Garden Progress at Last!!

We've had a long stretch of rainy, cold weather that made it seem as though summer would never come. Not to mention that the community garden doesn't open until May 18 (!!) As the rain poured down and the gates stayed closed, my small seedlings turned into wild beasts, threatening to take over our guest room.

'A few more days and we'll eat the cat.'

Last week we had a decent stretch on sunshine, and although I didn't want to be that person to jump the gun and plant all of my babies just to be killed off by a late frost, we did roll up our sleeves and start building our garden. You see, we're going a bit overboard this year: in addition to our 20x20 plot at the community garden, we're doing a small 6x4x12 raised bed right outside of our apartment. We're going to plant everyday veggies there like lettuce, spinach, and basil, as well as some tomatoes and some other varieties to compare how they grow in the bed versus the garden.

First, we tore up the sod under where the bed would go. We went for the more eco-friendly, gas free tilling option by using a manual tiller (in other words, Brian couldn't figure out how to get the roto-tiller the neighbor loaned us to start!) The blisters are still raw...six by four sounds small until you have to tear it up yourself!

Brian earning his keep, and putting his back into tilling

It turned out that we have really, really good soil for a base. According to the Vegetable Gardner's Bible (buy it now), roots are the most under appreciated, misunderstood, and most important part of a plant. Yes, we could have just plopped down a weed barrier and poured our topsoil on top of it, but plants shoot down a lot of important biomass down into the earth. We wanted to make sure that there was nothing in the way.

In addition, our soil is a well drained loamy-sand. There were far fewer rocks than anticipated, and so many fat earthworms that I'll never be buying bait again. Worms are another indicator of healthy soils.

Yum!

 We dug post holes for the corners, and settled the frame that Brian has build. We then filled it with a 50:30:20 mix of topsoil, peat and compost. Of course, not a few hours later it started to rain, and the forecast doesn't show it stopping for another week. Stay tuned for the transplants, if they haven't eaten me by then!

Brian adding the finishing touches to our first raised bed

Rainy day activity - Tea Napkins

Now that we're a little more settled in our new barn, we've been having more folks over for dinner and keggers cocktails. I tend to go all out for these get togethers - loads of appetizers and deserts, using my fancy serving ware, and then...paper towels? Not super classy and most of all, not super fun. I also don't feel like buying paper napkins, because they're #1 wasteful and #2 there not super versatile, they're just...napkins.

So that brings us to cloth napkins. They're stuck in the worlds of fancy restaurants and thanksgiving dinner at Grandmas. Wrap your head around how awesome they can be! They're cute, reusable, cheap, and you can go nuts making them in different style for every season.

Sure, you can go buy fabric napkins at a place like Crate & Barrel, and pay $8 a piece for them. Better yet, you can dust off your sewing machine, pick up a few yards of cute fabric at JoAnns, and kill a few hours making however many napkins you'd like. For the following project, the total cost per napkin came to less than a dollar per napkin.

Cutting mat and quilting ruler, useful for so many projects!

You'll Need:

• Fabric (1.5 yards made me 9 12" tea sized napkins. Try to get a fabric without a lot of stretch and a non-linear pattern, you'll find it much more forgiving) 
• SHARP scissors
• Regular weight thread
• Sewing Machine
• Iron with steam function
• Measuring devices - I find that the quilting ruler and rotary cutting mat are well worth the extra dough for projects like these.

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Lazy Corners

1. Pick out your material. I wanted something spring/summer flavored, and cheap. This fabric was $3.99 a yard. The irregular pattern means I don't have to worry about the print looking crooked like you do with a line pattern. Also, the less stretch it has, the easier it will be to iron straight seams.
2. Decide how large you want your napkins. Full size dinner napkins are around 14". Take into account seam allowances  (for my 12" napkins I cut 13" raw) and the width of your material.
3. Measure and cut. I forgot to pick up a soluble fabric pens, so I used a soft pencil on the backside of the fabric to mark my cuts. They will get rolled into the seam.

Ziggy to the Zag stitch

4. Using an iron with the steam on, roll over 1/4" of fabric and crease flat. The steam will help really set the crease. If your machine doesn't have a serger, you'll have to roll the edge over a second time and press again. This ensures that all raw edges are wrapped up and sewn inside and you won't have to worry about frayed edges. If you do have a serger...I'm jealous.

5. At some point, you'll have to decide what sort of corner you want. You can do the lazy, folded over corners like I did, or you can do a mitered corner (think hospital bed sheet). My fingers aren't nimble enough to hold the fabric in a mitered shape, let alone holding it to iron. If you did 1/2" seams, it would probably be a lot easier. The mitered edges do look a lot cleaner, there's no arguing that.

6. Sew away! I used a zig zag stitch because it's more forgiving if you're not doing an absolutely straight line, which I definitely don't have the patience for. I find the ZZ also did a better job at locking down the seam. None of this applies if you're a lucky bastard with a serger.

7.  That's it. Throw a party, then throw these bad boys in the wash. Enjoy over and over.

Finished product!