Hanging Herb Garden

Last weekend I made this hanging herb garden, a great solution for my tiny kitchen which has, oh, about 24" of counter space. At first I'd planned on mounting mason jars to a board which would lean against the wall but on my way to the hardware store it occurred to me to do it this way, which involves less infrastructure and is probably a little easier.

HANGERS

To make the two shown here, you'll need:

• 6 wide mouth, pint mason jars
• 100' of cotton cord, #7
• scissors, ruler

I find it helps to do make these while the rope hangs. Hang it from a back-of-the-door coat hook, or nail a small nail somewhere about 7' off the ground.

For each 3-plant hanger, you'll cut 3 pieces of cord 14' long and 4 pieces about 15" long (for your stop knots).

1. Line up the ends of your long cords and fold in half. You should now have 6 lengths of 7' cord. 
2. About an 1.5" from the bend in your cord, create your first stop knot. Mine had about 4-5 loops.
3. 10" from your top stop knot, take two neighbor cords and tie a basic knot. Repeat for each pair.
4. 4" down from the last knot, tie a basic knot between one strand of two neighboring knots. Be sure to be joining two cords that are already close - do not cross over a cord to tie to another cord. See the diagram and photo. Repeat for each pair.
5. 4" down from the last row of knots create another stop knot.

Repeat steps 3-5 twice more to complete one hanger. Repeat all the steps to create your second hanger.

PLANTS 

I used mason jars. I've had some hearty herbs in lesser containers so I'm hoping they'll work. I put small rocks at the bottom of each jar, transfered the herbs, adding potting soil when necessary. The nursery didn't have basil starters yet so I'm growing them from seeds. Fingers crossed!

notes

You'll see that mine are different lengths, I started the first hanger with less cord than I needed and adjusted for the second one.

I have no idea what I'm doing with that branch.

How have you grown herbs in your home? Any other small space solutions? Have you done more adventurous macramé?

As it's now been weeks between when I did this and when I'm posting this entry, I'd definitely say put your plants in things meant for plants, not mason jars. What was I thinking?

Naturally Dyed Tea Towels

For Christmas I made a small batch of tea towels to give to friends and family. And since I'd had in my mind for a while to experiment with dying, I decided to experiment on friends and family.

After the jump you'll find the basic steps for creating a tea towel and what I did to create a gradient on the towels from blueberries and blackberries.

Hello, again

You might have noticed recently a new post after a long, long while. My Code for America fellowship has just ended and I made a b-line back to making things. This year has been a whirlwind filled with lots of new friends, experiences, 22+ flights and lots of non-sewing projects.

Elizabeth is taking a break but I'm hoping I can start to get regular-ish again. I can't say how regular, my life could get crazy again (what and where will after CfA be?). But this site is important to me. I believe the best thing about the internet is sharing. If I'm able to share anything helpful, at any frequency, I want to. Also, now that I'm so front-end web development happy these days (and even blog about it now, too), the entire site might just get a big facelift.

But in other, seasonal news, I'm happy that my year has slowed down in time to get excited about the holidays. My boyfriend and I picked up this little tree (above) today (one of our favorite coffee shops in Oakland, Subrosa, is selling them) and I have all kinds of old-fashioned Christmas visions in my head. Handmade paper ornaments, popcorn garland...

Hope the holidays have kicked of great for you and thanks for sticking around!

Tote Re-Do

I once had a great, large tote. I used it often. After a while grime and grease from toting leftovers rendered the tote too gross to use (despite attempts to launder of course). I finally parted with the bag but I saved the hardware (handles, shoulder strap, d-rings) with the intention of re-creating it. A year or so later and 2 days before leaving for a trip to Argentina I decided, now is the time!

After the jump, illustrations and walk-through galore!

Post Fatigue

I set out over a week ago to write about post on a bag I made. Editing photos, writing and making illustrations has taken forever plus some. I have to take a break from it, whew! So here is a picture from my recent trip to Buenos Aires and the future post's artboard in Illustrator (which has gotten even more complex since this screen shot).

Have a great weekend!

Anatomy of a Try

I thought since I took the time to make this, I might as well try and get a post out of it.

This is a clutch I made hoping to adjust this one (Which is missing! Where is it? It ran off with at least one cute hankie and one vintage pocket mirror. Sad.) a tad so that it served more as a wallet. It was not a disaster by any means, but it wasn't quite what I wanted:

1. I forgot to add the ends to the zipper. This isn't critical, many pouches don't include them, but I really, really like them. I more often than not do one completely wrong thing in any project. Usually I catch myself while a seam ripper can still save me. Not this time.
2. I thought I'd like it with more of the zipper tape exposed. I do not. I also did this weird thing with gold thread at the end as a zipper stop. I wouldn't have tried this if I hadn't done number 1.
3. I created a divider on the inside, hoping to separate bills from coins and phone. I'm so-so about it. I also intended to have 3 card slots, stacked and side-by-side, 6 in total. I assumed my 7" zipper was long enough for that, it wasn't. (Three isn't so bad actually, I should carry fewer cards.) 
4. It's about 2 inches too tall. This makes it dark inside and hard to read the bills and spot quarters from nickels. Maybe if it were shorter I wouldn't mind the divider as much.

I still really love this gold linen though. And there you have it. Not a disaster. Not a success. A try.

Lemon Pudding Cakes

I love America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Illustrated, and Cook's Country. I have a mail subscription to Cook's Illustrated, and I tear out and keep probably three-quarters of the recipes in every issue. But I have an online subscription to Cook's Country - which, as far as I can tell, is the simpler, more down-home relative - and if I need a specific recipe, I go there first. Every one I've tried has turned out great, and they tend to be a little less fussy than the ones in Cook's Illustrated.

I've made this lemon pudding cake once before, exactly the way the recipe's written - baked in a single 8x8-inch pan. It's got a creamy, custard-y bottom, with souffle-like cake on top. A little whipped cream balances the tartness really well.

We've been having friends over to enjoy the deck that Allen built, and I thought that individual - and closeable - containers would make this really easy to set out at a party, and easy for guests to serve themselves. It also makes the recipe way more adorable, which is really important.

Alameda Antique Faire

Hi, all! It's Jessica, and I'm still around. My days have changed, however, and more often than not I'm behind a computer. An important detail is that I'm happily behind a computer. I'm loving the work I'm doing with Code for America and learning as much as I can. I can be found in coffee shops in SF and Oakland or at the fantastic office of ours at CfA. So, while I'm still making things, they contain strings in code more than strings of thread. But, I promise projects from me won't be disappear completely, they'll just happen when they do in this new schedule of mine, and whenever they do, they'll definitely be posted here.

Moving on, I did go out to Alameda, an island just west of Oakland, to visit the antiques fair (or to them, faire). It's the first Sunday of every month. There is an admission to get in, which I thought was a little odd, but if you go around 10 (I know, late by antique market standards) it's just $5. The place is huge and if I weren't on my fellowship salary and basically already in possession of most things I need in my life right now, I would have gone to town. To. Town. I did pick up a couple things, though. I got 7 hankies, because I use hankies. Everyday.

If you're in the area, it's definitely worth a go -- even just for the view of downtown San Francisco.

Below you can see that we're not in Kansas. Oakland has a big port and these giant shipping crate dinosaurs provide the backdrop for rugs, old dressers and Fiestaware.