blueberry summer

in which our plucky heroine notices what is tasty...

Most of the fruit here is not yet ripe. There are green plums all over the prune plum thicket, and small fuzzy quinces starting to be visible. The apples are not going to be good this year, as I neglected to properly thin them when they were small. I haven't checked on the persimmon tree, but in this midsummer, suddenly I notice the blueberry bush...

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~ a modest harvest ~

This year is the best harvest ever. There are more blueberries on the small plant than I have seen before, and more came ripe in the last few days since I picked a few spoonfuls on Sunday. I was excited as I slowly added berries to the container before dinner, dreaming of eating sun-warmed homegrown fruit with yogurt as dessert. Then I dropped the container, and all the berries ended up in the mulch and spiderwebs under the bush. Oops! Now you can imagine our plucky heroine scrabbling to find each and every precious berry, which is exactly what I did. They now required much washing before I called them once again food safe; and rather than a delightful dessert, they will become tomorrow's breakfast

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I've started the process of altering/lengthening the sleeves on the horses blouse. This entails both removing the peplum from the current blouse so it can be used to alter the sleeves with the identical fabric, and creating a new peplum from the newly purchased (same print but different fabric and slightly different color) This will work because no one ever sees the peplum, only the upper portion of the blouse is visible under my pinafores. Much to my surprise, I had created the former peplum from a straight length of fabric, adding a curve by sewing in multiple darts!?! Removing the darts returned the fabric to a straight rectangle, which will be much nicer for extending the sleeves!

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Week 5 has us making a short sleeve cardigan, which can also be worn back to front as a short sleeve sweater...

I just knit many many tiny cap sleeve sweaters for week 2, and since I am trying to only use what yarn I have on hand, there will not be seven more little knit tops this week! I decided that using the Placket Tee pattern would be the best option for this week, and embellished the front opening with some very tiny buttons to add to the "cardigan" effect.

The only teal yarn I had was some Knit Picks Curio #3 crochet cotton originally purchased for tablet weaving. Knitting with cotton is more difficult than with wool, since it lacks resilience, but Nandina is very happy with the vivid color and silky texture! I did knit a second one in some vintage russet color wool, and that cardigan is set aside with the other dolly clothing to be sent to Young Kestrel.

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	4 tiny knit vests	cleaned keyboard	recycle bin
2	tiny cargo pants	pruned grapevine	yard waste bin
3	very smol Birks	-	recycle bin
4	silkworm print	-	-
5	4 reversible skirts	-	-
6	Peach tinyprint	x	x
7	8 tiny tops	x	x
8	2 tiny cardigans	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes - 
1. medical paper tape, which I can apply to bug bites to keep me from ripping my skin off. Something bit me on the belly while I was salvaging the blueberries, and now instead of a little welt, I have a double layer white square on my tummy skin, and in a few days to a week, the itch will subside and my skin remain in one piece!
2. Did I mention pickled beets earlier? They make an excellent addition to salads. I need to remember to make some for the pantry, as I've eaten most of the former batch
3. The peplum of the blouse I am altering is actually formed from a darted rectangle, which will make using it to lengthen the sleeves eversomuch easier!

Time of Isolation - Day 1468