The Haul from the Farmer's Market

Here's my haul from the Farmer's Market in Hartford today.  Not too many veggies yet - mostly rhubarb, greens, and asparagus.  The little plastic container is black pepper chevre, and if you look closely you can see that it's sitting on top of a dozen eggs.  The apples are obviously from last fall, but I got 7 lbs for $3, so tomorrow I'm going to make applesauce.  We'll have the asparagus and mesclun with dinner tonight.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the rhubarb-  last week I made pie, so this week I want to try and do something else. 

My snow peas started blooming last week!  I anticipate a lot of stir-fries :)  Granted, that's really not much of a change.  I do a lot of stir-fries anyway.  I'm just hoping I can get the other members of my household to eat the snow peas instead of picking them out.  It's not that they mind the flavor, it's that they find them too "stringy."  Maybe that's just the supermarket variety - maybe the fresh garden snow peas will be OK!

I have no idea what happened to this poor lettuce!  It looks trampled, rather than bitten.  Usually rain will only flatten them out - I've never seen it break a plant off like this!  I guess we'll be having garden lettuce a little earlier than we'd anticipated!

Westville Artwalk

The Artwalk went pretty well, all things considered!  People still aren't spending as much as they did a few years ago, but I still did OK - by my standards, at any rate.  The weather sort-of cooperated.  We had some rain early on, but fortunately it started after we got the canopy up, so nothing got wet!  It stopped early enough that it didn't keep people away.

It did get very windy about an hour before the show closed, and everyone was holding on to their tents to keep them from blowing over!  Our earring display went over at least two or three times, and someone stepped on a pair of my posts before we could get them off the ground.  I guess she didn't realize that the shouts of "Watch it! Watch it!"  were directed at her.

Some of my new work sold, but I managed to get pictures beforehand.  This heart went, and I had at least one person wishing they'd bought it when they first came by.

She took a card, but then lots of people took business cards.  I'll be surprised if we actually hear from any of them.  Everyone gets excited about the idea of custom work when they're standing there, but it always ends up being more hassle than it's worth to them by the time they get home.  Next year we're going to try coupon codes on the backs of the business cards to see if it helps us see how many people from the shows come visit us online.

 I finally decided what I wanted to do with this pendant  that I finished a few weeks ago, so I had the completed necklace finished in time for the show.  Lots of interest, but no buyers.  The expensive pieces always (unsurprisingly) take forever to sell.

At least we finally had a banner this year!

We have signage!

After five years of selling jewelry at craft shows I have finally gotten around to getting a real sign for our booth!  It matches our business cards and everything!  And I even got it in time for Saturday's craft show!

Soil blocks: Not an unqualified success :(

I got a soil block maker at the beginning of seed-starting season(which is February around here), hoping to get the convenience of peat pellets without the added expense.  So far I've had mixed results.

Most of my seeds germinated just fine in the soil blocks, but shortly after gaining their first or second set of true leaves they seem to have stopped growing.  These were planted sometime in March - I'd think the plants would be a lot bigger by now!

I've heard that if you pack your soil blocker too tightly the roots have trouble penetrating.  My first few blocks were loose enough that I had trouble moving them without crumbling, so I packed the next set more firmly.  There's no way for me to know what's too tight or too loose except trial and error.  It's also possible I might not have watered them enough - or I might have watered them too much!  I hate it when diametrically opposed actions result in the exact same symptoms!  I've tried potting some of them up and attempting to loosen the soil a little, but so far it doesn't seem to have made much difference. 

So far the broccoli I started at the end of February hasn't gone much past this stage here.  I planted them out in hopes that being in the ground would encourage them - I'll let you know if it works. 

My sage, on the other hand, was planted in a peat pellet, and is going gangbusters, along with several other varieties of herbs.


I'm not all that upset, because I knew that soil blockers had a bit of a learning curve.  At the most I'm annoyed at the prospect of not having some of my longer-growing veggies (namely broccoli and eggplant) this year.  I'm probably not going to have time to try and start the eggplants again if these fail to thrive, but I can start more broccoli seedlings for a fall planting.  I think next year I'll stick to the peat pellets for these, and experiment with the soil blocks for plants that grow faster, so that I have time to try again if I don't get it right the first time.

Mildly annoyed-

One of the S-hooks by which my seedling lights are suspended from their chain has fallen into the light fixture :(  This is what it's supposed to look like:

This is what it looks like now:

 This is very inconvenient.  I can't just turn the whole thing upside down and shake the hook out, so I'm hoping it won't cause any serious electrical shorts in there.  Now I'm going to have to find some other way of hanging this end of the light!  Right now it's propped on our defunct clothes dryer, but this has the light a lot farther away from the plants than I'm happy with.

Fortunately, my sage does not seem to be suffering much!

Getting back in gear

My first (and usually only) show of the year is coming up on May 8 - the day before Mother's Day!  This will be our fifth year at the Westville Artwalk!  If you live anywhere close to New Haven, come and see us!  There are always a lot of talented artists in a variety of media, plus live music and lots of fun activities for kids :)

I've allowed myself to get distracted by knitting and gardening these last few months since the December holidays, and it's time to start getting some real work done.  Last year I managed to acquire a lot of new stones, so this year I need to start doing something with them.  I've just finished this pendant (sterling, rose quartz and peridot) -  I now have to figure out the best way to hang it.  I always run into this problem, especially with large-ish pendants.  I have a choice of putting it on a commercial chain or making a chain/necklace for it myself.

Using a commercial chain would certainly be the fastest and easiest option, but I don't always have them on hand, and the snake chains that would be most appropriate for something with this weight really aren't that cheap, even for me.  I just don't have the buying power to buy enough snake chains at once  to get quantity discounts, which means I'm paying almost full retail for this particular supply, plus shipping!  Not really very good business sense.

The flip side of this is if I make a chain or necklace with materials I have on hand.  I wouldn't have to buy any new supplies, and they would have been bought at wholesale, thus bringing the materials costs down.  The trade-off is that it takes a great deal more time to fabricate a chain/necklace, which frequently increases the price of the finished piece to something that is more difficult to sell.  Even if people appreciate handmade work and think the price is reasonable, it doesn't mean they can afford it!

I know - I need to get my jewelry in front of people who value handmade and have money.  I'm just not there yet.  The higher end shows that attract that type of clientele are just out of my range right now.  I can't afford the booth fees (which would have to be paid up front), and my display isn't professional enough.  I've been adding pieces to my display in bits and pieces over the years as I needed them, so nothing really matches.  I haven't got the space or the capital to try and fabricate booth furniture myself, so that's not really an option for me.  What I really need is to win the lottery!  That way I can just buy everything I need all at one go.  It will all match, it will all look professional, and if any of it doesn't work the way it's supposed to, I can go complain to someone who will help me fix it!

Back again!

I know, I have been terribly remiss!  It's been ages since I updated this blog.  Nothing very interesting has been going on, and the light hasn't been good for photos.  Now, however, it's gardening time again! Yet again I have way too many seedlings and can't fit them all under my lights.

 At least a good number of them are cool weather crops, and I'm finally starting to get them into the ground, thus making room for the new seedlings.  I finally got a heating mat for my germination flat, and that's made a huge difference in my success rate with some of my warmer weather plants!  Peppers and basil especially have had much better germination rates for me this year.  I hope the growing season continues to be this successful once I get them in the ground!

I'm trying several new plants this year!  In addition to lettuce I've got Swiss chard and spinach in the ground!  My broccoli seedlings aren't quite big enough yet, so it'll be another couple of weeks before I can plant them out.

I've also got a whole bunch of herbs going this year that I didn't have last year.  I get really tired of swapping places between not having fresh herbs on hand when I need them, and buying them so I have them but not using them up quickly enough.  I really hope that I'll have planted enough basil this year, and that it does better than it did last year! 

My mint is coming up nicely, and much to my surprise and delight I discovered that two of my parsley plants survived the winter!  Yay!  I had piled all our dead leaves into the garden last fall, instead of bagging them, and I suspect that's what did it. 

My peas seem to be doing nicely as well!  This is what the first shoots looked like a few weeks ago . . .

and here is what they look like now!

I'm very much looking forward to fresh peas in a few weeks, and I'm definitely looking forward to mid-late May, when I can start planting out everything else!