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how 35 bucks bought us a couple more years

exhibit no. 1 - a very good buy.

rattan furniture in our sunroom, bought second-hand from family friends when we built our sunroom 6 years ago.  for $200, we got a sofa, loveseat, chair, two side tables and a coffee table and they threw in what is now my sewing desk for free.  good deal, eh?

it needed some serious love, as it had served the previous owners well for over a decade i imagine.  enter new cushions + covers a few weeks later (birthday gift - thanks, mom).

exhibit no. 2 - fast forward 6 years worth of sunshine, a serious dose of 3-year old twins, a cat who loves the sunroom... you get the idea.  have a look under that blanket we never use.

uh-huh.  it's totally cracking and peeling everywhere and i really have no love for it.  none.  ok, maybe a speck when i think about how those $200 have served us so well over 6 years - that's pretty amazing.  but as we finally re-opened the sunroom friday afternoon, i decided it was time to decide - find a way to live with it, or rattan-be-gone?

*ding*

me :: girls!  quick - let's go to home depot!

girls :: home depot - hooray!  we will ride in a car cart!

me :: well, if we're lucky we'll get one.

girls : oh, we are lucky, mama - let's go let's go!

*fast forward 15 minutes to home depot in car cart racing toward the door making totally appropriate vrooming noises*

girls :: can we have a lolly?  puh-leeeeeaaaasse?

me (whips emergency dumdums out of pocket) :: of course my sweets.  just this once. (cough cough)

exhibit no. 3 - fast forward $35 lighter and 30 minutes later and we're back home in the sunroom, mama wrestling with an exceedingly humungous amount of canvas.

not bad, eh?  i think i may have found a little more love for the rattan after all.  for a couple more years, at least.

oh, but those cushions... no.  recovering those babies moves way up my list.  xoxo

a funny thing happened on the way to ravelry :: part 2

so where were we?  spring cleaning, right.  well, when i finally reached what i thought was the bottom of one of the yarn piles, i found something interesting.  quite interesting indeed.

protected from the elements and nestled neatly underneath two bundles of BSA cotton *yum* (which i apparently have earmarked for something), hibernating there i found not one, but two completed knitted pieces and their corresponding indecipherable patterns.  it seems a year ago (!) i worked on these little numbers with the dream of publishing the patterns.  how'd that work out for you, jennifer?  um, yeah.

no bother.  there is a bright side.  they still fit!  do you know what that means?  do you?  it means my pattern - my concept - WORKED!  my idea was to make a summer dress for a toddler that would transition to a top for a preschooler.  with the proper fit for both ages.

that something i made a year ago, subsequently forgot about, and accidentally stumbled upon in a mad decluttering frenzy... that something i was working on a year ago could excite me now... well, maybe it's time to refine this one after all.  i do so love that organic cotton.  maybe just maybe i'll work on it a bit.  i think we have time - it's snowing again.

wishing you and yours a delightful weekend!  xoxo

yarn sale

:: updated ::

thanks to everyone who visited my yarn sale on thursday.  any remaining skeins & bundles are in the shop, if you are interested.  and congrats to jennie and celeste who each won a skein of misshawklet handspun at the festivities!

a funny thing happened on the way to ravelry :: part 1

i've been putting off cleaning up my little office space (a.k.a. the small room with a filing cabinet - ostensibly for bills - piles of said bills waiting to be filed, and waaaay too much other crap that could probably be thrown away) for too long.  so when it came time to put together all the tax stuff for the accountant, and i found myself sitting on the floor rummaging through piles of statements at 11pm one night, i decided it was time to clean up.  and the first thing i unearthed was my yarn stash.  yum.

and then yesterday, i came across amy singer's column in the spring IK about spring cleaning le stash - she must have been reading my mind.  (and how cool is that?  amy singer?  reading my mind?  way cool.)  and so it all went on our dining room table, sorted thusly ::

• KEEP - seen above in all their glory (to be inventoried on ravelry, love that!)
• GIVE - in a big bag for our Easter Seals pickup tomorrow
• SHARE - organized neatly for whoever wants it  :-)

and you're invited!

* YARN SALE *

tomorrow :: thursday 27-march-08

13 yarns/bundles.  really nice stuff.  i love them all, but it's time to set them free.  they need to do more than sit in my stash.  so if you're into it, come on by.  there will be more info right here when it's all set to go, so stop back around lunchtime and look for a special link to the festivities.

oh, those two handspuns?  you like them.  me too.  and they will be free.  why?  because i really love misshawklet yarns and want to share a bit of her one-of-a-kind amazingness.  come back tomorrow for all the details.  xoxo

a brown paper package

all tied up with string.  three bands of string, to be exact.

the quilt is now at home, and it was received in the spirit which was intended.  love.  love plus one, that is.

the sweet serendipity of three people brought together.  meant to be.  adding so much to one another's lives.  lives intersecting.  balance. support.  joining to create so much more than their sum.

the reverse continues the story.  simple, modern and with a touch of whimsy.

parents + child.

a child who loves cars + trains.  sized to keep him cozy on many journeys.

team casa loves you, joseph.  and those people you live with, too.  thanks for brightening our world - enjoy and happy birthday!

xoxo

monday morning

at home, breathing in and out.  slowly.  enjoying the exhale after a wonderful (albeit jam-packed) weekend of fun, friends, family, food and hula hoops.  time to chill out.

more than crayons or even markers, watercolors are a secret weapon around here, causing an almost instantaneous mellowing effect.  i was a bit surprised (and sooo delighted) when they begged to paint this morning, despite (or perhaps as a result of) the delicious blur* that was this weekend.

normally we use watercolor paper, but there was only one piece left and that just won't do.  the girls are at that age where splitting anything in half apparently negates its physical properties, rendering it unusable.  uh oh.  no worries, we used post-it art paper, and even though it leaked through a little, the result was met with squeals of glee as we stuck them on the window to dry and were met with almost stained-glass illuminosity.

*sigh* since i took that picture about a few hours ago, they've already moved on to 3 giant floor puzzles, constructed and demolished a wooden block car wash, the same with a curvy tower of plastic egg halves, and some noisy alphabet thing.

need.  more.  coffee.  xoxo

*delicious blur, mmmmm... in a 24-hour period there was birthday cake, red wine, chocolate bunnies, chicky-poo-marshmallows, grilled lampchops eaten standing outside straight off the fire, a most amazing corn pudding, green salad with walnuts + goat cheese + strawberries, and more.  with intermittent hula-hooping, of course.

happiness is...

meeting new friends.

candace and i (and all our girls) finally met up last week, heading to lake farmpark for a quilt show, a serendipitous lesson in hand-milking, and lots of very cold, very wet and very fun puddles.

there were runs through the stables (until we noticed the "please walk" sign, oops!), and so so many animals including a few brand new lambs, which had the wee ones most excited.

a great day and so nice to meet up!

and speaking of things done by hand...

it's done.  washed and in the dryer as i type.  have a nice weekend!  xoxo

don't ask me how

first of all, THANK YOU to everyone for your input!  i need to ask you people for advice way more often - i so often find myself in a sort of crafting isolation and really should be asking for more input.  fresh eyes on the situation.  so thanks - and there is no sashing.  after piecing the back, one of the girls and a little friend helped me pin the monstrosity.  she even had a funny voice for kitty as it handed me each pin with its little well-worn furry paws ::

then, by a small miracle known as the little mermaid (they've been asking to watch it for ages and who am i to deny them that, right?).  where was i?  oh yeah, by some miracle, i quilted the whole thing.

you ::  what's that you say?

me :: yep.  the whole thing.

you :: i don't believe you.

me :: here's a peek.

(every line is symbolic - i'll explain after it gets presented to the little guy.)

me :: but wait, it gets better.  after i got home from the dentist at 8:30pm, numbness wearing off, i made and stitched on the binding.

you :: ok, shut up.  now you're just bragging.

me :: and i started handstitching the binding while we watched tivo'd big brother.

you :: bitch.

me :: if i can't tell you, who can i tell?  *grin*

you :: and i can't believe you watch big brother.

xoxo

pieced

i thought it out ahead of time and tried to go at it in a very methodical way, doing pairs of rows, then combining the row pairs.  and so on and so on.  my hope was to get the most bang for my stitching buck, and saving the pressing for the end before connecting the columns.

i'm sure there's a pattern out there for this design, but it wasn't my intention to end up with the plus signs - it just happened.  i originally wanted a cascade of color from light to dark, but after many tries, i wasn't feeling it, as they say.  this one is working for me.

to give you an idea of scale, the top is 40" x about 46" right now - they started as 5" squares before piecing.  it's going to be an on-the-go quilt for this well-traveled little guy (he's almost 3), so it doesn't need to fit any particular bed, per se.

i've picked out some little boy fabrics for a single strip of patchwork to break up the simple tea-stained muslin i've chosen for the back.

my only question now is this - perhaps you can help me - should i put a simple 1.5" white sashing border around the top and then the binding, or just put on the binding against the patchwork?  i'm leaning toward no sashing - what do you think?  i would really love your input!  xoxo

for a little friend

after 2 hours spent configuring and reconfiguring the layout of this quilt top, goal attained ::

simple, understated, simultaneously classic + modern, muted tones that say little guy, with a basic design that echoes connection, relation, support, individuality and interdependence.  when all was said and done, there were a few squares leftover to play with, but i think they'll be saved for another project at another time.

now to sew the top together, quilt it and handsew the binding.  in a few days.  ahem.