My first craft since I got it was this sweet little carrying case while I waited for my hard case to arrive in the mail. The classic 10 min project including cutting. It’s on piece sewn up the sides and lined in felt. The only thing I would do differently if I made it again would be to add some template plastic similar sturdy materiL to one side so it would retain its shape better when the phone is out of the case. Is it wrong that I like this much more than the purchases one? Unfortunately it wouldnt protect it much in a fall.

This is what my lovely sewing room looked like Sunday  morning–sort of a pretty pale blue swath of felt barf all over my sewing room. Yards of it. Why you ask?

My sweetest bunny is turning 8 next month. 8. Do you know how old that feels? Well, I’ll tell you–it feels a heck of a lot older than 7.

Work has been slow lately (yeah!!), so I’ve been taking advantage of that and getting ahead on projects. One of those projects is prepping for bunny’s birthday party. She has always chosen her own theme, rarely, if ever guided by me. Sometimes they leave me sweating (like “Strawberry”–um, baby, what about strawberries I ask her cute almost 4 year old self only to receive a puzzled look in return). We’ve done strawberries, tea party, golden ticket party, garden party (which, is, most assuredly, different than tea party) and now, wait for it–Dance Party. All I know is that there must be freeze dancing

We are still at that lovely age where her party can be all girls. And for that, I thank my lucky stars because, at least Bunny and her friends, will happily craft 30-45 minutes away if I have something good planned. Enter the annual, birthday craft. This year, I decided (what was I thinking????) that I would make felt poodle skirts and the girls could cut and glue poodles onto the skirts. But then, as I was purchasing the felt (thank you Joann’s $2.99 per yard off the bolt sale), I thought–what if the girl isn’t a dog person?? And aren’t dogs well, kind of hard to cut. See, the goal is for me to prep so they keep busy, not prep so that they glue something on and call it done. No, no. So, now, we are having “flower skirts”.

I made eight of these lovelies today. All sewn up, except I have a safety pin the elastic band so I can fit to size as the girls come to the party.

Then each girl will get a large square of felt in this lovely rainbow array of colors, scissors and glue. I’ll suggest flowers, but creativity is always welcomed. I have a feeling this won’t beat last years’ record of busy making where they literally BEGGED me to keep the craft time going (painting terra cotta pots). But I think they’ll like this.

If I’m a real glutton for punishment (and I usually am), I’ll make 8 blue felt head bands that they can also glue onto to their little hearts’ content.

These are prints I picked up when we last were in France and did a tour of the Loire Valley chateaux.

The prints are oddly-sized, so long, long ago I got  a set of frames at Ikea that came with some “odd-sized” mattes. The problem was that the prints are black and white and the mattes were white. I hated it. The pictures swam and weren’t properly anchored. So, in a stroke of brilliance, I painted the mattes this lovely shade of blue. On a windy day, outside, without proper restraints on newspaper. So, it was a disaster. Smears and unevenness and, well, I let them sit for over a year and a half waiting to figure out what to do next.

Until today when I saw them in a cubby in my sewing room and thought: batting and fabric. Color. Lots of it. So, I whipped out ye old trusty glue gun and went to town. I think they turned out just lovely. And, since I was on a tear, I went ahead and put them on the wall… seriously, people. That had the potential to be another 6 months before getting done!

And, last weekend, I finally got my buffet of thread up above my machine. Happy, happy color.

I still have one naked wall, and some ideas, but I think that will take awhile.  (And I still can’t get a “gallery” of pictures in here properly.

I’ve been on a sewing tear–look for more in this space soon.

Leanda de Lisle is clearly an excellent researcher and writes with enough detail to captivate you through the entire story. She focuses in turn on each sister. The portrayal of Jane was different than the previous portrayals I had read or seen.  De Lisle really focuses on Jane’s education and deliberate upbringing in the new protestant faith. She seems resolute but not at all in a puppeted way. I didn’t see any hesitation or have a feeling that she ever questioned why she should be queen. Very fascinating reading.

I had never paid much attention to the second Grey sister who Elizabeth I and Catherine saw as a threat. So virtually all of the information I read related to her and later Mary, the last of the sisters was new to me. The author did a great job reviewing journals letters and the like. I never realized just how much fortune depended on becoming and remaining in the queen’s good favor–the grey family struggled with making ends meet after Jane’s death off and on as Catherine and Elizabeth in turn felt threatened. The queens each held a strangle hold over the future of both of the remaining Grey sisters–even trying to control if they ever married (creating the next male heir rendered either Grey sister extremely dangerous with the preference for male rulers at the time).

If you’re at all interested in the Tudor era, I would recommend this highly.

Shannon Penman is a terrific writer. Read a chapter, just one, close your eyes and take the tiniest effort and you will be able to vividly imagine that you are there. Being able to paint so well with words though has its drawbacks–neither she nor her editor could imagine cutting much of the over 700 page beast that is Here Be Dragons. The first significant chunk of the book, maybe up to 1/4 or even 1/3 of the book takes place before the two main characters meet. The book is supposed to be about the love story between Bad King John’s bastard daughter Joanna and Llewelyn the Great of Wales. And it is a lovely story, and it doesn’t cheat you on the love story between them, the angst and agony of Joanna’s love being split between her father and husband. But it does go on and on and on and on.

I think part of the reason why I kept putting it down was utter frustration with Joanna–she was so utterly undeserving of Llewelyn. While he wasn’t a perfect husband, he was certainly for more understanding of her fits, childishness, and the million times she stabbed him in the back to try and do right by her father. I think she was in a complicated position but she was one of those horribly misguided souls who forever seemed to be making wrong decisions out of selflessness for her love of those around her, but when  you really step back and look at it, she was ridiculously selfish. Had the book been half its size, I might not have been so disenchanted with her by the end.

Speaking of the end, I felt a bit on the cheated side. After a seemingly almost impossible reconciliation between the two — it skips a few years, and then they die. I wanted to reach into the book and shake someone.

Despite the great talent Penman has, I doubt I will read anything else by her. At least not until I’m in retirement and have all the time in the world to read books that, while good, do go on, and on, and on.

• Picked a pattern and cut pieces over several weeks as I had time–at some point I started making my cuts not from the instructions but by looking on what I cut in the last cutting session. Which evidently at some point I had screwed up on, so the blocks were no longer going to be proportional for the pattern I had wanted.
• No biggie, right, take what I have, sew it up and see what we’ve got. But when you don’t know where you’re going, sewing up it a wee bit more challenging.
• Stop sewing and start arranging the mismatches and decide on what I’m doing.
• Re-sew several not comporting with my new plan. Finish sewing the rest.
• Lay them out. Have my then four-year old insist that she wants the squares arranged a certain way. Detest the layout. Detest the red. Detest that fact that I had long ago destashed all of the fabrics that made up the pieces I was using–no extras, so use what I have. Detest the Red.
• 
• Sew together. In incorrect order, evidently without precision in my 1/4 inch seam. Sigh. Unpick, re-sew. Do this 3 times over the course of a year and a half while I’m in law school.
• It’s together. Hooray. Let’s slap some borders on it. Let’s play it by ear. Let’s take my then 5-year-old to the quilt shop and as I’m looking at fabric, in innocence answer her when she asks what we are looking for. She has a decided opinion. I hated the fabrics she wanted then. One of them I’m still lukewarm on but it actually goes well with the quilt. The polka dots I originally hated–too bright! I love now.
• 
• Slap them on the quilt, study it and think–I don’t think that’s square.
• Bring then 6-year-old daughter to get backing fabric–have her insist on some unplanned for flannel on the back with monkeys and other critters. See the quilt that could have lasted her until her teens now have a more childish shelf life. Buy–just enough. (See the monkeys under this other blanket??? At my old house even!)
• 
• Sigh. Extra sigh. Still be living in our postage stamp sized place and decide to baste it with 505 spray on an autumn afternoon on our porch. With dead leaves swirling everywhere. With dead leaves falling onto the 505′ed areas as I struggle to get the layers squared. After a particularly huge gust of wind, decide that it is “good enough”. Realize later when I go to quilt it that the backing is too small on one side. Decide we’ll cut the borders down to match later.
• Start quilting one afternoon in our postage stamp sized house–even with my fancy new machine, the quilt is hanging over the edges of my sewing table in a way that is pulling on the needle as the fabric is going through. Try stippling though it’s been years and years since I did any. Disaster. Disgust. Roll it back up and put it in a tub.
• Move.
• Have phenomenal sewing room. Have unsightly tub that won’t close because the quilt is in it.
• Decide to quilt it. Unbloody pick the bit of stipple I did and instead try Oh Franson’s loopy flowers. But on my quilt they’re “sloppy flowers”. Have my 14-year-old niece comment that it’s so cool I wasn’t fussy and making them look exactly perfect because that wouldn’t look cool. Right. I totally planned that. Go to Oh Franson’s tutorial a few times and covet her ability to make things look like she didn’t freehand. Remember to do some half flowers falling off the borders so it looks like they extend to the edges of the quilt. Get tired of making the flowers pretty fast. Do them a little too far apart.
• 
• Finish quilting and remember to cut the borders… by just over an inch on most sides–effectively destroying the half flowers I had made in the prior step.
• Take purchased bias binding strips I’ve never used before (I have historically always rolled my own). Pin it on, discover that I’m roughly 30 inches too short. Since I didn’t roll my own–I don’t have any of this fabric to make more from. Sigh. Decide it will be a whimsy (which I hate) corner with interest and use a different fabric. Spend a bazillion years and unpicking time before I admit that I no longer remember how to sew down binding or mitered corners  before I get a book out say “Ooooooohhhhh!” and finish. Stay up late on a work night hand sewing it down. Throw in laundry. Have it NOT bunch up all crinkly and lovely.
• 
• But have the child loves it just the same.
• 
• Feel like a free woman out from under the weight of unfinished project.
• Turn to baby blanket I MUST finish!

Anyone signing up before the stroke of midnight (eastern??) gets a $10 rebate! Join in and conquer your fear of knits!

I think when I first started crocheting (because, hey, that’s where I started my textile journey), I remember thinking that I’d have to give away a bunch or end up in a house with a gajillion blankets, which would seem sort of stupid.  So I did–and, idiot that I am, I rarely took pix of the stuff that I gave away and didn’t track what projects/patterns I had done. So now I go to look at a pattern and think, wait, did I do that? Did I HATE making that?? Hmmm *scratches head* start making it anyway and get two days into and think “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I have made this bloody thing before and I”m NOT putting myself through that again!” (oops–tangent!)

I think with quilty stuff too, I tended to make exactly what the pattern said instead of acknowledging–hey cool pattern, but I have GOT to make some changes because I”m simply not the table runner type. I think this came from fear of making mistakes–so I couldn’t alter the pattern or I can’t make mistakes if someone else is choosing my fabrics etc. Like the year that I joined a Thimbleberries year long quilt club and realized way, way too late that 1) it was  a basket theme all year (I could do a basket thing say once every ten years and be set) and 2) it was almost all table runners except for a couple of hokey wall hangings that weren’t going anywhere in my house. Sigh. I’ll never get back the hours of my life that I put into those projects that I didn’t like. Or the basket block swap where I still have a queen sized basket quilt, made with colors I don’t like, with folks who weren’t precise in their blocks. At least I learned that I’m unable to do swaps anymore–because I hated that. (Oops-another tangent!)

What’s my point here? I forget! No, just kidding. It’s just the ridiculous things that I made as a more noobie sewist/crocheter that I shouldn’t have and that I’m glad I don’t have around anymore. The flip side is that I’m no longer that noobie chick and have taken stock in the fact that I have made nothing, zero, nada, bubkiss for myself, something I really want just for me in nearly two years. It’s true. I’ve made a few baby blankets for others, halloween costumes for others (which I won’t do anymore–I can’t sew to deadlines; it makes me unhappy–uh, tangent??), and the rest of what I do is for Bunny. While she usually thinks it’s neat–I think the awe of “wow, mommy can do that” has worn off and she thinks of it more as a matter of course (wait for upcoming post on her underwhelmedness on her bedroom curtains).

So i decided this week to break the pattern in a big way and the next 5 things I made would be for me–which I already broke by agreeing to make some pumpkin things with Bunny today for the house (kind of also for me, then, right?? Not so much really). Maybe I need to make a list of what I want and then I’ll stick with it better?? Gotta give this some thought and creatively rejuvenate.

But, wait, that’s not all. You can also get a handy dandy subscribe button to stick on your browser toolbar. I’m in love! I have a habit of cuddling up with my laptop and running through the favorite blogs some of you folks list. Invariably, I’ll have several that I want to subscribe to and it’s kind of a pain to copy that url, open google reader, paste it into the subscription area etc. Now, there’s no more need. Just click that subscribe button from whatever page you are on and voila. It’s part of your reader. Bliss. Thanks to the folks who blogged about it.

And this is what I got:

It has a corian countertop and there are four white “pillars” for lack of a better word made of melamin–that make shelves that perfectly fit two stacked clear tubs at a time. And none of it is bolted together. The weight of the top and the lip going over the towers hold it in place. I can rearrange the towers to make standing space or stool space wherever I want.

I’ve rearranged my space to accommodate it, and it’s not quite right yet. But it feels really open and functional when I’m in it. My first project was to whip out some fabric and cut a bias strip to make this super cute headband for the bunny I sent to Yellowstone with her grandparents this week. Bliss. Plenty of room to move the fabric, big rulers etc.

Tonight, I didn’t have it in me to sew after work, but I did, the hard way, without geometry equations, figure out that to make that cute shirred headband, which requires 15 x 4.5 bias strip of fabric, you have to have a 14 inch square of fabric–hello fat quarters!  We can discuss (make fun of me) my inability, total mental block related to math of all kinds, but especially geometry some other time

Now, the only thing this room really needs (other than pictures on the wall, to hang up my thread organizer mabobs) is my beloved Bernina and serger back from their week at the Bernina spa.

p.s. I *finally* got my pix to go in side by side! Thanks Beth!

p.p.s. can someone explain to me why all of a sudden the pix I take on the same settings as I always have are turning out dull instead of crisp. Poo.