cherry tomato

I'm a feltin' fool!

As usual, I'm scrambling to get things made for the holidays. Not only do I need to get busy making gifts for friends and relatives, I am participating in a sale on December 9th. I know what I want to make for the sale, but I've made very little progress thus far.

I've been working on these felted stockings:

Pre-felting

post-felting

Much thanks to my mom for giving me the pattern for these. She is also making these as gifts, and had nearly twenty of them completed last week when I saw her on Thanksgiving. I'm planning to make approximately one ton of these as gifts. They go together quite quickly, and the color combinations and designs are endless.

I'll keep you updated on what I'm doing and if I'm going to be putting anything in my shop. I'm thinking of adding a few stockings and some gift tags I'm working on. We'll just have to see how much time I have. I always seem to overestimate what I can get done in the amount of time I have.

Okay, back to knitting...

totally random post just because

I LOVE stringed lights. When I saw this string of lights with a beaded garland at Target, I swiped them up without a second thought. They were the first things I put up (well, other than unwrapping the aluminum tree and setting it on a table).  I just love the glow of the lights off the little beads, especially in the dark morning and evening hours.

These are kugels I received from my mother many years ago. I never really know where to hang them. They're far too heavy for the tree, so I usually end up placing them on a table. Now that we have our own home, I think it's time to find something proper to do with them. I think they're gorgeous.

Tomorrow I'll fill you in on some of the projects I've been working on. Until then, be well.

xo.

the holiday season:: oh, it's on!

We had a lovely thanksgiving. We had to take a ferry out to the Olympic peninsula and drive out into the country to get to my mom's place. It was the first time we drove there on our own, so we took a wrong turn and ended up on the Pacific Coast Highway for a bit. That was actually the best part of the drive because there were so few cars on the road there. We finally made it to the house just before it started to snow. I LOVE the snow. I mean, it makes me giddy. I started jumping up and down with glee. Unfortunately, it only snowed for about 10 minutes.

Being at my mom's house is like being in a museum. She and my stepfather collect 18th century American furniture and  accoutrements. My grandmother kept walking around the house, pointing at things and asking, "How old is this?", "Where is this from?"  It was so cute. I told my mother that she needed to start putting little tags on everything so everyone can knows what they're looking at.

Here is just some of their pewter collection.

I love how it used to be popular to have paintings of one's dogs in their homes. This is not a painting of my mother's dog (a golden retriever). It is a painting of a dog belonging to someone who must have loved it very much. Now, it hangs in my mother's house beside her bed. This is the first Thanksgiving I have spent with my mom in about 8 years, so it was really special. Unfortunately, I have not been feeling very well in the last couple of weeks, and I couldn't finish my mean, and I had to lie down for a bit. I'm really trying to take care of myself and do everything I'm supposed to be doing to be well. I have my moments of weakness, but overall I feel like I've been doing well. It looks like I just haven't been doing well enough because I'm having all the old symptoms again. Very frustrating.  I think I have been unwittingly eating gluten in places where it hides, and I just have to be far more diligent about making sure I'm not consuming this poison (to me at least).

We were going to wait until next weekend to decorate our house for Christmas. I usually don't decorate until we have a tree, and we are going out to cut our tree next weekend, so we weren't going to decorate the house until then. However, it snowed yesterday, and I simply could not restrain myself for one moment more. Out came the camera and the decorations.

I  bought this tree on Ebay a couple of weeks ago, and I'm completely in love. It is a vintage aluminum tree made in Japan. I have no idea when it was made.

Oh, but that is only the beginning! More holiday decorations to come...

gobble, gobble...gobble, gobble, gobble

I'm thankful for so many things, not the least of which is the friends I have made through this little blog. Thank you for the inspiration you give me every day. You have no idea how much it means to me. This has been one of the most difficult years I have ever had, and it's good to have a day to stop and reflect on those things I am so grateful for. Thank you to all of you who have been so supportive and helpful during the past few months.

I will be getting an early start tomorrow to travel to spend Thanksgiving with my mother, stepfather and grandmother. It's quite a drive, and we've had record rainfall this month. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a good, safe drive.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

gifts:: port2port

I'm fairly certain I say this every year, but I can't believe it's already Thanksgiving/the holiday season/the end of the year. Honestly, I haven't even finished unpacking yet. Never mind even contemplating the holiday season. However, I can't ignore that the season is here. The parties have started, the family is gathering, and I can't avoid all the incredible gift ideas I keep seeing.

I was so happy to be one of the few (less than 100!) who was able to swipe up one the 2007 calendars by the unbelievably dear Mav from Port2Port Press.

It sold out quickly, but I've heard a rumor there may be more at some point. And if you love paper products like I do, you can join Mav's Card Society and get cards from her that you can only receive through the Card Society. I've already given my husband the not-so-subtle hint that I wouldn't mind being a member.

Not only is Mav producing some of the most brilliant letterpress cards, she has compiled a list of inexpensive art to help you in your gift search (or maybe find a little something for yourself). One of the many things I love about Mav, other than her work, is her eye for beauty all around her, and her desire to share this with the world. Her blog is more about sharing than it is about herself.

Yeah, Mav!

sun! and more house banter

The sun is out! I can hardly believe it, but I'm taking full advantage by basking in the rays coming through my windows. Even though it's so bright I have to squint to see my screen, I don't care. I will not block out the sun!

My sister came up from Portland to visit last weekend. While we were cruising around town, well, it was more like driving to Target, I insisted I take my camera along because, as I told my sister, you never know when you'll need it. Well, I left it in my sister's car, and she returned to Portland on Monday. Of course, I never used it the entire time she was here, but I have needed it on numerous occasions in the past few days. I wanted to show you how much progress I am making on my studio. But alas, you'll just have to trust my word when I say things are coming along quite nicely. There were so many things in there that I couldn't even move. Last night I sat on top of a filing cabinet in the middle of the room and screamed (sweetly, of course) for Eric to help me somehow get some of the boxes out of the room. I just felt like I was in the middle of one of those little games. You know, the ones that are square, and they're full of little plastic squares except for one space, and you have to move them all around to put them in the proper order to make the puzzle come together. Well, that was my studio. It's hard to feel like you're getting anywhere when you're simply moving boxes from one side of the room to the other. (sigh...)

I'm having a hard time accepting that Thanksgiving is next week. I am participating in a trunk show on December 3rd, and I still don't even have my sewing machine! I don't even know what I'm going to make! I'm freaking but only a little right now. I won't really start freaking until next weekend.

Since I don't have my camera (Amy, please send it soon), I thought I'd just show you some photos of the fabric I got to make the curtains for the house.

The red was meant to be for the living room. However, it appears I am an idiot and ordered only 1 yard instead of the 5 I needed. Now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. It will probably become part of some pillows.

The other was meant to go in our bedroom, but I think I'll use it for the living room instead. I'm concerned about the living room looking too monochromatic, so I'll have to add some nice bursts of color in there somehow: pillows, lampshades, rug, etc. I think I can handle it.

I did get one other fabric, but I can't find a photo of it. I wanted something bright and girly, so I selected a light green fabric with various colored polka dots. The polka dots are all my favorite colors: pink, red, yellow, pale blue. It sounds a bit atrocious actually, but it really is quite nice and subtle.

Well, it's back to basking in the sun for me. I hope you're having a wonderful day!

kitchen? done

The first room we've (I've) managed to get put together is the kitchen. I love the kitchen. I have been collecting vintage (mostly from the 40's) kitchen items for many years now, and have managed to procure quite a nice little collection. The kitchen in our house has not been remodeled, and I believe all of the cabinetry and even the sink is original to the 1915 house. I love it because my vintage pieces look right at home here.

Yes, the stove is old, but at least it is gas. It's so interesting to try to figure out what this house was like when it was first built. I'm fairly certain there was a wood burning stove here because we have a chimney but no fireplace. The stove would have been centrally located in the home and was probably the sole source of heat.

This is a little cubby/shelves just to the right of the stove. It is where I keep my blender for making my breakfast protein smoothies, my rice cooker and my beloved Kitchenaid mixer. I haven't been able to use it much lately because I still haven't quite figured out the whole baking-without-gluten thing. Once we settle in, I'll be going a lot of experimenting though. You  The strawberry canisters are filled with gluten-free flour I will be using for said experimenting. Above that are my favorites: popcorn (my favorite food), rice noodles and bendy straws in my cherished vintage cherry pitcher. Oh, and of course, rice. With my new diet, I eat a lot of rice and rice-derived foods. I don't know what I would do if I didn't like rice.

Fortunately, the curtains I made for our last place match perfectly. The walls in the kitchen are nice shades of blue, and the curtains have the same shade, along with the red found throughout the kitchen. Some of my vintage aprons hang to the left for easy access.

I worked on the kitchen while Eric worked on the basement. He seems to have finally conquered the flooding in the basement. He sort of reminded me of the battle between the father and the furnace in the movie "A Christmas Story". A constant battle involving many expletives. He likes to talk to me about what he's done, but I don't really understand it. Something about epoxy, tarps, sandbags and little dams.

The rain continues to fall here and shows no signs of ending any time soon (thus the dark photos). It looks like this weekend will be spent indoors. I hope to make some progress on the studio, but I'll probably just be lazy and take a lot of afternoon naps. I think I'm much more into the decorating than the unpacking...

It stopped raining for about 5 seconds here, so I took the opportunity to snap a few photos of the outside of our new house. Everything is a little dirty and disheveled and a lot wet. One of the things I love most about living in the Pacific Northwest is how green everything becomes in winter. When I used to live in the South, I thought winter was so depressing because everything just died. here, the leaves fall off the trees, but the grass thrives and the dark skies make the green even more vibrant.

Because we weren't able to move into our house right after we bought it, we put a lot of energy into working on the yard and making a garden. It is still a work in progress, but I feel a great sense of satisfaction with what we were able to do. We focused on planting the "bones" of our perennial garden, and next spring we will fill in nearly all the space with loads of flowers. We reused old bricks and rocks we found in the yard as we cleaned it up. We've tried to recycle as much as possible as we've been working on our house. The back of our yard will be the vegetable garden, and boy do we have our work cut out for us there. We live in a neighborhood in Seattle that is home to throngs of rabbits. I'm not really sure how this happened (and if you live in Seattle and know something about the rabbits in Wallingford/Greenlake, I'd love to hear about it), but it's something that makes the neighborhood that much more unique. However, it also means we'll need to  protect  our  precious veggies from  the neighborhood bunnies next spring.

Vedo seems to be feeling better after getting his flea medication (he's actually lying on my arm, making it nearly impossible for me to type this), and the basement is in good shape. Now we can get back to hunkering down and relaxing in our new home.

Now I'm just going to watch the election results come in. You voted today, right? Good for you. :)

hmm, the joys of life

I'm beginning to wonder if my life will ever be regular, predictable, stable again. Ever since June, it's felt like someone took my life and everything in it, tossed it up into the air, and just let each component land wherever it happened to land. Since then, I've been scurrying about trying to put it all back together. Sometimes the configuration works and sometimes it doesn't. When the configuration hasn't worked, I've had to start over to try to figure out just how it all fits together. I think I thought that once we moved into our house, everything would magically find it's way into place, and I would finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief. I truly don't mean this in a pessimistic way, but the older I get, the more I realize that life will always sort of be in a state of flux. Unexpected challenges pop up constantly, and sometimes the biggest challenge is to not let life's unpredictability get to you. Especially since that unpredictability can be what makes life so wonderful.

We've  been in our house for a week now, and it's really starting to feel like home. It's been challenging to start a new job and make a new home all at the same time, because everything seems so new and a bit disconcerting. But everyday things start to feel a little more "normal".  Of course, the most fun part for me is the decorating. Reprodepot was having a sale last week, so I used that as an opportunity to order fabric for curtains for the living room, bedroom and studio. There are so many things I want to do, and we'll be spending this winter gradually putting it all together. I'm really looking forward to decorating for Christmas, and it's difficult to exercise restraint when the stores are already filled with holiday decorations.

The rain just keeps falling here, and our basement is flooding. Obviously, we are not pleased about this, and we've been hit with our first challenge as homeowners just one short week after moving in. Eric was up late last night moving things around and sweeping the water. My dear kitty, Vedo, is being tormented by fleas. All of our kitties are indoor cats, and the only thing I can think of is that there were fleas here when we moved in. I'm sure the other cats have them too, but Vedo has the misfortune of being highly allergic to them. It just breaks my heart to see him so uncomfortable. We're getting some medication for him today, so I hope he'll have some relief very soon. What nasty little buggers those fleas are!

Okay, I think it's time to end the world's most boring post. No photos today because Eric has the camera. No new creations because everything is in boxes and my sewing machine is still out at the lake. I hope to get the studio set up this week because I know that as soon as I get my fabric, I'm going to want to get busy on the curtains.

It's coming together slowly. very slowly...