urban bee corridors

i’m super stoked on bees.
recently  i went to a workshop called “how to grow a pollinator garden” put on by master beekeeper jennifer bach. i learned all kinds of fascinating things about bees. there are 20-50 thousand bees in a hive, almost all of them female (3-10% are male "drones"). did you know that the male bees are born from unfertilized eggs? does that seem possible? they are literally genetic clones of the queen. they hang out in “drone congregations” high up in the atmosphere.  when a queen is ready to mate (only once in her life) she flies way up there and zooms past the drones, and whomever’s fast enough to catch up with her she mates with (12-30 of them) and then she keeps the sperm in her body for the rest of her life, using it as needed to fertilize eggs for the next 5 years. she only mates with drones from other colonies, so essentially it’s the genetic coupling of two different queens’ dna that produces the next generation. fascinating.

 

i also learned that bees in urban areas can often be healthier than bees in agricultural areas because they aren’t as likely to be exposed to pesticides and vast areas of monoculture crops – which are bad for their health. that’s pretty sad, but it renewed my sense of the importance of growing backyard and patio gardens, to provide a sort of urban bee corridor.
they recommended letting 10% of your plants like basil and lettuce go to seed so the bees can enjoy it too, plus then you can collect seeds for replanting. another good tip was to try to plant a diversity of flowering plants that bloom at different times, so the bees have a consistent source of nectar throughout the year. they also appreciate having a source of water nearby when they are feeding, so if you set up a water dish or feature try putting small stones in it so the bees can access the water without getting wet. i’m definitely inspired to plant more flowering things and hope to lend a hand to our pollinator friends.
i also learned that bees leave pheromones on a flower when they sucked out the nectar, and those pheromones evaporate at the same rate that the plant takes to replenish the nectar - so it's a kind of marking signal that says to other bees "don't bother with this one." awesome.
one more interesting tidbit- when the queen hatches a new queen, the old queen takes half the hive and leaves the house to her new protege - this is when hives "swarm" - the hive lands somewhere, usually a tree - and waits while the scouts go out and find possible new hive locations. when the scouts come back to the hive they report what they've each found, and each bee in the hive communicates with the bees immediately around her, and they come to agreement about which is the best new location by essentially "voting." i'd like to learn more about this process. some people are referring to bee hives as a "super organism" - meaning the hive has an intelligence and ability that is beyond the sum of its parts.
at the workshop they had honey tastings provided by local beekeepers - and the jars were labeled by which month/season they were harvested - i was amazed at how completely different honey from spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons taste - even here in hawaii where seasonal changes are relatively subtle.

i was catching up on overdue presents and other personal projects that had been on hold for the past month while i focused on our eat local campaign. The bees inspired me, and i went home buzzing with enthusiasm that came out in the form of these potholders for my friend -and fellow birthday buddy - cathy.
it’s been a while since i’ve done paper piecing – since the dragonfly quilt- but it came back to me and gave me an excuse to dig into my box of scrap fabrics, which was one of the few things i shipped from oakland to hawai'i when i moved. i whipped these out late one night and am quite pleased with how they turned out. cathy’s an amazing cook (among many other things), and i hope these bees will bring her inspiration as well.

crayon roll-up

i’m pretty pleased with this super quick and easy baby present pattern i found at skip to my lou. i had a friend’s first baby luau to go to last weekend, and since i’d been so busy with work i hadn’t gotten around to a present until the day of, which also happened to be my first day of moving into our new place, so time was short.

thankfully googling “easy baby present sewing” turned up this gem – a crayon kit to go that’s vinyl on the inside so it doesn’t get all market up, and is small enough to wrap up and stick in your purse for instant entertainment on the road.
i didn’t have rickrack, which i think would have made it better, but i’m pretty pleased with how it came out, using some scrap camo print vinyl leftover from our grill cozy.

i also ended the project at exactly the right time – check out my spool of yellow thread at the very end of the project. a good sign!

hau’oli la hanau e kahiwa!

baby hats on a plane

this labor day weekend i'm working on a long-anticipated baby project. yep the baby's already been born, but i don't want to give away the surprise gift, so i will *not* be blogging about that one just yet.
for now let me show you the baby hats i made on the plane ride back from oklahoma last month. these don't have a particular baby in mind, i just figure it's always good to be prepared with baby gifts - plus they're so fast to make = good plane project.
i actually only made 1 1/2 of these hats, since one of them was started during an impromptu crochet lesson involving marty's niece nia, his aunty linda, and... well, guess who knows how to crochet now?

mmhmm, that's right.

week six: valentines fortune cookies

marty and i are apart this valentines day, and i wanted to send him with something to open and celebrate our love while he's away. this was a great suggestion by my coworker friend julie: fortune cookies with favorite memories from the past year. she recommended getting nice valentines card stock and a chinese food container from ben franklin (they'll even cut the paper in circles for you there!) but i ended up doing this project late at night while marty was dj-ing, so i had to use magazine pictures (recycled!).

i sort of wanted to make real fortune cookies to house our memories, but it looks like those are really hard to make, and i wrote out 26 fortunes, so i figured that was kind of an exorbitant amount of cookies to eat by yourself, and awkward to share them with someone if they have personal anecdotes hidden inside.
so i went for the paper ones. check out this great tutorial on how to do it.  it took me a bit to get the right size for the magazine pages to be transformed into cookie shapes rather than just crumpling or folding in half.

 i took a page from the book (so to speak) of real fortune cookie-making when my rolled up tape trick wasn't really doing it, and i glued the inner crease and then put the "cookies" in an egg carton to set. egg cartons are so handy! the real fortune cookie recipes i read said that if you were actually able to deftly fold the fortune cookies while still hot enough to not crack and crumble (and perhaps not burn your fingers) you should let them cool in a muffin tin so they keep their shape.

that seemed to work well, and i did make it to ben franklin's the next morning before his flight to pick up a chinese food box (though all they had were shades of pastel). it turns out 26 fortune cookies is too many to fit in a box, even if they are paper and small. so the box was a little overflowing and i hope it made it safely to oakland.

 happy valentines day.

week four: posture wrist rest

now that i have a job where i spend most of my days in front of the computer, i'm noticing the repetitive strain on my body: namely my wrists, neck and shoulders. i remember years ago i had a nice squishy mini-beanbag pillow-type thing that i rested my wrist on while handling the mouse, and that seemed to help. if i can, i'd rather make something myself than buy it, so i got an idea when my new laptop battery came in the mail padded with some squishy foam inserts.

since i already had the sewing machine set up from finishing the 'ulu quilt, i decided to whip up a quick wrist rest.
i took one of the foam inserts, folded it in half, and stitched up a mini pillowcase out of scrap fabric. i stuffed the folded foam into the pillowcase and finished the last edge by hand. it was a quick and dirty process, but i'm pretty pleased with the results. while the texture of the foam is not quite as appealing as whatever those little beads were in the manufactured wrist pillow, it is significantly lighter - it hardly weighs anything - which is a definite advantage considering my shoulder bag weighs nearly a ton with my laptop and all the other junk i carry around in it (another possible factor in my shoulder tension).
i finished the wrist rest off with a reminder to myself, figuring i'm going to be seeing it periodically throughout the day. my friend megan and i have started a practice this year of checking in for 5 minutes once a day to ask each other 5 questions that we want to be held accountable for. one of my questions is "how is your posture?"

i'm hoping this little reminder will help me stick with that commitment.

week three: 'ulu quilt

they say you have a year to give a newly married couple a gift. i've taken that advice a bit liberally and this gift is maybe a year and a half after the actual wedding. but hey, it's handmade! and what a great opportunity to continue celebrating your marriage.

so i read somewhere that the 'ulu (breadfruit) tree symbolizes marital bliss. i have never been able to find that reference again, so the specifics of why that is are lost to me, but i have a lot of respect for the 'ulu; its abundance and versatility made it a great companion for polynesian voyagers to bring on the long canoe journeys across the pacific. if you've never had the opportunity to eat 'ulu it can range from potato-like (and makes great chips, mashed, steamed, baked), to sweet-fruity dessert-like, depending on the variety and ripeness.

anyway, the seed was planted (so to speak) in my mind >2 years ago to make an ulu quilt for my friends jake and nicole's wedding. what better wish could you give someone for their wedding than marital bliss?

i chose the fabrics at fabric mart, a store in our neighborhood with a dizzying array of aloha prints. this is also the store i got my lovely curtain fabric and the camouflage water-repellent fabric i used to sew a cozy for our little bbq grill (these projects apparently happened when i was in blogging hiatus-mode). they've got pretty great prices, and i have to say i respect them for having a website called fmart. 
i misjudged the amount of fabric i'd need for the wall hanging quilt i was making. well, no. what actually happened is that i was bullied by the filipino aunty in the store into buying less than i knew i needed for the project because it was the end of the roll and she was giving me a deal on it. and i guess because i'm chinese i totally played into that. my thought process went something like "well, it's about 3 inches less than i really want for this quilt, but it's a deal..." so i made do.

the process of cutting out a pattern for hawaiian quilting is really fun - like cutting a fabric snowflake. i decided to do the breadfruits in a lighter green to accent, and made up a hexagonal quilting pattern that i think makes them look real. other than that the process is pretty tedious, pinning and then hand-appliqueing and hand quilting inside and out of your design. this is the second hawaiian quilt square i've done, the first was a lehua blossom for my mom. 

while i'm counting this as one of my 52 projects in 52 weeks, it obviously did not take me a week to make.  it took me quite a while to complete, and i'll dispense with excuses about that and suffice to say i'm excited to send it to them. so if you're a friend who has gotten hitched in the past, um, several years and you haven't gotten a gift from me yet - don't lose hope. 

week two: egg carton sprouts

i know it hasn't been a week yet, but i'm making up for getting a late start, so here's week two of the 52 weeks project.

we had a backup of recycling during our holiday travel time, so i guess i had inspiration to reuse materials that were stacked up in the recycle bin. i was looking at our egg cartons, thinking about possible uses other than returning them to local egg farms, which is also awesome.

the other day at kokua market i impulse-bought some dried green peas, because i was thinking about how much i love fresh pea shoots - remember that post? they go great on salad, in spring rolls, just grazing...
so i got the idea of using the egg carton as a tray for sprouting peas. i figure it's biodegradable paper, and it should hold up for the week or two it'll take for the sprouts to grow. i used some potting soil i had leftover from various other planting projects and was pleased to note that the little closure flap on the egg carton fit like a puzzle piece into the little open area on the top of the carton, so i could use both sides for planting.

after planting the tray of pea sprouts i decided to use the egg end for starting some sunflowers i've been meaning to plant near our laundry line along the backyard fence (sorry temperate-climate friends, it's totally still planting season here). but for those of you who have frost outside right now you can do this project in the window sill.

baby hat in a night

 

i had one night to make a baby present. my friend ikaika was having a first year birthday for his son, ka'uhane here on o'ahu and i found out the day before. good thing babies are small. i recalled my friend sandra saying she had a crochet baby hat pattern that she was able to make last minute - two in one night, maybe even - for a baby party recently, so i asked her to send it to me - thanks sandra!

i love the pattern, those little ear flap/tie things are super fun, though i didn't exactly stick to the pattern. i'm not good on checking gauge, and the crochet hooks i was borrowing from grandma ho were all sized in japanese, so i have no idea what size hook i was using. plus i really don't have a clear reference for how big a one-year-old's head would be, so the sizing is all an approximation. i added the little lines in the middle by crocheting into just the back loop of each stitch - something i had accidentally taught myself to do all the time, and my guatemalan host mother helped me figure out why all my crocheting looked ridged like that.
i got the idea for the variegated outline from the photos sandra sent me of her hat - that's my favorite part. so i used some extra yarn i have from the owl sweater i'm *still* working on for myself, and picked up a little hank of variegated yarn to accent.

i didn't have a baby head to model the hat on, so this stuffed dog had to stand in.
now upon meeting ka'uhane i have no idea of the hat will actually fit, he's a big boy. but it was a fun late night project to give me an excuse to get caught up on season 5 of lost.

watermelon baby quilt

aryn's done it again. she created this beautiful quilt top - in watermelon colors - for our friend claire's newly arrived baby, celia. celia arrived early and healthy, six weeks early in fact, so the quilt wasn't quite ready for her upon arrival. but with a little pushing it was ready for her baby shower - which turned out to also be a celebration of her one month birthday.

i love aryn's choice of fabrics and combination of colors. so well done. she hired me to do the assembling, quilting and finishing parts of the quilt, which was fun for me. baby quilts are a great size to work with! i want to make only baby quilts from now on. so all you people who are waiting for your wedding presents from me... take note.

i wanted to do something subtle since the pattern of the fabrics is so vibrant on its own, so i did some stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and then chose one of the stripes of fabric in each square to do some stippling on - in corresponding pink or green thread. i think it came out really nicely - it's subtle on the front but allows some of the pieces to pop out, and the back is a fun maze of swirls and lines.

for the binding i split the difference between aryn's method and mine - she does a turn over of the backing fabric and machine stitching; i do a bias tape binding and finish it by hand. So i turned over the backing fabric as binding and finished it by hand. it's time consuming, but i like the hand stitched touch.

Finally, we made a little dedication on the back for celia, and aryn wrapped it up and hopped over to the baby shower. done and done.

if you like piecing quilt tops but hate the assembly and quilting parts, give me a shout - quilter for hire. cultivatingdomesticity(at)gmail(dot)com

also have to give a shout out to my mom for making this awesome thread-catching pouch that hangs off the side of the sewing table - by the grace of gravity and a sand bag - and handles all those pesky little threads you snip off during the course of quilting that always end up all over the carpet and jamming up your vacuum cleaner. and it's so pretty on the outside and soft and furry on the inside, thanks mom!

holiday obsession: cranberries

this year's holiday theme for me has been cranberries. from cooking to crafting to fashion, i'm obsessed with the little buggers and their delightful color.
it started with cranberry relish. well, truth be told it started with a sale on cranberries at the korean market. but then that led to my favorite holiday dish - one that always has people asking for the recipe, so i'll give it to you now. it's the easiest dish to prepare for a big payoff in taste and compliments.

CRANBERRY RELISH
2 cups washed raw cranberries
2 peeled and cored apples (tart kind)
1 large, whole (as in peel and everything) seedless orange, cut into sections
1/3 to 1/2 jalepeno (veined and seeded), chopped fine
1/4 (or more to taste) cup sugar

fill a bowl with cold water and your cranberries - if you're buying a bag you'll have a little left over once you use two cups. wash them around and pick out any soft or wrinkled ones. then you're basically going to add all the fruit chunks above into a food processor - this is way better if you have one of those old school meat grinders and then you can feed everything through that and when you crank it the cranberries make a really satisfying popping sound. if you're using the food processor method you can pulse them until they're chopped into smaller chunks, but you want to be careful not to overblend, otherwise it'll just be mushy - you want the fruits to still maintain their structure. i find it works best for my little cuisinart to do it in batches. when you've chopped up all the fruit you sprinkle the sugar on and mix it around, then let it sit at room temperature for 45 minutes so the sugar melts (this makes a big difference), and then you can keep in in the fridge after that. we started adding jalepeno last year and i love the way it opens up the flavors with a little kick without being noticibly hot.
so there was that.
and then we still had a couple bags of cranberries, so i decided to freeze them. while i was considering what to do with frozen cranberries i made about 5 batches of these viennese crescent (aka russian tea cake, aka mexican wedding) cookies. i use pecans because walnuts make my tongue swell up, but if you can handle walnuts they're a cheaper alternative. this recipe comes from my mom:

CRESCENT COOKIES
½ pound butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup ground nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc)
1 teaspoon vanilla
powdered sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Cream the butter, then add the granulated sugar, flour, nuts and vanilla and mix thoroughly.  Shape with your fingers into delicate crescents, about 2 inches long and ½ inch wide and thick.  Roll them in the confectioners’ sugar and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for about 30 minutes, until just faintly browned.  Cool, then roll in more confectioners’ sugar before serving.


one thing i noticed in my many iterations of this recipe over the course of the week before christmas (we consumed a lot of butter and nuts!) was that i really prefer sweet cream butter in this recipe over unsalted. in fact, i added a sprinkle of salt in with the powdered sugar in that batch to compensate for the lack of saltiness.

these cookies are crazy good. i recommend making them for a party so that you don't just eat them all week and then make more when you run out. ahem.
just to satisfy my cranberry craving, i served the cookies with a little cranberry centerpiece and a few springs of thyme for holiday cheer.
we also discovered that frozen cranberries are a nice compliment to a glass of champagne - and if you muddle them up a bit they turn your toasting glass a nice shade of pink.

and finally, on christmas i had a craving for truffles, and - you guessed it - cranberries. so i followed this basic recipe for bittersweet chocholate ganache truffles, and then added chopped frozen cranberries to the ganache and rolled them around in cocoa powder and nibs with a little salt. they're spectacular. a little on the goey side because i think the cranberries added too much liquid to the mixture, but they hold their shape and the bittersweet chocolate and tartness of the berries goes really nicely together.

to top it off, i've been eyeing this sleaveless turtleneck sweater for a while that i'd gotten from someone and had in the "might be useful for future craft project" bin - and its cranberry color spoke to me recently. i had seen this tutorial on turning old sweaters into a shrug (or "caplet" as they call it), and i'm really into drapey shawls and shrugs these days, so i tried it out with the cranberry sweater.
you basically turn the sweater sideways, pick out the side seams so it opens on the top and bottom, and then cut off the top (and bottom, depending on the sweater) and sew those together. it worked like a charm. i had to pick up the stitches on the top when i cut off from the sleaves and neck portion of the sweater because it's such a chunky knit, but then I stiched it together, and also stitched the bottom of the sweater (where it's ribbed) together and then gathered it for a little flair. i'm really excited about this shrug right now. hannah and i got our nails done the other day and i later realized i'd chosen a sparkle cranberry color, so going out tonight for new years eve is going to continue the theme: cranberry and cocktail dress, here i come!

cultivating domesticity is in business

cultivating domesticity has entered into a whole new crafty realm. in the past two weeks we have:

• conceptualized and designed a new logo and visioning statement for the cultivating domesticity brand
• had that logo and statement made into two custom rubber stamps for use in business cards and labels
• started mass production of measuring tape wallets and fused plastic bag pouches
• set up as a vendor at a craft fair
  
• sold some stuff.
  
• installed paypal on the blog - check it out on the sidebar
  
• and i'm on the way to opening an etsy shop

most of the credit for these efforts goes to my amazing fiance, marty, for supporting and seeing this process through, especially as i'm preoccupied with simultaneously finishing one job and starting another.
also thanks to the help of many friends and family - mom for prepping all the wallets, adrionna and sonny for assisting with shopping, hannah for setting us up at the craft fair and sharing her wisdom, aryn, megan, and katy for their support and visioning with branding language, and all the friends and fam who have been avid readers of the blog and who came out to the first craft fair to support - thank you!

it's been a good learning experience. my sewing machine broke down the night before the craft fair - right when i was counting on pumping out a bunch of last minute wallets.
for one, i learned that "heavy duty thread" is actually for hand quilting, not machine stitching - oops. thanks to the ladies of sew images for teaching me that lesson and fixing the timing issues on my poor machine.  secondly, i only sold two wallets and three pouches during the course of the craft fair, so i didn't have need to be stressing the night before about not having enough products. thirdly, i picked up a lot of good ideas and inspiration for display from other crafters who came to the fair, and our brilliant idea to bring lamps and christmas lights was affirmed when our table was the warmest, most luminous booth in the joint.

lastly, i learned a ton from hannah, who has been doing this kind of thing a while and picked up the slack in terms of things i never thought of, such as: money for change, receipt books, and display. i also learned that if, at the end of the night you haven't really made a profit (as seemed to be the case for most vendors) it's a great idea to go around and trade with other people whose stuff you like. i got a great necklace made out of the little vinyl circle cutouts from the centers of old records from sarah at glitzfritz.

here's the new logo and visioning statement:

i love the rubber stamp aesthetic, and the cost effectiveness and reusability. thanks, marty.

i've already had several orders for measuring tape wallets - if you're interested shoot me an email: cultivatingdomesticity [at] gmail [dot] com
i'm relishing the process of packaging and sending them out. i love gifts. if you're looking for holiday gifts you can order now and have them in time for the holidays... i'm just saying.