These little charmers are called spiderwort. I have no idea why. And the Latin name is rather a mouthful, tradescantia. They are perennials, native to the eastern seaboard. I received a few bedraggled plants last year, and they have adapted happily, blooming profusely this year.

pink and blue spiderwort flowers

My favorite fruit salads are usually composed mostly of berries—no bananas for me thank you. This one here has strawberries, blueberries, red plum and blackberries. I’m hoping that later this summer we’ll have blueberries off our own bushes, wild blackberries and maybe a few strawberries as well. Confession, I really don’t know the difference between blackberries and black raspberries. But I think maybe what we have in our backyard is not like these storebought blackberries so maybe they are actually black raspberries.

fruit salad strawberries blueberries plum blackberries

We had a dead tree taken down so I let the kids, ours and the neighbors, play on it for a few hours. They had a great time pretending the tree was a fort, a castle, a mountain, a nest . . . We also enjoyed, well, some of us enjoyed peeling back the bark and watching all the creepy crawlies shy away from the light. There was also a rather intense debate on the possible dangers of mushrooms and fungi. I stayed out of it for the most part but helped guide them to the conclusion that mushrooms were best left alone unless bought in the store or eaten at a restaurant.

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For a school field trip, the girl’s class was required to dress in orange shirts. The girl’s teacher was less than thrilled and I do have to admit that orange is not a common color in the girl’s wardrobe. The girl does have a tie-dyed orange tee shirt handed down from her brother that she could have worn but . . . I just can’t leave well enough alone.

So I took apart a tee shirt of mine in a nice pumpkin pie color. I modified a peasant shirt pattern with a little inspiration from a tee in the girl’s closet featuring raw edges. I had no thread that looked remotely suitable so I pulled out a directly contrasting slate blue and stitched away. I used the neckline trim to create an elastic casing for the neckline and empire waist. Having run out of the round cord I stitched some gathers into the sleeves by hand. I gathered strips cut from leftovers into rosettes and sewed tiny buttons to the centers, placing one on each sleeve gather and a grouping of five off-center on the empire waist. It turned out really cute I think. And the girl loved it.

pumpkin orange raw edge peasant tee

raw edge hand stitched gathered flowers rosettes with button centers

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This project is on the list, unlike some other things I’ve been doing lately, but I admit it is pretty far down the list. Why are those projects farther down the list so much more enticing?

Anyway, we have a lot to do this weekend and I decided I could accomplish one thing by doing the dump/recycle run this morning. Since it was sunny out (yay!) I drove up to the junk wood piles and the girl and I scouted for usable pieces. I was mainly looking for 1x4s so I can construct a roof frame for the top of the slide tower which the kids refer to as the treehouse.

wooden swingset slide tower treehouse fort

Since the swingset is nicely weathered, it seems silly to buy new wood, especially when there is perfectly good salvaged wood available for the hunting. I did find some suitable 1x4s, the girl found quite a few pieces for building a “castle”, and we also found a few other interesting pieces.

salvaged wood pieces

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One of the pieces I found was just the right size to make a counter to attach to the posts under the fort. We also found a turned post long enough to cut in half to make legs. It’s not exactly level but it is sturdy. The girl found some large painted fruit cutouts and we brought those along. After arriving home we had just enough time before lunch to cut and install some support pieces and get the counter into place.

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I’m sure it will serve nicely as an ice cream counter/farm stand/whatever-the-kids-dream-up. The roof frame will have to wait, the threat of gray skies and the need to do some math have driven me indoors for now.

salvaged wood counter and painted wood fruit on swingset slide fort treehouse

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I received a very polite e-mail from a reader asking about the pattern for the cyclette bag (see here and here). I had intended to write up the pattern with pictures and apparently didn’t get around to it. Not a surprise. But looking back through the pictures I did actually make three of them! Which is a lot for me, I rarely make two of the same thing. But I didn’t take process pictures of any of them, waah.

So I decided to make another one and write up the instructions and take pictures along the way. It turned out to be a bit more involved than I had thought it would be. None of the sewing is particularly difficult, there were just more steps than I remembered. It is a rather clever construction (If I may say so myself) and requires no hand sewing but all seams are neatly enclosed. I’m not sure how I will proceed with formatting this one. The pattern lends itself to a few variations, which I may play out in order to incorporate into the finished pattern/tutorial.

But here are the pictures of the latest cyclette bag, inspired by the musette bag or feed bag carried by cyclists. The bag is sized to hold lunch and a water bottle, plus your wallet and keys in the inner zippered pocket.

random-charm's cyclette bag musette bag cyclist tote inside zipper pocket detail tote bag

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We’ve had rather a lot of rainy days this spring. Yesterday it was dry enough that the kids got outside and went crazy for a few hours. I think there were 6-7 kids running between our house and the next door neighbor’s. Today back to rain.

Liv doll Barbie Blythe hand sewn handmade dress

I made this sunny dress and matching hair scrunchie out of some scraps for the girl’s Liv doll, Alexia. I didn’t have a pattern and I didn’t make one either. I just sort of cut and pinned as I went along. Which is great in that it went together fast and relatively painlessly for such small work but not so great in that I would have to do the same amount of work to duplicate it. But I rarely do the same thing twice so it probably doesn’t matter much.

I used the ultra thin clear velcro that I found at the hardware store. It says that it is not recommended for fabrics but I ignored that of course. It did stick to the fabric enough to make it easy to work with and it was quite easy to sew through. I just cleaned a bit of adhesive off the needle when I was done. The closure is neat, easy to open and close and barely noticeable. Now she just needs some sandals and a sunny day!

micro thin clear velcro closure on handmade doll dress

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I love the slow unfolding of spring here. Every season really, but especially spring, seems to bring subtle changes every day.

Behind the house in the “wild” there are various ferns poking up to uncurl their fronds and strange primordial-looking plants pushing up through piles of dead leaves.

fern leaves uncurling

curled fern heads fiddleheads

ghost pale ferns

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And around the front of the house we have a swath of cheery daffodils nodding under the flowering cherry tree. A gentle breeze sends pale pink petals drifting like snow.

yellow daffodils foundation planting

cherry blossoms sakura against the blue sky

cherry blossoms against white wood sakura

More to come.

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I know this is not the only thing I’ve crafted in the last few weeks but I’m really at a loss as to what else I’ve been doing! I suppose we’ve been outside more. We are really full swing into spring now and it’s lovely to hear all the little birds and see all sorts of shoots coming up out of the ground. Sometimes I can’t remember what I planted where!

cast-on with handspun handdyed wool yarn

This project began with some yarn leftover from a hat I made for the girl, along with some other remnants that I used as dye sops. A simple but interesting construction, the pattern of paired decreases produces the soft scalloped edge. The finished knit looked like a crumpled mess.

knitted flower bowl ready to be felted

With faith and several runs through the washer and dryer it shaped up nicely into this sweet little felted flower bowl (link to Ravelry).

felted fulled knit wool flower bowl

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Look what came in the mail! All the way from England!

sushi cat custom poster

A one-of-a-kind picture of our cats Duke and Lila romping with the famous Sushi Cat, from the adorable arcade style game by Armor Games. The reaction from the kids was pretty funny.

“Aww, it’s Sushi Cat.”
“Wait, who’s that?”
“Hey, it’s Duke and Lila.”
“But . . . how?!”

JimP, the video game artist who created Sushi Cat, admired the felt Sushi Cats I made for the kids at Christmas so I sent him one of his own. He created this adorable poster incorporating stylized portraits of our cats as a thank you.

Thank you, JimP!

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I don’t know where the boy got this idea but he came to me with this sketch and a promotional toy ball and requested that we cover the ball in yarn and “knit” the body. My kids often come up with ideas they really can’t accomplish on their own and I generally fall for “helping” them make their creations. They do make plenty of their own creations with very little help.

In the advertising world, the production artist is the person who makes the creative or art director’s sketch into reality. Although they are usually at the bottom of the org chart, a good production artist is worth their weight in gold. I am not a good production artist. But I suppose this was good practice. The art director seemed pleased with the results and was even persuaded to help with some of the production.

orange skeleton mohawk dude kid drawing

We have recently acquired a rather large collection of worsted weight acrylic yarn balls in all colors from a neighbor and I have found these quite useful for occasions such as these. He quickly picked out the desired colors and I went to work on crocheting a cover for the toy ball. Yes, I could knit this but I’m better at winging it with crochet and I find it easier to get a firmer fabric with crochet, so better for dolls and animals.

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Boring part over we moved on to the body. I started each foot and then had him sit in front of me and helped him through single crocheting the stripes. It’s just a matter of sticking the hook through the right hole and pulling out a loop of yarn. We joined the legs into a body with more stripes, I did the decreases toward the neck and crocheted the arms and the blue eye rounds. He helped me sew on the arms and the details on the face. I did about one row of hair and he did the rest, styling as he went.

amigurumi mohawk skeleton striped dude

He took it to class for share day with a cardboard guitar he made. Rock on, mohawk dude.

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This is actually from a few weeks ago but I hadn’t gotten around to posting it. The girl likes to work with polymer clay on occasion. Usually I’m pretty strict about making a sketch first, otherwise she is apt to just cut it up into pieces and well, it’s not clay-dough. This time I didn’t ask her to sketch but we did discuss what she wanted to make. I helped make sure things were sturdy and fairly well attached but she did most of the work. I was amused to watch her put the legs on her cat just the same way she draws them, in a straight row instead of two by two!

5 year old's drawing of animal with long tail

The pet, as she referred to the cat she made.

polymer clay cat kid art child

And the pet owner, as she referred to the girl with blue hair. I made the feet so she would stand up on her own like the cat.

polymer clay cat and girl by five year old

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I have had a nice but rather large spice rack for some time. I recently traded with someone who had this cute vintage black spice rack that I intended to give to the girl. But when it arrived, well, I decided to keep it for its intended purpose. Good thing I didn’t tell her. It guilted me into finding her a bigger, more suitable shelf for her little stuffies that we already had in the basement anyway.

Before and after pictures. Just cleaned up the new (old) rack and put only the most used spices on it. It looked immediately at home in our c. 1952 kitchen. Not sure how I’ll use the little drawer but it will easily hold 4×6 or probably even 5×7 recipe cards. Now if I could just clean up the rest of that counter . . .

large wood spice rack vintage painted black wooden spice rack

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I’m doing my first test knitting. Am I qualified for that? I don’t know but I volunteered. This is one of those kinds of projects that you probably have to have kids to appreciate. It’s not necessarily the warmest or most practical winter hat, but I think it’s going to be very popular at school.

Knitting Ninja’s Shark Hat – new version to be released soon on Ravelry.

Pictures below of my version. There were some parts I was unclear on so it could be I got some things wrong but it’s still awfully cute and definitely wearable. Nom, nom, nom. I think I’ll be making more of these.

hand knitted shark hat

And surprise, surprise, girly girl thought it was the best thing in the world. She begged to wear it to school (sorry, not yet) and chased her brother around the house wearing it.

knitting ninja's shark hat pattern hand knitted shark hat with button eyes

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Area farms that make maple syrup open their gates to the public on the last weekend in March around here. This was the first year that we were able to make the timing work. Having recently watched a horse movie, we chose to visit the Cooper farm where they raise miniature horses, creamy white Charolais cattle, and a number of exotic birds as well as tapping their maple trees and keeping bees. The air was crisp but sunny and we enjoyed the walk around the farm squishing our boots through the Maine mud and ending up in the warm, steaming sugaring house, drinking in the smells of wood smoke and maple sap cooking down into syrup. A sampling of maple syrup drizzled ice cream provided the happy ending. We brought home powdered maple sugar, some maple cotton candy (the only kind of cotton candy worth eating), and local honey.

miniature horse

pheasants, peacocks and chickens

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running jumping on shrink wrapped hay bales

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The boy’s class had an Arctic Celebration this evening complete with readers’ theater, songs, artwork, games and snacks, and surprise—snow—so appropriate to the theme and late March in Maine.

handmade cookie cutter polar bear

I had volunteered to bring something baked and at the last minute (not a surprise) I decided that I just had to make polar bear shaped shortbread. Had to. A piece of aluminum roof flashing, a pair of pliers and a few minutes of careful bending yielded a serviceable cookie cutter in a graphically simple shape of a polar bear reminiscent of Inuit sculpture. The boy helped me make the simple shortbread dough and we had just enough time to bake the bears before heading off through the snow to see his classmates and their families at the school.

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hand-knit pink sweater dress

Over the last month I have been knitting on this project nearly every night after a certain princess went to bed. The free pattern is the Oriental Lily dress by Georgie Hallam and I followed it pretty closely except for using size 3 for the width and size 5/6 for the length. Not only is this the biggest project I’ve knitted but it is has also been one of the most interesting, not because of any detail of the pattern but because of the way in which it came together.

In so many ways this dress (Ravelry project link) was a group effort. Two different members of the Ravelry community gave me the two yarns I knit together for the main color. My dear neighbor E. gave me a huge bag of odds and ends in which was the perfect contrasting berry color. I read through the notes on Ravelry from the other knitters who have made up the pattern before me, allowing me to make the perfect size. When I was done with the bodice but having a mental crisis on whether the dress was hideous or Pinkalicious, so many people on Ravelry responded to my forum post. They gave me the overwhelming support I needed to go on and finish with confidence.

The girl was quite pleased and came bounding into our room this morning full of thanks. She whirled and twirled all day and then proclaimed that she wants to wear it every day, forever!

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