April | 2015 | liz-o-matic

As you’ve probably surmised in between sewing, knitting, reading, cooking….and you know working to pay bills, the husband and I enjoy gardening. I figured between crafty posts I could show you, dear reader, pictures from the garden as things grow and we harvest tasty vegetables 🙂 If you don’t want to see garden pictures then I guess this is a sucks to be you sort of situation, ’cause it’s my blog!

So, here are our main garden beds… and the husband dutifully watering said beds… The large beds measure 5′ by 10′, the three small beds measure 2′ by 3′ and we have one medium bed (that you can’t see from this angle) that measures 4′ by 5′. And a triangle shaped bed directly in front of the husband… but it only has day lilies in it . There’s also two other medium-ish beds in other areas.

Here is the medium 4′ by 5′ bed….. the stalks are garlic that’s been growing since last fall. They should be ready to harvest soon, hopefully. The sad little plant there being watered is watermelon.

These are our three smaller 2′ by 3′ beds. The far bed has yellow crookneck squash, the middle bed has green beans and the near very shaded bed has okra. We’ll see how they do, for whatever reason these beds never seem to be as prolific as our others…despite testing and amending the soil.

This is the larger 5′ by 10′ bed by the fence. You can see here cucumber by the trellis and more yellow squash in the foreground. The other end of the trellis will have Christmas Pole Lima beans. We direct sowed some beans when everything else was planted…. but they still haven’t come up yet

The other larger bed, that’s not pictured, has zucchini and more okra.

And finally…. here we have our tomato starts, which are right now just hanging out getting used to being outdoors. Hopefully, if the weather holds we’ll get them in the ground this weekend. We’re doing five different varieties this year: Chadwick Cherry, Sungold, Mortgage Lifter, Pink Brandywine and Big Rainbow. The last couple of seasons haven’t been that great for tomatoes, but fingers-crossed we’ll get a lot this season, because home grown canned tomatoes > store bought canned tomatoes!

The two other beds we have that weren’t pictured at all have garlic and spring onions in one and blueberry bushes in the other. We also have a fig tree that just got put in the ground this past fall and some small citrus trees in pots… meyer lemon and mandarin orange to be exact.

So, there you have it Spring Garden 2015! I figure I’ll take some more pictures in another month or so and show you how it’s coming along. Until then hopefully there will be more crafty posts… made even more finished garments! Or not who knows?!

WOW! It has been a hot minute, has it not dear reader! I could make jokes about being busy reading, knitting or the folks coming down for a visit (which is all true), but honestly I just kinda fell off the blogging wagon for a bit there Which is par for the course for me- super on top of it for a month or two… and then NOTHING. [P.S. Do NOT ask how long it’s been since I went running!]

But that’s all in the past, ’cause I’m back with a finished T-shirt! Behold- I give you my first attempt at Sewaholic’s Renfrew t-shirt!

I cut this in a size 12, grading out to a size16 at the bust….which made for an incredibly funny looking pattern piece! You’ll also notice I left off the bottom band…. side note: I HATE bands at the bottom of shirts 😛 I also left off the bands on the sleeves, which I’m considering going back and adding on.

I used this post, among others, to help with construction and working with knit fabric. I used a twin needle on the neckline (more about that cluster-fuck below!), but just a zig-zag stitch on all the hems… It kinda worked, but I think I’m going to need to find a better finish in the future.

I ended up using a bit of bias tape to stabilize the shoulder seams. I didn’t have any twill tape and did not want to spend the time, money and energy to get some. I read somewhere on some post in the comments section that someone used this method…. it seemed to work ok. Aaaand I did not finish the insides AT ALL, because knit fabric!

When thinking about making this I was real nervous about it being to tight/small for the “girls”. At the end of the day though this actually turned out to be too BIG for me. This is mostly because I generally like my clothes, especially my t-shirts, to be very fitted- probably too fitted if you ask my mother.

Speaking of my mother….she actually gave me the fabric. It was one of a bunch of fabric pieces she picked up for me at her church rummage sale. It’s actually really nice and soft and drapey…. and I’m kinda sad now that I wasted it on a muslin 😦

Sooo…. I bought a twin needle special for this project. You can see it’s “fine” work on the neckline above. The original plan was to use the twin needle for the hems as well, instead of just zig-zag stitching it. Well…. instead I broke the shit out of it! I believe multiple things went wrong here… the needle was too narrow, my machine needs a tune-up (the old girl is from the ’60s after all) and when shit started to go sideways instead of stopping I just kinda forced

Overall, I’m chalking this up to a learning experience. I honestly don’t see myself wearing this shirt much, except maybe on laundry day…. But, I’m going to give things another go- maybe narrowing the shoulders and trying this adjustment, as opposed to, just grading things. We’ll see how it goes

And more bonus knitting! I have dubbed this my bad hair day hat… I made it from leftover yarn from a sweater project using this pattern. I mentioned it once before, but now you get to see it actually on 🙂