Going Green

At least I have come up with a politically correct excuse for being away from the blog so long. I've been spending most of my time outside, far away from the TV, computer and telephone. Just haven't been in the mood to sit here lately. I haven't made a single cross-stitch ( I mean not one single, individual stitch at all!) in over two weeks. I've become hooked (OK, pardon the pun) on an old hobby....crochet. I had nearly forgotten all the stitches and their coordinating abbreviations on the patterns, but when my mom and dad visited over the Father's Day weekend my mom helped me out quite a bit. She is an expert at both knitting and crochet and corrected the mistakes I made in what will now be known as the "prototype" bag. I've made 8 of these "green" grocery sacks so far and plan to sell them at the up-coming craft bazaars in the Fall. I have a red, white and blue one in the works right now. They are made from "Sugar & Cream" crochet cotton by Lily, although I have found a slightly cheaper WalMart version of this cotton also. The pattern is free on the Lily website. When I find the link I will post it here. The old cliche holds true "If I can do it, anyone can!" They really are quite simple and, no insult intended to the avid crocheters, rather mindless work. I can crochet away on these while watching TV in the evening or just sitting outside basically staring off into space. The "space" as it is, has been rather hot and hazy today. Bordering on oppressive, but not quite as there is a nice breeze blowing.

We've gone a bit "green" in our back field also. It is over 2 acres and has sat dormant, except for the rampant weeds for over 20 years. This year we leased out 3/4 of it to a local farmer to plant soybeans. The 1/4 closest to the house contains our septic system leach lines. Although this would make fine fertilizer I did not want the tilling and plowing to disrupt all of last Spring's expensive and time-consuming work to re-route the septic system.

My other green projects have been hand-sewn dresses for the "Jane Austen" doll I showed in a previous post. She is really a Madame Alexander doll called "Articulated Alex" but she makes a wonderful Jane. Here she is sporting a somewhat more modern outfit, an 1900 Visiting Costume. This I will also call a prototype since it is riddle with mistakes in sizing. I bought 4 wonderful patterns off of eBay for my Alex and Tyler 16" dolls, but they always need a bit of tweaking before they fit right. There is a big gap in the closing of the skirt back and the sleeves of the black underblouse are too tight. I simply chopped them off to fit under the jacket. But since the jacket sleeves are too long it's not noticeable.

So 4 measly posts for the month of June. I thought I would do better then that. I still have the weekend to catch up a bit. There is a wonderful arts and crafts festival in town on Saturday so I may have some nice photos from that to post. I am still reading all of your blogs and trying to catch up with my comment-making.