So i have totally stalled out on the tree bag…i got all the leaves sewed on, and everything is cut out…but i am just not “feeling” it at the moment. I think the reason is because my longing for summer’s end has kicked in, and my head is full of autumn-y stuff. Heavy fabrics with muted colors…Dia de Los Muertos, pumpkins, dancing skeletons, halloween decorations, sweaters…..

So in spite of not finishing the pink tree bag yet, i DID complete this silly skull purse. Made entirely of thiftstore fabrics, of course, and the strap is a length of chain from the hardware store. I embroidered the little skull on a patch of the fabric and frayed the edges, then sewed on a little lace to give it a touch of girliness.

Busy busy busy…I also finally started working on the “Vera” napkin totebag, in all it’s tacky glory….i plan to finish it today. And i started a new embroidery project, and i made a new batch of “Queen Bee” soap…honey, lavender, lemon and vanilla. It smells like something yummy i’d want to bite. I still need to come up with good packaging for it. So far nothing has “moved” me…

All in all, i think i was pretty productive over the weekend, and brave too! I took Saturday off from “mommy-ing” and drove to Columbia to do a craft-store crawl with a friend…i DROVE all over the town, and did not crash or freak out too much. Was reminded of how much i hate living in the ‘burbs. And it felt really really good to get away for a little while. Got to hang out on a porch with other FEMALES…that is SO rare for me! I watched a long battle between cardinals and hummingbirds… real-life nature show!!!! I definitely need to do it more often. I think i will be much saner for it. Which is aways a good thing, right?

To my unending shock and surprise, i found out that several of my purses have finally sold! My sister is pals with a guy that owns and antique store in a nearby town, and he took all her jewelry and some of my bags to sell in his shop. I never expected them to sell…purses embellished with nudie postcards and made from old curtains don’t seem that they’d be very popular in a small uptight little town like Newberry…however, my assumptions were wrong and i am thrilled to be wrong for once! I was getting really tired of seeing my “old inventory” hanging around,so it’snice to know that my pieces are OUT there, being used and hopefully enjoyed. HOWEVER, i now suddenly feel pressured to make some new stuff! Especially if i get to do Mutation in October. I need to get busy and start working or i won’t have much to sell! Fortunately, i have alot of ideas, and i plan to stay as organized about it all as i can. I found another one of my old skirts that i am going to re-vamp, have a plan for another punkrock housewife apron (in LEOPARD this time! Rawr!) and more sugar skull ragdolls, but with painted faces this time rather than embroidered so that they don’t take weeks to make and can therefore be alittle more practical to sell. Soaps and journals and purses…my head is bursting with ideas and plans. It’s just a matter of DOING it. I must admit, selling off some of my bags in conjunction with how well recieved my apron for the swap went a long way in sort of “re-energizing” me. I feel like i am slowly getting my will to create back! I guess i needed some validation alot more than i thought i did.

Anyway……..

This is my current work in progress. I have been embroidering this tree forever, and i finally finished…but then i decided that wanted to applique some little pink leaves on it. I am just putting some tiny stitches down the center of each leaf so that they sort of ‘flutter” alittle at the edges and have some dimension and movement. It’s a HUGE pain in the butt, but i am loving the result. Once i get the leaves done, it will become part of a bag, i think. And then it’s on to some more soap making, i think, and some new paperbag journals. So much to do…and i am so glad that i finally FEEL like doing it all!

If there is one thing that makes me love having the Food Network, it’s Good Eats. That show has inspired my household to make all kinds of stuff we might never have attempted. Last night, it was pot stickers. We learned that they were actually pretty simple to make, thanks to good old Alton Brown.
They were fantastic, and it was pretty fun to make them too. We all pitched in and helped fold up the little dumplings. We had a good time as a GROUP for a change.

We all ate waaaaaay too many of them, with thai sweet red chili suace for dipping, and thai noodle soup.
Seems like most of my creativity is centered around the kitchen lately. I have been alot more into cooking and baking stuff these days. It’s no subsitute for sewing and paper-arts, tho’. But i just can’t seem to get enough settled- down-kid-free creativity time. Maybe one day i will have something OTHER than food to talk about again. Until then, i am working on finding a great gluten-free recipe to make for a friend who wants to strangle me when she sees my baked goods.

Yesterday was robot building day.

One of my nieces and my boys had a blast with old boxes , TP tubes, tape, glue, paint and various junk…

We all had a great time making a mess! And now, the robot army is ready to invade and conquer the Earth! Be afraid! For they are armed with pom poms, popciclesticks, feathers and even GLITTER. Cower before their fabulous festive fierceness!

Mary (From My house is Cuter Than Yours) got her apron yesterday! And she likes it, she really likes it! LOL!

Now i can talk alittle more about what i made for her.

It was kind of serendipitous, actually. Right around the same time that i signed up for the swap, i had the idea for a “Rockin’ Housewife” apron. When i drew Mary’s name, i knew i had to try to create the “vision” that i had for it…Mary is pretty rockin’…i had a feeling that something like this would be right up her alley (or i HOPED it would!)

Ya’ll know i like to recycle and reconstruct and all, and this apron is no exception. In a past life, it was a schoolgirl-esque kilt-y kind of little skirt that i once LOVED to wear with big stompy Tank Girl boots and mesh tights…then i got pregnant with my second son, quit smoking and prompty kissed my teensy waify little figure goodbye forever. But i have held onto the skirt for years, knowing that it had a higer purpose. So i cut it and frankenstitched and transformed it from a skirt to an apron!
Then it was time to make the pockets.

I drew my ubiquitous skull doodles onto the fabric and embroidered over them, and lined them with some cute red and white gingham. So far so good!

Then i made a little “patch” embellishment out of the gingham, black rick-rack and some fun skelleton fabric i have been hoarding.

Now the hard part…putting pockets and the patch ONTO the apron. The patch was not so bad…but the pockets. Oh my God, the evil evil pockets. I pinned them and re-pinned them a million time trying to get them JUST SO. And because of the pleats on the apron, i just could not make the suckers lay right to save my soul. This went on for WEEKS. Finally i got them to a point where i was semi-satisfied, and i knew i had to just do it and stop fretting over it. So, i first BASTED them down. Yes, i BASTED. This is not typical Amanda behavior at all. But i wanted to make damn sure those evil pleats did not bunch up and get wonky while i sewed the pockets on. They turned out fine. In the end, i think

Then for my favorite part…the chain! i got the wallet chain apperatus, and sewed little fabric loops onto the waistband for it to snap onto.

On the end of that chain are metal measuring spoons! I don’t know, i thought is was funny! She can remove the whole thing, or add other stuff to it or whatever. Customizable, baby! Hahaha!

I made a matching hot pad and wrote down recipes for her onto these really really cute monster recipe cards i got from Fishcakes designs. I also found her a vintage polka-dot apron that looked like it might match her amazing kitchen, and made her some CDs in a snazzy brown-bag CD book. I totally forgot to take pictures of of that part of the swap package, but she put some great ones up on her blog if you want to go look: http://myhouseiscuterthanyours.blogspot.com/

I could not be happier that she likes it all! What a great swap this was! It stretched my imagination and caused me to learn more about sewing, which a a VERY good thing (when in doubt, BASTE!) LOL! I got a ton of wonderful things from my partner and i got to send good stuff out too! I hope there’s another apron swap one day, because i would love to do it again! Thanks again, Sara and Mary, for hostessing!

During the summers when i was growing up, my grandma always had a bowl of sliced cucumbers and onions in alittle vinegar with salt and pepper on the table. Instant pickles! Somehow, eating them always cooled you down. And so delicious! Here’s my version, with sweet vidalia onions and lemon pepper + kosher salt. It tastes like summer.

This tastes like summer too… Figs figs figs! This is only a VERY small example of the tree. It is HUGE. There will literally be millions of figs soon. I am going to make some preserves this year even if it KILLS me.

make lemon cookies

This was a recipe from an old Southern Living cookbook. I had never tried it, but it sounded easy and good, so it was my project for yesterday. They are fantastic…so light that i am amazed they are not floating. They are covered in a glaze of confectioners sugar, butter, and lemon juice+ zest….very tart and wonderful. I gave a bunch away because i don’t need a whole batch of those hanging around….i am plump enough already!!! i must stop all this baking before i reach the size of am elephant seal.
Yesterday i also worked on a Goddess doll, hung out with my kids, and ate fresh figs right off the tree. We have the world’s biggest fig tree in out back yard, and the first flush of figs has started to ripen up. It’s damn near impossible to feel sad when you’re eating a warm fig that you just picked off the tree a second before you bit it. Medicine for the soul.

Right now, the house is perfectly silent. Big daddy has left for work, and the kids are still asleep. It’s so nice to have just a little silence every so often…you don’t get it very frequently in this madhouse! I love my noisy wild family, but i have been finding myself longing to just get away for a little while…even a trip to the the grocery store alone was a treat. Some days it’s hard to be a mom…i am selfish and i want space and quiet and freedom sometimes…but i bet if i had it, i’d miss my kids!

for the last post….this is supposed to be a happy, pretty little craft blog. Yet i still keep getting off the topic.
ok…i am not sure how to articulate how i am feeling…my writing skills are no where near eloquent enough to express it coherantly. But i am going to try.

I am so terribly conflicted about it all. On one hand, i think it is wrong for me to stick my head in the sand and ignore what’s going on in the world. I think Americans don’t realize what a PRIVILEDGE it is that we can choose to ignore the rest of the world and continue living our happy comfy little lives while war rages and distasters fall. And when disasterous things happen to OUR country, we get all outraged and upset for as long as our attention spans allow, then we all go right back to sleepwalking. We go right back to being divided.
On the other hand…is it right that i take on the “weight of the world” the way i do? Ultimately there is so little i can do. I have this deep need to absorb other people’s unhappiness abd hurting, take it away from them and somehow alchemically transform it into something beautiful and good…i want to comfort everyone around me, and to help everyone remember to look at the amazing miracles that surround us all the time, every moment of every day. And i DO try so hard to be that “positive light”. It gives me great joy to make others happy. But i CAN’T do it for the whole world. I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how to stop war and famine. I don’t know how to make America wake up and realize that our government is a MESS and that it’s maybe time to turn off Fox news and see what’s REALLY happening, and to UNIFY to make the changes that we COULD make if we all pulled together as HUMANS, not just dems or repubs, or whatever, but human beings that all have to live together on this wonderful planet that just might not last forever if we don’t work together to make it better.
I have got to find a balance within myself or i will end up totally become paralyzed by dispair.

Today i am focusing on loving my family, making something beautiful for a friend who needs desperately to feel some love and kindess. I will water my garden and feel grateful for the abundance in my life. I will take the time to HAND WRITE some letters to friends rather than email. I will do my very best to stay “in the light”…i can’t change the world, but if i can make even a few people feel loved, and make someone else’s life a little better, then i have accomplished something wonderful.

the news is breaking my heart right now.

feeling so scared and helpless and dismayed at the state of the world.

this is my new theme song…

“Waiting To Die” zero 7

Look what a terrible mess that we’ve made
The sun beats us down as we search for the shade
And, yes, it is true, death is everyone’s fate
But we’ve made it this far, it’s time to celebrate
La la la la la
La la la la, ’cause we’re waiting here to die
La la la la la
La la la la, ’cause we’re waiting here to die

***********************************

sorry gang…i watched the news.  i feel sick.

Lately i have been getting TONS of spam-comments. We are trying a spam filter right now, so there might be some technical difficulties. Please bear with me while we work this out…becuase if i get one more offer for cheap viagra i will scream. LOL!