100% handmade with love :)

Yosemite is lovely! (Pics to come soon..have to sort through the eleventy billion snapshots we took. :) ) This was Tejas' and my first time there, though his mom had been once before. Love love loved it, despite the hordes of daytrippers. It's the sort of landscape that makes you want to pack a bag with necessities and hoof it into the mountains, headed for the glacier in the distance, and to heck with civilization. Luckily we managed to quash that urge, but Tejas and I decided (foolishly?) that we HAVE to go back in the fall or late summer and camp, and hike up Half Dome. Wahoo! :)

In other news, I have officially corrupted his mom. She used to do all sorts of sewing and embroidery (much much finer than anything I can do. I take off my hat to anyone who sews her own sari blouses--those things have no room for mistakes!) but gave it up when her kids were in school. When she came this year, I gave her a couple of embroidered hankies that Tejas had asked me to make, and she was reminiscing about what she used to do...so I hauled out the ol' embroidery thread box and some fabric scraps and left them strategically on the table, "just in case." Before long she was stitching little bits when we were away working, "to see if I remember the stitches"...it snowballed. By this time she's filled a whole quarter yard of cloth with pictures, decorated a hankie for me (I'm the lucky one, lalalalalal! have to gloat a little :) ) and asked me to rummage for more fabric. Then last night she happened across one of my iron-on patterns and I showed her how to use it, and five minutes later she was gleefully pressing small kitties onto scrap fabric and letting herself be persuaded to take some iron-ons when she goes home next week! Until yesterday night she always said that she wouldn't have time at home to sew and she didn't want to take any thread or anything home. Last night, Tejas convinced her (didn't take much convincing ;) ) that we should pay a visit to JoAnn's and put together a little kit for her...just in case there's anything she needs that she can't get from my stash, and if she wants more press-on patterns. Mwahahaha...looks like my work is done! (She's also said she wants her mom to teach her to knit when she goes back, so I'm going to get some of those kid's needles with one red and one blue for her, and send her back with a couple balls of lovely soft handpainted wool from my stash!)

The other crafty thing I did last night was to make her a little sachet of lavender to put with her clothes in the rainy season. She loves the little lavender plant on our balcony--every time we go out there she crushes some of the leaves to smell them--and has asked if we can find some seeds so she can try growing one back home. So I've been clipping and drying little bundles of lavender all summer, and last night I sewed a little bag out of scraps of fabric and ribbon, then stuffed the dried lavender inside and sewed it up. Our whole kitchen smelled lovely and cool while I stuffed it--I'm so proud of that fat, lumpy little sachet! It's 100% homemade.

(We've had a total of five cherry tomatoes off my sungold tomato plant now! And there are blooms on my beans and tiny little peppers on my hot and not-hot pepper plants. I'm proud of them too! It almost makes up for my research going kinda badly. I'm trying to convince myself that I don't care--I have a wonderful husband and fun domestic things to play with at home, and it's not like I want a high-flying career anyway, so there's not a lot to worry about. I'm still kinda depressed though, even though my advisor SWEARS to me it will all be all right and he'll make sure I graduate in a reasonable amount of time and get a job and all, and I pretty much believe him. Think I'll go home and plough through some knitting to cheer myself up.)