The Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge

The Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge is located in Sag Harbor, NY. It is a coastal area, on the north shore of Long Island's south fork. There are wooded trails that lead down to the water, and an abundance of wildlife can be seen along the way. Chipmunks and birds are fairly comfortable with humans visiting their woods, some may even take food from an outstretched hand. The trick is to stay very still and quiet, and hold a few sunflower seeds in your open hand so that they can see it... In the winter when there is less food available to them, the birds in particular are very willing to come and partake. In the summer, they have other options, but still, an occasional sparrow or chickadee will land and have a seed or two. This is a great day trip for families, the kids will love it, and the beach is at the end of the trail so you can spend time there when you are done feeding the birds!

Create Your Own Throw Pillow

Frequently, when I tell people that I make things with a sewing machine, they respond by telling me that they don't know how to sew.  Many of them even have sewing machines, but they find them too intimidating to use.  So, to all of you people out there, if you can drive a car, you can sew.  You might need a little help threading your machine, but if it came with directions, and you'll be able to figure that part out.  As for the "driving," you steer the fabric with your hands, and press the "gas pedal" on the floor to adjust your speed.  Now, let's make a throw pillow.

You can make your throw pillow with no zipper, which is even easier than the one I'm going to show you, but if you have a DOG like mine (see above) who thinks all things soft and squishy are for  her sleeping comfort, you're going to want to wash your pillow now and then.  I think it's easier to wash the case and the stuffing separately, so that's why mine has a zipper. 

1.  Cut your fabric into a large square, or as I did, into a rectangle that is a square when you fold it in half.  (One less side to sew!)

2.  Fold fabric or match fabric if two separate squares with the right (Good) sides together.  If your fabric is striped, you'll want to line up the stripes as much as possible, and pin the edge opposite the fold. 

3.  Using a very large stitch size, sew down this edge.  Take the pins out as your sewing machine gets close to them...  you can break your sewing machine needle if you sew over them.  You can live dangerously by not using pins or by trying to sew over them, as I sometimes do, but I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner... and watch out for your fingers. There's really no need for them to get too close to that needle, unless you want to see what if feels like to sew over your finger, as I once did.   

3. Flatten out your seam - you're going to put the zipper on it, lining up the zipper teeth right over the seam.  

4.  Place the zipper in the middle of this seam, and mark with a pencil on the fabric where the beginning and the ending of the zipper will be.  

5.  Using a smaller stitch, go back to the sewing machine, and reinforce with another line of stitching in the places where your zipper will NOT be.  The edges of my fabric are about 18 inches long, and my zipper is 12 inches long, so I reinforced about 3 inches of the seam on each end.  

6.  Now, put your zipper back on the fabric, and pin it down.  

7.  Now, I always have a problem sewing around the lump that is the zipper pull, and here's how I deal with that problem.  I sew the bottom half of the zipper on both sides first.

8.  Then I push the zipper pull down the zipper far enough so that I can sew the top half of the zipper on each side.  

The picture above shows the zipper pull halfway down the seam, after I finished sewing each side.  

I'm sure the Project  Runway alumni have a much more professional way to do this, but this is what I found to be the easiest way.  Before I discovered this method, I used to have sections of my zipper sticking out of the finished product like errant bra straps.  Unsightly. 

9.  Now that the zipper is in place, unzip it carefully.  Where the zipper opens, cut the large stitches you first sewed.  You can use a pair of sharp scissors, or a seam ripper.  Most sewing machines come with a seam ripper.  It's a little gadget that looks like a mini envelope opener - a small hook with a sharp edge on the inside curve.  Slide it along the seam and WALLA - consider your seam ripped. 

10.  Match up your remaining sides, pin and sew them.  

11. Snip off most of the corners, taking care not to cut through the stitching where it crosses to make the corners. 

12. Pulling through the unzipped opening, turn your pillow casing so that the right side is now facing out.

13. Stuff with stuffing. 

14. Zip closed.  

15. Let your dog sleep on the pillow.  

Or not. 

You now know how to sew.  :-)

Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia - Sneaking History Into Your Vacation

We just returned home from a vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Williamsburg is a lengthy drive from our house, but it's still short enough to do in one day.

Visiting Colonial Williamsburg is a great way to sneak a little bit of education into your vacation. My kids have now both learned about the settlement at Jamestown and the birth of the United States, so Colonial Williamsburg (which is what you see in the picture above) now has some significance for them.

There are lots of short, educational demonstrations and talks you can see in Colonial Williamsburg, and it's a beautiful place to look at as well.  There are dozens of refurbished colonial buildings, some of which are shops of various sorts, and some of which are outfitted as if people of that day still lived there...

As an occasional photographer, I loved this scenery.  I tried not to linger too long to keep the kids from getting bored, but I found that if I mixed a bit of this...

with a bit of this...

...they did just fine. 

If your kids are like my kids, they will find something they want to buy, even if it's at "sort-of" historically accurate places such as this:

And then of course, there are the conventional souvenir shops, where you can buy things like this:

Don't worry - he didn't shoot his eye out - it just looks like a real gun.  

Although, if you cut the string on the cork of this pop gun (out of sheer frustration, due to SOMEONE popping it INCESSANTLY), you could see how it might have the potential to shoot someone's eye out...

Don't ask me how I know this information.

We visited the church some of our founding fathers attended while they worried about the fate of the colonies.  One of the guides informed us that you can still attend mass here.  I believe she said it is the oldest continuously attended church in the nation.

And, if you're a bacon lover, like my daughter, you'll probably appreciate this plaque in the church vestibule.

If you're interested in weaponry, be sure to visit the armory.

And visit nearby Yorktown, where you can see a canon fired just a few yards away.

It is my estimation that you can't spend a whole week doing this stuff, but don't let that deter you from visiting.  There are lots of other things to do in Williamsburg.  

More in my next post!

Dredging Yaphank Lake

Dredging Yaphank Lake

When I was a kid, (as my kids would say, "back in the day") people used to go swimming in Yaphank Lake.  It was probably the sort of place that mothers liked to come with their small children due to the lack of waves and the fact that the deepest part of the lake is only about 6 feet.  In the mid 80's, when I worked at the preschool just down the road, a bunch of us used to go down to the lake, plop our towels by the "shore" and work on our tans while we watched the neighborhood kids splash around in the water.  It was almost like having part of the day off.

Dredging operation at Upper Yaphank Lake

Some time around then, according to speculation, someone dumped a fish tank, or maybe just a fish from a fish tank into the lake, and invasive waters plant took hold in the lake.

Over time, those plants made the lake go from this:

(minus the black tubing, which keeps the silt from spreading while they dredge) 

...to this.

Lower Yaphank Lake - "Lily Lake"

This is not the same lake, but it's attached to the same lake via a short stretch of stream. Lily Lake or, Lower Yaphank Lake, is just as much of a mess as its sister lake.

 Luckily, a clean-up has finally begun.  I didn't realize it would take such a monumental effort to fix this mess.

First, they rake through the water with this steam-boat looking thing, and pull out the weeds...

Then they pile it onto the shore.  

After the Upper Lake is done, they'll move on to the Lower Lake.

They use this tubing to hold a big screen in place.  It's supposed to keep the silt in a smaller area while they work.  See the massive pipe coming out of the water on the right side of the picture above?  It runs underground and dumps out in the lower lake.  I guess they are filtering out the smaller particles, so pieces of the weeds-from-hell don't spread again.

Look at the massive quantity of this stuff.  

Before they started, the whole lake was literally covered in this stuff

They've pulled multiple piles of this stuff out of the lake so far.  

It's a wonder fish can still swim through it. 

Looking forward to the day when there are kids here again, playing in the water.

If you want to know more about the Yaphank lakes, check out these links...

http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/24204.html

http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/24179.html

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/3-7m-bond-okd-to-clean-up-yaphank-lakes-1.4987973

http://www.savetheyaphanklakes.org/initiatives.html

http://yaphankcivic.org/Lake_Invasives_Species.html