In our garden

I had used lots of green onions for my food class at school and didn't want to throw away the roots, so we planted them. This is a picture of how they looked after they were just planted. Can you see how they're kind of bending over?


The next picture was taken a week later. They look a lot better. I think that's when I cut a few stalks from it for something I was cooking.

There were also sweet potato flowers in the patch...an indication of potatoes...we need time to dig.


What are you growing?

Deformed Potatoes

We harvested potatoes again right before New Years. The one on the left was huge! We think it was made of several potatoes that joined together.

Here's a close up of the huge potato. We actually had two huge deformed potatoes.

Here is a picture of all the normal sized potatoes.

Here is a photo of the two large deformed potatoes. We didn't eat those because we figured there would be dirt inside them if more than one potato joined together to form the huge one.


Otherwise the potatoes were a great addition to our New Years celebration. We were even able to share some with our neighbors.

Carolina Christmas and Sweet Potatoes

These are the sweet potatoes we harvested for Thanksgiving. We shared with our neighbors too.

I am doing a mystery quilt through the internet. It is called Carolina Christmas from Bonnie K. Hunter using scraps. I am still trying to choose my fabrics. I can't decide if I should use green/blue/yellow/neutral or red/green/yellow/neutral. Maybe you can help me decide I have my three choices pictured here. Can you let me know what you think?

Also, I am not sure how important it is to have a 2 yard piece tying the colors together. As you can see I only have one 2 yard piece, the rest are all scrappy. Does it matter?

Sweet potatoes and patchwork coasters

We harvested more potatoes and gave some to my parents and our neighbor after we steamed them. Yum.

I experimented with making coasters and they turned out pretty good. At first I sewed together 5 strips, but they came out too big so I ended up taking off one row. Then I used denim for the back...I think I'll make some more when I have time. Maybe I'll experiment with a different design.

Sweet Potatoes

I'm very behind in my postings. These pictures were taken in July. It is a picture of our sweet potato patch before we decimated it. The next picture is of me trying to dig out the potatoes. (ha,ha) DH had to come with a tool to come help me dig out all the potatoes. Then there is a picture of the area we dug up. I planted more slips...I must be crazy. (ha, ha) There is a picture of all the potatoes we dug up after they were washed. The potatoes on the plate are steamed and ready to be packed up for our potluck lunch at the Ukulele Festival.

Potato Leaves, Bread and Drawstring Bags

We fertilized the potato plants and the leaves are now growing as big as my hand! (and I have pretty big hands) We harvested lots of leaves and some potatoes for Father's day lunch. It was yummy. I forgot to take a picture of the potatoes. Oh well, maybe next time.

This loaf of bread was made from scratch using a recipe I got from someone on the Celiac Forum. I turned out great! I went to this natural food store called The Source in Kailua. They had so many gluten free things! Mixes, flours, cookies, etc. The owner was so nice. He didn't have the mix I wanted, so he ordered for me. Then he called me when they came in. I really like that store!

I've posted pictures of some patchwork drawstring bags I made and gave away to some friends on the mainland. The outside is the patchwork and the inside is the aloha print fabric with monkeys.

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...

Sweet Potato Flowers and Mother's Day gifts

Did you know that purple sweet potato plants had purple flowers? I didn't. The flowers bloom in the morning and fall off the vine in the evening. If you notice in the picture there is a bud next to the flower. The flower was a pretty pale lavender on the outside. Near the center it was a dark purple. I asked the Ag teachers at school and they told me to dig around the area where the flower is because there may be potatoes! I asked them how far down the potatoes would be and they said not far, near the top, so I dug around the area where I saw the flower. I couldn't find anything (sad face), but the flowers are pretty. More on sweet potatoes in another post. :)

For Mother's Day I made a scrap rug and kaleidoscope hot pads.

Giveaway Winner and Sweet Potato Leaves

I entered a giveaway on Sew Mama Sew and won a rotary cutter. Yay! I didn't expect to win anything, so it was so nice to win something.

I harvested some sweet potato leaves, pictured in the plastic bag, then following the recipe on this website, I washed the leaves or immersed them in water, then blanched them for 2 minutes. I then drained them and chopped them. Next, I chopped garlic , stir-fried the garlic and the leaves. It was so good. The family loves it! We will be eating this weekly. Yum!

Turning Twenty Quilt and Sweet Potato Plants

During the break I took a class at Bernina where I learned how to make a Turning Twenty Quilt. It was so fast and fun! I used fabric from my stash. I didn't realize that I had that much fabric! For those of you who don't know this quilt is called Turning Twenty because it uses twenty fat quarters. I didn't have enough fat quarters so I used half-yards. I thought it turned out pretty nice. All I need to do is put a 6-1/2 inch border around the edge, then get the backing together and get it quilted. I can't quilt it myself because my machine is too small and this quilt is so huge! I will post about it again later. Hopefully I can get a picture of the whole thing when it's completed.

I don't know if you recognize the white printed fabric. That's the fabric I won in Bee Square's giveaway in January. Thank you Diane!

The sweet potato plants are growing very well, as you can see. I've started harvesting the leaves and cooking them. They are very nutritious. Apparently, they help lower cholesterol and are high in leutin.

I'll post the recipe I used another time.

Sweet Potato Plant and Fleece Hat

My sweet potato plant was doing quite well. The first picture two pictures were taken a few weeks ago.

Today, my dh helped me plant the additional slips in the planter in our yard. This is when I discovered that white flies were eating my potato plant. I had to spray down the underside of each leaf with water and wipe off the black eggs. I don't know how successful I was. I guess we'll see in a few days or a week.

The next two pictures are of the pots after I cut off the slips that were ready to plant. They look kind of bear don't they?

The next shot of one of the slips in the planter box.

The shot after that is of the underside of the leaf with the white fly eggs. I don't know if you can see the black dots on the leaf.

The last two shots are of a reversible fleece hat that my mom wanted me to make for her trip to China.