First Sunflowers

Yesterday, the kids and I went out and discovered that Bug's sunflower had bloomed.  It's not very tall, but is quite pretty.  And it looks like there are seven other blooms getting ready!  Seven!

It was also pretty exciting to see that the tomato plant is still alive and has bloomed.  Again.  It's not getting enough water, or is getting too much sun - I'm not really certain which - and keeps blooming and wilting without actually producing any tomatoes.  A little disappointing, but at this point I'm really just kind of thrilled that it's love at all.  If it bears fruit, that will be a huge bonus.

Really, our outside time yesterday was all kinds of exciting.  I finally remembered to buy birdseed, and Bug and Boo were all kinds of excited to fill up the feeder and sprinkle as much seed on the ground as we'd let them. 

My sister moved into a cool new house awhile back and had set aside some stuff at her old house that she thought we might be able to use.  And since my step-dad came back from Texas with a trailer, we were able to haul over a new refrigerator (Mom's old one, since my step-dad brought a newer one from their place in Texas for their house), some shelves that have already gone up in the studio and more for the garage, a spinning composter and an ancient lawnmower.  You know, the kind with no motor.

For the first time in my life, I mowed my own lawn.  And it was exhilarating.  I'm not naive enough to think that I'm always going to have fun with that, especially as it continues to get hotter and hotter here in the desert, but I certainly felt accomplished yesterday.

Then we got the composter set in place.  Bug and I pulled out some of the mulch that was left in it for a project we have planned, then dumped our first big bowl of compostable stuff inside.  Bug is so excited about it that he's decided that it's his job to spin the composter.  He even walked away from Phinias & Ferb this afternoon to go spin it when he saw me carry a bowl of scraps outside.

Add to things that Richard has been cooking with fire and we've been living in suburban pseduo-homesteader heaven for the past few days. :)

Totally Stolen Idea

I keep thinking of tiny little things that I want to post, and then wondering if it's worth it to put up a post for something so small.  I'm going to activly decide that, yes, it is okay to post something little.  Sometimes those are the cool posts. :)

I'm also going to totally steal an awesome idea.

Jeni, over at In Color Order, does this super-cool thing at the end of each blog post.  She lists things she loves and good things about her day.  I love that.  I love the idea of closing each and every post by taking just a moment to think about, identify and honor the little, good things that have happened.  Jeni also includes a picture of her bunny, George, in each post but I don't have a bunny.  I have four cats, but we're not going to go there just yet.

I'm also not going to steal Jeni's format (though it's a good one!).

So.  Here we go.

Today, I loved...

- A touching conversation with Bug*
- Having a fun and leisurely lunch with my mom and Bug while we were out running errands
- That there are pomegranate trees in the yard of the house we saw and put a bid on (!) today
- That I got to spend an hour-and-a-half with Boo while Richard took Bug to the park
- That I got up the nerve to RSVP to two playgroup events  (I'm terrified.  Really, really terrified.)




*The conversation with Bug...

We were at the store with my mom, headed to the register to check out.  They got distracted and stopped to look at something, so I went ahead to start checking out so that they wouldn't have to wait in line.  A few moments later, I heard Bug shout and, shortly after that, he and Mom came around the corner.  Bug came up to me and wanted to be picked up and said "I was sad and yelled and you weren't there."

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry.  You were looking at something and I knew you were with Grandma so I knew you were safe."

Bug: *giving me a hug*  "I'm safe now."

Tiny Little Garden Suprises

Is that not the cutest little tomato ever?  Keep in mind that it's that small looking in the hand of a two year old.  It was tiny.

Bug and I spent a little time in the back yard yesterday afternoon - something that we don't do nearly often enough.  He loves to be outside.  LOVES it.  But it's so incredibly hot during the day that we usually end up putting him off until it's pretty late in the evening.  My step-dad seems to be immune to the heat though, and ends up going out to do yard work in spurts throughout the afternoon.  Bug often goes outside with Pop-Pop.  I love to watch them together - he follows his grandfather around like a puppy - but I do feel guilty for not being out there with him more often.

But we were out there yesterday...

And we found these tiny little tomatoes, which was a fun surprise.

My mom's back yard is an oasis.  Seriously.  It's gorgeous out there.  Green and just wild enough to be very pretty but not feel like a park.  Very friendly feeling.  Relaxing.

Bug and I were walking along the planter than runs along the back fence of the yard.  We were talking about the zucchini, which was recently pulled up, and looked for cantaloupe, which Bug has been obsessed with of late.  (Along with nectarines.)



We got to the end of the yard where all of the herbs are...and I spotted two tiny, bright orange bulbs in the greenery.  I don't have much skill when it comes to recognizing herbs, but I couldn't think of any at all that grow berries.  So I looked closer and they were tomatoes!  Bug was enthralled.



We ended up finding five tiny little ripe tomatoes tucked into the herbs.  (My step-dad identified them as cherry tomatoes, though I've never seen any that tiny.  He said they just popped up there, wild.)  Bug very carefully placed three of the little tomatoes on the ground "for the bugs", and ate the other two.  He said they were tasty.


We looked for more little tomatoes for quite awhile, but couldn't find anymore that were ripe.  I think a few nearly-ripe tomatoes ended up getting picked and donated to the bugs.  There were quite a few green ones though, and I talked Bug into leaving those on the plant so that we can have ripe tomatoes again soon.

We checked the big tomato plant, too (this thing is massive), but nothing was ripe there, either.


The big tomatoes are Celebrity, I believe.  It's been giving quite a lot of fruit.  Tasty.)

Must. Find. Outlet.

The last few weeks (erm, months?) have been a tad bit hectic/stressful/busy/crazy.  Choose your descriptive.

Bug is doing well.  Or, well enough.  There have been a LOT of changes in his life in the last two months, so some days are better than others.  We've been in a little bit of a rough patch the last two or three days or so, but today was better.  Given that there has been the same amount of chance in my life, I can't say that I've been responding well to his freakouts - which isn't helping.

Boo is doing very well.  Getting big and strong.  She's outgrown her teeny little preemie outfits and is starting to wear "real" baby clothes.  She puts away a LOT of milk and has started to chub up.  Her thighs are getting thick and chunky. :)  (Funny to me...Bug's filling out, too, now that I'm making new-baby milk again.)

My sister is AMAZING.  She's four days post-op and her doctor says she's healing really, really quickly.  She's already got full range of motion back.  My sister is Superwoman.  Which I've always known but this has proved yet again.

Great news from her surgery, too.  The genetic testing showed that she doesn't have the marker.  Her lymph nodes were benign so the cancer hadn't spread.  They were able to get it all out of her and she might not eve have to do chemo.  Yay!

And we bought a condo. (Or, Mom bought a condo and we'll be living in it.)  We haven't closed yet and there's a tiny bit of work to be done (a/c doesn't work - yikes!), but it's really exciting to know that we'll have someplace to really call home soon.  Not that we haven't been comfortable at Mom's, but it'll be nice to have our own space again, and I'm sure they'll be glad to have less chaos in their lives when we're not on top of each other all the time.

So, all in all, things are ultimately going well.

And I haven't had an outlet for any stress at all.  (Because yelling at Bug does NOT count as an outlet!)  I neeeeed to do something creative.  And soon.

I've fallen behind in my bee blocks.   I've got a few starts there, but nothing worth showing yet.

I decided today that I needed to either sew or bake.  So I looked up bread recipes and might try a honey wheat yeast bread tomorrow.  And I got a bug to make a little dress for Boo, so I started on that this evening.  I'm patterning it as I go, so we'll see how that goes.

And I think we're going to (finally!) get library cards tomorrow.  I don't have any time at all to read, but I really need to have something on hand that I CAN read.  If that makes any sense.

Hopefully there will be pictures of something soon...

It Just Keeps Getting More Interesting Around Here

Yup.

Not really sure how else to explain (in a nutshell) how things have been going around here of late.

Bug is doing well, considering that his world was turned on it's head less than two months ago and things haven't really straightened out for him yet.  He's loving hanging out with his grandparents and his cousins and has more or less accepted Boo.  He doesn't really like it so much when she's nursing or if I'm holding her when he's really upset, but otherwise he's affectionate and loving and a really awesome big brother.

We're still looking for a permanent place to live.  It's nice being here with my mom and step-dad, but it would be nice to be in our own space, too.  (And I'm sure they'd like to have their space back!)  We've looked at so many houses and condos that makes the head spin.  We've seen some really awesome places...and some really frightening ones, too.  Hopefully we'll see THE place soon. :)

In other news...

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer this past week.  Unfortunately, I can't say it came as a terrible surprise.  Well, strike that.  It WAS a terrible surprise, just not terribly surprising.  There's a bit of in the family, including our paternal grandfather.  (Which is where everyone in the medical community makes a knowing "Ohhhhh".)  She's being terribly brave and I have no doubt whatsoever that she's going to kick cancer in the ***.  She has a double mastectomy planned for next week.  I'm really glad that we're here, now.

And, the icing, my niece turned up today with what appears to be either shingles or chicken pox.  We've been over there for the last two days helping to paint my sister's healing room...so I'm pretty sure we're going to see the chicken pox here really soon.  I'm glad that Bug will get it out of the way so early, though I wish Boo were a little before she'd come into contact with it.  And I'm sad about the timing.  Bug's best friend is coming to visit from Texas next week.  They've been looking forward to it for weeks.  (As have Richard and I!  We miss our friends, too!)

Not much craftiness to talk about, I'm afraid.  Too much other stuff going on. ;)

A Surprise and an Exception to a Rule

Our plans for July 4th were pretty squishy this year.  Bug and I were both sick and getting together for a big family thing seemed like a bad idea in light of that.  We thought that, maybe, we'd try to find some fireworks to watch if we were feeling up to it.  (Because Bug LOVES fireworks.)

At 2 am, Bug woke up in a coughing fit.  It was pretty miserable and took about 30 minutes to get him comfortable and back to sleep.  I got up at 2:30 for a potty break and was *thisclose* to being asleep again at 3 am...when my water broke.  Bug woke up again pretty much immediately, and I woke up Richard while I tried to get the boy back to sleep.  I thought we'd have a relaxed time moving towards having a baby, but Richard flew out of the room to wake up my mom and they tried to rush me out of bed and to the hospital.  I paused long enough to get Bug back to bed, then Richard and I took off to the hospital.

I will admit to being pretty freaked out.  We were at 35w1d and I worried that the baby wasn't ready.  Given the way Bug's birth worked out, I was pretty freaked out about having the baby in a hospital (we'd planned on a birth center birth with a midwife in Houston).  And, while I'd had a consultation with an OB that I liked once we got to Arizona, we'd only met the once...and she was out of town when I went into labor, so I had no idea what I was walking into.

As it turned out, I couldn't have hoped for a better birth experience.  It was AMAZING.  Richard was fantastic.  My sister stepped in to serve as my doula, and she was awesome.  We had a fantastic, naturally-minded nurse and an absolutely wonderful, supportive OB.  About eight hours after my water broke, Boo was born.  (Drug-free!  Woo!)



She looked pretty amazing, especially considering how early she was born.  (The stats: 6lbs5oz, 19.7" long.)  Then they realized that she wasn't breathing quite properly.  Her lungs were immature and had a LOT of liquid in them, still.  She had to go to NICU.

The next time I saw her, she was hooked up to all sorts of stuff...and it seemed they'd added more every time I walked into the NICU.



Boo was able to come off of oxygen pretty quickly, but still needed CPAP for several days.  Then her left lung started to vent into her chest cavity, pushing her left lung into her heart and right lung, so they had to put a tube into her side.  Scary.



Luckily, Boo is strong and a fighter and things started turning around pretty quickly.  After six (long!) days in the NICU, Boo was off of the CPAP, the tube had been removed, she was nursing and they took out her IV.



We're adjusting now to life at home, but she's doing very, very well.  And Bug is starting to get used to her. :)  Richard and I couldn't be happier. :)

Gross

So, my 2.5 year old has cradle crap.  Um, I mean cradle cap. 

Bug's always had just a tiny little stubborn spot that's refused to go away completely, but I haven't been too concerned about it.  The other night, we were lying in bed and I was messing with his hair and realized that he had gunk - and a lot of it! - aaaaaaaaaalllllll over the front of his head.  Ugh.

I'm sure I need to bathe him more often.  Or, wash his hair more often, rather.  But we're both still kind of recovering  from a nasty bathtub spill that's left him terrified of having water over his head.

Does this make me a bad parent?

Things That Make Me Happy

Though, perhaps I should have titled this post "Things that make me happy, that I've taken photos of".  Though, that's not grammatically correct, is it?  Ah well, you get my point.

In the chaos that is our house pre-move, there's not a lot of picture taking going on around here.  We can barely get through the living room, much less find a clean spot to take a picture of anything.  It's frightening in here.  (And it smells funny.  I don't quite get that one.)

BUT.  But, I did snap a few pictures today of things that are making me smile.

First up, the tangle that is our pseduo-garden.

We have tomatoes again!  Even after Bug picked and ate one!  Yay!



And, look!  A pepper!  I'd totally given up on that one.  Really.  I was just going to be happy that the plant itself had survived this long.  But, there it was when we left the house this afternoon, one tiny little I'm-going-to-be-a-pepper-when-I-grow-up.  I'm so excited about it. :)



Also, if you can believe it, a completed WIP.

A few days ago, I finally got around to wrapping up the cute little beanbags that I wanted for Bug for the studio.  (Even though we no longer have the studio.  Ah, well.)  Choosing a filling really gave me a lot of trouble for some reason.  I finally decided that washable was unlikely to happen so beans of some sort were my best bet.  Richard suggested that I try a few things out and see what I liked best.

We tried rice.  We tried split peas.  We tried lentils.

Rice makes for a nice heavy bag and the filling isn't so large or so hard that a parent or sibling who gets beaned in the head would get terribly hurt.  Split peas are considerably lighter and slide against one another nicely in the bag.  Lentils... Oh my goodness, the lentils!  I've decided that I LOVE lentils for beanbag stuffing.  They have *just* enough weight to make the bags nice to throw, but they don't hurt at all if you take a hard hit.  The bags fall really nicely and stay where they land (Richard's concern because of how the lentils move against one another).  It's luxurious.  Now I just need to find a good price on bulk lentils, because I WILL be making more of these bags.

I might even already have the fabric ordered.  *cough*



I've got almost half of the fabric cut for the Four Cousins project, but my sewing table is in a sad state and it's not much to look at anyway, so no photo of that yet.  I'll post one when it looks a bit more interesting.

And, no photo of this one, but it was the best moment of the day so far...

Richard and I took Bug out to lunch today and he got pretty sleepy while we were out.  (It was an early morning.)  He ended up falling asleep in my lap a little while ago.  I carried him to bed and was *just* putting him down when he woke up a little.  My heart stopped, hoping that he'd go back to sleep (I REALLY want to nap with him today!) and not fuss and and and.  And he laughed and murmured "I love you, Mommy", then rolled right over and zonked out again.  Melted my heart. <3

Work is Work

This is what Bug and I did for a little while this morning.



Now, what you *should* have noticed in that photo was the stack of little blanket squares all stitched into rows.



We finished those up this morning while Richard was doing some work outside.  And, when Bug decided to go help out there, I started stitching the rows together.

This is as far as we got today.



I might have gotten a bit closer to finishing, had I not accidentally sewed the rows together in the wrong order.  You'd think that having them labelled would have kept that from happening...but, no.  I'm awesome that way.  After I tore it apart and fixed it, Bug grabbed the first three rows and wore it around the house for awhile like a shawl.  Had to wait until he was distracted again before I could attach the next two, and after that I started feeling guilty about the other things I wasn't doing, so I set it aside.  Maybe I'll get a bit more done after bedtime.

More Big News

Woooo...  It has been one heck of a week around here.  There have been some awesomely good things that have happened and some bad stuff that was so upsetting that I'm still trying to figure out how to process it.  Ultimately, everything tied itself up in a pretty major decision.

We're moving.

Half-way across the country.

And soon.

I'm sad.  I'm excited.  It's a big ol' mess of emotion.  But ultimately it's all good.:)

More news as I figure it out, I guess.  :)

The List

Today, I'm organizing my sewing to-do list.  (We're not even going to talk about my full to-do list...my head might just explode.)

With today being a holiday and the first day that Richard has been home ALL DAY LONG and us having decided that today is a zero-pressure day for getting anything in particular done, I indulged and pulled out *my* stuff, instead of looking too closely at all of the things I need to do for the store.

It's still a lot of stuff!

I'll say upfront that I've been really inspired by the idea of Mending Week, as posted over at Making More with Less.  But when I looked at my mending pile, it was way smaller than my work-in-progress pile.  I mean, I *need* to fix the elastic in Bug's cloth diapers, but he's been letting me slide a little on that...so I'm gonna run with it for just a little bit longer.

So, just focusing on things I want to finish up for the kids:   (Wow, the plural of that still catches me off-guard.)



A set of bean bags for Bug.  I stitched these up the week we moved into the studio so he'd have something else to play with there, but I don't really have any idea of what I should use to fill them.  I kind of want them to be washable, and using real beans would mean that they weren't.  But I don't want to fill them with plastic beads because they're plastic beads.  Hmm...



I still need to wrap up Bug's quilt.  The top has been done for awhile now and I have the backing fabric.  I've been holding off because I want to use a layer of flannel on the inside instead of actual batting and I knew I had some, but haven't been able to put my hands on it.  I saw the flannel when we were cleaning out the room for my cousin, so I think I should actually be able to finish this project soon.



A set of flannel wipes for Boo.  I think there's eight here.  I made three sets for Bug when he was born and we really loved them, but most of them have somehow disappeared over the last 2.5 years.  Not really sure how that happened.  Maybe they ran away with some of the single socks that disappeared in the wash?  Bug picked out the fabrics, and I think he did a great job.

Then there's this:



I found these fabrics, 4" squares of cotton prints, cotton flannel (the orange) and cotton corduroy (the blue) that I had initially cut up for a project for Bug and his cousin, who's five weeks older than he is.  That didn't end up happening and now they're both a little too old to get anything out of that particular project.  And Boo will be too young for it for a good eight or nine months.  When I counted up the number of squares, I realized that I had the *perfect* amount needed to make a little toddler-sized blanket.  So that's what I'm going to do with them.

Look!  I was even able to steal a moment this afternoon to figure out the layout!



And, when I emerged from the bedroom where I had sequestered myself to do that without interruption, I discovered Richard bound - literally - in the living room.



It seems that in the few minutes that I was in the other room, Bug discovered that he could unwind the wool dryer balls.  That little bitty quarter-sized ball of wool at Richard's feet was the size of a tennis ball about an hour ago.  Now it's draped over just about everything in the playroom...including the cats.

Busy, busy, busy

Oh my gosh... There's been so much going on here lately that I barely even know where to begin.

Bug and I have been spending a lot of time at home this week, staying up to late, sleeping in too late, running errands and somehow not managing to get to the studio at all.  Or for maybe an hour before we're ready for a nap and come home.  It's a little frustraing, but I've been carrying a big bin of work around with me, so I have stuff to do when I find a few minutes to do it.  Admittedly, we've also been watching waaaaaaaay too much tv.  I'm trying to convince myself that letting Bug watch more movies than normal while I'm pregnant isn't going to ruin his life.  I still feel guilty about it.  We've also been making more of an effort to get out and play.  We had a great water-play afternoon at Bug's bff's house last week, and finally set Bug's little swimming pool out on our patio.  Taking advantage of the summer and all that. :)

We also bought a new car!  Well, new to us.  It's pretty awesome.  And I'm really excited that now we not only have two reliable vehicles, but also two that will hold our kids.  Awesome.

We drove fo.ev.er to pick it up. though.  It was a nice drive.  The weather was pretty, Bug was in a good mood and we made great time.  Considering that we drove from Houston almost all the way to Dallas, I was stunned.  We met the seller and his wife at a restaurant in Corsicana called Collin Street Bakery.  It was pretty and relaxed and smelled so good!  They sell their cakes and such via a catalog (and even own the pineapple plantation in Costa Rica that produces their fruit), and sell the cakes and fresh baked goods and pickles and such in the store.  And they make some really fabulous sandwiches.  Needless to say, we lunched there before heading home. 

The trip home...  Oof.  We made the drive to Corsicana in 3.5 hours.  The trip home took closer to seven.  Seven!  Part of that was that we took our time at lunch.  Then we had to stop in a small town that seemed to consist of two gas stations, a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut for a toddler meltdown.  That took 90 minutes.  Then we stopped at Rudy's on the way home for dinner because we were so beat.  (Had NO idea there was a Rudy's in Houston!  Woo hoo!)

Rudy's was a little odd.  We've been to the ones in Austin and Brownsville and loved them.  The atmosphere here in Houston was identical, but it seemed that no one there had ever seen a pregnant woman before.  I've never noticed so many people staring at the belly or, even weirder, doing these odd sideways glances as they passed by.  Weird.

Just before we left, Richard took Bug to change his shirt (covered in banana pudding and goodness knows what else) and diaper and I chilled at the table.  I got up to refil my glass of water and, on my way back to the table, caught sight of another pregnant belly as a woman walked past.  I sat back down, looked up as she walked past again...and then realized that I KNEW HER.  It was a dear friend that I've stayed in contact with but haven't seen in person in a number of years.  Our schedules just never ever align.  And she's pregnant with her first baby (so excited for her!) and we ran into each other the day after her due date had passed.  It was beyond amazing to see her.  She had never met Bug, we had never met her husband....it was awesome. :)

*sigh*

Now, to completely change gears, how about I post some pictures?

I received my block from Sandi awhile back and finally got around to taking a picture.  This was for April from the Quilt Block Swap.  As I recall, my only request was for a wonky block of some sort.



Sandi seemed concerned about what I'd think of the block.  I LOVE it.  It's bright and crazy and fun.  Bug fell completely in love with it.  I think I'm actually going to turn it into a pillow for him.

And I finally finished my May block for Virginia.

She asked for a log cabin block in white and blues with the traditional red center square.  I will admit that I was a little terrified by this request.  I've never actually done a traditional block...everything's been wonky or otherwise made up so far.  And, for some reason, I had a really difficult time picking out the fabrics.

Luckily, Virginia had a really specific tutorial that she wanted followed, so the construction part was actually really easy-peasy when I got to it.  It went together really, really quickly and was actually quite a lot of fun to put together.

The fabrics I tripped over at Joann's.  Bug and I were wandering the aisles - not our first trip for this purpose either, which made it particularly depressing - and I wasn't really seeing anything that excited me all that much.  Then I saw the three white and blue fabrics and that was it.  They were perfect (at least in my mind, hopefully Virginia agrees!) and I knew they had to come home with us.

So, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Hopefully Virginia likes it, too. :)


 

Running in Circles

It feels like that's all I'm managing to do this week...just run around in circles.

Bug is better, but still feeling under the weather if his reaction to school this morning is any indication.  He loves school.  LOVES it.  And this morning he had such a massive freakout that we ended up back in the car ready to just go home.  I think his teacher was a little surprised that I refused to walk out of the room and leave him there while he was in a full on I-want-my-Mommy meltdown.  She gave him a hug and tried to wave me out of the room.  Um, no.  That's not how we do things around here.  Anyway.  Once we got out to the car, Bug calmed down, asked for pretzels and said that he wanted to go back inside and color.  I told him that we could go back inside, but that I couldn't stay and color with him and he said that was fine.  So we went back inside, he got a little whiney when he saw that the colors had been put away, but cheered right up when he realized that it was snack time.  He kept his snuggly pillow with him today, though.  I hope he's okay.  I felt terrible leaving him today, even though he knew when I left.  I'm guessing that we'll be snuggled up watching Clifford and Thomas this afternoon to soothe any still-raw nerves.

I wish that I had something neat to post about, or some cool pictures of finished products, but I seem to be running short on both at the moment.  I've got a lot of projects going at the moment but haven't managed to finish any of them this week.  Project ADD and sick toddler and all that.  I'm really close on a few things though, so maybe I can get something finished while Bug is at school tomorrow.

I keep getting this crazy urge to post about our little garden, but when I really think about it it seems a little silly.  For one, it's hardly a garden.  We have a couple of vegetable plants in pots.  I think I'm mostly just excited that they're still alive almost three months after we planted them.  And it looks like we might actually get a tomato or two this year.  But our lawn is in desparate need of mowing and I noticed this morning that the leaves on the tomato plant are looking a little yellow.  So maybe I should hold off on congratulating myself for the time being.  I certainly want to hold off on taking any pictures.

And now I think it's time for me to end my little woe-is-me post.  As I see it, I can sit here and complain about how little time I have to finish anything...or I can get out of this chair and get something done in the time I have left.  And the latter sounds like a MUCH better plan to me.

Maybe I'll even have some nifty pictures to show for it. :)

First Bit of Sashiko Done!

I wasn't planning to post about the sashiko inspired project again until I was completely finished with it, but I needed the distraction today...so, here we are.

The basic idea was to practice hand-stitching and it seemed like a better use of my (very limited) free time to make something useful at the same time.  We're a paper towel-free home, so we go through lots and lots of little cleaning rags.  The ones we have now are generally all of the terrycloth variety and getting pretty ratty looking.  I hate handing something stained or torn or otherwise ugly and asking Bug to wipe his face on it.  So I figured I'd make a set of little finger wiping / spill picker-upper cloths.

I chose a couple of fat-eighths that I wasn't in love with from my stash and dug out the embroidery thread and got to work.  I'm finding that, as I work on these, I really really start to like to the fabric.

Today, I had misplaced the almost-finished orange and yellow floral so I grabbed one of the other fabrics when Bug went down for his nap.  I don't really dislike this fabric so much but it hasn't been speaking to me either, so it was fair game.

The stitching on this one is very, very simple.  I just stitched over the vertical center lines of each vine and left the rest of the fabric alone.  I'd considered accenting the darker leaves somehow, but I kind of like the simplicity of the almost-straight lines.

When I'd finished with the vines, I folded the fabric in half, pressed it and stitched it closed.  I top-stitched the edges to give it a slightly crisper shape.  I've purposefully chosen not to square up the fabrics before I stitch them.  They were all cut (before I bought them, not by me) a little wonky, so they're not stitching up completely square.  For our purposes and because that seems to fit quite well into our wonky lives, I kind of like them that way.

(I skimmed a book titled That Dorky Homemade Look, by Lisa Boyer, the other day and these evoke that feeling in me.  I think I love them because of their imperfections.  And I think buying the book is in my not-too-distant future.)

So, here's the first of the sashiko-inspired cloths.

This first picture shows the color of the fabric the best.



And here's a detail, showing the pattern of the fabric and the stitching a little better.



More on these as I finish the others.  I'm planning on four.  I think.

(PS - Bug has given this one his seal of approval.  I handed it to him and asked him what he thought and he immediately wiped his face, then wadded it up and handed it back.  Success!)

Soap!

This morning, we made soap.


A little backstory:


Some years ago, I was obsessed with making candles. In the midst of melting things and trying to clean up after having not used the proper tools, I thought that perhaps soap might be a better option. I went to the craft store, picked up whatever melt-and-pour soap base, bought some cutsie soap molds and added food coloring or crayon or whatever and made soap. They were kind of cute in a bowl by our bathroom sink and served their purpose well enough.


The two pounds of soap base made up a gajillion little novelty-sized soaps and it took us quite awhile to work through them all. We never used them as bath soaps and I didn't make any more when we finally ran out.


Cut to last year, when we really started paying attention to the stuff we put into and on our bodies. Thanks to asthma, I have a lot of trouble with synthetic fragrances and that cuts out a lot of store-bought soaps right off the bat. The decision to cut SLS from everything we brought into the house nixed just about everything else.


I did find a really awesome sandlewood soap, but the only place I've seen it is a tiny Indian grocers on the far side of town. And, well, an hour is a hecka long drive for a .59 bar of soap.


R asked why I didn't just make us some soap, since it was something I knew how to do. I hadn't realized that he'd actually liked the soaps I'd made before...


But once the bug was in my ear, I was all for it. I went to the craft store only to discover that the melt-and-pour soap bases I can get locally is pretty crappy stuff. All of the good stuff has been skimmed out and chemicals put in instead. Yuck.


An exhaustive web search led my to Wisteria Lane. I love that they not only discose everything that's in their soap bases, but they also have a ton of options, good prices and are really easy to work with.


My first go, I ordered hemp oil and goat's milk bases. We loved them so much that I immediately ordered more of both the hemp oil and goat's milk, and tried the cococa butter and olive oil bases, too. Those four bases gave me six soaps that I fell in love with.


I sold some on Etsy and gave a bunch away as gifts. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Oddly, my favorite of all the soaps (hemp oil with white tea and lemongrass) has been the only one other people didn't care for. The exfoliant is too big.

Anyway.

After Christmas gift-giving, we were down to one bar of my soap and a few small bars of store-bought 'natural' soaps. I was good and used the store-bought stuff, but my skin regrets it. My face is broken out and my knees and elbows are all dry and scaley. Gross. I was really excited to order more stuff from Wisteria Lane, and was thrilled that it arrived last night. (UPS makes deliveries after 8pm - who knew?)

So, this morning, we made soap.

I had one pound of hemp oil base, so I made the hemp oil with white tea and lemongrass. With the large exfoliant, since it's for us. And I tried a new base, the exfoliating nuts and cream. Oh my goodness... The nut base has such a light yummy scent and felt so good in my hand. I decided to make it a honey soap, which gave it a really nice pale caramel coloring. It looked and smelled so good, I wanted to eat it.

I ended up pouring both soaps 'hot', so that most of the exfoliant drops out of suspension into it's own layer. I'm fond of them that way.

Honey nut soap in the pan:



Hemp soap in the pan:



Setting: (The muffin pan makes for a soap that fits nicely in the hand.)



Finished soaps:





http://froglovesmonkey.etsy.com

http://www.wisterialane.com/

- Kiza