Japanese Sewing Books and Sweet Potatoes

No. 2 daughter's ipod was acting up so we made a appointment at the Apple store in Ala Moana. While we were waiting for our appointment, we went to Shirokiya. Shirokiya has a new/used book/video section. We were browsing through there and I found these two sewing books. They were really cheap...I couldn't resist. One has bags and the other has all kinds of cute things.

Guess what! We found some potaotes! One was big enough to take out of the ground, but the other was still too small. My older daughter had the priviledge of digging it out.

Well, we scrubbed it, cut it up, and microwaved it, but when we tasted it, it wasn't sweet. (sad face) As you can see, it looked really nice, but... Anyway, I asked the Ag teacher at school, but he didn't know how to make it. There is another Ag teacher at school that need to ask, but I haven't been able to talk to her. In the meantime, there was some fertilizer on sale at Longs, so we bought that and my dh sprinkled some on the patch. We'll see what happens...

Japanese Quilting Book and Vermicomposting

Well, it's been a while since I posted and I apologize for that. I hit a dry spell for a while, but now I'm back on track and busy sewing. I purchased this Japanese quilting book for inspiration. It has some really cute stuff in it, but now I have to translate the instructions. Okay, now that's going to take a while. They have pictures to follow, but I'd like to try and translate what I can. Maybe my no. 1 daughter will help me when she comes home for the summer. She may double major in Japanese ( keeping my fingers crossed).

Anyway, I'd like to tell you about my worms. We're going green at school. I have a bin of garbage eating worms at school. We're trying to make a school bin. I have had a small bin since the beginning of the school year (August 2008). Pictured here are others harvesting their worms. This is called vermicomposting. The worms are vegetarians. They eat fruits and veggies, newspaper and cardboard. The worms reproduce rather quickly and one of their waste products is a very fertile soil called vermicast which is great for growing plants. The liquid in the tofu container is called vermicast tea which helps ward off white flies! I put some of the tea on my potato plants and the white flies are gone! Hooray!

Anyway, back to the worms...I bought a black containter from Hardware Hawaii for $5.00 (it was on sale). I learned how to drill holes in the bottom for aeration. Then I put burlap on the bottom first. On the burlap I put torn pieces of cardboard. On the cardboard I put shredded newspaper. Then I dumped in all of the contents of my old worm bin. The bin rests on the tofu containers for aeration. The tofu containers collect the vermicast tea.

I didn't harvest, I just went to a bigger bin. Maybe next time I'll be able to harvest my worms. I don't know if you can see the worms (they're red). I'm hoping I can get enough to have some for home.