mandalei

So I have been working on some projects the last few weeks, in my free time (ha!  hahahaha!)

a quilt for a certain lovely lady

And finally finishing my diaper bag.  I had almost gotten it done, only to have gotten my head all turned around and accidentally sewed the handle into a Mobius loop.  I got so frustrated, I dumped it in a corner and left it there for months.  I want to start a new bag, though, and needed to get this one done first.  SO here it is!  It’s Amy Butler’s Nappy Bag, and the fabric is a Japanese import.

Sometimes I think we need a kickstart to get going.  We’ve been planning things to do for Jack’s room for so long now, but the last time we started painting, I was 7 months pregnant, we were up at the house for the weekend, and we couldn’t get the trim finished before I just couldn’t take the bending and leaning with my gargantuan belly.  When we made it back up to the house the next time, it was the day of our final move-in, and was  2 weeks after Jack was born.  The trim?  Yeah, it’s still not painted.  (FYI, if someone tells you not to pick paint colors when you’re pregnant, believe them.  Or decide on a complete decorating scheme from a distance. What once was a solid stained wood is now striped with glossy paint.  Oops.  We also learned we have to prime everything first, and since it is Jack’s room, we’re not in any rush to do that.).

Anyway.  As I was saying.  Kick in the pants, right.

I changed my mind, too.  I had this whole plan to get going on a pirate-themed room, but just couldn’t commit.  It wasn’t the pirates, it was me.  Sorry about that, I still think you’re swell guys, but *everyone* was into pirates (and I was, but not because of those movies–one of Jack’s ultrasounds looked just like a Jolly Roger!  Of course, one of them looked simian, too, but I hadn’t considered Planet of the Apes.  Go figure.)

Ahem.  So I changed my mind and settled on rockets and robots.  I had found this great fabric from Australia, and then spent weeks tracking it down in the U.S.  It and some of its complimentary fabrics are now mine!  I also found a rocket-shaped corkboard from PB Kids on sale for stupid cheap (15 bucks, originally 70) as well as 2 blue curtains (also on sale–marked the same color, and I thought they were the same color, but um… they aren’t.  but I couldn’t tell right away so most people won’t notice), and a series of hanging panels with rockets at Home Goods, and last weekend, Ben and I found a painting at that same Home Goods with a robot and planets AND a space ship (months after the initial purchase of the rocket panels!)!  Keep in mind, this collecting spree was only spree-like in that it was all cohesive in terms of theme; the buying process spanned several months.

It was the robot painting that really did it for me.  Now I had A Theme.  A Motivation.  We hung the rocket panels and the corkboard and the robot painting two days ago.  Today, I cut two strips of my rocket fabric, and sewed them to the curtains, and we hung them tonight.  I won’t go into the second embarrassing curtain story here.  One embarrassing curtain story is enough for now.

And now… now I am really inspired.  I have decided there’s no better reason to start painting again than to make something for my sweet boy’s room.  I sketched out some plans, and hope to transfer them to canvas tonight.  By golly, it’s a triptych, no less!

In the meantime, I have to finish gramma and grampa’s quilt, I have three more quilts promised elsewhere and planned,and we still need to finish painting the house.  On that note, I am going to go finish reipping out the quiltling I don’t like on Gramma and Grampa’s quilt, and get that finished tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

Pics to follow at some point.

Thankfully, I only had the actual “feeling crappy” stage of the bug for about 24 hours (hi everyone, thanks for the good wishes!), because we had a second round of weekend house guests who arrived on Saturday.  It was loads of fun to have them here, and we made some pretty good food (along with the eternal 2 layer chocolate cake, thanks to this recipe cheat sheet at angry chicken).  We had:

Butternut squash/apple/parmesan soup with homemade bread (white and wheat) for grilled cheese sammiches.  Wine (x2) No recipe to give, it’s made up from stuff on hand.
Biscuits (made with White Lily flour, imported from the South especially by my mom–recipe from back of bag)
Lunch from a local bakery (divine croissants!)
Mushroom risotto made with homemade turkey stock from our TG turkey inspired from this post by Michael Ruhlman, and angry chicken chocolate cake.  Beer (Fantome, Rare Vos, Hennepin) and wine
Breakfast today was chocolate cake and breads (King Arthur Flour cookbooks for general and whole grain baking).
Homemade pizzas using the pain a l’ancienne recipe from Bread Baker’s Apprentice

I know I have mentioned how much I have really been getting into cooking lately, but with the all the stomach issues I had the day before they arrived, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do anything really yummy.  It was actually kind of nice to know that I have made enough things now to have a pretty good idea of when/how/why I need to be doing things so that they actually happen and turn out the way they’re supposed to.  As I was making Jack’s baby food (zucchini and sweet potato, to be frozen), it occurred to me that I didn’t mind because I really enjoyed even doing something so simple as chopping that sh!t up and steaming it, and then whirring it to pieces with the stick blender.

We have another set of house guests coming on Friday to stay the weekend, and I am wondering what’s going to be on the menu.  I think three weeks in a row of chocolate cake, no matter how easy, is probably pushing it.  Maybe.  The only food restrictions for this coming weekend will be a) no macadamia nuts and b) no red peppers.  I think that can be accomplished.

In other news, I am waiting on a new metal closed-toe darning foot and bobbin holder (with special tension setting! have your eyes glazed over yet?) for my sewing machine to finish up their quilt.  I finally finished up the acres of quilted grid, and now am waiting for the darning foot to do the free-motion design and the border.  I really hopeI finish this soon, because, um, I don’t think I can work on this another summer!  That would be 3, and you can tell the hiatuses have wreaked havoc on some of the things lining up that are supposed to.

But oh… I have other projects in my head right now, like fabric collages and “pictures”, put together with my stash.  And another quilt, this one for a gift for friends who just got married.  I need to make Jack a doll, and I found a great tutorial for a rocket ship that I want to make him, too.  I still need to bust out my new paints and easel, too.  So much to try and do!

A little boy-doll to give to a new friend’s little girl who’s moving away.  I am very sad.  I will post pictures after I have actually given it to her, but as I was making it I realize how much more I needed to be creative. I have lots of potential, I just need to *do* it.  I really want to get my painting kit set up, but I need some space with good light to do that, and I also need to just start sketching and doodling some, to get back in the habit. I think it would have a big impact not only on my painting and drawing, but get me out of my analytical rut, so to speak.  I want to paint a mural in Jack’s room, too, but don’t want to start it until I have something quality.  I know the argument there is “when will it ever be time?” and part of me feels like I am always saying “I need to research this first before I begin,” so maybe the trick is to just wing it an let my creative juices flow.  I have really gotten away from that, in the last decade or so–I used to be alot more free with what I did.  Maybe each day I just need to do something spontaneous and it will come back.

Still working on: grampa’s quilt.  I am almost done with quilting the grid, then it’s time to FMQ (free motion quilt) the center motif, and then the border (and the binding, finally, but who cares about that with all this quilting to be done?)  Promise I will put some pics up once these things are off to their new owners! Before then, maybe I’ll post some close-up shots…

I finished Ben’s stocking in record time this afternoon, and am pretty pleased with how it turned out.  It was a heck of alot easier than the one I made for me!  Which is now MIA.  Hmmmm.

If you look closely, you can see red chili pepper lights on teh cactus.  And yes, hat is Santa riding a horse dressed like a cowboy, and he’s riding a steer down near the toe.  Note in particular the holly on his ass-kickin’ boots.

OK, so here’s the post on my stocking. I am going to make one for each of the boys, but of course I wasn’t working from a pattern except for what I had in my own head. If I was smart, I would have made lots of notes. But I didn’t. So anyway, here’s how it worked as close as I can remember, which is not very close at all.

After I sketched out the rough shape I wanted on some paper, I cut out the outer layer using a cool mod print I found last year, and then cut out a similar shape from white flannel, but extending the top of the sticking by about 8 inches so I could make the fold-over-cuff.

Then came the fun part: trying to wrap my brain around which would be right-side/wrong-side/inside/outside and how to sew the right sides facing each other so there wouldn’t be any raw seams showing. I enlisted help (Ben), and then o a deep breath and embroidered my name and two little snowflakes on what I was hoping would be the correct face of the flannel. It was, but I am not sure how! I still ended up sewing the same two pieces of fabric 4 different ways before I figured out how to do it. Did I take notes? ha! no. The next stocking I make should be fun.

So, here it is! Pictures of my stocking as a work in progress. I will post more of my finished piece as well as Ben’s and Jack’s once the fabric Ben chose shows up… Like I said in a previous post–I am really proud of this.

We had a really nice (if cold) weekend, going out to the downtown area and getting some shopping done for Christmas.  While we were out, we checked Jack’s foot size, since I am looking to get him some kind of wind-proof shoe.  AAaaaaaannnd… he wears a 3 or 4.  And he’s 5 months old.  Somehow this seems to be rather large, but then, what else is new?

On Sunday, we geared up for a big storm! 6-12 inches by Monday!  but it ended up being barely 2 or 3 inches.  I did manage to start working on my Christmas stocking, breaking out fabric that I had been hoarding from last year.  I had been thinking about this stocking for a while, and had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do.  It would have a white flannel interior that would fold over the outer patterned fabric, and the cuff made by the flannel would have my name embroidered on it.  Eventually, it worked out, but that’s another post.  Probably one I will write next.

Lastly, I hosted playgroup for the cloth-diapering-nursing-organic-eating-plastic-free moms today and it was really nice.  I made chicken pot pie (using my homemade turkey stock and the chicken I roasted last night) and had pears and honey for a light dessert.  Ben says they can’t be crunchy granola types because the don’t wear Birkenstocks.  It was really cute with all the little girls–Jack came down from his nap, though, and when he got a good look at everyone in the living room, he got really upset.  He’s not really used to alot of people around all the time, and he got a little freaked.  I need to get him out  more, I think.  Or wait, is that Ben?

Enough summary!  I will put up another post on my stocking.  I am really proud of it.