Felt Houses Advent Calendar

Now you know why I needed all that rickrack.

I made the kid an advent calendar out of gray felt, with pockets shaped like little houses. It's a pretty shameless copy of this lovely project by Minna of Time of the Aquarius.

Except, since I am American instead of a stylishly sober Finn, my version is a lot more garish, what with the red rickrack and red stitching on some of the houses (I would have gone crazy and done all of them in red, too, had I not run out of red thread one-third of the way through.)

For Christmas Eve's pocket I decided to try my hand at a Danish woven heart, using this tutorial. It didn't actually work so well as a basket--it was just floppy and fell way open (maybe I did something wrong, does anyone know?) so I sewed up the sides a bit.

(Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with that picture. Still figuring out the new camera. Update: Apparently the white shelf threw off the metering. No, I don't know what that means either.)

Here it is all together. It's attached to the bookcases with earthquake tack, washi tape, and hope. I'm a little worried about how it's going to hold once the pockets are full.

And on that note, better run--I have some goodies to dole out among the houses. Happy December.

Holiday Spirit

A dozen sheets of graph paper, a million and a half insanely detailed lists, and six yards of red velvet rickrack: I think I'm ready to rumble. You?

I'm even a day ahead of schedule, for now.

(The bad news is, my desk currently looks exactly like the "before" picture from my previous post.)

La Rentrée

No, I haven't dealt with it all yet, but somehow moving it out of the way makes me feel more able to do so. Here's to a fresh start.

What I did on my summer vacation

Okay, first things first: I know I still owe a post about the quilt I made last month. That's coming--second week of August, second week of September, potayto, potahto, you know?

For now, an update on what I've been up to more recently.

Every year at this time, my daughter's daycare closes for two weeks. I take off work, my parents come up from Arizona, and together we work and play. I've been unplugged almost completely, and quite honestly it's been really nice. Here is some of what we did this year.

Harvesting:

Planting:

 

Pickling:

 

(Refrigerator Pickles via Instructables.com. These are truly "quick 'n' easy" and the results are great.
They're spicy and pungent, but without the strong aftertaste of commercial dill pickles. My tip: instead of trying to dissolve sugar and salt in cold water, heat the water, dissolve the sugar and salt in it, and then cool the brine in the refrigerator.)

Drying:



 

(David Lebovitz's Herb Rub via The Wednesday Chef.)

Pesto-ing:



(Top: Sage-Walnut Pesto via Not Without Salt. Bottom: Hazelnut-Mixed Herb Pesto. Based on the sage-walnut recipe, but sub hazelnuts for walnuts, and an unscientific mixture of thyme, oregano, and winter savory for the herbs in the first recipe.)

And thus getting the herb garden under some semblance of control:



(Yeah, that's the "After" picture. You shoulda seen the "Before"!)

Making long-lost recipes:

 (Blackberry pudding, from a 1938 cookbook. This one deserves its own post.)

Conducting experiments towards new cleaning products:

(More to come, if it works.)

Prep work:

Discovering new treasures:

(Thank you to the lovely woman who sat next to us at Cafe Presse one day, and not only put up with preschooler antics all through lunch but also told us how wonderful Lincoln Park is. Dear mystery woman: you were so very right.)

And new-to-me treasures:

(Thrifting with my mom: my once-a-year treat!)

Getting ready to welcome Fall:

Houses and an invitation

My log cabins are done!

I have loved this pattern forever, and I am so glad to have finally had the chance to learn how to make log cabins. I used the piecing instructions in Modern Log Cabin Quilting, by Susan Beal, which seems like a wonderful book so far. One day I will make a full log cabin quilt.

And now the invitation part: if you are in the Seattle/western Washington area, you can see the quilt I'm making as part of the Lo-Fi Festival at Smoke Farm (about 1 hour's drive from Seattle) on Saturday, August 12 13 (I'm so excited I can't count!). Please come! It's gonna be smokin'.

If you're not in the area, I can promise many more pictures and thoughts about the quilt, its design, the process, and just in general way more than you probably want to know about the event, here on this blog sometime during the third week of August.

Ok?

A gross of geese

Yep, 144 of them to be exact.

(Each of those piles above contains four geese. I used this tutorial for piecing flying geese four at a time, and it is GENIUS. Seriously, I cannot imagine what I would have done if I'd had to piece them all individually and sew all those seams on the bias.)

Sewing these made me think a lot about muscle memory and how practice really does make perfect when it comes to making things with your hands. That's fascinating to me. I started analyzing some of it--the way I learned exactly how far to put the needle into the fabric in order to avoid the fabric pulling once I started sewing; or the paradoxical insight that watching the needle wouldn't give me an accurate seam, I had to just focus on a tiny corner of the presser foot instead. But there's more, I'm sure, that I haven't articulated but that my body has noticed.

I've done a lot of sewing over the past couple of weeks (not just these geese, but a couple other projects that I'll share in a bit), and I can see that I've gotten a lot more skilled, which mostly means faster and more precise with my seams. It's really glorious.

Next up: a quartet of log cabins!

Making progress

...though not quickly enough, I fear. (Mid-August is coming up fast. Eep. And have I mentioned: eep!)

The biggest surprise so far is what a workout rotary cutting is. I keep having to take off my sweater!