another weekend of productive domesticity and photography

my weekend sort of started on friday this week (i say “sort of” because i had to work a few hours on saturday) and i spent the friday morning taking pictures of a friend’s children.  it was a new experience for me to try to photograph three mobile children.  usually, at least one of them is new enough to not really move a lot and the others can all sort of orbit around the stationary center of an infant, but in this case, all three are very active and i was happy to take on a new photography challenge in exchange for a loaf of the mom’s fantastic homemade bread.  here’s my favorites:

the photo below is the only picture i got of all three of them actually looking at the camera and nobody making a weird face.  normally, i’m a fan of “weird face” pictures, but that wasn’t quite what i was going for.*  i ran this photo through some strange color filters in photoshop elements, but i think i need to learn more about photoshop actions.  hey all you photo-buffs out there–what would you do to this photo to improve it?  i like the more relaxed and genuine smileyness of the photo above, but the girl’s head is sort of hiding and i’m not sure what to do about that.  any ideas?

segue to saturday:

my farmer’s market is a-ma-zing.  we hadn’t been able to go last week (and maybe not the week before that either?) so i was on a stock-up trip.  i bought:

zucchini (regular and “italian”)

potatoes

tomatoes

onions

corn

bell peppers–green, red and yellow

parsley, dill, mint (both a bunch to make tea and some little “starts” to plant) and garlic

5 of the pollen-free sunflowers like you see above

golden beets

haricots verts

blueberries, raspberries and “black cap” raspberries

carrots

shelled peas

broccoli

bacon

usually, mr. happy stuff and i go together, but he was busy doing something else on saturday morning, so i was on my own and boy were my arms tired by the time i got back to the car!  i had to be at work by noon, but i wanted to get some of those veggies processed ASAP, so between the market and work, i pickled a batch of beets; washed, blanched and froze the peas; froze half of the raspberries, made a batch of granola and another batch of rhubarb sauce (from the rhubarb that was a gift from the owners of last weekend’s cabin–thanks!)

today’s (sunday’s) domesticity project was sewing!  (finally!)  i finished the totebag from my long-ago blogiversary giveaway, but i haven’t properly photographed that yet, so you’ll just have to wait.  i wanted short, easily finished projects today, so i also did my common threads block.  liz wanted straight (or at least not diagonal or curved) lines in her block and had some lovely inspiration quilts so i combined two of the designs to create this block:

it was a bit scrimp and pinch on the fabric (i think i had less than 4 square inches of fabric leftover at the end) so that took some creative piecing on my part, but i enjoyed the challenge.  i didn’t enjoy realizing that i needed to rip off seven strips and re-do them when i slightly altered my design plan, but i do think i like the final result better for changing it.  i am a huge fan of the “red cross quilt” that was the inspiration for one of the inspiration quilts and maybe someday i’ll make one of my own.  i hope you like this block, lady harvatine!

*although this photo did crack me up: