SEWING FRIENDS

Why was I the last person ever to know that Oliver + S's designer was planning on making patterns for women with Simplicity?!

I'm not even joking -- I love this designer and her use of cottons.  She makes me want to wear yellow.  And I really should not do that.

Just To Inform You

I do plan to put a tutorial for making the icing and icing the cookies you've been seeing me churn out either on my blog or Helen's blog.

I'm currently waiting on determining the final design of some cookies I've got planned.

Also, someone with a new baby who occasionally blogs here with me should start looking to her own Monkey socks. A certain ninja kitten just started her first heel.

Songs of Love

The child that only six or seven months ago was barely stringing together a word or two and was still signing the words 'more' and 'please' is now the child that gabs and gabs and gabs at me.

While he's still fairly unintelligible to most people, I'm able to decipher his attempts at conversation with increasing regularity. From these conversations, it's becoming obvious that he realizes time exists and that tomorrow can be filled with fun things to do, as can "Sunday". He's letting me know he can count now and that he likes to count. His tenuous grasp of colors is still not impressive, but since we're not taking the time to point out colors more to him, he's trying harder to figure out which colors are which.

My absolute favorite part of this new talkativeness, though, is his singing. The first few times he'd try to sing, it would be what you expect: the Alphabet Song, Jingle Bells, or Happy Birthday To You (and Beverly Hills by Weezer). However, as he realized we liked his singing, he branched out to other harder Christmas carols such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas. Then came the Beatles tune Hello Goodbye! When he first started chanting that to himself, the husband and I looked at each other to confirm that we were hearing.

Rapidly, then, he began to take other songs he knew and add his own lyrics. He often changes the Farmer In The Dell to use new words, and just today he changed both The Wheels On The Bus and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. It's fascinating because I had no idea children who were this young could be that creative. I love to know what is going through his mind too, and it gives me a glimpse of what he's thinking.

I can't wait to have further conversations with this child!

Still Creating, I Swear

I just am not creating anything fabric-y.



My obsession nowadays is cookies. They taste so good too!

But, fear not, I've started to knit once again. I shall show you the Monkey sock that I've secretly plugged away at over the last week when I get up the energy to post photos again of my knitting.

I Want To Quilt -- No, REALLY

I know I'm not crafting much recently, but I've been really big into drawing (another creative hobby) and playing Japanese video games (another gigantic and useless time suck that leaves me better able to determine that the Japanese are really weird, but kind of awesome) and baking cookies (third batch of royally iced cookies so far). However, I was just sitting at my computer, trolling through my feeds, when I came across a fabric line that made me want to quilt HARDCORE.

Anyway, there I was, innocently looking at sewing blogs when Bookworm Bethie attacked. All sweetly, she posts about how she got a charm pack of Sherbet Pips from Moda. I hit NEXT SEWING BLOG on my browser, but then, I stopped and went back. Were those people on scooters? Were they wearing scarves? Were the scarves striped? Was it impossibly adorable? Check, check, check, check.

This line is done in red, pink, turquoise, grey, and white! It features people on scooters in the winter. It features little girls swinging. It was possibly designed with me in mind. I'm fairly sure of it!

I tried to think of skirts or sleep boxers I could make from some of the yardage, but I knew what I really wanted to do. I wanted a quilt. A nice simple quilt with lots of white to offset the busy patterns. I'm pretty sure that as soon as yardage becomes available in April, I'm picking up several yards of various pieces so I can make my dream quilt. Then that fabric can sit with my neglected needles and sewing machine and they can all cry about the fact that I ignore them.

Still... it's so cute that I suspect that I will not resist.

Bye, 2010, Someday I'll Miss You

I don't think 2010 will go down as the best year ever for me. I'm not going to rank it too lowly, because my son did learn to give me a giant hug and say "I love Mommy", but it kind of sucked early on. There were too many hospital visits for N, serious and horrible illnesses and death within our families, and too much time for P in a completely different state while I attempted to see what single parenting felt like. I think N experienced over fifteen colds in the last year, but who's counting?

I will say that things perked up greatly come autumn, excepting the issue of colds. The arrival of fall always makes me incredibly happy. There's hayrides, the start of the holidays, and having my child really recognize that seasons change.



One of my best friends had a baby girl. One of my other best friends (and N's godparent) announced her pregnancy. I made a few good friends this year and I think I've found one or two other moms that could be good friends.

Christmas was also excellent this year, but it normally is. I got a lot of video games and N got a boatload of toys and P got a peacoat that makes him look hawt. I have such excellent taste.

Let's hope 2011 is a lot calmer with smoother sailing in the health issues. If so, I think it could be a fine year all around (except for my favorite season autumn when you'll possibly see me sob over everything when my son goes to school for the first time ever).

New year, new look for my chairs!

Many, many moons ago, my chairs were looking pretty grubby, and I hatched a plan to recover them (and Jenn hatched a plan for me to blog it.) Easy peasy, right? All you need to recover chairs like these are some fabric and a staple gun!



WRONG. The fabric was easy to acquire. Jenn escorted me to Jo-Ann's, and we selected a lovely navy pattern... in 2009. And then it sat, and sat, and sat, waiting for me to do something with it. First, I needed to borrow a staple gun. Then, I needed staples. How long can this take? A mighty long time. Finally, the impending arrival of a new baby provided sufficient motivation for this long-overdue craft project.

For the first chair, I decided to remove the existing cover. It was also stapled in place, with a far more powerful stapler than any I have encountered. To pry that fabric loose took roughly 2 hours, screwdrivers, two people and quite a bit of elbow grease. Needless to say, the subsequent chairs have their original covers under the new ones.



The only upside of all that work? I could use the existing cover as the template when cutting the new fabric.

Stapling is a two-man job. You need a second person to hold the fabric taut while you staple. Additionally, I had to hammer the staples in a bit to get them fully flush. Each chair takes about 5 minutes, once you have your system down.



Once we finished the first one, though, the other 3 flew by. Before I knew it, my capable assistant was reassembling the newly covered chairs!



So, over a year, 2 hours, 20 minutes and 9 months later, I think we can call both of our recent projects a success. And now I'm considering another, similar project... recovering my bed frame, that is.

Want Tutorials?

So, I wanted to clue you in on the two crafty things that I did discover this Christmas season. 

One, I've figured out how to turn my multitude of wrapping paper into paper bags.



Not the most useful thing this year (except it works for cookie deliveries), but I suspect that when I have a child at grade school, it'd be neat to send in lunches made out of wrapping paper or such at Christmas time.

Two, I finally learned how to make a damnable bow out of wired ribbon.



For years I've lusted after this ribbon, only to reject it, because it was nearly useless in my wrapping efforts. Now, I buy this ribbon ALL the time. That's my new Christmas wrapping rule.

Any one want tutorials on either of these items? If so, let me know. I think I'd enjoy putting those online.

Stories For Memories

I want to add some more memories to my life. Some of these are Christmas related, others not:

1. N has been really worked up about Christmas this year. He has some grasp of what is occurring and realizes things are working up into a fever pitch of cookie making, Christmas lights, and presents. As such, we've started to let him on to the fact that Santa brings presents for good boys and girls. Now that he realizes that Santa brings stuff, he's started to think of Santa as a slightly scary but mostly awesome individual. The first time we met him this year, he was SUPER excited. It was chat, chat, chat. However, since then he has not wanted to sit with Santa.

We'd beg him to look at the camera with a smile, and he'd just look over at us slightly peeved that we had interrupted his conversation. Anyway, Santa came around to visit on a fire engine, and then we went to visit my brother-in-law and his darling wife and Santa was there with a fire engine. Each time, he screams "Hi, Santa! HI! Hi, Santa!" His hand is out waving and he is yelling. The second time, Santa came and visited the children and would sit with them. I asked him if he wanted to sit with Santa and I got a resounding NO! Then, I pointed out that Santa was giving out candy canes and books. He paused.

Again, I asked. This time, the answer was a muffled yes in my neck. He watched fascinated as the other kids sat with Santa and got candy canes from Mrs. Claus. I told him that Santa's wife was giving out candy canes and he said, "Grandma give out candy canes."

I asked, "Grandma?" He confirmed it, "Grandma Santa!" He sat with Santa and got his candy cane and was excited.

2. We've also been hyping up the 'giving Santa cookies' routine. We have told him that he has to leave cookies for Santa, a carrot for the reindeer, and his book told him to leave a piece of cheese for Santa Mouse. We quiz him on this since it does help him with the concepts of giving and that Santa won't be around when N is awake. However, it's very important to him now because people will ask him about it. At the library today, the librarians and security guard listened to him talk about Santa. Then they asked him what he'd give to Santa and he told them cookies. I asked him about the reindeer and he told them about the carrot.

I walked away at that point, while holding him. Over my shoulder, he yelled out to them, "Mouse cheese!"

3. N has managed to grasp the concept that "I love you" means something. He will deny loving me if he is angry at my brazen dictatorship of the household. However, sometimes when he's sleepy, and we giggled our way into tired napdom, he'll hug me tight while blinking his eyes open and say several times, "I love you."

Or, he might just say, "No kissing! Sleep time!" if he is annoyed with snuggles.

4. There is some severe cookie making love in this household. Apparently, nothing beats mixing up dough, pouring in sugar and butter and eggs and flour, and eating dough. However, an extra loved step is rolling out cookies for the most difficult cookie I make -- the rolled sugar cookie. Today, after his bath, he came out to find me making cookies, and he was shocked and dismayed. "Make cookies?" he asked.

He began to tug on the chair he uses to stand on while we cook, and he was yelling, "Chair! Chair" at me. After we mixed up the cookies, I laid some out to roll out, and my husband came over. N graciously allowed his daddy to push him up to the area to see the rolling out better before telling him, "Living room, daddy. Watch football." That's right -- he told him to get out!

Forget Resolutions

Look at this face, at this child!




We haven't been blogging because we're too busy to blog! Always on the go, always moving about!

Okay, that's not true, unless you count the pediatrician's office as a destination. Our household has been fighting illness since September. My husband and I are tired of, and N is definitely tired of it. I don't blame him. I feel horrible on the nights he wakes up in pain from ear infections. He feels horrible because he is in pain. I can't take the pain away so I just have to sit up next to him while Motrin or Tylenol start to work.

I mean, imagine him making this face at night and crying and without the adorableness of the Batman costume to mitigate it.




But I keep thinking about my blog. I want to blog. I'm dying to blog. I internally made resolutions for the new year about blogging. Then I realized this was dumb because I was waiting to blog. So, I said to myself, "Self, just blog." So, that's what I'm doing.

What am I up to nowadays? Cookie making like you would not believe.




In the last two days, I've made a batch of snickerdoodles, a batch of chocolate chip cookies, a batch of meringue cookies, a batch of peanut butter cups, and a batch of rolled sugar cookies (which I need to ice). I'm cookied-out! Not really. And the house smells delightfully of cinnamon.

What have you all been up to?