Nature | August

 It's time to round up this month's nature pictures.

My favorite is the close-up hibiscus flower. The petals look so velvety! 

Do you have a favorite from this gallery? Have you seen inspiring sights in nature this month?

My children ran to get me when they saw this freshly emerged cicada. They didn't want me to miss out on seeing it.

This sphinx month was very well camouflaged on our neighbor's mailbox post 

Knobby knees of the cypress. I loved getting to see these! There is a poem in this scene somewhere. Let me have a crack at it:

Knobby Knees of the Cypress 

A stoic people,

A stable people,

Watching the waves

Ever changing.

They stand,

Unmoved,

Never changing.

To shift?

Or to stay?

To shift 

For the wave is best.

To stay

For the knee knob is best.

A foggy morning.

I saw a beautiful morning. Drips of rain clung on all the leaves and branches. It could have been a heavy dew. It was hard to tell. The droplets were prisms everywhere! I was able to catch the effect in this picture.

First omen of fall.

This woolly caterpillar was so funny to me. Look at how his little grippers meet each other as they grasp all the way around the singular vein of leaf that is left. I imagine him worrying about where to find more food having eaten almost everything on this leaf. "What am I gonna do? I have nothing left. I'm starving!"

I am going to add a video of a monarch caterpillar changing into its chrysalis. It took f-o-r-e-v-e-r . I had my phone propped up on my knife organizer block all day because it offered a decent angle to capture this monarch caterpillar turning into its chrysalis. After 8 hours I have up and turned my phone off. I happened to be in the room when it finally split it's skin. I turned my camera on quickly to catch the rest of the "action". Doing science takes a long time! It's a slow burn. Don't feel bad if you getting tired of this video and don't finish watching. I can admit that it makes pretty boring cinema. Don't get me wrong, it is an amazing process and seeing it happening before my eyes was a real treat!

Ham And Cheese Braid

 My mom made these every year to pack for our lunch when we went to the State Fair. We'd walk around the fair for a few hours. We'd see the biggest pig and some teams of Clydesdale pulling polished coaches having a competition in the Coliseum or watch a demonstration of dogs doing long jumps into a big pool. There were so many things to see! The 4-h projects, a marching band, an old fashioned threshing machine, a historic village, fiber arts, giant fish in the conservation center, antique tractors, live music, mammoth pumpkins, and a specially carved pumpkin with a scene of the fair or something iconic about our state, large tractors driving shuttles that we'd have to scurry out of the road to let pass, and on and on. The lunch hour would come and then we'd head back to the van and have a picnic. We'd pull the cooler out, lay down a blanket and feast on slices of Ham and Cheese Braid dipped in horseradish sauce, homemade cookies, fresh grapes, and chips, maybe some baby carrots, too. After our bellies were full and the water bottles had been replenished we'd go back and see more of the fair. State Fair days were always long and hot and full of sights, sounds, and smells. The feeling on the drive home was so raw: I couldn't wait to get back to my happy, quiet home, but I was glad to have so many memories of the big, wide bustling fair in my mind. And I was just so grateful to have my family around me; of all the people that I had bumped shoulders with in the crowds during the day, I got to go home with the best people in the whole wide world - my favorite people - my family.

This year I made Ham and Cheese Braid to take to our State Fair. We don't do the whole picnic at the van. We bought corn dogs for lunch.  We had Ham and Cheese bread for a snack and to keep us from having to buy supper from the vendors, though.

I had fun making Ham and Cheese Braid after so many years. I thought it would be fun to make a video about the process and it was a fun project. Here is my little video. You can see how to make a Ham and Cheese Braid. My mom uses ham, provolone, and deli salami. I substituted summer sausage for the salami because I am to cheep to buy anything from the deli counter. Sorry for being so stingy. 

Applesauce Pancake Recipe!

 

It has been an apple-y time of year! Last week I was processing apples Monday through Friday. I froze 19 bags of applesauce. There is about 2 quarts in each freezer bag.

We like applesauce plain but also in treats like Applesauce Cake and Applesauce Pancakes.

(Follow this link for my favorite Applesauce Cake recipe.)

Applesauce Pancakes 

3 cups flour

1 Tbsp.+1 tsp. baking powder 

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. sugar 

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 oil
2 cups applesauce 

Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Combine milk, eggs, and oil in a 2 cup liquid measurer. 

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients along with the applesauce.

Mix until nearly smooth.

Cook on a hot skillet or griddle as normal pancakes.

Enjoy!

This Blue Dress Took 3 Years!

 I cut this dress out back in August 2023. This January(2026) I pulled out the pieces to start working on the dress.

This is how I put in a centered zipper. I find the best results are achieved when I baste the zipper in with a spiraling zigzag stitch that holds the zipper teeth directly on the seam.

It turned out pretty good on the first time. I didn't have to do any stitch ripping. Yay!

I usually put an invisible zipper in this pattern, but I didn't find one right away so I went forward with the centered zipper. Sometimes you've got to keep chugging and not get derailed on the details.

I tried machine sewing the button holes. They were awful. I had to take them all out and hand stitch the button holes.

Much better! 

I also added 2 more buttons because I had smaller buttons than the pattern called for. I had to change the placement of the button holes to add the extra 2 buttons.

Because this dress took me so long to finish I had gotten it soiled dragging it around from sewing station to sewing station: from the kitchen table, to the living room, to the van for road trip sewing sessions, to the picnic table. I hope the spots come out.

This is after the wash.... Not too bad. Not too bad.

I see some issues with the fit. 

I'm pretty sure I need to learn how to do a full bust adjustment. I can see some pull lines and the waistline is riding up in the front. Those are signs that I need a full bust adjustment. I have watched how-to videos and read tutorials, but I am still super intimidated to try customizing a pattern.  

I have one more dress already cut and ready to sew. Since it is already cut out I am going to put off learning how to do a FBA yet again.

Have you ever had to adjust a pattern to fit your measurements? How did it turn out? Was it easy to learn?

These institutions don't seem too hard. 

If you want to see another dress that I made from this same pattern, check out this blog post from 2024.