Fabric Sample

Quick little posting today as I have lots to get done in a short time. Thursdays are my busiest day of the week, and they have recently gotten busier with show prep for Rakkasah and the student salon at the studio. I also still have my tutoring time at 826, so there is a lot to do before I head into the city. Last night I finished off a pair of pants that were ordered. It was really nice to get back to making pants. I hope that I can spend more time on that in the coming days, as I have some great fabrics that are awaiting transformation. This pair was a wonderful red that faded into a slightly lighter tone. I called it red swirl.



Look to the Etsy Store in the coming months for more new pairs to appear! Till then, I am off to watch some dance video and work on cleaning up the house a bit. There are also some curtains to be made in attempt two for 826. All in the next two and a half hours! Yikes!

Rainy Day Yields Inspiration

Today is the third day of rain here in the Bay Area, and I am finding myself rather renewed. I spent most of Thursday working on prepping for teaching Annie sewing as well as working on a special order that I hope to finish up today. Friday was kind of an exercise in frustration and disappointment. Annie and I hoped to make cheese, but we could not find the starter and rennet to save our lives. We licked our culinary adventure wounds and went back to the sewing room to work on aprons. The sewing went well, and soon Annie will have a new apron!

I went to class at Fat Chance Belly Dance this past Saturday and had a great time. Now that I am performing at Rakkasha with the group of students at the studio, I have more rehearsals and classes to attend. I also have signed up to do the student salon, so there is a lot of dance to participate in lately. The neatest thing was getting to attend a class taught by Carolena, the founder of the dance form. It was in a way a huge dream come true. I know it is corny, but she was one of my biggest inspirations when I started dancing. The class was so interesting, and I got so much out of the session. The rain showed up later that evening, and it was a welcomed thing. It made me sit down and just relax a bit and let myself rest. I was pretty wiped out from the dance sessions and all the fun of running around with Annie.

The rest of the holiday weekend was filled with reordering and picking up the house. The china cabinet was reorganized and reconstructed to make it much more functional. I also worked on my embroidery project that has spanned many, many years. I hope to get it finished in 2010, but it may be a stretch.

Today I am feeling like I have lots of energy to get things done despite a bad night's sleep. I am going to go and make a spice cake after this entry as well as finishing up the special order. I also want to dust the house and clean up in general. I am also making my final determinations as to the balcony garden for this year. I hope to make the order for all the seeds today or tomorrow. After all of this, I want to work on making a database to find recipes more easily in our collection of Cook's magazines. I am tired of going through each issue to find the one recipe that I need. Hopefully that will help. Well I need to stay with this wave of inspiration while I still have it. Spice cake pictures and recipe review tomorrow!

Holiday Wrap Up Three

One of the presents I was really looking forward to making was a learning book for Craig. I found the pattern on the internet and bought it up. It was a vintage Vogue pattern for a book called "It's A Zoo." The book was great as it used up lots of fabric from the bins. I only bought some of the fabrics for the pages themselves. I also got to use up some old and wrinkled interfacing that I have been kicking around for some time as it is featherweight fusible, and I do not really need that too often. I was astounded at how well this one came out. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Title Page that was customized for Craig:



Page One: A fishing pelican. I made it out of the same material that his previous and Jozef's pelicans were made out of for some continuity. The fish attach and come off of the hooks.



Page Two: A turtle that is a sensitive fellow. Learning to use snaps.





Page Two: A hungry alligator on what must be a hot day. Learning to use a zipper.





Page Three: A giraffe all ready for a night out with her hair all done. Learning to tie a bow.



Page Four: A kangaroo out for the day with her baby. Learning to use a buckle.





Page Five: A bear ready to coach his baseball team. Learning to lace up eyelets.



Page Six: A rollerskating elephant ready to go! Learning to button and unbutton.



Page Seven: A lion all braided up neatly. Learning to braid three ropes.



Page Eight: A hippo is driving the bus for all the animals to ride. Learning to button and unbutton again.





All in all it was a fun project and used up lots of scraps in this new era of using up things. I also got to use up a bunch of notions that I have had knocking around drawers and things. Any cleared up clutter is good use in my mind.

On that note I am off. I have a special order I need to complete today as well as transferring the pattern for Annie and I to sew up aprons. Lots to do before I need to head out for Long Now tonight!

Holiday Wrap Up Two

In my attempt to get things accomplished today around the house, I am going to keep this entry mostly pictures and kind of short. I ended up buying Brenna's gift for Christmas, so no pictures there. I did make her birthday gift however, but I forgot to take pictures of it. I made her a set of hand dyed play scarves. I am not sure I would ever do that project again as it was a lot of work for not so great a yield. I think I would buy them in the future and avoid all the mess here at home. She has been enjoying them and making things with her imagination to decide what the colorful pieces of silk are going to be.

Claudia got a homemade Christmas gift though. I made her a castle play set. I purchased the patter from Gulf Coast Cottage. The pattern was well written and easy to follow. As a bonus, it used felt, which I have in abundance from buying too much during my felt food making days with Brenna. The set took longer to make than I had anticipated, and much of that was due to me being overly tired and this being the last of the gifts. I worked on this until 5 am to get it finished and off in time. It had to be mailed on its own along with Grandma's missed present from the first box we sent. Her jam was not packed with the rest of the presents. Luckily I found it before it was too late. Here is the set as I made it sitting under the tree before I wrapped it up to send off to my niece.









The set comes with a princess with removable hat, knight with removable shield, unicorn, dragon, tree, and castle with a working drawbridge. The land underneath the set turns into a carrying case for the pieces. It was a great project, and if I had not have been in such a time crunch I think I would have enjoyed making it even more. I really did love this project though and would highly recommend it to anyone that would like to attempt it!

Holiday Wrap Up One

Well I completely got busy at the end of last week and did not get around to starting my holiday wrap up, so I thought today it would be good to start it out. I have three things to show off today, two of which are repeats from last year, one is a new item just for this year. I have to say that I am surprised that I managed to pull it off this year, getting all of my handmade items finished in time to give them or send them for a Christmas day opening. I also managed to meet my goal of getting all the major mailing of Christmas gifts off by the ground shipping deadline. It was still expensive to help Santa out by sending that many presents, but it was worth every penny. The theme this year was to try to minimize buying new materials and use up materials I already had heaped up in fabric bins, boxes, and containers of crafting supplies. Overall, it was a pretty successful endeavor.

For my Dad, I did a rehash of a moss stitch scarf. I had one ball of the Cascade EcoAlpaca left from the attempt at this scarf from the year before, so I got another one and knit it up, this time correctly, for my Dad. It looks entirely different since I knit the knit stitches rather than knitting them to the back. I like this one a bit more, but both still looked great in the end. I was just glad that the yarns were a really exact match since there is no dye lot because it was natural alpaca yarn.



I also made another counting fish pelican for Jozef. It was requested for him last year by Kathy, so I had fun making a second one in what I am sure is a long line of counting pelicans in my career. Overall this did not meet the full criteria of using up and not buying more items to make it, but all I really had to purchase was the zipper and yellow dot fabric for him. The fish were totally made out of scraps of other fabrics. It is nice to see how much faster you are at doing things the second time around.



I did not do so well on the not buying when I made this banner for my Mom. I thought, though, that it was a great exception to the rule. I made it using a pattern from Butterick that Dan picked out. She really liked it, and I have heard that it is hanging up in the kitchen currently. I was amazed while working on this to see how much better at applique I have gotten. I did have to do some shopping for the buttons with my Mom when I was home for Thanksgiving, so it was pretty funny when she opened up the package to find the buttons on her gift.



Today I am working on gaining the motivation to start some house cleaning. Over the holiday crafting extravaganza, things like dusting and vacuuming fall by the wayside. I also have a rosemary bush in need of some transplanting out on the balcony. The lemon tree is chugging right along, and the first lemons are starting to ripen. I do have a bit of sad news in regards to the balcony garden. White flies were hard at work while we were gone traveling during the holidays, so the herb garden is basically no more. I have decided to turn over that box to strawberries this spring and instead use the Aerogarden for the herbs as the likelihood of white flies inside is lower, so I will not have to pour so much time into fighting insect battles for my herbs. They have been missed this week as I wanted to prepare a recipe only to find that I forgot that there is no easily accessible sage any more. It was rather disappointing.

I am also working on prepping for an apron sewing session with Annie this week. I am determined to copy the pattern and sew one apron on my own so that when I am teaching her the lessons will be more successful. The harp is also in need of some time with me as one of my resolutions is to become more proficient on that poor neglected present. Now that I received my knee bones for Christmas, there are no more excuses. Calloused fingers, here I come!

Finally Back to Normal

It has been a really busy and fun filled month of December. Now that I have reached the Epiphany though, the tree has been put away, and new places have been found for the last of the gifts that arrived today. I made quite a few gifts this year and will be showing them off in the next postings on the blog. Some things were different this year, like my swag over the hutches went from colored lights to white since I broke the colored strands when unpacking them.



I also went on a trip for Christmas with Dan's family. We went to Colonial Williamsburg for the holiday. It was quite delightful and full of fun. The historic houses were all decorated, and we went to see many traditional concerts and ate a ton of traditional meals. I of course was so wrapped up in having fun that I did not remember to take many pictures. I did however, snap a picture of one of my favorite houses on the way down Duke of Gloucester Street.



The weather was actually quite pleasant for the majority of the time we were there. The only day we were rained on was Christmas proper, and most of that day was spent inside of buildings and not walking around outside.

Dan and I then came home for two short days, and then we were off to Las Vegas for a week to celebrate the New Year. Here again I did not remember to take pictures as there is just too many other things to keep your attention. I did snap this picture of the conservatory in the Belliago hotel of their Christmas display.



This year is already off to a quick start. I have been invited to dance with a group at the Rakkasah bellydance festival, so I will be spending a lot of time in the studio over the next few days. I also have a custom order I am working on along with some more personal goals for this new year. I have decided to try to work on some of my own projects this year. Along with working on some new plans for both Fabulous Pants and the yet to be revealed second project, I am determined to learn the harp more this year and to also finish a long lingering embroidery project. Needless to say, I am going to be busy. I am hoping to eliminate some of the unnecessary television and internet surfing to try to get things done. Here is to hoping it works!

I am however, glad to be back to the quiet house and settling back into a normalized routine. I am planning the patio garden for next year, and thanks to Annie's book, I am learning quite a bit about container versus ground gardening. I am also ready to tackle cheese making with her in the next few weeks and months. There is so much to learn! I cannot wait. Well I am ready to get down to the sewing machines again. I am going to follow through with my focus on self plans a bit here and finally sew up the machine covers I keep promising myself. Pictures when they are done! Tune in Tomorrow for day one of the Holiday Wrap Up 2009!

The Fruitcake is In!

The fruitcake was made this past weekend, and it is now swaddled in its wrappings waiting to come out on Christmas eve. Being from a fruitcake eating family, I never really got all the jokes about hating it until I had a really awful factory one. The light bulb was lit then. I have decided to continue making my own from scratch even though it requires up to four hours in the oven. This year I decorated my top and it turned out nicely. Now, in three weeks I can tell you how it fully turned out for taste this year.