The Winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in Give-Away Day! I was utterly floored to receive so many comments and thoughtful answers to my "Best Prize" question. But first, the winner!

Because of the high number of comments, I had to forgo my original plan of pulling slips of paper out of a hat, so I used random.org and had the eldest kidling push the select button. And the winner...

Threaded Basil! I'll email you for your address to send off your padded pouch! Yay!!

I loved reading all of your comments. One of the most touching and frequent answer to my question was the prize of spouses or children. Ingrid's champion spaghetti eating son made me laugh and laugh.

Thanks again to everyone who played and shared with me!! You're all winners in my book (was that to schmaltzy?)

Today is Give-Away Day!

One of my absolute favorite blogs, Sew, Mama, Sew, has declared today Give-Away Day! I slipped my blog in just under the wire to participate.

Here's how it works. Today, lots and lots of crafty bloggers are all giving away something hand crafted or items to aid and abet a hand-crafter. You can enter to win by leaving a comment on their individual blogs. I love this idea because it's always cool to win something but even cooler to find crafty blogs!

Here is my give-away item. It's the first of my Padded Pouches:


I am especially charmed by the interior:


I'm a sucker for a good stripe.

Unlike my other pouches, this pouch is a little smaller and padded with cushy fleece. It's got a cozy feel and the fleece adds some extra protection for anything delicate that lives in the pouch. I'll be adding this pouch to my shop later today.

To win this pouch, leave a comment answering this question:

"What is the greatest prize you've ever won?"

Post your comment by 7:00 pm (PST) on Friday, December 5th, and my random number picker (ie, whichever kidling is closest to me at picking time) will select the winner. I'll ship off the pouch early next week and pay for domestic or international shipping.

Thanks for playing and go check out some other blogs!

Whatcha been up to?

Hmm, I've been up to a variety of stuff lately - and as you can tell by the vast amount of time since my last post - none of which has been blogged. I think I have to admit to myself that I'm a sporadic blogger. (Ooh, I'm going to name my next band "Sporadic Blogger"!)

Lots of October was taken up with our annual Skeleton Theatre project. My husband and some of his friends build animatronic skeletons which perform on Halloween and the night following. This year was "Pirates of the Scary Beings" with 4 skeletons, a parrot, a huge talking skull and 2 pirate ships in our front yard. Chris wrote an original script, hired some of his actor friends to do the voices and once the electrics dried out from a Seattle deluge, we had quite a show! Along with my cooking duties, this year I was costume mistress and tooth creator.

Two of the pirates are of the dandy variety, so we got some coats from the thrift store and I fancified them with lots of gold trim and hot melt glue (Crafting note: do not listen to David Sedaris while working with hot melt glue - burned fingertips are the inevitable result of this ill-fated mixture!). Here's the finished result:

That's Captains Black and Blue. They are the evil pirates. To see a little behind the scenes, check out this lovely write-up from my favorite local news blog.

Once Skeleton Theatre finished up, I played around with my new loom! My sister scored an Easy Weaver loom at a thrift store and gave it to me for an early birthday present. Thanks, Cam! It took a little time, 3 books from the library and some googling, but I finally managed to weave a fairly presentable scarf!

I started with this poorly dyed (and photographed) roving I did in the crock pot:

Spun it into this sloppy yarn:


Had a blast weaving it on my Easy Weaver:



And ended up with this scarf:


I'm amazed. Colors that looked so wan and icky as roving and yarn blend so well once woven. I'm very pleased with my scarf and itching to warp my loom again.

The Winner!

Yay, I have a winner for my "Pouches-A-Plenty" Giveaway! Thank you to all who entered. I have to admit to a bout of hostess stress when I announced it - "What if nobody enters?" I loved everybody's "P" words, too. They made me hungry and delighted all at once.

So with the help of my randomizer (aka the youngest kidling):


My winner is Sue! I'll be contacting you so I can send off your prize!

And here's a pouch update:


It's my "Retro Kitchen" set. Aren't they cute and kitschy? I'll have some more updates later in the week.

Thanks again to everyone who entered my little contest!!

Project Pouches-A-Plenty

Hurray! My sewing experiment has been so much fun and as a result I have a nice passel of pouches for my shop!


I decided to focus on pouches because they are small and quick to sew - qualities of high appeal to someone having a bout of creative attention deficit disorder. My goal is to list something new everyday for the rest of September. We'll see if I can maintain my creative burst of energy.

To celebrate my plethora of pouches, I'm having a Project Pouches-A-Plenty give-away!

The rules:
1. Leave a comment for this post by Saturday, September 13
2. Indulge my word geekiness by including your 3 favorite words that start with the letter "P"

I'll pick the winner at random on Sunday, September 14.

The prize:


It's the first in my Circle Pouch collection. It's the perfect size for those little things that rattle around your purse.


I'm also excited about the first Project Pouch that I'm putting in my shop today:


It's a simplified version of my Flare Clutch but it can still qualify as a gussied up pouch, can't it?

So go ahead and leave a comment to enter the give-away and I'll leave you with my favorite movie quote populated with a prodigious amount of "P"s:

"Waiter, there is too much pepper in my paprikash. But I would pleased to partake of your pecan pie."
-Harry Albright in "When Harry Met Sally"

Riding the Pendulum

First off, thank you for all the kind comments about my Training Wheels post. The youngest kidling will be starting school this coming Wednesday and I'll let you know how we do. I have a feeling I'll be the one in need of kleenex and a big hug.

So, for the 2 of you who regularly check my shop (Hi Mom, Hi Cam!!!), you may have noticed a distinct lack of anything new for, lo, these many months. Part of that is due to life stuff (and to what Chris aptly calls my spinning addiction) but I think a lot of it was because I burned myself out.

I have ideas for new products all the time, but when I'd sit down to plan and prototype, I'd get caught up with the minutiae of long-term production - "How can I most efficiently cut this out multiple times?" or "How will I stream-line sewing?" - and my eyes would glaze over and I'd wander off to rustle up a snack. These are very important considerations and my business model has served me well, but I've decided to take a break from it and just create stuff for fun, even if I'm only making it once or twice.

So I'll be spending the month of September swinging my sewing pendulum over to the more creative side and see how many new items I can dream up. Actually, I've already started and finished this last night:


I'm even considering a little give-away to celebrate! So check back sometime after Labor Day for details. And I'll also try and do a few blog updates about my little experiment.

One last thing, I want to give a very very belated congratulations to my bag-making buddy, JPAT for being a Featured Seller on Etsy last month. You go, girl!! Check her out - her wares are lovely!

Little House in the Big...'Burbs

I've always been a huge fan of the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mom read them to us everyday while we ate lunch. I remember wishing that we could eat roasted pig tail, have a pig bladder for a balloon and that my dad would find an old wooden stump to turn into a smoke house. I was also impressed that Laura's only plaything was a corn cob wrapped in a piece of flannel (I continue to be impressed with that whenever I look out at the vast array of toys and trinkets spread throughout our house). Laura and her family were the epitome of DIY before DIY was cool!

Anyways, I've been trying to muster up some of that pioneer spirit lately. First off, I bought a bread machine the local Goodwill. Now, I know that a true pioneer would make her own bread from scratch, but trust me, I am the worst bread-maker in the world. I couldn't even call myself a bread-maker as much as a rock-baker. So it's been a treat for us to have home-made bread on a regular basis. Chris has requested sour dough bread next. Does anyone have a good recipe for sour dough starter?

I've also been getting more into dying my own wool for spinning. I've dabbled with dying in the microwave but I wanted to work with larger amounts of wool, so I got a crock-pot at Goodwill to dedicate to dying. Here's the one I bought:


I LOVE this one because it reminds me of the one we had when I was growing up. Actually, I think this avocado green one may match the crock-pot that replaced the mustard yellow one that someone (who shall remain nameless) put over a hot burner instead of using the heating element, thereby creating one of the most hilarious and smelly plastic messes my childhood kitchen ever saw. But I digress. Here is some of the wool I've dyed in the crock-pot:


And I've been spinning it with my new spinning wheel!


I did not get my wheel at Goodwill. It's made by a small, local company called Fricke. It's a single treadle, scotch tension, 5 ratio bundle of fun. It is a less expensive wheel than most out there but it spins wonderfully and I'm tickled with its small foot print and minimalist look. It was a gift from my wonderful parents (and really, I can use a spinning wheel far more than I could use a smoke-house made from an old stump). Here's some of the crock-pot wool spun up:

The other evening I had some wool simmering in the crock-pot, some bread baking in the machine, and my spinning wheel humming along and I felt a little like a modern pioneer in the 'burbs.

ps I've been doing some sewing, too!


In addition to sewing for my shop, I've been working on a submission for One Yard Wonders!

Laramie, Wyoming

Hey there!
Can you see me through all the dust and cobwebs around here? Next time I'll try and remember to put down some dust covers or something before I take such a long and abrupt hiatus! I meant to post a little "Gone Fishing" note before I left on my extended vacation but life got a little away from me...

I just got back from my annual driving trek from Seattle to San Diego and back. We had lots of fun at the beach, various amusement parks, fairs and the like (including actual (albeit fruitless) fishing!). But right before I was to start the drive to San Diego, I got the very sad news that my grandmother passed away and I made a whirlwind visit to Colorado and Wyoming to attend her service.

My grandmother was 103, so while her passing wasn't that much of a surprise, it was very sad. Her name was Low Shee Hing. I called her "DoPo," which is Chinese for "Maternal Grandmother." She was born in southern China and came to the US as a mail-order bride. She and my grandfather ("Do Goong") eventually settled in Laramie, Wyoming and Do Goong opened the Paris Cafe.


The Paris Cafe closed when I was a baby, but the stories about it from my aunties, uncles and cousins are myriad. The Paris is now a real estate office but the bakery next door is the same from the Paris days. Mom remembers a window between the two establishments where they could pass freshly baked rolls back and forth. The grainy picture above is a photo of a photo I took at the Bakery.

It was very special to visit Laramie again with my family. I have many happy memories of visits there. Some of my favorite memories are eating Kentucky Fried Chicken at Dopo's table with all the aunties and uncles and cousins, listening to the mix of english and chinese along with the aunties' cackling laughter. I also remember making rubbings of DoPo's plastic lace tablecloth and wavy plastic carpet protectors - such things could only be found at DoPo's house.

DoPo was also a remarkable seamstress. She sewed all of her clothes from her own patterns. Mom told me that DoPo could look at a garment in a store and then go home and recreate it from memory. I'm sure my love of sewing is due to the influence of my Mom and DoPo.

I've told the kidlings that when they have their own children, I'd like to be called "DoPo." I hope that I'll be able to pass on some of the love, creativity and tradition I was lucky enough to get from my DoPo. Thank you for everything, DoPo, and ho ho chan!

Farewell to the Training Wheels

{Today’s crafty post has been pre-empted by long parental musings. Regular craftiness will resume momentarily.}

A few weekends ago, we took the training wheels off the youngest kidling’s bike and she’s utterly enamored with biking – crowing with delight as she zips down hills and taking the inevitable falls with equanimity. As I ride behind her, watching her sit tall in her little saddle with her legs joyfully pumping, I’ve made the bittersweet realization that it’s not only her bike that no longer has training wheels, but her life and, in a sense, my life too.

This is what I mean: The youngest kidling just finished up her last year of pre-school and will head off to Kindergarten in the fall. She’s had four wonderful years of learning how to share, listen, inquire, make friends and make messes. She’s excited to go on to the big adventure of elementary school and I hope she approaches the ups and downs of school with as much joyful crowing and equanimity as she does biking.

Extending the training wheels metaphor to myself took a little bit more emotional untangling. When formulating our plan to have and (more importantly) to raise children, Chris and I decided that I’d stay home with them until the youngest started school. And with the help of our supportive parents, we’ve been fortunate enough to make that happen. So for the past 7 years, I’ve been the primary care giver for our daughters (because of Chris’ very demanding work schedule, we can go ahead a put an added emphasis on “primary”).

While they are terrific kids and frequently hilarious companions, I must admit to sometimes feeling as if the kidlings are tethered to me like a set of training wheels – and you don’t have a lot of maneuverability or speed with training wheels. But with both of them going to school full-time in the fall, my return to a metaphorically two-wheeled life is on the near horizon, a thought that fills me with both joy and trepidation. I’m thrilled at the prospect of more time to myself, but I worry I haven’t done enough to prepare them for school and life. I’m also not quite sure what my life will look like when they go back to school. I have some very vague and some very definite plans for what I’d like to do, but I’m bound to feel pretty wobbly for a bit, readjusting to my two wheels.

And so I bid a fond and bittersweet farewell to the training wheels…and look forward to the wobbles to come.

I'm a Find!

I woke up the other day to a convo from the lovely Steph, letting me know that my Passport Wallet is an Etsy Find!


For the uninitiated, Etsy disperses news/how-to's/style commentary from its Storque site and often selects sellers to feature. I'm thrilled to get mentioned!

Now I need to focus on my weekend plans:
-Mow the lawn
It'll be the first time this year, so I'm expecting it to be like the jungle in "Romancing the Stone" sans a young Michael Douglas with a machete. Bummer.

-Photograph shoulder bags, flip wallets, pouches
Yay, the weather folk are finally predicting sun!

-Take the kidlings to see "Busytown" at the Children's Theatre
For the third time (but I love it just as much as they do).

-Sort my scraps

-Sew a bunch of stuff

-Rent "Romancing the Stone"
Hey, do you remember an old movie called "Napoleon and Samantha" with an itty-bitty Jodie Foster and my childhood heart-throb, Johnny Whittaker, and an old circus lion? I got it from the library the other day to show the kidlings and Michael Douglas played a poli-sci student (or "hippie") who saved the day. The movie was much more surreal than I remember.

What are you doing this weekend?

New Passport Wallets

Yay, some of my new superbuzzy fabric is now a passport wallet called "Happy Map"!


Here's the interior:


The youngest kidling picked out the orange dotty fabric. She's developing a great eye for color! My favorite thing about the main fabric is the little quotes, like "Without a purpose, being free, to please myself, it seems the time stops." I love non-American English syntax.

Here's another new Passport Wallet:


My friend, Laurie, put together most of these fabrics for a custom order passport wallet and I like them so much, I put her design into production. Here's the inside:


These will go into the shop today and tomorrow, plus I have some new flip wallets to photograph. Oh, and those new shoulder bags, too. I hope my Seattle sky can stay clear for the next few days!!

My Own Project Runway (I think)

True confession: I've never seen Project Runway. I caught about 30 seconds once. It looked like someone was rushing in from the Dry Cleaners. I mean to watch it, but we don't have cable and I keep forgetting to put it on hold at the library. I don't what my problem is because it sounds like my kind of show.

Anyways, this is a boring introduction to my pronouncement of May as my personal Project Runway month. This month I'm going to make myself some clothes. I'm tired of looking like I threw on whatever was lying on my closet floor (which is how I actually pick my daily ensembles) and I hate shopping for clothes with the intensity of a white hot sun. Especially with 2 kids in tow - someday, if we ever meet in person, I'll tell you the story of trying on bras at Target with both kidlings in the dressing room. Hilarious and far too mortifying to discuss here. So I figure turning clothes acquisition into a craft is my best bet.

And the Interwebs have aligned to encourage me in my endeavor! A few nights ago, as I ordered this from Amazon

photo courtesy of amazon.com

Sew, Mama, Sew! announced their Women's Clothing Month! They are even having a Sew-Along which I'm excited for, especially since I missed their Quilt-Along.

So it was all meant to be. I'll try and post some updates and photos (if I don't look too freakishly strange) throughout the month. Wish me luck!

That's A Relief!

I've had a handbag design floating around my brain for months. I think the original sketch is on the back of one of the kidling's art projects. I made a prototype a month or two ago and was so discouraged I gave up.

Then my friend, Alizah, invited me to sell some bags at her jewelry show. I dusted off my miscellaneous scribbles and finally pushed the design out of my head and through the sewing machine so I could have some new bags to sell at her show. Chris likens this to when we throw one of our extremely rare dinner parties and I decide to make something I've never made before that usually involves a technique I've never tried or perhaps lighting something on fire (Hey Mom, remember that time I singed off part of my eyebrows making Steak Hong Kong?).

Anyways, here's my latest Shoulder Bag Design:


I'm pleased with how they turned out, although I might tweak the closure system for the next iterations. I'm so relieved to have the design out of my head. Sometimes the knocking got a little deafening. Several of these bags will be in my Etsy shop eventually, once I've taken pictures and come up with a better name than "Shoulder Bag." Any suggestions?

Happy Street

Here's some cuteness I got in the mail yesterday:


I've already made up some little stories in my head about the adventures of Hedgie, Woolie the Sheep and their flock of chicks. The Happy Street Fabric is destined to become Passport Wallets, because isn't Happy Street what we're looking for when we're traveling?

I got these fabrics from Super Buzzy, one of my favorite on-line fabric sources. They are having a big Spring Cleaning Sale that I found out from my new favorite site, True Up. True Up is all about fabric. It highlights manufacturers, designers, self-printing options and sales. I love indulging my fabric geekiness there, although my PayPal account has felt its effects!

I'm getting ready to sell my bags at my friend Alizah's house this weekend. She has lovely jewelry so I'm planning on adding to my earring collection. I've been trying to figure out if I have time to include Hedgie and Co. in some new wallets...

P.S. Some of my things got a little blog action! My Owls of Athena Passport Wallet got a mention at Blue Orchid Design, and my Retro Blue Dots Brooch Clusters made it into a terrific collection of retro items at smashingmagazine.com. Yay!

The Sad Truth About My Head

I've noticed a disturbing trend - so many of my blog posts open with sentences following this pattern:

"[Insert quaint non-expletive exclamation], I didn't mean to take [Insert embarrassingly long span of time] between posts, but I've been busy with [Insert random life occurrences]!"

I must try and break this habit. After this post.

Let's play a game. I'll make a list of Inserts and you can come up with an opening sentence for this post. Here we go:

Quaint non-expletive exclamations:
Darn
Dang
Golly
Gee Whiz
Sweet Kitty
Cripes
Jiminy Cricket

Embarrassingly long spans of time:
A week
A fortnight
A month
A year
An eon

Random life occurrences (based on true events)
Jury Duty
Tax Preparation
Family members struck with colds, stomach flu and strep throat
Organizing the Elementary School Carnival
Teaching an Etsy Workshop
Teaching at the YMCA
A Spring Break trip to Olympic Penninsula
Briefly walking next to Danny DeVito

Wasn't that fun? Hmm, now my life looks more like a Mad Lib and less like blah blah blah boring stuff.

Anyways, back to the sad truth about my head. It hates hats. Especially handknitted hats. I've knitted three hats for myself (including one while participating in the aforemetioned Jury Duty) and my head has rejected all three with such force of personality that the hats immediately defected to the oldest Kidling's head.

Here's one traitorous hat knitted with some of my handspun:


And here is another, modeled with some matching Knucks I made for the oldest kidling to match her father's. When I asked when she'd wear them, she said, "When I'm working on the scaffolding with Daddy."

The hat is The Greenery Hat and lots of fun to knit. And, really, the hats look so cute on the kidling, I'm over being sad about my bulbous head.

Pattern Patter

I've been thinking about patterns a lot lately. It all started when the kidlings were helping me tidy up. Through a typical parent/child miscommunication (the kind where a kid's brain translates, "Please run upstairs and change your socks" into "Please run upstairs and change your socks and then play Pioneer Girl and wash the dirty socks in the bathroom sink with extra soap and wear a funny bonnet for extra authenticity and be sure to make Mommy wait for 20 minutes wondering how long it takes to change your socks.") my book of patterns was lost for a heart-stopping 20 minutes.


I know it doesn't look like much, but that notebook carries almost all the pattern pieces and construction notes for my wares. I'm sure I could replicate them if need be, but I'd really rather not. And practicality aside - while I love to watch the number of sold items in my Etsy shop click upward, that notebook is a more tangible marker of my sewing accomplishments. Sometimes I can't believe I actually created patterns that work! (We found the notebook on the dress-up box, by the way.)

At the other end of the spectrum, I've been struggling with a lack of knitting patterns lately. I was always a knitter firmly wedded to a pattern. The connection between a specific yarn and a specific pattern was absolute. Then I started spinning and ending up with lovely yarn that had no pattern to go with it. What to do?

My first forays into winging it did not go well. I used these 2 of my handspuns



to knit 2 garter stitch scarves that were awful. Far too wide and just the right length do be supremely annoying. So the poor scarves just sat there and moped. Then I got Lexi Boeger's Intertwined from the library and it really helped me to "listen" to my yarns and let them guide me. So I unraveled (frogged?) the scarves, reknit them and I'm so pleased with the outcomes!

First is this scarf:


It's still a garter stitch scarf, but I re-knit it half as wide and it looks (and wears) so much better! The narrower width concentrates the colors so much more and blocks are in more pleasing proportions. The yarn was made with one of Hobbledehoy's Happy Batts and pink roving from bethbrown.

Here's the second scarf:


I knit this one with a drop stitch and I love how airy it is. The drop stitch accentuates the lovely candy striping of the yarn.


I probably should have reset the twist after unraveling the yarn so it wasn't so squirmy. But I kind of like the squirms. This yarn was spun from one of artclub's surprise batts.

So that's my pattern patter for today. Anything you'd like to patter about?

Mama's Got a New Bag!

Hey, look, I made a new bag just for me:


It's rather rare for me to make a bag for myself. You usually see me wandering around with a proto-type or minor sewing disaster slung across my shoulder. I splurged on this bag because my ancient messenger bag has been leaving bits and pieces all over town lately AND Craft Magazine and Amy Butler are having a bag-making contest.

I contemplated entering my Sophia Bag, but this Amy Butler "High Street Messenger" pattern was calling to me from my pile of Good Intentions. To better justify this project, I stipulated that I could only buy minimal fabric and everything else was from my stash. Fortunately, I'm a pack-rat and only had to buy the solid curry fabric and supplement my stock of brown twill. I even found the marine hardware I used for a closure in my box of "General Randomness."

I made some modifications to the pattern, mostly by-passing zippered pockets. I trimmed the exterior pockets using Quenna's brilliant faux piping tip.


My favorite part was the patchwork front flap. I used to be a quilter ages ago and this project gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with my loyal walking foot and the joy of hand sewing. I've wanted to participate in Sew, Mama Sew's Quilting Month and just haven't had the time but I think the quilting bug has been reintroduced to my crafty agenda.

All in all, this was a fun project with only a few mis-steps. Of course, thinking about the prize of a new sewing machine kept me going through the hard parts (not that I could say any of these thoughts out loud because, you know, my stalwart Viking was RIGHT THERE!).

P.S. I've been checking out the other entries and there are some amazing bag-makers out there. I don't think my Viking has to worry about being replaced any time soon. That's ok, though, I got a new bag out of the deal!

Experiments with dye

Wow, February is zipping by me at lightening speed! We had the younger kidling's birthday party with a Candyland Theme, complete with a green-screen Candy Tram ride that Chris whipped up in a few days. And we're still reeling from the sugar rush!

Last weekend, through a harmonic convergence of getting caught up with my shop, a well-timed play-date and a technical rehearsal, I had the house completely to myself for 2 hours! So I dug out some natural merino roving I'd bought ages ago and messed around with dying it.

The kidlings and I experimented with Kool-aid dyes before so this time I added Wilton's Food Coloring Gels. I've had these for (literally) years, so some of them were kind of gummy. Next time I do this, I'll go buy some new jars. I used instructions from Keep On Knitting in the Free World and they worked like a charm.


I ended up using Wilton's Brown, Copper, and Kelly Green along with Kool-Aid Lemonade.

Here's half the roving after a good soaking in water with the dyes squirted on with a turkey baster. At this point I seriously doubted my color choices and felt strangely drawn to the idea of spaghetti for dinner. Next up was a few trips through the microwave and drying out in the shower to become this:


I like the colors together but wish I'd used two to three times more dye. I'm excited to spin it up, though, and see what I get!

And finally, I got a lovely award as a "You Make My Day Blog" from Jocelyn! Thank you so, much Jocelyn! (I'm kind of shy when it comes to tagging other people, so it may take a little while to pass along the award.)

"Grand!"

That's how I've been feeling this week for a variety of reasons.

First, I got so many kind and heartwarming compliments on the bag and pattern review I did for Sew, Mama, Sew. Here's the bag:


It's one of Amy Butler's new patterns, The Sophia Carry-All. The pattern review is here.

I also made some new things for my shop, including this flip wallet:

(Aren't the bunnies adorable?)

And this Passport Wallet:




And finally, I made it to a grand's worth of hearts yesterday!

Now I have a hankering for some Pillsbury Doughboy's Grands Biscuits.

How have you been feeling today?

Extracurricular Sewing

It's a brand new year and yet my Etsy shop looks much like it did in 2007. The poor shop has been a bit neglected because I've been doing a lot of extracurricular sewing this month.

First, I sewed up a passel of bags for my sister's birthday.


It was a particularly special birthday for her this year, so she got an extra helping of presents! I especially like this bag:


I call it "The Light Bright Bag" because it makes me think of the Light Bright toy we shared when we were kids. For those of the younger set, a Light Bright was a backlit panel with a grid of little holes over black paper that you could poke plastic pegs into to make glowing designs. Oh, here's the updated version. My sister picked the fabric for this bag and I think it underscores her excellent taste. If you ever see me wearing anything cute or hip, there's a 95% chance it was a gift from her!

I also made a bag for a Pattern Review I did for Sew, Mama, Sew. The review will appear early next week and I'll post some pics after that. It was a lot of fun to make a bag from someone else's pattern! It's so easy to follow my own well-trodden path and get into a rut. I've been thinking of doing some more pattern reviews here. What do you think?

Anyways, now that my extracurricular sewing is finished, I'll be working on my new handbag design this weekend and hopefully will have one or two for my shop on Monday.

Happy weekend!