Some Summer Goodness From the Backyard

We believe four of our five hens are laying eggs. Today we cracked open two eggs with double yolks to our surprise! Our Banty Hera laid the small light brown egg, the other brown eggs are from the sexlink hens and of course our coveted green egg is from miss Helen, our beautiful Americauna. They all have an amazing orange yolk color from their free ranging habits.
I am especially proud of the yellow pear and tigerella heirloom tomatoes I started from seed. This is my first harvest. The blackberries came with the house. Again, such amazing abundance have we been given.

The next bit of goodness is a toddling Boo with straight up ponytail and blackberry juice smeared everywhere.



Since she loves berries so much, we've slid into calling her Booberry. Notice the juice between the fingers. This makes her extra delectable.




It was hard to shoot this moving target, but this pic gives you the overall impression we enjoyed last night after dinner.

And ignoring my blog!!

Maybe it is just a sign of summer to let things slide. Maybe my baby became an official toddler and maybe she just happens to be cutting molars as well... in any case, circumstances have conspired to keep me from blogging.

There were a lot of great possible posts and I stikk, ahem, still couldn"t blog. If you could see me now, nak-ing and batting away stray feet and hands from the keyboard, then you would understand the lack of any posts for 6 weeks!

Those posts would have been about camping over the 4th of July, our first chicken eggs laid in the ivy off our deck, all the sewing going on around here, Fairy Girl in her Irish dance class, visiting with cousins, Boo walking for the first time, fresh peach pies, and more!

But tonight I bring you pictures of a project I have been wanting to make since last fall. I finally started it this weekend and finished it today. It's called "Dress with quilted bodice" from Junko Okawa's book, Carefree Clothes for Girls. It has two layers of contrasting gauze and also quilt batting in the bodice. Sewing crinkly gauze or even just cutting out the pattern pieces was a whole new learning curve for me. Thankfully, the dress is supposed to fray and that hides a lot of the lessons I learned making it! I used gold embroidery thread to quilt the bodice and also to add a glimpse of shimmer to the overskirt's hem. The back closes with finger knitted gold thread loops around understated white buttons. Have I bored you all yet? Anyway, after dreaming of this dress for nearly the the time it takes to gestate a real baby, I can finally say it will cease haunting my creative urges.

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