cheshire (TNR'd) cat in the garden

yesterday about 7am in the garden, i heard a scramble up a neighbors fence. i see our lady Gemini being chased by Mr. Elusive Orange Tabby. Gemini bounds sprightly from the fence, up the garage roof and onto the 100+ year old catalpa tree. the chase ended there. go girl! the birds however were barking agitatedly by the presence of the Cheshire cat resting contentedly on a thick limb. i have yet to TNR orange tabby boy. he (and the other "neighborhood" cats)  is being well-fed by well-meaning neighbors on the other block and therefor is not attracted to my sardine baits. perhaps a neighborly chat is in order (ie: can we complete the circle of care and get this cat to the clinic?). the good thing is i haven't seen any kittens or new cats on the scene. thankfully we got the girls spayed a while ago.

elsewhere outside...here are some pics from our back yard wildflower patch:

i mixed in some tall ornamental grasses last year, from clumps i divided (ignore that huge leafy weed there lower right corner). it attracts all kinds of beneficial bees, butterflies, yellow finches, insects. a natural bird feeder all year round. we never have to water or mulch it. just mow it down in the early spring and nature does the rest! on the project list is to make a water fountain feature to put in the middle of it. we joke about having a crazy 20 foot water spray (the kind you see in public parks) that would drown out any noise. there are days here that are peaceful and quiet, and days that are constant buzzing of noise.. that's city life. right now is one of those peaceful moments... an ideal day to hang out laundry and bake bread (in addition to working on special orders and bears ;)

☀have a lovely summery day!

March PFATT Marketplace: my dear friend Froggie!

spring has arrived! what a mild winter we had... not once did i have to shovel snow (knock on wood, march is not yet over!). out from under the covers and with a spring in his step... may i reintroduce a beloved friend of mine, Froggie! he has been my companion since 2010, a beloved silly little monkey who is seeking to further his horizons. these pics are from a photo session for a british teddy bear mag. Froggie is my special PFATT Marketplace offering for March, being green and all :) he has a wonderful feeling about him, you must hold him to appreciate his full charisma.

see Froggie's PFATT listing here. SOLD, thank you!
have a lovely day!

bounce the bounce

lazy line dry via instructables.com

our handy retractable clothes line in our backyard. got it at home depot.

$5 indoor clothes line via apartmenttherapy.com

DIY indoor clothes line via chez larrson

i am taking a quick sewing break to "vent" about dryer vents. it boggles my mind when temps are 80-90 degrees and neighbors have their air conditioners cranked, while simultaneously heating up clothes in a dryer for 1-2 hours, then rebooting again for another 45 minutes. i hang a queen-sized sheet outside and it's dry in 10 minutes and smells like sunshine. we lived in a condo previously so i understand that some places have by-laws where you're simply not allowed to hang laundry outside, or perhaps you don't have a yard.

here are some easy, cheap solutions to save energy, utilitie$, and above all... put an end to using those toxic, heavily fragranced dryer sheets! bounce those bounce sheets out of your home. btw, hanging clothes indoors during winter helps humidify the house. that's on our project list for fall!

must-read articles:

• toxins close to home
• exposure assessment
• guidelines for nontoxic living
  

i care about you and thought you should know :) have a terrific thursday! xoxo

urban homesteading

thought i'd share with you a little about our urban homestead in case any of you are curious! here's the organic veggie bed in early-summer. this year we laid down the square foot grid and it's a lot more organized and productive. we planted a variety of salad greens, kale, scallions, herbs, broccoli, mustard greens, and peppers... all in this one raised bed! this year we also built a second raised veggie bed for zucchini, tomatoes and whatever else. we potted 17 or so tomato plants to free up space in the beds.

veggie garden in july. cool weather-loving salad greens are all gone and peppers (carnival mix, red/green bell, jalepeno) are starting to produce. the little strawberry plant (below the veg bed) had only one strawberry which a squirrel ate.

yum. basil basil basil.

turned it into nut-free pesto. easy recipe here.

the pesto is great on pizza. i make our own pizza dough (whole wheat) and love my pizza stone. i bake bread and baked potato wedges on it. it changed my life! every kitchen needs one of these.

whole grain bread made in cast iron loaf pan.

same recipe baked on pizza stone. i amend the recipe by using all whole wheat flour and adding 2 TBSP of wheat gluten, sometimes adding ground flax meal, raisins, sunflower and sesame seeds, what have you. my studio is a few feet away from the kitchen so i can hear the oven timer go off :) and that about does it cos it's time for me to make dinner! have a great night. xoxo

buzzin' fly

(title of this post is a Tim Buckley reference :)
some buzzin' buddies in our garden. it's so rewarding to give the birds n' bees a natural source of food/ habitat. i see bird fights all the time at the neighbors bird feeder, which BTW is attracting the elusive orange feral cat to their yard instead of mine. bright yellow finches visit our wildflower patch every day, nibbling on seedheads of dying back flowers.. so i leave half dying flowers for them and cut the others to rebloom for the insects. a happy balance.

indoors- this week i've battled a 2 day invasion of the ants in the kitchen. we had heavy storms which always makes them come indoors. but it was better than a flooded basement like my neighbor had. after a half dozen natural repellent attempts (vinegar, cinnamon, peppermint oil, bay leaves) i had to resort to the deadly black ant traps which worked in conjunction with the natural remedies. so sad to watch the hard working ants carrying away the poison, i always feel like a murderer! a good repellent is a wad of cotton with a few drops of peppermint essential oil/ orange and or lemon oil stuffed in the hole where the ants come in- smells nice too.

so finally after regaining control of my kitchen, i could get back to working on bears for abracadabra. the plan was to have them there before end of this month (oh, that's in 3 days!). so i'm doing what i caaaann! after that, it's all about Hugglets festival. i need to order business cards and supplies, and waiting on my passport. i can't believe it's only about a month away.
so i best be gettin' busy like a bee... xoxo

socks and shibori

my neighbors must be thinking "that's a lot of socks!"

the wildflowers in our yard are blooming like crazy. a cornucopia of colors which have inspired the hues in my latest tie dyed monkey socks:

while i had the dye pot going, i couldn't resist throwing in some girl/ guy tees:

these are shibori japanese dying techniques. by no means am i a pro, but i'm getting the hang of it. it's a fun DIY project. the hardest part is waiting for the dye bath and seeing how it turned out!

another blistering 100 degree day in chicago, so i'm staying put in the studio with a tall glass of iced half-decaf coffee. i am working on a few new bears before diving head on into monkey madness. and stay tuned for PFATT offering in 2 days. stay cool and in the shade where you are!

planet snow part II

looks who's baaack-- snow creatures! remember them from last february?
i think i have "shoveler's-elbow" from clearing the porch and cutting a narrow walking path out front through 4' deep snow drifts. now i get to rest :)

i saw a seagull glide serenely overhead, as we humans (featherless bipeds- as Plato once said) laboriously dig out mountains of snow on the ground. oh, to be a bird. even though it's freezing outside, you get my gist.
no strength left to type anymore... need-hot-beverage. is 3:47pm too early for hot cocoa with a shot of brandy? please say it's okay!

thunder-snow??

(here comes the blizzard, right on schedule)

coffee. check. oj. check. bread. check. rice. check. candles. check.
lucky are thoust who live in semi tropical climates! we are bracing for an historic blizzard tonight and tomorrooooowwwww. what the heck is thunder-snow???

• BLIZZARD WARNING FROM 3 P.M. TUESDAY TO 3 P.M. WEDNESDAY. Light snow flurries from a wintry overcast much of the day. NE winds strengthen 14 to 28 mph. Gusts topping 30 mph before evening. Steady storm snowfall spreads in from the south mid and late afternoon. Full-blown blizzard this evening and tonight. Serious blowing/drifting as gusts build to 40-50 mph. Bursts of thunder-snow and periods with less than a quarter mile visibility. Blizzard or near blizzard conditions persist into Wednesday morning. Totals: 14-22 inches by Wednesday afternoon.
• Wednesday

  Snow

  HI

  23°

  LO

  -2°
  Blizzard conditions start the day (how wonderful!) with heavy accumulating snow and north winds gusting to 50 mph combining to give whiteout conditions in open areas. As snow lets up in Chicago, it intensifies over Indiana later in the day.

let's hope the roof stays on the house! oh, i shouldn't even say that... (what was that creaking sound?) stay warm my fellow wintered folk!

make-do leg warmers, the buddhist way

"the garments of many of the brothers are in rags; i am going to distribute the garments among them."
what will you do with the old garments?
we will make bed-covers out of them.
what will you do with the old bed-covers?
we will make pillow-cases.
what will you do with the old pillow-cases?
we will make floor-covers out of them.
what will you do with the old floor-covers?
we will use them for wiping cloths.
what will you do with the old wiping cloths?
we will use them for floor-mops.
what will you do with the old mops?
...we will tear them in pieces and mix them with mud and use the mud to plaster the house-walls.
-from The Teaching of Buddha.


i habitually repurpose things if it can be put to good use. not only in the studio, but anywhere in the house. this doesn't mean holding on to junk "just in case"... it must be useful on a daily basis. "what will you do with the old garment?" there are a few fun ways to look at that first question. for example: i've wanted to knit my own leg warmers (have to learn to knit first, lol) but it's cold and i need warmth now. i thrifted a nice solid brown sweater for DH but it was too small for him, and too big for me. so i had the idea to cut the sleeves off and use them for leg warmers! the wrist part keeps them up snug and the raw cut end goes around the bottom for a slight boot flare. this works best with a machine washable sweater, not a fat cable knit or one that will unravel. i went further and cut the tight neckline off and it now it looks pretty rockin' in a rustic-vagabond kinda way, great to wear over long sleeves. project in a pinch:

instant make-do leg warmers:

supplies:

• one "too big for you" sweater (or boyfriends old sweater, lol. machine washable, won't unravel kind).
  
• scissors

cut off sleeves (a few inches below shoulder seam) for leg warmers. optional: cut off neckline of sweater and use as short-sleeved vest. 1 sweater=2 garments. great for kickin around the house or under long skirts. do you have a neat repurposed idea? please share!

7am in the Garden

(top) our purple clematis is blooming and thriving now in it's 2nd year of planting. last year it was such a scrawny little thing, it's fragile vines barely even reaching the lattice. i had "clematis-envy" last summer looking at the neighbors well-established blooms reaching the top of their garage. this year we can finally enjoy ours :-)

(middle) the organic mesclun salad mix seedlings. they were the first to sprout in our raised bed garden. hooray! something is growing!

(bottom) our first perennial wildflower patch, grown from seeds started last june. this is the glorious result of my experiment with no-dig method of gardening. i learned about it from an article by Lee Reich in Mother Earth News. it blew my mind and just makes so much sense to not disturb the soil. plus it's a lot easier than digging up turf and you can lay a garden bed instantly! we have white, orange and pink in bloom now...

whats blooming in your garden? enjoy your sunday!

Easy Homemade Organic Rice Milk

When a neighbor/ busy mom of 3 told us she makes her own rice milk for her family, I had to investigate. I discovered it's SO easy and economical to make: 1 cup of rice = nearly half gallon of rice milk. So here's my first batch! Needs some tweaking, but overall I'm fairly impressed with it. For baking purposes (like the 1.5 cups I used in pancakes yesterday), it's impossible to tell the difference between homemade rice milk vs. manufactured. There's a few variations of the recipe out there, but I tried this one first. Goes well with homemade nut butter :)

Tomato + Tortilla

Actually, I could go for some Mexican right now...
Hope you're having a splendid weekend!

7am in the Garden

I'm trying to become an early riser. The bedroom window is always cracked so I can hear the the birds in the morning. They start singing around 5:45am. A neighbor says she hears the woodpecker at 4:30am. My zen clock is set for 5:28am, but I'm gonna set it even earlier...5:14am to account for the 15 minutes sleeping in. This also means going to bed earlier, by 10:30pm. Seeing the sun rise and getting up with the birds and squirrels is a great way to begin the day, and I accomplish so much more with those extra hours.

This morning I have mammoth sunflower seeds to plant. And this weekend, seeds to begin our organic veggie garden.

*New bears* are also budding in my studio, stay tuned!

10 minute Homemade Almond Butter

This recipe for homemade almond butter is so easy I'm just bustin' to share it with you. I buy almonds in a big bulk bag since I'm allergic to other nuts (except peanuts) and use almonds as a substitute in many recipes. You can use other nuts with this recipe to make your own natural nut butter.

2 cups of almonds=10 ounces almond butter.

• Roast almonds on baking sheet @ 350 degrees, about 8-10 minutes. Let cool.
• Grind in food processor on high, about 10 minutes until the nuts release their oils. Be patient, it WILL happen.
• Add a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil if tastes too dry.
  

Can you believe how simple it is? One less thing on my grocery list :)

Spring Forward

Set your clocks forward today! Well, spring home projects will soon be underway: painting, building a deck, eliminating more of "the yard" by planting native wildflowers and tall grasses (the no-dig method), hanging a clothes line... ah simple pleasures!

Have you all seen Food, Inc? Rob and I watched it last night for the first time. We live without a TV, cable, etc, so we just wait til things come out on DVD. After seeing this documentary, I'm totally spurred on to start a veggie garden. What also inspired me was seeing this family's amazing urban homestead in Pasadena, California, an "edible eden" if you will:



I can't wait to build the raised beds for veggies, and to see what "springs" up this spring! What will you be planting this spring? Something tasty?

Planet Snow + Blueberry Cobbler

Looks like my work is cut out for me today on Planet Snow. Pull on the ski boots! There are guys that come around our neighborhood, ringing doorbells asking to shovel the walkway for cash. It's like I have to beat them to shoveling my own property. While I've been typing this, the same person rang my door twice. So I better get out there and start clearing snow, 'cos they will keep ringing my doorbell otherwise! Now... onto cozier things:


This here little fellow is "Blueberry Cobbler", my PFATT Marketplace offering for this month. I just flipped over how wonderful that hand dyed mohair turned out. Multiple dye process was so worth the extra time and effort. And it makes the mohair totally unique! If you'd like to scoop up Blueberry Cobbler, send me an e-mail. (update: he's SOLD).

Hey, it's also my brother's *birthday* today, and was Miss Felted Folksie Linda's yesterday! So Happy Birthday all you Aquarius'!

I'm off to brave the elements now. Enjoy your day!

Snow Day

Snow day = guilt-free staying indoors. BTW, the above pics are in color. For the first time in a loooong time I slept in 'til the gloriously late hour of 8am. No rushing off to my early gym class or errands to do that can't wait a day. As long as there is coffee, internet connection and a working furnace, I am good :) At some point I'll gear up and shovel the sidewalk, which I actually enjoy doing! Though today is looking to be a "shovel twice" kinda day.

All the more reason to be psyched about the TAMPA bear show this month! Which reminds me, I need to order new business cards pronto...

Stay warm (unless you live in a semi-tropical area, in which case you must invite me + Rob to visit)! xoxo

Winter Wonderland

We certainly had the white Christmas! Hope yours was a magical one. Today brought more snow; the light, fluffy, powdered sugar snow that's a breeze to shovel and fun to walk in. It was good to get out of the house for a short walk this afternoon, down the peacefully deserted bike path. When we got home, guess who I saw dashing through the snow? Gemini the feral cat! I was wondering how she was faring. Apparently she's doing just fine this winter. And I hope you are too! :)

*good morning blooms*

Remember my experiment back in June? This bright mix of perennials are the result! I tried a new-to-me technique: the no-till gardening method from an article by Lee Reich I read in Mother Earth News (I read/ memorized the whole article at Lowes while waiting for Rob to finish shopping). Lee Reich has liberated me from digging up turf! Here's another great article too. Our little wild flower patch was sown from seeds and doing quite nicely. Oh what joy to see what's new in the garden every morning... as the summer days gently wane.