Sylvia Bass

I go through creative phases in my life where I am inspired to make things. Sometimes it revolves around cooking and baking, sometimes drawing, sometimes sewing.

Last month I made a few skirts using a fun book called, “Sew What! Skirts“. The premise of the book is to show you how to make your own patterns to create simple skirts. I made two wrap-around skirts that I wear frequently.

New cushion cover and old cat

Last weekend, I made new covers for the pillows on the sofa. We have a lovely Room & Board sofa that is covered with a blanket most of the time. We keep it covered so the cats don’t get hair all over it since it’s really their sofa and we get to borrow it on occasion. The blanket is easily removed when we have company and the sofa looks like new. We never bothered to cover the pillows and they are starting to show wear in little drool spots, mysterious stains and bits of feather poking through. I had some mid-century style modern fabric in my stock. I had purchased it in the hopes of making place mats or an apron, but the pattern was too big. It was perfect for the pillows, however. With the addition of vintage buttons from my mom’s stash, I had two nifty looking pillows that make the sofa pop — even with the cover on.

It has been a little more than three months since I began composting. By this time, I should have my first batch of compost ready to spread in the garden. Did my alchemy experiments work to turn garbage into black gold? Not quite.

I think my ratio of brown to green compostable materials was too brown and not enough green. Some items like paper towels, coffee filters and branches were still whole after the three months. I threw them back up in the top for another round.

The interesting thing is that this month I had another type of fly infestation. I have been dealing with fruit flies off an on throughout the spring and summer. I noticed a few weeks ago a wasp like fly buzzing around the composter. My husband looked them up on WhatsThatBug.com and found out they were Black Soldier Flies. The name sounds a bit intimidating, but it turns out that they are a beneficial insect. The adults have no working mouth and only live a few days spent on finding a mate and reproducing. They lay their eggs in decomposing material and are thus drawn to the compost pile. This is where the beneficial part begins. The fly larvae are voracious eaters and hasten the composting process the same way worms do. Suddenly my compost is teeming with life and the process has sped up considerably.