Drbarb’s Weblog

Has been raining for weeks now – very unusual for Texas. Good time to get things done indoors but ready for some sun! I find I am able to motivate myself much more easily when the sun is out .

Anyhow I am going to be selling some of my knitting and other fiber art at the Lakewood Home Festival on November 14th and 15th. This past weekend I atmepted more nunofeltng and am pleased with the outcome. The scarf is a combination of blue merino wool and silk hankies that I dyed. Am pretty pleased – it is soft  - love the colors. Here it is…..

And a closeup……

A few weeks ago I needlefelted and wet felted this yellow scarf. I dyed the silk scarf a pale green and decided to go with the yellow – more of a spring color but I like the final product.

And one more. I just noticed that ruffles are in this year. My daughter saw a similar scarf at a yarn shop when I was visiting in Seattle – actually a shop in Bellevue. She said she loved it – so I found some similar yarn and knitted it up – pretty easy and really ruffly!

Will post more of my items soon. And BTW I was embarrassed to note that I posted the cute picture of my grandson and me twice! Maybe it is all this rain or just a senior moment!

I spent a week in Seattle and just now realized I never blogged about it. Guess Oprah and the cucumbers got me off track!!
Here is a picture of my daughter’s beautiful heirloom tomatoes – the gardening gene has passed on.

And I finally taught Stella how to knit. She was so proud of herself!

Here is a cute picture of S and S and their dog – Mersey – an 18 month old Australian Shepherd.

And finally here is the family waiting for the school bus on the first day of school AND a picture of a very loose front tooth!

See what I mean – definitely growing up too fast.

Cooler days, pumpkins all over the place and Halloween just around the corner. Here are pictures of little Grace at the arboretum.



And here is a birthday cake I made for a friend last week. I made real buttercream frosting – so good and worth the effort! I substituted regular cocoa for dutch processed and found out it wasn’t as good – a little dry and not as flavorful.

I decorated it with a caladium leaf and a penta flower. Will definitely do the buttercream again and will buy some dutch processed cocoa!
Am going to two different garden tours today so need to get going. I will pick and choose gardens from each tour but it is going to be a beautiful day today and this is one of my favorite things to do- will post pictures!

My grandson and I visited the Texas Discovery Gardens new indoor butterfly house a couple of weekends ago. It is wonderful. Met one of my gardening friends there and he took a snapshot of us watching the butterflies!


And here is a picture of a butterfly that landed on my grandson – he wasn’t leaving until one landed on him. Proud of him for being so patient.

We have had cool weather and rain for the last several days. So still waiting to get my fall veggies in. Texas State Fair starts tomorrow and it is going to be sunny and in the low 80’s – perfect!

Am so embarrassed that I didn’t know what kind of cucumbers I grew so I did some research today and found out what they were – Armenian! I thought I had purchased some type of Asian cucumber but had thrown out the seed packet last Spring. I will definitely plant them again – they were both delicious and prolific and BIG – see my previous post!

Am getting ready to put in my Fall vegetable crop – broccoli, kale, lettuce, beets and maybe some turnips. Already have two tomato plants in and my eggplant is still producing. Also have some cherry tomatoes in a pot that are still going. Of course, I have tons of herbs as always.

BTW we found out here in North Texas that Oprah is coming to the State Fair on October 12th  Not sure if my cucumbers will be featured but at least I now know what variety they are! Think that would teach me to save seed packets!

Found out today in the mail that I won three ribbons at the TEXAS STATE FAIR – one first place and two honorable mention!

My first place winner is red tomato relish – actually it was a recipe for French Canadian ketchup. Well, they didn’t exactly have a category for anything French Canadian at the state fair.  Big surprise! So I entered it under red tomato relish.

Here is the recipe!

My next ribbon was honorable mention for this photograph from my garden:

And my last ribbon, also honorable mention,  was for this nunofelted scarf:

Every summer when I don’t think I can stand one more 100 degree day I walk in my garden and am always shocked and amused to see my surprise (spider) lilies popping up. You wouldn’t think anything would want to come up during this relentless heat but up they come like brave little soldiers! And they always make me smile. I have them planted in various places all over my garden so I shall be amused and amazed for he next several weeks! 

And here is my brilliant milkweed plant waiting for monarchs to come!

Caladiums offer wonderful color for the garden too. I am in the process of pressing some of these – they are so pretty.

And here is a completed piece of garden art. These are all found objects – most left  over from other projects. Did I ever mention my DH never throws anything away?

And finally in my year of decorating the garden I had our handy man build this fence to hide our pool equipment – an eyesore in the backyard. We bought these Bamboo poles for half price intending to use them somewhere/sometime!  Still need to incorporate some bamboo in the front of this structure but such an improvement!

I haven’t posted in quite a while – think about it but just don’t get it done for some reason. So here goes. I saw Julie and Julia yesterday with a very good friend. I just loved it and came home and wanted to cook. Didn’t want to debone a duck or anything that extraordinary but my DH and I came up with this dinner.
It is tilapia, royal blend texmati rice and a  cucumber and bell pepper salad. The cucumbers are from my garden – really kind of unusual asian cucumbers with incredible crunch!

I had a great tomato crop this year – actually almost satisfied my yearly tomato cravings. And I still have tomatoes growing. Still a mystery to me but the squirrels have moved out of our back yard. My neighbor put out a lot of bird feeders and I think they all went over there robbing from her bird feeders. So they stayed out of my  garden. Here is a picture of one of my beauties:

And one of our favorite meals in the summer – a BLT - actually I make mine  a BBT – bacon, basil and tomato!

And our  Texas heat. We really had a nice long Spring but we are now in the 90’s and probably going to stay that way. My grandson is thrilled that our pool is now open. He has been  waiting patiently.

Had some good friends visit over the weekend. My long time friends’ husband had a high school class reunion – 40th! My DF didn’t want to go so we treated ourself to a wonderful dinner at York St. in Dallas. It is one of the fifty best restaurants in the US and is 10 minutes away. The food was wonderful – even bought some leftovers of blue fin tuna and beets for my DH. He was highly appreciative. Darwin decided he had to get in the picture too but no leftovers for him!