past weekend.  It was also a trip to celebrate our second anniversary.  We camped at Buckhorn Campground in the Angeles National Forrest.  As we were driving up the Angeles Crest Highway the landscape was looking pretty dry and hot with just shrubs and yuccas, but once we got over about 5000 ft. it turned into mixed conifer forest with pines and incense cedars.  The campground itself was even more lush looking, well comparatively lush.  There were lots of wildflowers and currant and thimbleberry bushes.  

We made shish kabobs for dinner the first night and hotdogs and beans the second night.

The second day we were there we stumbled across the trail to the summit of Mt. Waterman a 8038 ft. peak in the San Gabriels.  It was about a 6 mile round trip hike from our campground.  We've actually skied at Mt. Waterman a good number of times so it was interesting to see the area in the summer without any snow. 

Keita was a little barky and territorial of our campsite and probably would have rather been sleeping on our couch in font of the TV, but I think overall she had a good time.  

In The Garden June 2012

Since I get to work from home, I tend to go out and check on the garden multiple times a day. So its king of hard to see much change between visits.  I was out of town all last week for work and so I got to come home to more noticeable progress. 

The first tomatoes are starting to get ripe.  These are Black Krim which actually grew as volunteers from our compost.  I made gazpacho last year from the Black Krim tomatoes that I grew in the garden and accidentally threw all the tomato seeds in the compost instead of down the garbage disposal.  Since then they have been popping up all over the garden.  This weird tomato developed from a monster fused tomato flower which I guess is kind of common on brandywine type heirloom tomato plants.

The tassels are starting to emerge on the corn in the three sisters planter box behind the barn.  I can only see one ear forming. Hopefully the ears will catch up with the tassels soon. 

I think we will end up with a bumper butternut squash harvest.  The little baby butternut squashes are so cute.

The purple tomatillos are growing like crazy.  I have never grown them before and never really cooked with them either.  I will be making a whole lot of salsa verde.  But, I think I'm going to have to look up some more things to do with them also.