Chock Full of Happiness

Yay, Sunday--

Finally getting an entire summer's worth of hair buzzed off, alternately at the hands of husband and two-year-old:Blueberry-oatmeal muffins and a SECOND cup of coffee made for me by Matt and the girls, with only a minimal amount of yelling during and a fair amount of clean-up afterwards:Lots and lots of children's artsy projects at home while Matt played a softball double-header in the mugginess across town. Tempera paint in gallon jugs, we hail you:Prior to the bath...Several hours of crafting, for the first time in a few days. I can tell when I've really needed the crafting time, because instead of watching streaming Netflix on the computer while I work, I just... work. Silently. Breathing...Resulting in no fewer than TWELVE quilt tops, soon to be quilted into wall hangings, destined, hopefully, for future lives with some strange folk: Did you get a chance to breathe calmly this Sunday?

May the Force Snuggle You Up and Keep You Cozy Warm

It seems like I've been doing nothing but this all day-- but there's also been a lot of time spent on this--
--and this--
--and, fortunately, a little time, just enough, spent on this:
Fangeek quilts make me so awesomely happy. I made this one just for fun for my etsy shop, but Matt eyed it so longingly that I think I may have a holiday gift idea for the hardest person to give a present to EVER.

What do you want on your fangeek quilt?

Wedding! Wedding! Wedding!

There's nothing like how a wedding tends to take over everything in its vicinity, and it's not even your wedding. This weekend has been all "Wedding! Wedding! Wedding!", and I did not even attend the said wedding of one of Matt's first cousins, on account of they didn't invite children. Obviously I have been all about complaining about this and all the levels upon which it is wrong (philosophically, ethically, logistically, etc.), and in debates with child-free apologists, neither of the excuses of "That's just the way most people do it these days" and "Well, it's their wedding" fly with me. Firstly, I don't care if not inviting children is trendy right now. Barring real limitations (say, the wedding is taking place in a nightclub, or a porn studio), it's rude not to invite particular members of someone's immediate family. I see it the same as if the wedding read, "Blood family members only." See? Rude!

Not inviting children also doesn't apply as one of those wedding planning whims, such as whether or not to serve cake. It's a real inconvenience to the families invited, many of whom are already at great time and expense to come to the wedding because they love you so much, and they would feel terrible if they couldn't be there to see you. Mind you, the bride and groom did arrange a hella expensive group babysitting service for the duration of the wedding, and this actually would have been a fine solution, if this babysitting had taken place AT THE WEDDING LOCATION. But nope. The babysitting was to take place at the hotel at which the families were all to stay, and the wedding and reception took place at a winery a half-hour shuttle ride from the wedding, shuttles running from 4:00-5:00 and 9:00-12:00. Seriously? Seriously, no way for a parent to check on a child, no way for a parent to respond to an emergency phone call from the service, and it's expensive. None of the people who had family obligations to go to the wedding, but also had children found this appropriate. For instance, in this wedding the groom's sister has a two-year-old and a breastfeeding three-month-old--they're not invited. She brought a family friend with her from her hometown, paying her way, so her small children could be supervised one-on-one by a familiar face. Another first cousin has a four-year-old with cerebral palsy and a six-year-old--they're not invited, and they had to sit there in Seattle, where they live, and find a local babysitter here with medical training to babysit their son. They're both doctors, so they're pretty well qualified to take care of him themselves, you know. And then there's us, flying in from Indiana, only see the folks here for a week every year--my two-year-old isn't ready to have a stranger babysit her, especially in a group setting, and so while everyone else went to this wedding, I sat at home with the kids, a strange home with not many toys, no car, the kids upset because they want Daddy, from 3:30 pm until everyone got home after midnight. Superfun.

Maybe I'm alone in this last one, but I also think it's really weird to purposefully not invite children to a WEDDING. You know, a ceremony in which you celebrate the joining of FAMILIES. A bonding experience for a new, united FAMILY. You know who really adds meaning to the concept of "family?" CHILDREN! And you know, maybe you really do think that your dream wedding shouldn't include children. Maybe you don't think that parents would do anything to keep their kids happy and well-behaved in even a very formal setting, would bring small books and toys, would take the kids for long walks outside. Maybe you really think that all your loved ones with children, all these people who made such a special effort to come and witness your joy, would let their kids throw dinner rolls and shriek and spill stuff. If you really think that, then maybe you should be the one to make a special effort to plan a wedding in which this does not happen, to plan a celebration in which your young family members can be welcome and meaningfully included. They'd like the chance to wish you joy, too, you know, especially since they only see you for a couple of days each year.

Anywho.... Boy, I went to some great garage sales on Saturday! I don't know if they just have more awesome stuff in California than they do elsewhere, or if, since garage sales aren't as popular here, they don't get picked over like they do elsewhere, but man, did I score!

A Nightmare Before Christmas shirt for a T-shirt quilt: Lots of rubber stamps, and a white ink pad! How much do I love the sun stamps, and the Christmas tree? I love them a lot.
I don't actually do screen printing, but I did order some stuff from Dharma Trading Company for freezer paper T-shirt fabric stenciling (It will be waiting for me when I get home--whee!!!), and this would work for that? Elsewise, it's just awesome:

I was so excited to spy these little wooden embroidery hoops, because I've recently read about stretching great fabric in them and hanging them on the wall as art. Dinosaurs are possibly going in here:
Matching embroidered pillowcases for pillowcase dresses:
Dinosaur temporary tattoos! The sweeties warmed the cockles of my heart by both insisting that their tattoos be placed on their left ankles, "just like Momma." If only my tattoo was awesome like a dinosaur:
A quilted pillowcase, 20"x26". It has a commercial tag, but it still looks hand-quilted to me. Sweatshop?
And an awesome pair of red Converse sneaks for Willow for next summer, and this great book called From the prairie: A child's memories, which has patterns for cloth dolls and, get this, clothes for the cloth dolls. Righteous.

The girls were invited to the rehearsal dinner (run by Matt's awesome aunt and uncle), and they were, of course, charming and well-behaved:

I, of course, ate and drank everything I could reach--gotta get my money's worth, you know, since I'm not going to the wedding. Did I mention that my children aren't invited?

But enough with the preamble...I know you want to hear the gossip about the wedding. Well, Matt came home disgusting drunk, clearly taking my personal motto to eat and drink all he could reach to heart, and he could tell me unsatisfyingly little about the actual reception, because everything was all, "No, I don't know what the cake tasted like. I missed the cake because I was at the bar." Yuck. But he did tell me, and I later got all the dish, that the groom's sister, the one with the two-year-old and the breastfeeding three-month-old, actually missed her own brother's wedding. Baby Hunter became hysterical every time his Momma tried to leave him, and eventually, after many desperate attempts to leave, because obviously Karin so much wanted to watch her brother get married, he lost all composure and just had a huge nervous breakdown. Karin missed everything. She says, and of course she's correct, that this obviously wouldn't have happened if Hunter had been invited, because not only would she not have had to try to leave him, but she could have nursed him if he became upset and worn him to keep him happy and comfortable. It makes me really sad to think about how unhappy the situation was for her. Me, I'm not unhappy about the situation. I'm just resentful.

Next: Home! Home! Home!

Cupcakes, Dinosaurs, Pink Chucks, and Arkansas

Since it's craft fair season, obviously I've been spending almost all my time this week working not on record bowls, T-shirt quilts, and melted crayon hearts, but on cupcakes, dinosaurs, pink Chucks, and Arkansas.

The girls and I have been way into , which I swear is, along with my other great favorite, , the only cookbook I have ever cooked from in which what I cook actually comes out even remotely similar to the photo in the book, and even remotely delicious (I'm a disastrous cook, with a near-manic tendency to make ill-advised substitutions and a certainty that all measurements are only approximate). So far we've made the chocolate mint cupcakes twice and Matt has made, of all things, the margarita cupcakes with them once. Margarita cupcakes? Awesome.

I've also been, during Sydney's precious afternoon naptimes, watching Dexter - The First Season on Netflix and making the girls a bunch of the felted wool cupcakes I found in . They stopped looking like cupcakes to me once I got deep into making them, the same as when you say a word over and over again it loses all meaning, but out of the three I've made so far, there's one that even I'll admit is just darn cute.

And then there are the dinosaurs--I promised the girls a dinosaur quilt this summer, and I am darn well going to deliver a dinosaur quilt, so for a couple of days I put the iron and the dishtowel in semi-permanent residence on the livingroom table (I got so used to intoning, every time I heard little feet thud by, "Don't touch the iron. The iron is hot," that I started even warning Matt as he went by. This is similar to, when I'm laying out a quilt on the livingroom floor, my intonations of "Don't step on the quilt. Walk around the quilt") and knocked out these sweet babies: I'm not a hundred percent happy with the frame conceit, and I doubt that I'll do another one just that way, but hey, it's dinosaurs. The more, the merrier.

The vegan cupcakes are ostensibly a rehearsal for the girls' big summer birthday bash next month, and one of the things I've been trying to do all month, only it keeps raining two out of three days, is take a photo of the girls in their matching candy pink Converse Chuck Taylors to put on the invitation. Finally, a break in the weather, and I managed to find matching socks for everyone, and I only once had to fiercely threaten Willow with not going to dance class if she didn't sit down for this picture for five minutes (I know, I know, but usually I am the kind of mother you don't want to call Social Services about), and I got this photo:

It's so cute it kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach a little. Of course, I cropped off the part where they're sitting with dirty faces cramming their mouths with Quorn nuggets and pineapple.

In upcoming news, today is Willow's last day of school for the summer--I blew her mind yesterday by informing her that when she comes back to school in August, she'll be a MIDDLE-GROUPER! (As opposed to the Youngest Group and the Kindergartners, the other kiddos in her class for those of you not in tune with Montessori lingo). So after school, and after dance class, and after stopping by a party for my friend Tim, who has just successfully defended his dissertation (I sigh, because I can no longer attain the academic single-mindedness it takes to get a PhD), we're all trekking down to Arkansas for the long Memorial Day weekend. Papa and my mother have been talking about taking the girls to McDonald's for their collective birthdays, and hopefully the city pool will be open, and I'm eager to look through my Mama's collection of old recipe books from the various elementary schools and churches she was involved in throughout her life, a collection that is both beloved to me and awesome in its ingredients and preparation methods (7up cake! Jello molds! Oleo!). Willow and Sydney are begging to take their new favorite toy, which Matt bought for them at Goodwill for five dollars on Sunday. That favorite toy is this:
Whew! What did you do this week?

Dinosaurs on Film!

It's only 2:30 and so far:

1. Since the little kid now has the high fever that tormented the big kid this weekend, we didn't go to storytime at the local library this morning, and so while the little kid napped fitfully in the other room, the big kid and I worked on the dinosaur quilt for her mid-July birthday. This consists mostly of looking at all the dino T-shirt panels and dino fabric we've collected, re-stacking and re-sorting them--she's not even four years old yet, and the big kid already knows the best part of sewing. We did make a plan, however. Here is the big kid's concept sketch of the plan:

It really is a pretty accurate sketch: basically, we decided that each T-shirt panel would be surrounded by a wide border of printed fabric. I'd like the border to have the pattern match perfectly on all sides and to be pretty seamless, like a picture frame, so a log cabin quilt it is!

2. After the little kid wakes up howling and we nurse, have snacks, read books, have more snacks, spill some milk, do some laundry, eat watermelon outside, read another book, and I bully the big kid into getting dressed (I may have raised my voice just a smidge, but honestly--what did she do with her toothbrush? We never did find it!) so my partner can come get her, he takes her to school and then puts the little kid down for a nap while I eat some Minute Rice and read some more of this awesome blog I discovered the other day. The author takes beautiful photographs, makes awesome recycled sweater creatures like I'm learning how to do, and is a self-taught sewist, as well. Her blog entry on the Simplicity 3835 shirt pattern actually sent me to ebay to bid on one for myself. If I win it, it will be my very first pattern ever, so don't snipe me, y'all, because I swear I always get sniped.

3. After I finish my lunch (it was actually pretty gross, so yay, calorie deficit!), I spend an episode of Friday Night Lights finishing up a super-large item for my Craft for My Kids swap on Craftster. I'm almost finished, with maybe one or two smallish-mediums or large-ish smalls to make for my partner's little girlie.

4. I go in to nurse the little kid back to sleep (Matt has gotten me into Superman, oddly enough, so I'm working my way through the Superman in the Sixties collection. It is so weird), then creeeep out, holding my breath, and actually have time to finish tweaking and printing the dino photos I'm going to put in the kids' downstairs bathroom. This is Sue, from the Chicago Field Museum:

These are some of the kids' dino toys. One night the big kid and I got down her Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (Smithsonian Handbooks) (gift alert: the kids totally need all these Smithsonian Handbooks) and she actually found the right picture for each of these dinosaurs and spelled their names for me so I could label their bellies with a Sharpie. This here is a velociraptor up front, and possibly a pachycephalosaurus behind it:

4. And now it's 3:00, the little kid is now sitting on my lap pestering me while I finish up, and we're about to go get the big kid from school. We can't go to the YMCA like we usually do because of the little kid's fever, we can't go to Sam's even though we need cookie dough for my last day of class tomorrow because my wallet is MIA, so if we're lucky we'll get invited to hang out with another mom and gossip while the kids run around and get dirty, and if not we'll come home and rock the neighborhood playground, and if those are our choices for spending the afternoon, then that probably just makes us pretty lucky in general.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Goodwill

The Goodwill 50%-off storewide sale is awesome. I look forward to it with such joy in my heart. I mark it on my calendar and gaze at it happily whenever I happen by. I memorize the date, so that I can say things like, "No, we can't go to Indy next Saturday. That's the Goodwill 50%-off storewide sale." I plan the night before so as to get to Goodwill as soon as it opens at 9 am on the day of the sale (this Saturday, we were 9 minutes late. As Matt dropped me off on his way to the hardware store with the girls, he said, "Nine minutes late? Oh, please." And yet? I had to wait by the cash registers for a cart, and then follow the person with the cart out to her car, and then help her load into her car the 5,000 deoderants she had bought---which weren't even 50% off, because they were NEW!). I follow a strict hierarchy of departments to visit, based on what I want most, how crowded an aisle is, and if my arm is tired from pushing through overcrowded T-shirt racks.

I adore the storewide sale for numerous reasons: for one, I don't do a lot of shopping, so going on an actual shopping spree once in a while is fun. I also buy all our clothes, all our books and toys, and most of our household items used, so, for instance, Matt actually needed work pants, and Willow needed shorts for the summer. And I buy a lot of the materials I use in my handiwork used, so I'm always looking for wool sweaters to felt and T-shirts to quilt. Here's what I bought this Saturday:

• dinosaur matching game, because the girls love dinosaurs



• dinosaur pop-up book, same rationale



• wading pool that must be tested and may or may not be returned, based on how massive it is and whether or not I decide it's actually an extravagance



• 6 pairs of shorts for Willow for the summer, one of which is identical to a pair of Matt's cargo shorts--awesome. I need now to make her some ribbon belts to hold them up, since they're a little roomy.



• flowery dress for Willow, unnecessary but very pretty



• 2 pairs of work pants for Matt



• one pair of jeans for me, one pair of brown pants, and one pair of brown pinstripe trousers--awesome. Only the jeans need to be hemmed, even.



• Sewing for Dummies--awesome.



• 3 wool sweaters for felting into stuffed animals or quilt blocks for some crib quilts I'm thinking about making



• one stripey shirt, two peasant tops for me.

• two hoodies for me, both brown, yet both different
• two ringer tees, for me and Matt


• half-dozen or so tie-dyed T-shirts for a quilt I'm making for us, to match one I donated to Willow's Montessori for an auction and really liked



• three dinosaur T-shirts for a quilt I'm making for the girls



• one Superman T-shirt for Matt



• three Star Wars T-shirts for a quilt



• one Captain America T-shirt for a quilt



• four or five pillowcases for summer dresses for the girls, including a couple that match--awesome



• one burgandy fleece blanket for a quilt backing



• one Christmas-themed T-shirt for a quilt



• one World's Best Mom T-shirt for a quilt



• The Mouse and the Motorcycle, a chapter book to read to Willow at bedtime

Whew. And for way less than a hundred bucks.

Easy Peasy Quilt Binding

I'm a fan of work that is unfussy, simple, and even a little rough. I like handmade things to look handmade, and sometimes I'm actually reluctant to learn proper techniques, because I'd rather figure it out for myself. Even though I'm growing much more skilled, I still like to think of myself as an outsider artist.

Quilt binding is something that I figured out for myself, and I think my work looks very nice while being unfussy and simple, although I'm sure there's no way I'm doing it the "right" way. I don't use batting because I like, instead, for one of my other elements--the pieced front, or the back--to be really thick. With a denim quilt, the denim is really thick and warm, and with a T-shirt quilt, I back it with a thick blanket, preferably fleece. I also don't quilt, because I tend to find even the most subtle quilting distracting from what I've sewn--I just haven't incorporated quilting into my designs, yet. I've tried several ways of binding my quilts--sewing it right sides together and turning it, using commercial or constructed quilt binding, etc.--but my very favorite way is to fold the quilt backing over to the front to bind the edges. I also really like to use non-ravel fabrics, like fleece, so that I don't have to fold over.

So here's my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles quilt laying on top of the orange fleece blanket I'm going to back and bind it with. For a really precise fit, you'd tape the blanket to the floor or pin it to the carpet, and pin the quilt to the blanket, but I don't tend to use slippery fabrics, and I find that just laying it and smoothing it still keeps it well-fitted.

And then I go around with my rotary cutter and my cutting mat and I trim the fleece pretty narrow--I fold over some of the quilt front with the back if there are any uneven spots.

The thing to really take the time on is to pin everything nice and stable. I pin about every five inches or so--it's kind of tedious, and it takes forever, but Willow likes to hand me the pins, and when I used to not even pin very much, the front and back really wouldn't turn out even.

I'm mostly working on other sewing projects--I've got my postage stamp quilt squares swap, and lots of clothes to mend--but the next quilts I'm making are for us. I plan to make a queen-sized and a full-sized denim quilt for our two family beds, and a dinosaur quilt, partly from T-shirts and partly from printed fabric, for the girls.

Fangirling at a Comic Book Show

I sold in the dealer room of a comic book show this Sunday--the ASH Comics Show up in Indianapolis. I got a lot of love there but didn't sell anything big. My neighbors were Mike, who moonlights at Wal-mart when he's not selling toys at the fairs, and Bell, Book and Comic from Dayton, Ohio. They were terrific neighbors. Mike gave me trail mix--with candy!

There is a difference between a convention, which is usually a multi-day event for fans of something, and a show, which is usually a one-day event for collectors of something. I do pretty well selling at conventions, for a couple of reasons, I think. First, fans are more likely than collectors to buy things that are more homages to a particular theme than collector's items. Second, the multi-day factor allows people to visit an item several times over a couple of days, getting attached to it, and then they all buy on the morning of the last day.

The comic book show was okay, however, because the table price was pretty cheap, and for a cheap price, marketing is a worthy goal. I gave out a lot of business cards to people who liked my stuff--Mike said he'd put a couple by the time clock at his Wal-mart--and pointed people to my Web shop and blog. It's very fun, too, to have the geeky conversations you can only have at a place like this. I'm a big nerd, but I'm not out-nerding anyone at a comic book show.

I'm in the process now of putting my fangirl quilts up on etsy. Here's my first one:

The rest will hopefully be up in the next couple of days.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, comic books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Pumpkinbear.etsy.com

Pumpkinbear.etsy.com is my etsy store. It's a modest undertaking so far--I'm only a beginner in online business. I don't have a bio up and my only feedback is as a buyer, but I do have some stuff for sale, all highly beloved, all quilts and the ubiquitous record bowl:

One of my favorites is this fangeek Powerpuff girls quilt. I like it so much because the week after I found this Powerpuff Girls bed ruffle at the Recycling Center, I found a pair of purple jeans there in the exact same spot. The exact same spot! I like to imagine the person who was just now giving up all hope of purple jeans ever coming back into style--those clown-colored jeans were hot in my junior high (or at least I thought they were hot--hmm, sigh). I had a pair of turquoise ones, and as I've always been a nice, big girl, the look probably wasn't so much awesome, especially paired with my white/pink Barbie high tops and the huge spiral perm Mama talked my Cousin Kimberly, fresh out of beauty school, into giving me. If I still had those beautiful turquoise babies, I'd pop 'em right into a Superman quilt, and they'd live happily ever after.

What I made today: with the girls, beaded wire "rain" to hang from painted clouds on the ceiling of their bedroom; T-shirt panties for myself

Show-and-Tell: What I Make

I dabble in a lot of projects, although for craft fairs I try to specialize--the first season that I did a craft fair every month, I tried to introduce a couple of new types of crafts each time, but I think my quality suffered. It takes a LOT of practice and consistency to produce professional-looking objects, and that's sometimes something that I need to force myself to do, rather than flit around from project to project, leaving a wash of half-used materials in my wake and ending up with a lot of not-that-awesome end results. So this season, I've decided to keep most of the experiments at home, and only display a few selected types of crafts. Here's some of what I think I do well:

Record bowls are my bread-and-butter. The records are cheap and plentiful (I specialize in show tunes and children's recordings), the process is quick and easy, I can do it with the girls hanging out on the floor of the kitchen with me, the profit margin is high, and people like to buy them.

Okay, I love to make denim quilts, and they're soft and comfy and sturdy and warm, but I have to admit that I do have to literally give them away--they make happy presents for family and friends, but I haven't yet sold a single one at a craft fair or the farmer's market. It's such a super project, though, because blue jeans are one of the things you can always get for free--my best sources are the sidewalk exchange at the Recycling Center here and friends who blow out the butts or knees of their otherwise fine pants--and the colors, when pieced and sewn together, are subtle yet always complementary and, I think, really beautiful.

T-shirt quilts are pretty popular, though, and they're also somewhat pricey, which is good when I need to get paid. They're also some of the more satisfying things I make because there's a lot of scope there--for instance, I like to collect T-shirts around fan-geek themes, like Superman or video games or 80s cartoons, and make a quilt that's an homage to some nerdy joy. I do sci-fi and comic book conventions with these, which is a nice change of pace from the regular craft fair crowd sometimes, since I'm pretty much just a fan-geek myself.

Like everyone else, it seems, I also make soldered glass pendants and 1" buttons, but Matt, my partner, is getting antsy to get out of the house today, and I owe him for teaching how to post images on my blog and only yelling at me twice while doing so, so the lovely odes to paper and the melting of metals will have to wait.

What I made today: panties for Willow from a soft old T-shirt; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pillowcase dress for Sydney.