One Inch World

I am lost deep in the black hole of moving hell. Okay, perhaps not quite that bad. But I swear I haven’t done anything other than unpack boxes and buy bookshelves for the last three weeks. The light is starting to come out though, Saturday we finally unpacked the paints, and yesterday I cleared enough space to dust off my ancient Singer Featherweight. (I’ve been borrowing my ex-housemates modern sewing machine for the last 6 years…) She still runs, her name is Elizabeth, and she was my mother’s in college. I think I need to get her serviced pretty badly though, she’s sounding kind of chattery, and I think I’m missing a screw from the bobbin assembly…

Anyhow, here are some awful pictures of Rebecca’s sewing, from two months ago. The next several posts will all be things several months old, before moving took over my life!

Rebecca has been sewing felt recently. For Christmas D-Pa got her a stack of craft felt of her very own. This is a heart that one of us cut out, can’t remember. I think she cut it out… it was for Daddy, went something like: “This heart is for Daddy.” “You’re cutting a hole in it?” “Daddy has a hole in his heart and all the blood is coming out.” “Oh?” “Now I’m taping it up.” “Mom, make a needle for me, I want to sew it to my skirt.” “Oh sure, why not.” “Now Daddy’s heart is stuck to my skirt, and I’ll show everyone at school tomorrow.” Two months and it’s still on there.

Yes, the color on this is awful. We did this at Nenny & D-Pa’s house over winter vacation. Rebecca said she wanted to make a donut, so I cut out two teal circles for her. Yes, she chose the color. First she sewed around the ring in the middle, then she said she wanted to put strawberries on it. So I cut out some strawberries, and she randomly stitched everything together. Then she wanted to stuff it. Sweetie, that’s really the wrong order to do things in, but who’s fault is that really? Sigh. Okay. So I started forcing stuffing in between the front and back between the strawberry stitching, holding the edges shut so that Rebecca could whip stitch around the edges. It ended up plumping up reasonably, luckily she wasn’t very thorough about sewing down the strawberries, because Mama’s always have to make these things work out, right?

By next week maybe I will have unpacked her felt and she can get back to work again. Actually, the biggest stumbling block to that right now: I bought a second hand wood bookcase for craft supplies, sight unseen, or in this case un-sniffed. It reeks of either perfume, incense or ill conceived fake teak scent. Any ideas how to get rid of it? I’m afraid the scent is somehow embedded in the finish and I’m very upset about the whole thing. It looks very nice, but the smell is making my throat raw.

I wanted Rebecca to be involved in making the valentines for her classmates tomorrow, which is challenging, since we have to make 26ish of them, and that takes some stamina. At first I was planning on doing some stenciling, I cut out some hearts, and I wanted her to use the spray bottles of liquid water colors we have to paint hearts onto watercolor paper. But. For some reason when the girls use these they feel that they have to hold them really close to the paper, and anything other than fully covering to a drippy mess is unacceptable. So the first stencil was filled to overflowing with red watercolor paint. You can guess it didn’t come out looking like a heart. We moved on to plan 2!

On each piece of watercolor paper I drew a secret heart picture, nothing complicated, and Rebecca sprayed and painted watercolors over the top until she could see the whole picture. And yes, I did use a moving box as my backdrop, my house is covered in them! Should I be packing right now? Yes…

I was throwing out all my old makeup – I never wear makeup anymore, and besides, old makeup is gross – and I thought, being sadly unable to throw *anything* away, that the twisty mechanism was a good thing to put into some kind of Montessori-esq tactile activity. So I cleaned them out, and then they twisted, but there wasn’t anything left to show that they went up and down, clearly they needed something inside them, and hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it was a crayon?? At first I was thinking of hot glueing in some regular crayons, but then I realized that fat crayons were more lipstick sized. They were too big to fit though, so I started whitling them down with a butter knife, until I could cram them into the little veined cups, and they stayed in just fine!

And they twist up and down, and they draw, and they are so cute! So, now we have four lipstick crayons, and I’ve only found *one* in the washing machine so far…

Once we were done making them we used the wax shavings – yes yes, couldn’t just throw them away – to make sun catchers. I’m sure that’s why it’s been raining for the last two weeks…

So, I’m sure, being moms, that you have some lipstick languishing in a drawer somewhere that would be so much happier as a crayon!

Basic Instructions:
Clean out lipstick with a paper towel, and maybe a q-tip. They don’t need to be washed, just mostly clean.
Take half a fat crayon, and whittle it down until you can jam it into the lipstick holder. You shouldn’t have to hammer it in, but it should be tight.
Done!

I think these would make great little valentines day presents too!

I’m back from vacation in modem land, and I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog! I think I need some kind of schedule, craft, homeschool, and kid art once a week on their own days, but I haven’t gotten there yet!

This is a carrot. Carrot leaves look nothing like that in reality, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a soft carrot with a realistic top. Only plastic ones.

This carrot is a basic cone pattern, with velcro patches holding it together. I’d really like to get some colored velcro for projects like this, and making sushi rolls, I’ve seen some really cute patterns that use colored velcro. I used random orange fabric patches to make the pieces I cut the cone sections out of, which I like. The construction is pretty messy though! I tried to get away with sewing the tiny circles on with the sewing machine. That never works…

I just got my copy of One Yard Wonders, which has my origami organizer pattern in it, and it is SO AWESOME! (The whole book!) I admit, I thought it was a little kitchy when I first heard the proposal, projects using 1 yard of fabric? My prediction was it was going to be half bags and half aprons. But they managed to keep it to 5 things I would call an apron/smock, and a similar number of bags. There is really a lot of diversity. And the really magic part is that now I know I can indulge in a yard of fabric whenever I want, and there will be some awesome pattern in this book that is just right! I hadn’t realized that the true power of this book would be to enable future fabric purchases, hahaha! I know how much fabric to buy now! One Yard!

Going in I also really wasn’t sure how they were going to make all these patterns and tutorials from different people fit together and look cohesive, but then, that’s their job, isn’t it? I should have had more faith. They did a great job! My pattern looks nothing like it did when I submitted it, it looks much better! They took my photo tutorial and turned it into an illustrated tutorial, that, except possibly for the tying step, is probably easier to understand. So now I’ll have the confidence to do this again, if I ever see another call for proposals. In the mean time I’m forging ahead with my next pattern for my Etsy store. LEDs, conductive velcro, and felt…

We had our sort-of annual gingerbread house making party yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. This year I skipped the nervous breakdown inducing making of 50 billion slabs of gingerbread, and we all used graham crackers. They work better than 3/8″ thick slabs of gingerbread anyway, they aren’t as heavy, although they don’t taste as good. I tried calling a local bakery, but they laughed at me. Someone mentioned they sold slabs at Nobb Hill, so maybe I’ll try that next year.

Anyway, there was plenty of candy and icing and graham crackers, and at least 10 houses constructed. My best friend and I collaborated on Donaldson Castle, complete with body hanging from the ramparts…

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a tailor in Ghana. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.