Greenhouse Gardening

Plant shelf with heat coils and grow lights

I'm back to blogging again. My commitments are past; my color design class, after a year, is over. I've been busy exploring various textile crafts and taking pictures but not taking time to write blogs.

Lettuces and Greens

My plans for now? To get my garden spaces cleaned up and ready for this year's growing season. Spring flowering bulbs are starting to bloom and things are greening up and starting to grow. I anxiously await this time of year ... 'Anxious' because some things die from lack of Winter moisture, or pocket gophers and voles. I have started veggie and flower seedlings in my greenhouse: broccoli, cauliflower, kale varieties, tomato varieties, and favorite flowers.

Herbs

I will not bother with growing carrots, radishes, beets, or lettuce again over winter - too labor intensive and a huge electricity draw for keeping it warm. What I will always keep going tho are herbs. I enjoyed having fresh herbs all winter: chives, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, basil, mint, oregano, sage, and thyme (I should have typed some of those in the song's order ... it's now running in my head!). The grapevine's leaves are filling the entire greenhouse ceiling space and Monte keeps looking for newly forming clusters. The clematis vine that twines into the grapevine is just now starting to flower - it's the deep violet Jackmanii variety. Tomato plants in the corner have been giving us cherry tomatoes, but I don't know if I'll grow them over winter again either.

Entwined together: Potted Fig tree, tomatoes, and grapevine

Mock Orange - been babying over a year; seeds from Monte's family homestead

More Ukrainian Egg Dyeing Info

I'm cleaning up the dining room table of all the Ukrainian Egg dyeing tools. I have a box the jarred dyes return to along with all the kistka tools, candle holders, beeswax, how-to instruction sheets and then the vinyl tablecloth. This year there's cartons of undone raw eggs to put by the box in the garage too. Will I pull it all out to make Christmas tree ornaments next fall? Every year I say I will ... We'll see. Varnished, blown out, and hung with silk cord and tassel would be beautiful!

I took some pictures of eggs that got left. Gary made the egg faces. Most people took home their eggs. I save cartons prior to Easter so they can be cut up for protecting a few eggs. Like most of the gals who came to my Spring Tea did two eggs. Friends stayed on into the evening dyeing more. Then, as I was starting to put everything away the Easter weekend Dawson texted me saying he was "bringing lots of friends to dye eggs ... and by the way, we're staying for supper". I had no plans. We had homemade pizzas for supper - a dessert one with brie, chocolate chips, and sliced cranberry sauce was delicious. I want to make it again for improving the recipe.

Something I thought I should mention, to add to the dyeing instructions I've posted about, is the use of bleach. My boys are big-time into the use of bleaching their eggs. You can see in the above picture the back eggs that are quite white. Most of these started out as black eggs, waxed, and then bleached. Travis's egg with the birds and the sunset below, started out black too. He probably bleached it several times, but beware ... excessive bleaching can weaken the egg shell. I bleached one of mine, wanting a truer green after the scarlet, but I didn't wash the egg after bleaching - with soap and water! Bleach will affect the dyes. My egg didn't take the green dye evenly. I hope I didn't wreak the dark green dye. Monte's still got his serpentenite egg in there ... waiting ...

Palm Sunday

My wool bean-bag nativity I made is still displayed on an old travel trunk in the dining room. Maybe the trunk will become my seasonal table for differing displays. I don't pack my creche away anymore. There is a high bookshelf above the windows in our great room that it normally sits on except at Christmas.

For Palm Sunday years past I put a Jesus figure I made from wool on a donkey surrounded by paschal lambs on our kitchen table. I'll have two tablecloths at varying angels that are a deep green and purple. I like to bring palm fronds home from church and add them to the table as well. This year I added a cross and nails to the creche scene and Jesus on the donkey with the lambs in front.

Spring Tea Ukrainian Egg Craft

Merengues spread with jam & cookies

Veggies & 3 dips - boiled small potatoes are the favorite!

I did it again - I had another tea crafting party. Like my Valentine Tea crafting party I posted about, I invited people to tea and learn the art of Ukrainian/Pysanky egg dyeing. Needlefelting was the other craft option. I did a post about the Ukrainian wax resist dye process earlier, so see it for the details. This time I made some desert along with the sandwiches and scones (see my kitchen blog for recipes). The favorite was banana bread spread with Nutella and a Granny Smith apple slice.

Ukrainian Egg Dyeing

Ukrainian Eggs and a Needlefelted Picture

Hanna and Phill needlefelting

Relaxing, eating supper with friends

Dawson using Kistka tool with beeswax on a raw egg

Ukrainian - Pysanky - Egg Dyeing

Ukrainian - Pysanky Eggs

It's that time of year again. I've ordered more dyes, though I still have last year's dyes jarred in a box in the garage. Since more people are going to be coming to our home to do eggs this year, I thought I'd get some fresh dye. We'll use both.

I saw an article in a 1973 National Geographic Magazine on Ukrainian eggs, and wanted to do them. Since I knew how to do Batik textile art, I understood the process, but didn't know special tools existed. As is typical of me, I just jump in and do things. I got beeswax and melted it in a metal measuring cup and stood over the stove painting the wax on eggs. And the only dyes I new of were the typical grocery store Paas (?- I think that's what it is) dyes. Monte joined in the process when we were dating.

Soon after we were married I found the traditional kistka tools and special dyes. For years now we've been ordering supplies from the same store, and have bought kits for wedding presents. We've also bought a lot of extra tools and leave the dyes out for about a month and have had many people around our dining table decorating eggs. One couple, years ago so looked forward to it they started designing eggs months beforehand. When they moved away they bought their own kit and have done it every year.

Though electric kistkas exist, it's traditionally done by heating the metal funnel of the kistka over a candle till the beeswax is melted. It does not run out until it touches the egg. It's a wax-resist process, starting from lightest and getting progressively darker. You initially wax over everything you want white and put egg in yellow, once dry, you wax over what you want to stay yellow, and so on. When done you hold the egg to the side of the candle and wipe the melting wax off with a paper towel. The eggs are raw and they dry out over time.

This picture is just one of the three cartons that got done several years ago. That was a very productive and artistic weekend of eggs - Travis had several couples come and stay several days to dye eggs (and enjoy just hanging out, of coarse). Dawson has friends come too. Everyone loves it! I've gotten emails from both boys this year - going to be bringing friends again!

I cap the canning jars of dye and repack the box. I store them along with the old silver spoons, candles and candle-holders, box of tools and instructions and pictures, and then the vinyl tablecloth. It can be pulled out anytime. Every year I say I'm going to do it for Christmas ornaments - but I haven't yet.

Several years ago Monte made a shelf for the eggs to better display than the hanging wire baskets I've always kept them in. The company I order the dyes and tools from, the Ukrainian Gift Shop, has a variety of stands for the eggs. So I got a bunch of the cheap clear plastic stands. Monte is going to make a shelf unit for each of the kids too.



Having done these for years, I never varnished them and finally did a few years ago. It's a final step I've always skipped. So some of the varnished ones are older and already faded. These dyes are toxic, so no eating of the eggs, but are not run-proof, so make sure the varnish is not water-base. We nailed three nails every so often in boards to support the eggs and I use my gloved hands to rub the oil-base varnish on the eggs. (The stands could be used in the oven on low temp for helping melt the beeswax off. I've not tried this - but a book I have shows it.)

MOPS NeedleFelting Craft

I've been a MOPS Mentor Mom going on 11 years now. I led the needlefelting craft for my MOPS group today. It was so fun and the gals were gabbing away while creating beautiful felted pictures. Most of them were needled onto craft felt that I provided. I'll glue these onto cardstock and use as cards.

Felted Lariat Flower Necklace

Felted Lariat Necklace

I've been having so much fun exploring more wet felting techniques. There's a lot of felted jewelry ideas to explore. For this Lariat necklace I first needlefelted the flowers and leaves. Then I wet felted the green rope. Then I needled on the leaves and flowers. I might want to add some beads.

Felting Over Styrofoam - Eggs and Wreath

Wet-felting over styrofoam

Just like felting over soap, you can felt over styrofoam. Just like my felted soap tutorial, I'm using the plastic sandwich bag for felting over the eggs. At the time, I only had the smooth styrofoam. I wanted to experiment again. I'd totally needlefelted wool Christmas ornaments and found the styrofoam needed to be the pourous rough styrofoam. This time I wanted to wet felt the initial wool layer to the egg - so much faster. In fact, once blotted in a towel, you can needle your design details with the still wet wool ... if you need to, which I did need to when I did another tea crafting party ... but that's another post ...

So start with the coarse styrofoam for balls, eggs, wreaths, whatever shape ... when you want to needlefelt. The only way I could get design details on the smooth styrofoam wet felted eggs was to needle the flowers on sideways catching the designs into the wool - so don't even mess with the smooth styrofoam. I order most of my wool from HalcyonYarns.com. The Babooshka Soup bag has lots of wool strings and other fun fibers that make for decorating ornaments and eggs very easy. I love the Peace Fleece fiber and the Harrisville wools.

Tightly cover the styrofaom with thin layers of wool. Carefully squish into a corner of a plastic sandwich bag, put a drop of dishsoap on the wool, let the water get hot and put a bit in the bag. Squeeze the bag around the egg and then start slowly rubbing the plastic around (I still have not tried doing this in a nylon stocking). Then rub the plastic more and more all over the egg so the fibers can migrate and tangle together tightly. The soap will disperse all thruout the wool. You'll eventually need to squeeze out the excess soapy water and rub some more. At this point I'll often rinse the wool, squeezing out excess, but a bar of soap over it and then rub over bubble wrap for another form of agitation. I don't do this for long because needling on a design will tighten things up more. This whole process probably amounts to just a few minutes per egg. Rinse them well and blot in a towel.

Then needle on your design details. I didn't take a picture of the finished eggs ... I'll have to do that and post.

Wool DreadLocks

I LOVE dreadlocks. I'm attracted to dreadlocks. I think I would like dreadlocks. But I wouldn't want to shave my head when I tired of them. So if anyone can tell me differently, let me know ...

Wool Dreadlocks

I made wool dreadlocks and attached them to a crocheted headband I made. Monte would rather I make dreadlocks that match my hair coloring - looking more natural. So maybe I'll make a wig of them someday ... But here's what I made so far ...

I pulled long stands of wool, wet them with hot soapy water and gently rolled them on bubblewrap. That's it. I left one end unfelted. I stuck these ends through the crochet holes and wet the headband and soaped it up and rubbed it on bubblewrap. This secured the wool locks to the headband.