another post?!

howdy. i've been meaning to post some pictures of some of the projects we've/i've been working on. first up, another beady. 

...yeah, i know. it's been really fun, though, and challenging. i started out trying to plan the design using photoshop, but that only worked to the ring of red beads, and then things stopped lining up for some reason so i've been winging the rest as i go. that part's hard. i'm not good at envisioning the final result and sometimes i'm too impatient to carefully devise a plan, so i do things without having a strategy in mind and then often end up trying to salvage them. i'm a weird mix of patient and impatient.

next we have some books- i recently found several half-finished books in a box, and for a couple days i worked feverishly on them, vowing to not start any more books until these were finished and, ideally, sold (because i have been slowly amassing a fairly impressive inventory of one-of-a-kind hand-bound books). but before that i made these, inspired by the idea of a book that wasn't a regular ol' rectangle:

 

...and inspired to try something a bit more elaborate with the binding (i added beads, naturally):

and finally, here are pictures of the wee little garden we've started. yay plants!! it wasn't easy- our duplex doesn't have a lot of vacant dirt space, but we do have a lot of concrete. we bought some large, over-priced pots from target a while back (why are pots so expensive???), and then i found pots of equal size, if a bit less attractive, at the dollar store (yes, for a dollar! :) ) and bought several, along with a few rectangular pots. almost two years ago, bart bought several vegetable seed packets as we dreamed of transforming the wesley street house (where he lived at the time) into a garden paradise. well, that didn't work so well (the poor plants were hammered to death by the summer sun's burning, relentless, pounding rays), but he did have a bunch of the seeds left over, which we've planted again this year. surprisingly, a lot of them are still alive. we'd also saved the seeds of nearly every heirloom tomato we bought at the farmer's market last year (but neglected to label them). so we've got cucumber, zucchini, dill, basil, thai basil, oregano, thyme, mint (seeds may be dead), spinach, chard, peas, green beans, carrots, broccoli, and two mystery tomatoes growing in various pots and in the one small, out-of-the-way patch of dirt we can safely call our own. we also have some cosmos started and would like to plant them, along with some california poppies, in a little rectangle of dirt that currently houses one small, somewhat frail rose bush in front of the duplex. i took pictures of the "empty" pots and dirt with the hopes of updating regularly (HA) with pictures of their progress :)

in addition, we were given permission to take home all of the easter lilies at church after easter. we have three of them inside, and gave away one, and the rest are here on the back patio, enjoying the sunshine, and, until very recently, full of extremely fragrant flowers. <3 we also have some geranium and fun little succulent cuttings rooting there. our one successful gardening venture at the wesley house was filling a small square of dirt that has a manzanita tree in it with little succulent cuttings. it has since filled out beautifully and is flourishing. yaaaay for green things!