My day is looking up!

So I spent the day fighting with, err creating, a new shorts/top set for my Etsy shop. I had to recreate part of it when my coverstitch machine chewed it up. Thank goodness I had more fabric. Unfortunately, of course, I had already done the applique on the front and was nearly done when the coverstitch took a good chunk of it. I did finish it though, and you can see that at my shop

BUT, my day started to look up quite a bit. I entered a drawing on a blog, Quilt Taffy for some fabric (because I NEED more fabric, right?) and I WON. Yippee!!!! You can see the my prize package here and I chose the brights, package #2. :)

So, not a bad day all in all.

Spam time, aka new items in my Etsy shop

Okay, so it has been a rough few days in my personal life and sewing is my relaxation, so I have new items in my shop as a consequence! Now, who can't use a nice toddler bib or two. Go on, go take a look. :)

Seriously, sales are slow but I'm still new to Etsy and it gives me such pleasure to create. I have discovered trading at Etsy too so while we may not have actual cash from it we will have plenty of other handmade items to use. LOL. There are tons of jewelry sellers (I traded for earrings), soap sellers (haven't found a good trading partner for that yet), knitted items (I traded for organic cotton yarn knitted face cloths), on and on. Yes, the barter system is alive and well on over at Etsy.

I'm off to do some gardening before it is too hot to do anything.

Roooolllll call

Yes, we have a roll call - Lily performed a perfect rollover yesterday afternoon from belly to back, witnessed by me, Noah and Noah's speech therapist (Stephanie). Woohoo, way to go Lily!!! I'm sure there are many more instances to come.

Eewww - what is that?!

Yuck - That might be your first reaction to the photo today (along with the thought it is a terrible angle and quality of photo) but on further inspection you will see we were very happy to see these this morning. In fact, they are our Painted Lady Butterflies. They came in a kit of caterpillars and the photo you see is four out of five of them in chrysalis form. We have been watching them grow for the last little over a week and following their progress. More photos to follow next week hopefully. :)

A few links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Lady
http://www.earthsbirthday.org/butterflies/bflys/activitykit/2.htmlhttp://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Vanessa_cardui.html

SewingMamas on Etsy blog

As you may notice, I sell on Etsy. Etsy has some groups called "street teams," that are basically groups of like-minded sellers, grouped by interests or geographically or other ways. I belong to the SewingMamas Street Team, which is a group of us who post and chat together on http://www.sewingmamas.com Well, we have a collective blog, where we talk about our shops and our work. Check us out at: http://etsysewingmamas.blogspot.com/ And I can say from swapping (trading with) and viewing the work of these ladies, that you would be a happy buyer from any of these shops. :)

Simplicity 3765

Simplicity 3765, originally uploaded by michaeldog_1999.

I got some weekend sewing in, and made Simplicity 3765 for Lillian. I made her the 3-6 month size and for once it pretty much ran true to sizing, just a little bit large. The aqua was a teeny scrap from the Wal-Mart scrap bin I paid less than 50 cents for. The red is a red stretch denim I have had in my stash for a long time, at least since Zach was tiny. I had planned it for the boys but it always seemed a little too girly, and now it is for our girl. :)

The things kids say ...

After the IKEA incident on Saturday we move on to Sunday, where Zach sees in his Cricket magazines a sweet idea of getting a bowl and a couple sheets of paper and writing on them compliments for mom. Then mom gets to choose one from the bowl and read it now and again. I any case he came to ask me for the paper but requested only one sheet instead of the suggested two sheets becuase, "I don't have enough compliments for two pieces. I just want one paper." DOH. Rich and I held our laughter until he was out of sight. LOL.

Why spelling is important.

So on Saturday, Rich, the kids and I went to IKEA for breakfast (99 cents!) followed by some shopping to pick up some new glass cups. We were in line for the breakfast when the signage caught our eye. It said "Swedish Craps 3 for $2.99." I kid you not. It was the type hand lettered on a chalk board. More remarkable was the fact that 3 separate IKEA employees handled the sign and looked at it in hanging it and none appeared to note anything amiss. Now all of us in line were noticing, and DH, geek that he is, tried to snap a picture of it with his camera phone, but alas it did not come out. One women in the line delicately hinted that are those Swedish crepes? - making a strong emphasis on the word crepes of course. The employee looked at her as if she were insane and couldn't she see they were?! My attention was distracted by the kids for a little bit (after all we are trying to get 3 kids through this line) and when I looked back someone had apparently come right out and told them it was spelled wrong and what the original sign said. They were in the process of getting the sign down, which they had put up not 2 minutes earlier, and getting it quickly to the back. So I wonder, does their sign person truly have bad spelling skills or was this deliberate (ie perhaps he quit later that day and this was his last laugh)? In any case, Rich and I got a chuckle with our breakfast.

Noah's new patchy pants

Noah's new patchy pants, originally uploaded by michaeldog_1999.

Today I finally got my serger back from the shop and finished up Noah's "patchy pants" that I started quite a while ago. The patches down the sides are from all different pairs of jeans and denim jumpers family members gifted to us when they were worn out from regular use. I love all the different shades of denim there. The rest of the pants are baby corduroy (new not recycled use this time!). He is happy with his new pants. He is still in the beginning stages of potty training so I want to keep him in elastic pants, and elastic pants can get pretty boring but these do a lot to make them more interesting. These are fun to make too because you can use up scraps of this and that.

Illegal to homeschool in California? Nope.

For those of you who are hearing it is illegal now to homeschool in California, that is not the case. Several news agencies are portraying it that way (and several are not of course) in order to grab attention, but dig a little deeper and you will find out probably more than you ever really wanted to know about CA homeschool law. Unless it effects you directly of course, as it does us, in which case you need to know every little detail.

For those of you interested in updates, a good place to look is the California Homeschool Network website. They are keeping their legal updates current regarding the issue. http://californiahomeschool.net/howTo/updates.htm

Modified Otto pants, purchased top

Modified Otto pants, purchased top, originally uploaded by michaeldog_1999.

Today's sewing started out bad in that the T-shirt I was making for Zach out of the very last of the outerspace ribknit he loves became a wadder, now residing in the trashcan. It was on its way to being perfect (meaning I pretested the pattern on another shirt and the fit was perfect). I then broke out the very very last of his current favorite fabric, an outer space knit with rockets and so forth. I trimmed it with a red collar and sleeve bands, a favorite hue of his. I don't know what happened, if the needle became dull or what, but somehow on the bottom hem the fabric got shoved down through the footplate by the needle and got ripped in the process. Arrggghhh! A wadder.

In better news one of my favorite Yahoo group fabric co-ops (Fabricand Notions run by Ressy) posted a BUNCH of cute knits today, including several bigger boy prints. I ordered some of those, and hopefully one of those will be the next favorite fabric and we'll do that shirt again.

I then moved on to Lilly's pants in the photo that I cut earlier in the week. They are Ottobre 3/07 #3 in a size 68 cm. I left off the front and back pockets because what 6-month-old do you know uses pockets?! I also didn't line them and left off the bottom frill. I wanted them very very light for summer. They came out okay but the crotch depth is a little short for her cloth diapers so they ride below her belly button. They look comfy for her though. I matched it up with a RTW onesie someone gave us and put an applique with rickrick on the onesie to match the bottoms. I like her in the bubblegum pink rather than the pastel type pinks. Her skin tone doesn't look as good in the pastels.

I had to finish the seams with my regular machine though on this as my serger is in the shop. Boy do I miss it. What did I ever do before I had a serger? ...