summer works-in-progress

some side quests I've been on lately

what I’ve been working on lately:

growing a garden
Josh and I are attempting to quiet the voice in each of our heads that says “you don’t know what you’re doing”, and do things anyway. We’re letting the lawn grow feral, selectively trimming it back with a weed-whacker¹, letting the “weeds” we love grow tall and unruly (plantain for cuts & burns, dock, and other weeds with medicinal properties, in particular). We’re delighting in the bees and pollinators (and fireflies!!) that visit our feral ground cover, “creeping charlie”, as

Grace Rother

informed me.

This year, Josh built us a tiny raised bed and we lightly amended some soil near the driveway. We planted dahlia tubers (with so many thanks to Gwen for gifting us some!), a flower mix, and marigolds. In the raised bed & other planter boxes left by the previous owners, we planted things we feel are “high value”: herbs, tomatoes, and onions - things we know we’ll delight in picking off the vine. One day I hope to be able to make a floral arrangement from yard stems, and to pick a sun-ripened cherry tomato (is there any truer bliss??). I planted some madder (with thanks to Rachel for bringing it to our farmers market with me in mind :,)) and in 3 years, maybe I’ll have some madder root to dye a very small amount of fiber with.

the tomatoes exploded while we were away, thanks to our neighbors for watering them!

learning to work with wood

Do you subscribe to

Treehouse

? This is not the first time I’ve sung

Zinzi Edmundson

’s praises in this newsletter, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I pay for Treehouse and the physical and digital content Zinzi produces feels deeply generous. Recently, she sent a physical copy of instructions for making a simple bench. Josh went to the lumber yard and sourced some scrap wood, we talked over the fence to our neighbor about our lack of tools and next thing you know, we made a bench. This neighbor of ours doesn’t seem like he’d be the most patient teacher to someone like me (the highly sensitive newbie to power tools), but to my great surprise and delight, he showed me how to use the chop saw, and then (with minimal heckling) let me use it to make all the cuts. Then he handed me a drill, and again, showed me how to use it and patiently let me struggle through using it, periodically lending a helping hand.

He taught us about wood finishing techniques and we decided to try torching the wood (small neighbor Sirius said “like creme brulee?” and I said, “actually, exactly like that”) to give it some protection from the elements. Someday, we’ll finish it with linseed oil or something to make it really hearty, but for now, it’s a bench! People have successfully sat upon it! It’s reasonably comfortable and even sort of nice looking!

building a (tiny) herbal apothecary

making plantain oil, growing & drying lemon balm for tea, munching on “dead man’s fingers” out on the cape, trying out feverfew tea, reading & learning from local (and further afield) herbalists .

yet another lampshade

The lampshade obsession returns. Your guess is as good as mine as to why my brain gets stuck on these. This one was a much trickier endeavor as I attempted to restore an antique lampshade belonging to my friend, Roxanne. Overall, I think I retained its character while adding the mark of my own hand to it :)

L to R: before, after, installed!

trying to work my way up to sewing the sorts of things I really want to sew

Do you ever find that in your quest to make the things you really want to make, you have to first make some things you’re not all that excited about? What I really want to sew is a linen set: a short sleeve button down (specifically, this one) & a pair of zip-fly shorts with pleats (pattern tbd, maybe these?). I also want to sew a Salima-inspired dress from some cotton poplin (with a smidge more length than the inspo).

What I actually made with the resources I had available to me this month (ie limited time, energy and mental resources for learning new things): this funny little muumuu. I will say that it was a pretty perfect companion in the recent heat dome, it felt like wearing almost nothing, and I got a lot of nice compliments on it. Onwards!

the muumuu in question made from thrifted fabric hannah gave me <3

That’s all for me for now - summer is already at a feverpitch and it’s taking a toll, so I’m off stripping back to the essentials for the next few weeks. If I’m resourced enough to share online, I absolutely will, and if I’m not, I’m so appreciative of you holding space in your inbox for me when I am again <3

Until next time, I’d love to know, what sorts of side quests are you on lately?

1. I recently called the weed whacker a “whipper snipper”, one of those brain farts I periodically have where I memorized a word for something in Australian English and cannot for the life of my remember the American English word for it. This happens to me also with “spanner” when I mean to say “wrench”. You can take the girl outta ‘straya… etc etc).