Happy October’s Eve
Ever since last week when I made my little polka dotted pumpkin it’s all I can think about. I’ve made a few more, in all different sizes and I absolutely love them. I drew up the pattern, and the plan is to have the tutorial finished and ready to post tomorrow.
Even though he’s not soft or squishy or polka dotty, this guy really wanted to get in on the pumpkiny action. I told him if he promised to smile real big and to play nice with the other pumpkins I’d make him a hat.
Cran-Apple Pie
Yesterday I made a pie. Lately I have been working on my”not a new years but a mid-August goal” of making really good pie. And yesterday I decided to include Creamie in the whole process. Wow. She had a great time. My kitchen looked like a disaster zone, with apple core’s and flour and craisins strewn all over the countertops and floors. And she was as happy as can be. And next time I do that I’ll need Scott to be around to take the pictures, because it was so much fun to bake pie with her. She stood on a chair next to me and wore her little apron, and held her little rolling pin, and smelled all the spices before I dumped them in. She had her own spoon to stir with and she nibbled on the apple core’s and sampled the filling and was the cutest little pie helper a girl could ask for.
Here is my result. One of the ugliest, yet tastiest apple pie’s I’ve ever made. I’m still struggling with the crust. My problem is that it’s too tender and as I roll it out it just tears in pieces. After it’s baked it’s perfect, but the rolling out part is an ordeal. I need another lesson from my pie-expert mother. I ended up just setting large pieces of pie-dough on top of my pie for the top crust, because I couldn’t keep it from tearing into pieces as I rolled it out. Creamie decided to do the same with her little pie.
Only she lost interest after one piece. And who am I to tell her that she has to do a full top crust. I mean, it was her pie. She rolled out her little scrap of dough and mashed it into her baby tart pan with her fingers and then dumped in the last bit of filling. Which ended up much messier than either of us had planned. And then before it made it into the oven I caught her picking some of the craisins off the top. Which she learned from her mother. She’s sneaky like that. It was a near perfect way to spend the afternoon.
Wishing You Were Here…
I’m starting to feel much better. I switched my allergy medicine this week and it seems to be working much better than the last one. I had been taking it for almost ten years and sometimes you just need a change. Speaking of change, it’s been in the 90’s here today. Lame. Dear Fall, I wish you were here for reals.
[ colored glass earrings for sale here ]
[ felt rose bobby pins, she has earrings too! ]
[ Pretty 1950s plaid dress ]
I’d love to find a dress like this one. Over the weekend I was helping my mom organize some of her sewing stuff. She has some absolutely incredible treasures. Hundreds of patterns, some she remembers buying when she was 12. And she has a handful of patterns that were her mom’s. She comes from a family of 12 (twelve) and her mom sewed all the dresses for all seven girls. All of them. My grandma had boxes and boxes of beautiful patterns in every size from the 1930’s through the 60’s. And nearly all of them were thrown away. Because someone thought that “no one would want these old clothes.” It kills me. Hundreds of patterns. They could been sold for thousands (check etsy or ebay, vintage patterns are not cheap because a LOT of people want them!) But I never would have sold them. I would have kept them and loved them and looked at them and sewed the same dresses my grandma made for my mom for my daughter. And that is a beautiful thing. From the one’s that survived I’ve already got a few ideas. Next year I’m going to dive right into sewing clothing for myself and more little cute dresses for Creamie. Of course.
Anyway, where was I… oh yes. Fall. Please come soon. I am missing you more and more.
One of Those Monday’s
The weekend started out really good. I spent Friday night in the mountains with some friends at a beautiful cabin at Sundance. I get pretty awesome fall allergies, and sometime around 1:30 am I started to feel it coming on. It was all downhill from there.
[ image via weheartit ]
I’ve gone through two full boxes of tissue in the last 48 hours. I am so ready for winter to be here and freeze the life out of all those plants that make me sneeze. Dear Snow, please come soon. I miss you.
The Mouse
This afternoon I spent some quality time on the patio with a power sander in my hand. A few years I bought The Mouse with my birthday money. I pretty much love it, but today I put it to a much better use than smoothing out rough wood.
[ image ]
Today me and The Mouse spent half an hour outside in the sun sanding a whole summers worth of wearing flip flops off of my heels. That’s right. I power sand my feet. It’s WAY cheaper than a pedicure and it makes me feel all crafty.
Amy Butler and More Polka Dots
Sometimes I look back on my week and I am amazed at how much or how little of something I’ve done. This week was a lot of home cooked meals (go me!), a lot of banana splits with homemade fudge sauce and a lot of sewing. And absolutely no scrubbing of bathtubs or laundry. Meh. You get some you lose some. Of course with all that sewing Scott’s birthday present still isn’t done (Sunday, I swear!). This week Sew+Tell is an Amy Butler challenge, with prizes to be had!
To start the Amy Butler fest, I made a fall version of the Birdie Sling. I made this same pattern about a year and a half ago for my sister. And I love the pattern, but I’ve clearly got some weird poochiness going on. My last one had it too… I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, but a quick google search of birdie sling images showed me I’m not the only one with issues. (But clearly us issue girls are in the minority.) After I took these pictures I tore it apart to fix some of that weirdness. And now it’s unfinished but not weird or poochy. Does it still count as a finish if at one point today It WAS finished? The chocolatey fabric is a soft suedey bit of loveliness and the bag is lined in the same brown floral. (Both from Walmart.)
But more fun than making another purse (I’m on a fall purse kick lately! (here and here) I better call this one an overnighter.) I got to do some more with those orange Amy Butler polka dots (from the Lotus collection). And I might even like it better than the pumpkin. No, that’s a lie. There is no might about it. I love this.
This is the new friend at our house. Everyone wants to sit by him at lunch. A few weeks ago when I spotted (ha!) these polka dots I couldn’t help but imagine a whole family of giraffe’s walking around in spots. I have long loved this pattern from hop.skip.jump and after three yards of polka dots mysteriously made it to my house, I bought the pattern. And there never was a happier, or cuter pair. I cut him out on Tuesday night, saw a squirrel (SQUIRREL!!!) and got sidetracked by the pumpkin project. But that actually worked out for the best.
Around midnight on Wednesday I sewed my little giraffe parts together and put them in a stack. And Thursday morning that little stack, a bag of polyfill and a few sewing supplies went on a very long car ride with me. We drove to a small town a few hours away with Scott so he could do a little work and Creamie could go down a different slide at a different park a gillion times. Turns out stuffing a long skinny animal neck with enough polyfil to make it stand up straight is a very long laborious, but perfectly lap-controlled project. It was the perfect bit of car craftiness.
And the whole four hours roundtrip ride was puncuated with a little voice from the backseat “Hold Giraffe! Hold it!” Followed by me, fingers full of needles and polyfill and giraffe parts, in my grown up voice from the front seat “As soon as he is done I promise you can hold him.” And then a more under the breath voice “Why in the crap is this neck so long! Are you serious? I can still get MORE stuffing in that neck? Ahhh, why didn’t I leave a bigger stuffing hole in this thing! And on and on…” And finally, four hours plus a few minutes later he was finished. And when I set him down for a quick photoshoot Creamie sidled right up next to him and said “Hi Giraffe. Hi.” And then they started telling jokes. And they were both laughing it was so funny.
[ This is Creamie saying “Rockabye. Nigh’night. Rockabye. Hug.” ]
They are good friends now. Creamie even sang him a song and rocked him to sleep. The pattern calls for this little guy to be made from wool, but I couldn’t resist the idea of a polka dot giraffe. I think the wool would have been easier though. Also I left out the button joints on the arms and legs. Because he belongs to a one year old. Well, and her mother. I’m going to have a hard time letting this one down off the shelf. Mostly due to the incredible amount of time that went into stuffing that neck. You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuffing that has been compacted in that tiny neck with a ballpoint pen. Just the neck and body took me more than an hour to stuff. I’ve decided that making softies is 10% machine sewing, 70% stuffing and 20% hand sewing. You know, with all that wealth of knowledge I have in the softie making department. Perhaps the problem is I am a total rookie…
But the giraffe seems happy to be finished and to have some new friends to hang out with. Even if he is head and shoulders neck above them. (That cute little frog was knitted by my amazingly talented SIL Stephanie. Creamie sleeps with him most every night.)
I’m off to look at Sew+Tell: Amy Butler Edition. And then I’m off to a mountain cabin to laugh the night away with some cute girlfriends of mine. Right after I finish sewing my new overnight bag back together.
Polka Dots and Pumpkins
I’ve got a lot of sewing projects that are stacked up on my dining room table. Scott’s birthday present still isn’t finished (but oh so close) plus Halloween costumes are looming large in front of me, and I’ve got a few Christmas presents that are already in the works. And by works I mean in various stages of completion. In the stacks. So, last night with an early bedtime what did I do? Something completely different.
I had the orange polka dots (by Amy Butler) out for another project, which is cut out and in a nice little stack. But I got an idea and I couldn’t make myself stop. And since the other polka dot project doesn’t need to be done until tomorrow night I felt totally justified in throwing all cares to the wind to make a polka dot pumpkin.
I love how he turned out! The leaves are made from a super soft merino wool sweater I felted last year. I’ve been waiting for the perfect project to use it on. There are actually three different leaves, but it kind of just looks like one big one, which I am OK with. I amazingly had matching embroidery floss to stitch some veins in the leaves, and to give the pumpkin a little more definition. The stem is a linen scrap from the new living room pillows I made a few weeks ago.
I used one bag of poly pellets in the bottom of the pumpkin (to give it a little weight and help it stand upright a little better) and then stuffed it with polyfill. Easy peasy. Creamie was dying all morning yesterday while I did the last bit of handstitching on it. She kept saying “Hold pumpkin! Hold pumpkin!” and when it was all done (and all pins removed) she took it in her arms and sang it a lullaby. And then she said “pumpkin pill-yo-yo-yo (pillow). Nigh’night.”
Also, in fabulous news… her sweater was purchased on my fabulous thrifting weekend. It came with matching tights, is from Gymboree and was $6 (almost more than I was willing to pay, but the cuteness and the stripes got me.) And her little brown skinny cords from BabyGap? Well, I didn’t buy them from BabyGap, but I did pay a good $3 for them.
I think there are more polka dot pumpkins in my future. How cute would three of them be together, in all different sizes? And, it’s a fabulous excuse to buy up all the cute orange prints I can find. I think I’ll make one into a jack’o’lantern with a little scraps of black felt for eyes. Gaaa, it’s going to be cute! And besides cute, it really is the perfect decoration for me. Totally unbreakable. (It also worked fabulously as a giant pincushion. Or a pillow.) Now, back to the dining room, my sewing machine and the stacks.
UPDATE: I’m adding this to the Amy Butler version of Sew+Tell at Amylouwho’s. I tell you, that Amy Butler makes a fantastic polka dot, no?
Thrifting at Midnight
It’s no big shocker that I love the thrill of finding something fantastic stuck on the bottom shelf at a thrift store. I love that kind of retail therapy more than anything else. I don’t usually hit up garage or yard sales though. But on Saturday night at about 10 o’clock my friend Kim called me with fantastic news. Her aunt was setting up for an estate sale the next morning, and if I was interested I could swing on over right now. At ten o’clock. At night.
[ Peacock green/ teal blue leather purse. Brand new as far as I can tell. $12 ]
I was sold. I dropped everything I was stitching and grabbed my shoes and keys. In between my front door and my car I sent my best thrfting buddy Betsy a text asking her if she wanted to come too. She was in. We followed cryptic (slightly wrong) directions and drove up to a house on a hill with a front yard full of stuff. We both grabbed flashlights and started looking through boxes. There were a LOT of boxes. This woman was a near hoarder.
[ Pyrex bowl, Butterfly Gold $1.50 ]
She had about 50 purses, most of them unused. She had piles of magazines and books. She dry cleaned her sweatpants. She had her name stamped on everything. Sometimes in three or four places. There were typewriters (but not pretty one’s) and furniture and tools and lamps and boxes and boxes of shoes, some never worn. It was thrifting heaven.
[ Vintage tapestry evening purse with silk lining and mother of pearl accents. $1.50 ]
We spent a good two hours digging through every single pile with our flashlights and both came away with some fantastic stuff. It was a wonderful way to spend a Friday night. And the next morning Betsy and Creamie and I went out again. We hit up four different thrift stores before stopping for lunch.
[ Six new rolls of gaffer tape from seven gypsies. $1.50 ]
Saturday morning was less successful. And shopping in the day is just not as exciting as shopping at night I guess. Saturday night Scott and I were on a date, killing some time between dinner and our movie and we happened to drive past yet another thrift store. And you know me. I can’t just drive by. I have to see if there are any treasures that need rescuing.
[ Three paisley padded hangars. $1.00 ]
Don’t worry. There were. And some “treasures” that didn’t need rescuing at all [ read big old stained ugly tanning bed for $500… really? ] Sometimes you just have to laugh at the things that turn up on the thrift store shelves. And as if I hadn’t had enough thrifting in 24 hours, on Monday morning I went again.
[ Three spools of vintage Christmas trims. $1.00 ]
I actually think Monday mornings are the best time to go. Way fewer people than on a Saturday, and for the shops that accept donations, you get first dibs on what was dropped off at the end of the weekend. When everyone has finished cleaning out their parents garages or their grandma’s attics. Tuesday’s after Monday holidays are also fantastic.
[ Vintage fan necklace. The fan opens and closes, and on the reverse is a gold on gold design. This is my very favorite find of the weekend, from the estate sale on Friday night. It was $ .25 ]
This isn’t even everything. There are plenty more little bits that will show up here in the next little while. I’ve picked up some great clothes for Creamie recently. Her entire winter wardrobe, and jeans to last through next winter. A few dresses, some shoes and tights, and the cutest striped sweater I’ve ever seen. I can hardly believe my streak of recent good luck. And that’s mostly what it is. Being at the right place at the right time and having your eyes open. So what have we learned here? Keep your eyes open and keep a flashlight in your car. And extra batteries. You may never know when you’ll have the opportunity to go thrifting at midnight.
Don’t you just love the fall?
It makes me wanna buy school supplies.
I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
I need more Pie in my life
Last night for Scott’s birthday we had our families come over to celebrate. And we celebrated with pie. Lots of homemade all from scratch pie. Well, pies. It was definitely plural.
I made a pumpkin and a banana cream, and my mother saved the day by making apple and a rhuberry pie. (I’ll share the recipe for rhuberry pie soon, oh my hello it is delicious!) I have an empty crust ready to fill up with lemon meringue, but I didn’t get to that. Ah well, I still have tomorrow. And I still have homemade pudding in the fridge from the banana cream… and there’s a teensy bit of pumpkin left… and if I tell you that we had 32 slices of available pie and there was only 13 of us that did any tasting, and three of them were under 8 and only had one piece each, and we ended the night with only three pieces of pie left… well if I tell you all that, will you promise not to do the math and tell me that I shouldn’t have eaten those last four pieces? Great. Thanks.
pinksuedeshoe 