Spring is really coming!

My tomatoes have sprouted! As have the indigo and the foxgloves! 

Any guesses?

Can you tell what I've begun this weekend??

There is a 4-seat couch under there!

So ready for spring to arrive!

I have a terrible case of spring fever, so I gave in to it and started my seeds for my vegetable garden and the long-awaited herb garden today. The vegetables I started today include various heirloom varieties of tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), eggplants, pumpkins, gourds, asparagus, and melons. I have lots of other seeds ready for things like beans, carrots, beets, and corn, but those will be seeded directly into my raised beds when spring is really here.

For the herbs (and dye plants!) I've got indigo, false saffron, lady's mantle, sweet woodruff, sweet marjoram, German chamomile, lamb's ear, St. John's wort, rosemary, borage, thyme, wormwood, rue, chives, spearmint, sweet basil, catnip, parsley, sage, bee balm, fennel, celery, and rhubarb. Again, there are more, like dill, which will be directly seeded later.

Not that there's much to see, but here are the first planted seed trays. You can certainly tell which ones have been watered already!

 

Not that you can tell from that picture, but the trays are actually in the conservatory, so they will get lots of proper sunlight. I need to take some daylight photos of the conservatory, so I can show off the lemons and kumquats on the trees and also the lovely blooms on the camellia and azalea! 

 

Most of the new flowers I'll be planting this year will also be directly seeded, but a trip to the garden center is in order, to get more seed trays for the ones that do need to be started indoors. 

Small projects underway or finished

I finished up a small embroidery project this week. It's a portion of a large wall hanging for Insulae Draconis. Constanza started it, but hated it after finishing the gold portion, so I did the black for her.

I would not want to do another - so boring!

And another run of household badges is started. I need to have those done to distribute before Raglan Fair. These, on the other hand, are quite fun to stitch!

The patterns are made for Samuil's tunics, too. Emma and Snezhana are going to do an assembly line of basic tunics for him, based on the prototype I made. That will guarantee he has enough for long summer events (10 days or so).

Taking a step backwards

I never posted any photos from Yule Ball/ Kingdom University in December 2014. But I promised I would, so here we go.

This is where the event was held. Not a bad little castle! To give some perspective - that banner is 5 x 15 feet in size!

 

The weather was fine enough to have court outside in the knot garden. This is the induction of the new Kingdom Artisan, Jahanarabanu Vivana.

 

 

Here's a nice little picture for the Heralds! This was the backdrop for court.

 

 

 

Feast photos. Yule fun with the best of friends!

 

This picture is special. It's all the titled Kingdom Heralds of Drachenwald (Schwarzdrachen, Albion, Edelweiss, and Aurochs), except Posthorn, and he's here in spirit. See the little heraldic tabard on the red panda?

 

 

Heralds do get silly! Albion and Edelweiss loved this gift from the Holly King. It's a puzzle of heraldry!

 

Here's almost all the household of Linden Manor.

 

 

And here's how they really behave!



Today's progress

Got all the parts for the hood update cut out and ready to assemble. Also created a calligraphy and illumination area in the library, directly below the skylight. Cleaned the library - dusting mostly - and decided where to hang the large mirror to reflect the most light. All the C&I stuff I have been gathering up is now all in one place and organized, ready to begin experimenting! A good day, all in all!

Plans afoot for January

Much like Santa Claus, I'm making a list - but mine is for projects for 2015. Tomorrow's first one is to begin improving my embroidered hood. I love the embroidery I did around the face opening when I first made it, but the shoulder cape is just a bit too short, as is the liripipe. It's also just not warm enough. Fortunately, I still have some of the original wool fabric left and can extend it without any problems. I then will embroider a coordinating pattern over the join and line it with some linen from my stash. You can't see the embroidery in this old photo, but you can get a sense of what I plan to do.