Queen Anne's Lace scarf

My favorite crochet pattern ever...

Queen Anne's lace scarf

A Forest Painting Evolves

Strings and Stitches

The Burrow

I come from the Molly Weasley school of sewing and stitchery.  It may be crooked and frayed, but if you add enough lace and pretty fabrics,  nobody will notice... much.

My seams are crooked, there are strings all over the place, but I love making pretty little things the girls enjoy wearing.  I am getting better, really, I am!

the bodice was way off...

the bodice fits but the tiers are totally wonky...

This skirt has been my favorite project so far.  I have made two, one for each girl, and they are actually presentable enough to wear out of the house!  The girls love them!  I still need to work on my crooked seams and amateur techniques.  I roughly used McCall's pattern M6066 for the main part of the skirt.  I'm horrible at reading patterns and impatient with those flimsy sheets of... whatever that is, but it's nice to have a guideline for the basic foundation of whatever you are making.  

Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs

These are a bit more time consuming than the food coloring method, but a lot more interesting!  The kids were excited by the whole process and even though the house smelled like cooked onion, cabbage, and vinegar (with a hint of boiled egg), it was well worth the smell and the effort.

We soaked all of the eggs overnight.  I was most impressed with the lovely shade of yellow that resulted from boiled carrot tops, cumin, and celery seed, and equally impressed with the beautiful blue eggs that emerged from the purple cabbage water.

I found most of my dye recipes here, but next year I will try using spinach instead of onions to make green dye.  Red/purple cabbage is perfect, beet juice was pretty but still too pale... next year I will try chopping twice as many beets to make a more concentrated dye.

Happy Easter!