Archive for May, 2010

Holi

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Holi [Wikipedia] is an Indian spring festival of color. You put on some white clothes, you pelt each other with water and powdered dyes, and you get very messy. I think we have missed the last two years, we went when Rebecca was almost 1, and now we’ve taken Penelope when she was also under a year. We always mean to go every year, but depending on the weather the whole thing can be more or less appealing!

Here is Penelope with her first blessing of red. The downside was that although the dye came out of her skin reasonably well, her slight cradle cap was red for a month until I got tired of people asking if she had some horrible skin condition and put some oil on her head to dissolve it. Worked amazingly well actually.

And Rebecca about half way through. I was sort of hoping her hair would stay dyed purple, but it came right out.

It was hard to pick just a few pictures, but in the end I couldn’t resist the baby foot! You can see how grubby Penelope is in the background. I love my messy girls!

Sparkly Watercolor Crystals

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

I was shopping for something at the drug store, and there was a half gallon of epsom salt. Needed to be tried, so I bought it for our art group.

The basic idea is to make a salt solution, super saturated or not, mix it in with different colors of liquid water colors, then paint. As it dries it forms different crystal patterns, the type depending somewhat on the salt concentration that you mixed in, and whether the salt was fully dissolved. Epsom salts are cool because they naturally form much larger crystals than NaCl – table salt. Don’t ask me why, I’m lousy at chemistry. But it looks really pretty!

First Painting

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Starting the wee one off with the painting thing. Liquid water colors and fingers. Two months ago technically, looking at the EXIF. Oooh, I’m too busy, aren’t I? Hmm. What to do. I’ll have to think about that one.

May Giveaway Winner

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Was I supposed to do this Friday? In anycase, random.org rolled 134 (out of 135!), so choice of pattern goes to:

Breanna sackrey Says:
May 20th, 2010 at 6:26 pm edit
yes I do wear shoes regularly but I do not read your blog regularly but I intend to browse after I am done entering giveaways. teachloveread at hotmail dot com

And I decided to give an additional pattern to one of the handful of folks who claim to read my blog at least sometimes, (or ever!), which I love to find out!

So congratulations also to:

Hilda Says:
May 17th, 2010 at 4:51 pm edit
I used to read your blog all the time but I admit it’s been a while since I’ve been here. My blog list is just a little too long these days! I do wear shoes, or flip flops, or slippers just about all the time, although I happen to be in bare feet right now….

I understand about the long blogroll – Mine is about 10 times longer than I can read right now! I click around randomly in my list and always find something nice though!

If you are crushed not to win my pattern, remember you can always buy it! ;-)

May Giveaway Day

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Well, we survived Rebecca’s birthday yesterday, although I fell asleep at 7:30pm and slept until almost 7am – not counting waking up every two hours to nurse Penelope of course… But our house is still a disaster and I have looming deadlines for my One Yard Wonders projects so I wasn’t going to do this, but hey, someone else mentioned it, and I still had about 10 minutes to sign up, so sure, why not.

And what will you win? Oh, right. Well, I would say any pattern in my Etsy store, but because of my move, two half finished soft-circuit patterns, and getting distracted by the next One Yard Wonders book there is only one pattern in my Etsy store. Technically there is a Halloween pattern too, but I’m not reposting that until July, what? I should just relist it now and stop being mad at Etsy for not letting you change the number of items for sale before charging you for relisting all of them? Yes, I’m mad at Etsy. Stupid Etsy. Okay, okay.


So your choice of two patterns. Comment on this post, tell me whether your read my blog normally, and whether you like to wear shoes, just so I can tell who is paying attention, and yes, I will email internationally! As mandated by the Sew Mama Sew post the giveaway will be open until through the 20th, and I will ‘ship’ by the 24th.

So comment, (were you paying attention?) and then head back to Sew Mama Sew to check out the rest of the giveaways going on. Should be good times. I’m off to pack lunch for tomorrow, then crash, bed.


One Yard Wonders Exhibit A

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

I had a problem with timing this year, the call for submissions to the second One Yard Wonders book came out while I was packing to move, and with the approaching deadline last month at the end of March I was still unpacking. I was not very happy about this. So a week before the deadline, desperate to submit *something* I made this fairy skirt and play silk. And I told them about all these other brilliant ideas I had that I didn’t have time to make before the deadline.

Long story short, they did not take this skirt, unsurprisingly really, but they *did* extended the deadline for everyone for another ~2 weeks, one of which my little sister was visiting playing au pair. So I got three more projects sewn, although one was a little late, and they were accepted! The down side being that now I have to finish writing up the instructions for three projects and re-make them with the soon-to-be-provided fabric for the final versions. So along with making things for Rebecca’s birthday party next week, I’m going to be pretty busy for the next month! And here I was wanting to get back to working on patterns for my sadly neglected Etsy shop. But life just is. I’m doing what I love, so I can’t complain.

And here’s a picture just for fun:

This picture sums up what I love about my bounce flash. Is that shallow? Okay, silver lining lifestyle comment: since our mattress was saggy and pokey by a year after we bought it, 8 years later Rebecca is allowed to jump on it whenever she wants. Bonus. She jumps on the couch too. It’s a nice couch, but we got it for free from family, and jumping always seemed more important than preserving the couch. It’s holding up so far. :-)