Home Grown Eggs

This morning Will woke me up at 7 (I am the late sleeper), hollering as he came inside “Honey, LOOK!”  I cracked open my eyes to see four eggs nested in his hands. For months people have been asking us “When will you have eggs?” , we figured it wouldn’t be until the end of October. We are not sure if they are from one or two of the chickens because we haven’t been looking everyday but now we will start to watch them more closely.

Our chicken’s eggs are smaller then the store bought eggs but we are sure they will be even tastier. What is your favorite egg recipe? We are looking forward to quiche.

Indigo Moons

This last weekend I went to the exhibit “To Dye For” at the de Young Art Museum with my mother. Museum bumming is a favorite pastime with us and it had been a while since we had a chance to go to an exhibit together. If you are local or in the San Francisco area between now and January I highly suggest checking out this exhibit. Sadly you can’t take photos, nor is there a book of the exhibit so you will just have to trust me.

The exhibit inspired us to go home and play with a new Indigo vat. We didn’t manage to take photos, to much indigo all over us to handle the camera, but Monday night I got Will to take a couple shots while I tried out my Itajime resist shapes that I got a while back from Rossie.

This is after three dips in the vat, I really had to work the corners to get the dye in the folds as much as possible. I wanted as deep a saturation as I could get everywhere but in the circles. The fabric was some scrap silk I had.

I accidentally cracked one of the circles slightly by tightening the clamp too much, but the thin lines it caused actually appeal to me a lot.

I was very happy over all with this piece as I haven’t done any itajime since I took hand dyeing back in college. At the suggestion of a friend I think I am going to cut it down the center and sew it back together in to a long wide scarf so I can wear it. I can’t wait to play with the other shapes I got, triangles, ovals and coming in the mail soon….toast!

Phoebe Bags Craft Day

This Labor Day after many weeks of not getting to hang out with Libby (she has been hiking a LOT all summer) we finally managed to get together and dust off the sewing machines. Back in the spring we got fabric with the intention of making the Phoebe Bag by Rebeka Lambert of  artsy-crafty babe. We found a very soft yummy Bamboo Rayon Corduroy to use as the outside and we each picked different lining.

The pattern is a pretty easy, a great first bag if you have never made one but the corduroy that we picked, lovely as it is, was a bit of a pain to deal with when pinning things as it likes to move..a lot. We suggest sticking with plain cottons or linens for a less frustrating experience if you have never made a bag before.

This is the lining of Libby’s bag, we almost had a bit of a tussle over this paisley when we found it at the fabric store.

For my bag I used a thrifted top sheet that we found for a fun fresh look. Here you can see the pocket; Libby’s bag also has a pocket but the darker lining made it hard to see in the photos.

Despite the tricky corduroy and some tension issues with our machines that we had to iron out it was all and all a fun project and I for one plan to make a couple more.

After all that crafting we were very hungry (we totally forgot to eat lunch!) so we enjoyed some roast triample squash from the garden. The squash was very tasty, can’t wait to make one into soup.

A very satisfying day indeed.