More and more pictures

DS1's class trip to Sutter's Fort






DS1 waiting for the wagons. Nice frock coat, eh?



Here's a shot of the waistcoat. And of a kid from his class.




Ummm....


The porta-potty across from our house, set up for the people digging big holes to turn off our water and install water meters. Nice view!





DS2's snow ball from the day it snowed.



Front yard.

NaNo let down

Kind of wandering randomly around since NaNoWriMo finished a couple of days ago.

DS1 still needs a cravat or SOMETHING to tie around his neck tomorrow at Sutter's Fort. No respectable gentleman would be out without one. Poor guy's going to just have a hunk of black fabric. I just have to find the fabric...

Oh, and his shoes are all wrong. Too freaking bad. I am DONE. Well, except for the necktie.

After that... Xmas PJs for all the kids, new PJ pants for me (my zebra stripes have holes. I made them.... 4 or 5 years ago?), then The Toddler pulled out a couple of quilting mags and I was flipping through one and came across a pattern that I like, which seems to eb the one I kept the mag for. And I had a burst of inspiration and know what fabric I will use for it that's been moldering away waiting for a burst of inspiration. So my sewing time will be filled for a bit anyway.

Pizza for dinner tonight. I can't seem to come up with any ideas for anything lately, either.

I need to come up with a present for an English friend. I have a few vague ideas but am a bit stumped. Needs to be mailed ASAP, of course!

quilts and more quilts

DS2 has been pestering me to learn to sew. Yesterday, since we were off school for teacher in-service, I gave in.

We started with a small pillow (a 'babysitter' in my family's parlance) and it's lovely. Then he got ambitious, so he chose some fabric and we cut squares for a doll-size quilt to be about 18x24 inches. I chose 7 inch squares so there would be lots of room for seams.

Because I can't cut a straight line, we used the rotary cutter and I did a lot of the cutting.

So DS1 decided to get in on it and while DS2 started sewing, he started cutting out 6 inch squares to be about... 28x33 when he's done (6x5 times 6 inches minus seam allowance.... Whatever that makes). DS1 did a lot of the cutting without my help, so he made more goofs and had squares he couldn't use. But he did I great job and has his squares. DS2 did most of the sewing on his squares and I finished up for him.

Today, I had DS2 pin his quilt top with the batting and backing and DS1 started sewing. Apparently, it takes too long and is really booooring, so he did 2 of the 6 columns and I did one and the rest is for tomorrow. It's shaping up really well.

So far only one rotary cutter accident and it was shallow. Also only one sewing blunder that had to be unpicked and that one was mine - which showed the kids that even experienced sewistas (though i don't have that much experience and am not that great) make mistakes and it's OK.

And then I got out a quilt top I made a few years ago that never got attached to the batting and backing and started pinning. I need the rest of my pins - the ones that are currently in DS2's quilt. One of these days I'll finish it. Probably.

Wednesday

It's a half-day at school for conferences, so whatever I do has to be done by noon.

DD is emptying the shoe closet. Before that, she emptied the marker drawer (She can't get the caps off yet).

I'm sneezing and sneezing and sneezing and my back aches. I have spent too much time over a computer the last couple weeks and so my upper back is dodgy, and then add the aches and pains of this cold and I'm pretty much immobile.

I need to finish work on the sling I am making for my new nephew. It is wayyyyy too long and I have a spacial problem in which the ugly wrong side of the fabric ends up showing on the tail, so I need to fold the end up and sew it down, I think. Then add a pocket or two, because my favorite part of my favorite sling is the pocket that's secure enough (velcro) to hold my keys and wallet in a pinch and yet large enough to hold a diaper.

I'm going to go change the baby's diaper and see if she will take a nap. She's in here again and shrieking.

ETA: Nope. That would be too easy. We need to spend another hour or so fussing and shrieking before actually falling asleep. Yay.

ETA(2): It took me 45+ minutes to unpick the hem on the sling and then 10 minutes to sew the end over. And now the end is too short and too thick - well, it will work, but it'll be a bit awkward. Still need to do a pocket. red/orange? yellow/orange? Or more blue?

ACK!

I need to make something for my brand new nephew. I'm thinking a sling. I have the rings and I'm sure I can come up with enough fabric. That's a little inside joke there, since I have 7 huge bins of fabric in my sewing room.

I realized that we should get some small gifts for the big brothers, too. And oh, yeah, the parents who made it all possible. Maybe a tote bag/diaper bag. I don't know if I have enough time....

And then I realized, had a dim recollection of a conversation, thought about the dates involved... DH's birthday will happen while we're in Oxford. Oh yeah! Oops! And it's the big FOUR OH. So what's the present? No idea. Well, I have a few ideas, but don't know how feasible they are.

So anyway, i just fixed some trousers of mine that were sliding off. i have lost some weight since I bought them, but they're always been a bit too low-slung for me and they stretch out quickly. Anyway, they seem to fit now, but I goofed up one side a bit and it has a weird pleat. Too bad, I'm wearing them anyway.

Oh, and I weighed myself last week and am 4 pounds down from my start weight of a couple of months ago. so not huge progress, but progress. I need to go to karate class more!

Book group tonight. We read parts 1 and 2 of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (sp?). She's an Iranian who was a little girl during the revolution. Her parents opposed the Shah, but didn't get very far with actual freedom before the religious forces came into power. (Oh, you mean like in Iraq?....) She spent much of her adolescence in Austria and then went back to Iran, but left again for France in her 20's after her failed marriage. And that was the end of book 2 and I haven't yet read any of the rest, but obviously she went on to make a mark as a succesful artist, as the books are graphic novel compilations of the comic strips (not funny comic, just the format) from a French newspaper.

About 3 inches narrower

The quilt for my brother and SIL is coming along. I am done quilting it. They are not allowed to look at the back, but there it is.

I trimmed about 1 1/2 inches off 2 of the sides because on one side, the batting didn't go all the way to the edge and on the other the backing didn't. Now there's a subtle visual clue (other than the directional prints mixed in) as to which are the sides and which are the top and bottom. See, it's like I planned it!

I could have sworn that I pinned it right in the first place, but then when it came to sewing, it went all wonky and I had to undo about half of the quilting a few weeks ago and re-do it. I took November off and hadn't done anything until today.

Just the binding left, assuming there aren't any horrible, nasty errors that I haven't noticed yet. I'm trying to decide if I will cut binding from the leftover backing (there's certainly enough except for on that one side) and fold and iron and sew it on or if I'm going to blow a bunch of money on packaged binding, which eliminates the folding and ironing steps but unfortunately not the sewing step.

It's the largest quilt I have made yet. I'm sticking to baby quilts from here on. Maybe doll quilts.

Angry, but, well, not too angry

The kids had all the couch cushions on the floor yesterday and toward evening I discovered that a throw pillow that I made from a piece of really pretty silk (pale background with vines) has been torn all along two sides.

The pillow form is intact and I have a ton of other fabric, some of which I have looked at thinking "That would make a nice throw pillow" so I'm not extremely upset.

Oh, and the silk on the original pillow was a discarded sample piece from the fabric store where I used to work, so it's not like I paid for expensive silk which is now torn....

Since I opened this "compose" window

I might as well write something in it. What I was originally going to say has flown out of my mind.

So instead, how about a bit of help? I'm doing a Secret Santa on an online sewing group I'm on and want to think of a book to send. Something to lean back in a bath and read. I want to make her something as well. Dunno. A waterproof book bag? Just joking on that, though hmmm.....

Anyway, I am a bit stuck and am busy with writing and need to think about that instead. (I know! I'll finish my novel and send her that.... hahahahahahahahaha)

And I need to send this soon, because she's in the UK. (And that's not giving away all that much, because most people answered "long, hot bath with a book" on a multiple choice question (even me, though how many years has it been since I took a long, hot bath with a book?) and everyone but me lives in the UK.)'

So.... book ideas?

ETA: And I know I'm not supposed to be editing, but there was something really glaring that i had to change in what I wrote yesterday. So I am officially at -9 words for today so far. Off to get more coffee....

Almost ready for Halloween!

DS2 suddenly decided that he was not going to be a ninja again (though last year he wore a ninja costume and a cape with skulls) and instead he is going to be Tremendous T, his very own superhero. So he needed a cape. I bought some cheap, black satin and ironed on a big red T (wonder under rules, y'all!) with a T made of reflective tape sort of under it and stuck a length of leftover bias tape through a channel at the top for a tie.


I got a yard of shiny, hot pink tulle and folded it over twice and ran elastic through the waist for a tutu for DD. I got some matching organza ribbon and made a ridiculous hair flower and attached it to another bit of elastic. She's a flower fairy ballerina princess. Diva. Prima donna. Something.



DS1 is a samurai again this year and I finally figured out how to make a helmet for him. I used a yellow play hard hat and taped foil to it, then made horns and covered them with foil and stuck them on there, too.



If the boys insist I need a costume, I guess I'll be a pirate again.

so instead of reading...

I need to read 150+ pages of Blindness by Jose Saramago by 7:30 tonight. I read fast, but it's not a terribly quick read.

So here I am blogging instead.

Oh, and I started quilting the quilt for my brother and his wife and got one side done, then started through the middle, but discovered a huge wrinkle in the batting, so need to un-pin and re-pin the rest of it to go on. If I were a true quilting perfectionist, I would un-sew everything I've done so far.
I don't THINK so!

And still. 150+ pages. Here I go....

Pinning

I have started pinning the batting and backing on the quilt I am making for my brother and sister-in-law. It's a big job and I don't have enough pins, but I used all I have and will start adjusting and smoothing sometime soon. Their 1st anniversary will be next month, so I really have to get busy

The baby just squawked, so it'll have to be another time. Though now she's quiet again, so I can type for another minute or two.

Oh, and by the way, my mom reported that my brother and SIL are cooking ramen over a candle while waiting for their electricity to go back on. And they asked my mom to mail them some food because mail and UPS are still delivering, but the grocery stores are all closed.

great excitement yesterday

So anyway, with DD's new found life skill which isn't good for her health, I asked Dh to put her crib together yesterday. First, I had to shuffle furniture around in our room and vacuum and such and then the boys helped hiom. DS2 did most of the screws and screamed when DS1 had a turn and did ONE screw. Then it turned really ugly when ds1 was going to put the mattress in by himself and they almost had a boxing match over it and finally I pulled ds2 back and after a struggle, I pretty much lost it with him. He is such a defiant little monster lately. Sorry, I know I shouldn't say monster, but I was thinking a much worse word. It's the defiance and black-is-white knee-jerk reactions that are on my last nerve. I know he's the former baby who now has a baby sister. I know he's always trying to catch up with ds1 who is 2 1/2 years older (BTDT!), I know he's 6 and in that 6 year old kid trying to be the boss phase. But does he have to do it over the summer where I have to be around him 24/7? He's still that sweet little boy who wants to sit on my lap and then he's the snarling beast or the screaming, crying waterworks. Emotions run high.

So anyway....

DD has her crib set up now. As they were putting it together, I realized I still hadn't found any crib sheets. So once it was all set up, dd had taken a very brief nap (still in my bed) and DH could take over the supervision of the baby, I made a fitted sheet. It was remarkably easy because the 44/45 inch width of quitling fabric is just exactly right for a crib sheet. I cut it to the right length, sewed right-angle seams at 8" in and cut off the corners, then hemmed and sewed on elastic at the same time. It's very bright fabric. She'll never be able to sleep without sunglasses. I need to get to work on another sheet for when that one needs to be washed.

So now the tricky part is to convince the baby to sleep in there.

Hiiiii-ya!

We had belt promotions last night. I'm a green belt now, which is the 4th belt and the second one in the intermediate class. DS1 is a blue belt, 2 ahead of me and also the last rank that is in the intermediate class. In a bit under 4 months, he'll be moving to red belt, which is the advanced class.

DD is a black belt :)





I was going to take some pictures of all of us together, but forgot my camera in the mad rush to barely get there on time for DS1's belt ceremony. Got lots of praise and cooing and funny remarks from people there about her gi. I was going to give her a white belt at first, then thought about using green or blue since that's what we were moving to, but decided that black would get more notice. That shirt's not going to still fit her by the next time we promote. Well, unless DS2 goes back and then he should promote in about a month.

Pants were sweat pants from ottobre - you can't see it, but there's wide gray ribbing at the waist. The shirt was from http://babypatterns.atspace.com/overview.html - the yellow wrap shirt in 3-6 months. I had a heck of a time trying to get it to print out as big as it's supposed to be, plus it's probably supposed to be knit instead of unstretchable woven, so it was a bit tight.

She managed to not melt down, though the whole thing (2 ceremonies) lasted over 1 1/2 hours and when she was getting fussy was when I was out there doing my karate stuff and getting my belt so I couldn't just stop and nurse her.

DS2, on the other hand.... well, he didn't melt down, but as soon as we got there - IMMEDIATELY after eating dinner of which he didn't eat much because he wasn't hungry - he went to the snack table and proceeded to graze for 1 1/2 hours. Don't we feed him?

And then DS1 sat and read a comic book throughout my belt promotion. Now why did I drag the whole family along again?

PICTURES - tummy sleeping and fabulous quilt

Isabelle mastered rolling back to front yesterday. So now when she goes to sleep, she rolls onto her tummy. Last night when she woke up at 1 am, I fed her and then tried to settle her down on her back, but nope. Tummy. So we grit our teeth and hope for no SIDS. Anyway, she proceeded to sleep from 1 am until almost 9. So she's happy. And I'm happy-ish. Sleep is gooooood.



The other day, DS2 announced he wanted to sew something, so he gathered up some pieces of fabric from my scrap box, I threaded and tied off a needle and he made a quilt top. So today we pinned and trimmed it onto pink velour and I zig-zag sewed it rather ruthlessly and added loops of ribbons to make tags for her to chew on.

"another picture when she's wearing it"

Or four.

It's the same pattern I used for the turquoise romper with big flower a few weeks ago.

I nearly forgot to cut this one out with extra for seam allowances, so the legs aren't quite as long as they should be. Which is not a big deal. But one leg is also about 1/4 inch longer than the other, but I don't have the energy to unpick it. I might roll it one more time and sew it again. Or I might not.

I made the same mistake that I had to unpick with the crotch seam. I put the buttons higher up so the straps don't dangle from her ears. I didn't make it as a bodice and a bottom this time, but still used the fabric as the bodice lining instead of interfacing as the pattern says.

Fabric from Hancock's - Spring 2007 on clearance (still) now at a store near you - as if I didn't have enough other fabric here without buying some more. It's cotton/poly and a pique. Well, not pique, but something similar and I can't think of the name. I got 1/2 yard of each pattern and have about half of each left.

Romp romp romper (AKA pink clown)

I started this yesterday and finished sewing the buttons on just now.

I'll take another picture when she's wearing it.

Just checking in

B-day party for DS2 yesterday. DS1 and 4 friends. One friend couldn't come at the last minute because the itchy red spots turned out to be scabies (quickly treated, once you figure out what they are, apparently). It was loads o' fun for all (except maybe the girl who's DS1's age - 8 - whom we haven't seen in a long time who eventually got tired of little boys. Now why would that happen?) Just played inside and out, some in the water, mostly not, rode circles in the garage on bikes part of the time, though it was 100 degrees in there. WhatEVer. I'll be adding some pics of the cake and of the kids. And we moms sat around and chatted.

One of DS2's best friends from kindergarten is moving into the neighborhood. Woot!

We went swimming again today. The boys are definitely learning more on their own and with me helping them float than they did in lessons. There isn't a lifeguard at the pool we've been going to, though, and it makes me really nervous. The water's not all that deep, but they really are not god swimmers. I just wander around near the boys with DD in my arms. Eventually, she gets tired of it and starts screeching and we get out.

And here they go arguing again...

I've sewed up a couple new diapers for DD from velour. I want to try to put snaps on one, but who knows when I'll get around to doing that (metal snaps with a snap setter tool and a hammer. BAM! BAM!). I also dug out the old diapers that were too worn out and the elastic too shot for me to even pass them on for free after DS2 was done with them. I put new elastic on some of them, new velcro on one, and a couple of them need new snaps (BAM!) and we're in business. We're pretty much going straight from small diapers to larges due to the thigh... uhm, situation. They're not that huge compared to lots of babies, but compared to the rest of her not overly chubby body and compared to her skinny brothers, she's got a bit more to her. Lovely, chubby baby girl :)

Well, not a lot else to say. Not all that much going on, really.

A couple more PICTURES

Isabelle wearing the romper I made. I'm going to add buttons higher up on the straps so it fits better.

Beautiful rainbow baby quilt made by Granny!



Get the papparazzi outta my face!

That quilt I am working on

Click on the pictures to see them really big.


The whole quilt top - well, all except the last part of the border on the closest side. I had to go buy 10 more inches of that fabric to finish it. DS2 about to tunnel under it.



Close up of part of the center section: a couple of the I Spy blocks, and do you see now what I mean about peacock/lava lamp fabric? It's even better in person.


Straight-on shot of the center focal part. With DS2 counting how many small squares it would be across. He then figured out how many small squares there would be in the center section, if it were all small squares; that's actually the math problem he was working out on the white board in my last post.

I got backing fabric the other day - some dark navy/indigo 100% cotton sportswear fabric that matches the small dark squares - and a king-size bag of 80% cotton batting. The quilt top is just a bit too big to be queen-size. I am hoping I'll have enough of the sportswear fabric left to do the binding, too. I've been putting off laying it all out as a sandwich and pinning it for a couple of days and then have the task of quilting it, which should be ... fun. I'll just stitch in the ditch, but that's still a LOT of quilt to be shoving through the machine.

yummy yummy yummy yummy fruit salaaaaaad

Boys were watching the Wiggles a bit ago. It's been a while since they did that regularly. They never dance along anymore, but DS1 was singing.

And now I want to make fruit salad for supper. Oh, I was going to make chicken stew, but I don't have the energy. I think I'll just bake some chicken instead.

I read a brand new suspense/action romance novel by an author that I usually like and it bored me silly. I mean loads of chatting and repeating that didn't advance the plot. It could have been a short story, but it was a 350 page long trade paperback. So comedies by Donna Kauffman yes: suspense, no.

I am currently reading a Harlequin Blaze by Leslie Kelly. I got it because someone recommended another book of hers (a longer novel, not a series one) and I liked it pretty well and this one is set in the same town with some characters overlapping. She's a pretty good writer and I am going to see what I can get by her from the library.

DD has been down for a nap for over 2 hours right now so I am almost done with my quilt top. I ran out of the fabric I was using for the last row of binding and need to go buy about a quarter of a yard of it; I'm really really hoping that there is still a 1/4 yard of it. Since I deviated from my pattern on the borders, I have quite a bit of one fabric left and have run out of everything else. I was planning on keeping the last yard of lava/peacock fabric for myself, but ended up using it in the border, all but a piece about 4 inches wide and 10 inches long. Sigh. Oh, and it's going to be about 96" x 96" which is what, 8 feet? Not as long as your usual queen size quilt, but a bit wider. I hope it looks OK on their bed. I took some pictures which I will post when Dh come and reboots the other computer that he has booted up in Linux.

Speaking of which, I bought Quilter's Newsletter this month on the strength of the picture on the cover: http://www.qnm.com/webextras/feature366/ I would love to have A) the skill; and B) the patience to make something like that. Not in oranges, though. I could make the pattern pieces larger and use solid pieces instead of the teeny tiny triangles that make up the feathers and make the curved square-ish pieces straight lines instead of curves and.... well, basically, I wouldn't be making the same quilt at all. Dreaming the impossible dream :)

Dh mowed the lawn! I should have made this the first item, probably, since it hasn't happened in a very very long time. He even did the back yard, which hasn't been mowed in a couple of years. It doesn't have a sprinkler system back there, so it all gets dried out and turns to hay and then in the fall when the rains start again, it flops over and new grass starts growing. It turns so hard that the kids won't be able to run around barefoot in it over the summer, but it is nonetheless easier to run in it this way than with 2 foot tall dried-out spikes of death.

I have one part of my vegetable garden that I want to dig out to put in some tomato plants this year. Usually, I put in a lot more stuff, but since I haven't started and don't generally have a lot of time when I'm not either feeding or carrying the baby, I won't. I keep looking at it and not doing it, so I need to wet it down and dig it up and shovel some of our copious compost into it. I'm thinking of getting some plastic to put down to keep the moisture in and the weeds from growing.

Oh, and another tidbit that should be at the top: Isabelle slept ALL NIGHT last night - from 10:30-ish to 6:30. Knock on wood that it's not a fluke. I woke up with torpedoes.

Anyway, I shouldn't have thought about the baby, because now the milk's threatening to come out.