giving

Gifts
I wanted to give some thank you gifts to some very nice people, and finally managed to get it together enough to package them up. I love wrapping presents. I might have mentioned this before, but one of my favorite memories of my Grandma was spending a few days at her house before Christmas as a teenager and helping her wrap her gifts and make her dipped chocolates. She taught me how to get nice, crisp corners in the wrapping paper and how to tie a perfect bow. I’ve branched out a little from the traditional gift-wrapped box and ribbon wrapping since then, but I can still wrap a box just about perfectly :o) There’s a better picture of the package on the left on flickr, but I can’t seem to upload it here. I added a pair of pretty chopsticks to the bow.

So, Friday I went fishing. It was a work activity thing, and it was very very fun. I don’t remember the last time I was on a boat in the ocean, but it was just beautiful on Friday. It was lovely to cruise up the coast to La Jolla and then throw our lines in the water and catch some fish. I didn’t take my camera, unfortunetely. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I didn’t want to risk its getting wet, so you will just have to believe me when I tell you that I caught FOUR fish! They were all just ocean whitefish, probably 12-16 inches each. They cleaned them for us right on the boat, and I took them home and we made fish tacos for dinner. Delicious! I would love to get a whole bunch of friends and family together to go out together and do this again sometime soon. I learned to tie my hook to the fishing line and bait the hook all by myself (with live, wiggling sardines, no less!). I was pretty impressed with myself for not getting all squeamish about it. At least none of them flew out of the tank at me.

I didn’t get to the cupcakes this weekend, sadly. I did manage to work a bit more on the chicken coop. and dogs were given baths, and cleaning was done around the house, but I was not feeling too good due to a very annoying bladder infection (TMI, I know, sorry!). Happily, when I last went to the doctor for bronchitis this winter the doctor gave me a perscription for an antibiotic and added a re-fill just in case I had a relapse. So it’s all good now. I cannot drink any more cranberry juice for a very long time or I may gag. 

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monkey

I am having the darndest time taking a good picture of this sock monkey. Out of about 8 shots, this was the best I could do:

Monkey2

I’m not sure if I’m completely done yet. I have some lavender felt, and I might attempt a pair of shoes. What she needs, more than anything, however, is a name. I can’t think of anything, I need some suggestions. Please share your ideas in the comments!

As I’ve been sewing lately, I’ve been trying to get my clubhouse (aka guesthouse, aka former tack shed) cleaned up a bit. Here’s a tiny corner that is all cleaned up and pretty (except for the hideous paint on the walls, I’ll get to that someday):

Sewingcorner

I like those little Chinese pincushions. They come in such great colors.

I got an e-mail yesterday from someone at Penguin Australia regarding a craft book to be published, and they are interested in including my monster pattern. Did anyone else out there in creative blog-land get a similar e-mail? It looks authentic, I’ll definitely be checking into it further.

Having recovered from the catfish attack, my dad marched in a parade this week.

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grand opening

I guess we can call this a lower-case grand opening. I’ve listed a few things on etsy, and have a little more to add and a couple other items underway and to be added over the next week or two. Please visit the shop here. I may try to take some new pictures of my glittery letters I’ll be selling, they didn’t come out very well. They really are much cuter in real life (and at only $6, which includes domestic shipping, quite a bargain :o):
Greenm
I made lots of these last Christmas and used them as gift tags. I don’t know if anyone is still enjoying their gifts, but absolutely all of my gift recipients have their initials displayed somewhere, and they look at them every day.

One project that I finished up, but that is not for sale is this:
Craftapron
It’s a little craft/garden apron form my niece, so she can keep her tools and seed packets handy if she helps her mom in the garden. I’m working on one for her mom too. I think I like it, it’s hard to know if it’s really as cute as it could be without being able to put it on her. I hope she likes it.

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felted

I’ve figured out something about the way I work, and the way I learn. When I decide to try something new, I go to the library and check out every book I can find on the subject. If possible, I might take a class or have someone show me how to do it. I learned to cook first by taking every cooking class offered in high school. Then I read cookbooks. I followed recipes carefully, step-by-step. For awhile I was crazy about soup. I whipped up all sorts of soup recipes, curried cream of chicken, fresh pea soup, chicken stock from scratch, creamy cilantro soup. And then I started to see how soups work. If you want a creamy soup, cook some sort of starch with the stock and then puree it, put the vegetables that take longer to cook in the soup first and add the others later. I learned how some seasonings work together and how much of a particular herb to use. It wasn’t until I followed recipe after recipe and really understood how the ingrediants worked together and what techniques were used that I felt brave enough to discard the cookbooks and do my own thing.

I went through the same process with bookbinding, reading every book I could find on the subject and following the instructions exactly as written. I took a class, saw the tools and watched what other people did. Then I made books in all sorts of different dimensions using different materials and combining techniques.

I think I’m finally reaching that point with knitting. I knit my first project without a pattern this past weekend (except for the odd garter stitch scarf, of course). It was just an experiment, and it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it to, and really, it’s just a couple of rectangles sewn together, but I learned and now I have a little more confidence with my knitting ability. I now know a little more about felting and intarsia and creating a chart to knit from. I also have a nifty little bag just for my sock projects!
Felt1_1  Felt2
I knit the polka dots a little more long than wide, because I knew it would shrink more in length than width, but I should have done one less row, they’re a little more egg-shaped than I wanted. Polka eggs instead of polka dots! I decided to try some blocks of color for the other side, because I wanted to try something different, and frankly, the polka eggs were a pain in the bum.I love the way it felted, it’s so soft and fuzzy and it’s a nice size for toting around little projects. So there you have it, a felted bag from scratch!

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Look, I made something!

It was a little under the wire, the wedding is tomorrow, but I finished this guest book last night:

Pinkbook1 Pinkbook2 Pinkbook3

It is for the niece of a co-worker. The only information that I had was that the wedding colors were pale pink and black and the flowers were roses, which made me think of Paris, circa 1950. So I took that idea and went with it, and the aunt of the bride said that it totally captured the bride’s style. So I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. 

I made an organza (or organdy, I always forget the difference) sleeve to protect it. To bad I forgot to press it before taking a picture, especially considering that pictures of non-ironed creations posted on blogs is one of my pet peeves. I know, totally nit-picky, but press things before you go posting it for millions to see. In my case, there will only be 29 people viewing my un-ironed organza book sleeve, so I’m not too concerned. The cover is Italian silk and a black flocked damask with a little grosgrain ribbon trim. I tucked a little picture of roses in there, since those are the wedding flowers.

P.S. I think you could still buy one of these little guys if you wanted to.

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Wrapping Party

Wrapping

I wrapped presents last night! Wrapping presents is one of my favorite things to do. When I was a teenager I would spend part of my Christmas vacation with my Grandma, helping her do her wrapping and making her famous dipped chocolate candies. She had 25 grandchildren, so there was a lot of wrapping and dipping to do. She taught me how to get the corners just so, so the wrapping looks nice and crisp and tidy. I think that was the Dutch in her that I inherited. Even when she was in the depths of Alzheimer’s, she would make her bed with perfect hospital corners, and help do the dishes, folding the dishcloth perfectly and hanging it neatly to dry. I miss my Grandma.

So, I made little gifts for co-workers. I made glass glitter initials for everyone, and I wish the photograph showed the colors a little better. Then I filled cellophane bags with Lindt truffles and knitted roses (I added pin-backs to the roses), and stuffed straw gift basket filler around everything. A couple of friends got properly wrapped presents. I love the pale blue paper I picked up at Target, the turquoise glitter looks so pretty with it.

I took a couple pictures of my tree, but I ended up with a frightening bug-eyed peacock, so I will have to try again tomorrow.

I’m doing my best to enjoy the next few days of holiday-ness, but it’s been rough. I took off work on Friday so I could decorate and bake and do fun Christmas things and woke up that morning with a cold that is still lingering. I have a frog-like voice and I’m going through the tissue at record speed. This morning the husband called as I was leaving for work, broken down at the side of the road. In the car that we just spent a lot of money fixing. Not my car that we spent large, vast amounts on, but the other one that we fixed up because it would be so much more fuel efficient to drive than his big old truck, which probably also need to have large amounts of money spent on it for new tires and such. So it seems that this year is just trying to knock us down and we keep getting back up only to be knocked down again. Please, 2006, could you go a little easier on us? That would be great, thanks.

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