angry chicken

I find this more amusing than my kids do

I made this block (you can see all the sides in this little video) because I was getting sick of nagging and sick of saying the same thing every day to my children. So I just hand them the block or leave it near by, as a quiet request. When I put this in instagram I laughed at what others said are their go-to nags.

It's rainy today, which is great because I really need to sew on costumes and staying inside and listening to audio books feels so much better when the weather is bad. I am facing Waltz of the Flowers again (The Nutcracker) for costumes, this will be my 3rd time making Flowers, all for different studios, using existing bits and pieces and adding. Flowers are tricky, but fun. It's hard though, working with sad well-loved tutus and tops that are not really the right color. My dreams have been a combination of costume sewing and apocalyptic events because we are almost done watching The Umbrella Academy and it's getting stressy. I am enjoying it a whole lot.

Thank you for your Paris and London and book suggestions!! I have booked our lodgings and train between the 2 cities, so now that I know exactly where we are staying we can start spending our hours on google maps walking around and finding all these places you have suggested. Last time I was in Paris there were no smartphones, and the last time I was in London there was no internet. I wrote a lot of postcards.

hamster hands

This is Mochi, our hamster. There is a zine about her you can buy from Sadie. She is so special. She waits for us every night to play with her. Pete is quite attached. 

We are in the beginning of spring break and I have a lot of sewing to do getting ready for spring shows. I had some not great success dyeing nylon, so thank god for Goodwill. I found the vests I needed and don't have to worry about the first dozen refusing to cooroperate. I have banished them into deep storage for now.

I have big indoor plant plans. I know this is the time to be thinking about outside gardening, but we have almost no direct sun, so I can only do so much. But indoor plants are calling to me. I plan to put them mostly on the mantel, to avoid the cats thinking it's a toilet, which is what happened last time we got house plants.

After listening to a large batch of podcasts (mostly catching up on This American Life) I am now listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama. I'm only about 45 min in, but really liking it so far. I am reading a historical romance, which I have a big stash of on my kindle because I need them and am always happy when I go back a to them. They are the perfect escape.

Delia and I are planning a trip to London and Paris this summer, so I am starting to make lists and researching shops, fabric stores, museums, cool cafes and all that. Any suggestions are appreciated! I haven't been there since 2001, so I bet a lot has changed.

one-color embroidery

I stitched this a couple of years ago for a book I contributed to, Embroider your Life, and I found it tucked away in my desk recently. It's stitched on a linen base and is a slipcover for a hardback sketchbook. So, it's reusable, which is nice. I forget how much I love one-color needlework, especially when I use different thicknesses of thread. This pencil was procured from the fabulous pencil shop in NYC, CW Pencil Enterprise.

I am up to my ears in costume construction and altering for spring shows. I also am going to finish Dune on audio book. I have 3 hours left. It's great—dated, awesome, and also goofy because the narrator does the women's voices too, but in a weird falsetto which is really amusing to me. Also, Paul is a kind of a whiner, but I know he's a teen, so I get it. It's hard being a teen messiah. I had never read it, or seen the movie, (I don't plan on watching the movie) but I know this book played a big part in forming my brother's personality and life view. That and Van Halen. I think for me it was Xanadu (the record and the movie) and Mists of Avalon.

I am really appreciating this list of recommended movies streaming on netflix right now from the New York Times. I feel like I spend more time trying to decide what to watch than actually watching, so this is helpful.

fabric happiness (and a blog anniversary)

These beautiful fabrics are from Bolt, which recently moved and expanded. They have such a good selection of fabrics and trims I got a little nutty. I am so lucky to have such wonderful local indie fabric stores in Portland.

I just saw on my calendar that Feb. 21st was my blog anniversary. I started it in 2005. 14 years? Incedible. And yet not. I feels like a long time ago. I go through my archives sometimes, with the girls. I just did recently with Lydia looking at all the homeschooling projects we have done. And the crafts, etc. We got a huge dumpster last weekend and finally cleaned out the garage and knowing I have documented so many of our learning projects, toys, costumes, and artwork makes it so much easier to send it away when it's creating clutter and chaos in my life. I do need to make a new banner for the blog, I think this one has been up for more than 7 years now. I am on instagram more these days. But sometimes I am not. I haven't really gotten into the stories thing. I am better with the photo and text format. Also, I like to reference what I have documented, so having it go away isn't so useful for me. Years ago I was printing out the blog and binding it in books, but I stopped after year 5? I'd love to keep doing this. I think I could easily get 2 years in a book because the amount of posts decreased as the years went on. But I also look at this project and get tired and think I a was totally bonkers.

glueing stuff on stuff and happy 2019!

I finally packed away all my supplies for making these—they went on various gifts this year as gift toppers, my new passion. I made so many different types, all from bits and bobs from my stash. They are all glued to clothes pins and then clipped on. After, they can be reused as ornaments! I'm all about making more of these next year, along with Christmas corsages, which was a huge rabbit hole for me late one evening. 

We are slowly getting back into the groove, this holiday season seemed impossibly busy. I'm relieved to get the tree down and clear the house of all the stuff that seemed to pile up.

Unrelated, I am smiling at this great video series over on the New York Times, a maker challenge called Make T Something. So cool.

36 hours in seattle

We had so much fun running around Seattle last week. We saw Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker. I had been dying to see the new costumes and sets designed by Ian Falconer a couple years ago. It was so good, and so wonderful to see it all in person. Here's my rock-star parkig at the market. I was so proud. It pays to get there early.

We shopped and ran around going to old favorites and now ones. I did not make it inside of Nana's Green Tea, sadly, because the was a crazy line around the block. And we went early! So, that will be for next time.

Sadie's zines (#3 is available now)

Sadie just finished #3 of her zine series about all of our pets. There will be 7 total. This one features her sister's hamster, Mochi. These are so funny and wry, I love them to bits. And they make great stocking stuffers! She will bundle #1-3 of them with a little ribbon, too, perfect for stocking stuffers or tucked into holiday cards! The title of this series is a quote from her father in regards to all of our animals.

You can send her actual $ in the mail, old-school style, or she can send you a PayPal request. Just e-mail me or DM her over on IG. They are $1.50 or 3 for $4 and that includes shipping.

happy thanksgiving and hello almost december-

We are are 1/4 done with our shows, and things seem to be going well! I love the last minute issues, like would a mouse tail be attached under or over a tutu? I decided over.

I couldn't sleep last night. I was up at 3:30am, too hot, and needing to get away from the dogs. I watched a movie, Eva Hesse, Portrait of a Ground-breaking Artist on Kanopy and was moved to tears. I studied her work in college, always loved it, and this film brought it to the front of my mind again. Seeing it now after so long and remembering her life story was so inspiring and emotional. She was working in NYC the same time as Patti Smith, I realized, and they were at the same clubs, not that they mentioned each other, but I kept thinking about that, having just listened to Just Kids. 

Kanopy, I read about when I was researching substitutes for Filmstruck (RIP) and I can't believe the catalog they have! And it's free, if your local library is signed up. It's kind of incredible.

I am 9 hours into Dune (of 21 total) the audio book version. I think I will need to switch to the physical book soon because I will be done with my sewing before I can listen to it all. I better be anyway. I have never read Dune, it is my brother's favorite book, all I knew is it was about big worms and I should avoid the movie. I love it so far. So epic.

This photo is from Acorns and Threads, my very local embroidery shop. I can walk to it. I was there choosing threads for my next project after all the sewing. This is how I rebel. Thinking about needlework while sewing.

I did not write a favorite books and gift guide this year. Time slipped away. I might post a book one soon. I love looking at the old lists to remember what has come into the house. Here's last year's with links to all the previous lists.

still sewing costumes and upcoming shows

I am working on the Tulip costumes for Waltz of the Flowers for VDT's Nutcracker, which is coming up fast. There are 12 total. The pastel bodices were existing. I added the leaves and front embellishments and then made 2-layer chiffon circle skirts to draper over purchased super-stiff crinolines. Mixing the chiffon colors to match the bodices was really fun. I love using chiffon layers. Mill Ends has a large selection of colors, thankfully.

This is a busy time for shows, my eldest daughter is in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare at Winningstad theater today (sold out), which is an all day show with 6 schools performing. She is in Much Ado about Nothing. The crowds for these shows are authentic Elizabethan, so there is a lot of very-making and yelling at the action which is pretty great.

I am so excited to see my middle daughter dance in The Portland Ballet's A Midsummer Night's Dream Thanksgiving weekend. There are still tickets available. These shows are always so beautiful and I love going downtown to see her dance at Lincoln Hall at Portland State. it's a fun area to be in and grab dinner.

My youngest is in the Lion King Jr, which is a wonderful family show. All the kids in this production are between 10-14 and are homeschooled. It's put on by Village Home and these shows are so impressive and such a great opportunity for them. Tickets are here! (It's the first weekend of December.)

I just finished Turn of the Screw on audio. I had read it long ago, I think in high school, and remembered almost nothing. It's so creepy, claustrophobic, vague, and ambiguous. To the point where it's almost funny. Especially the ambiguous language. So many unmentionables and allusions to corruption.

Thanks for your suggestions of good audio books. I need to listen to something not creepy, sad, or dark, but at the same time, I am on a classics theme, so that might be hard.

Some of my ideas for Thanksgiving (what to bring to Grammie's):

Cranberry Curd Tart

Endvie and Apple Salad

Wild Mushroom Crostini

Pete is making his delicious blackened brussels sprouts.

Okay, time for more sewing!

sewing costumes

The basement is a costume shop right now for the Vancouver Dance Theater's production of The Nutcracker. These are photos of Spanish and a Snow Queen headpiece. There's the making of Candy Cane headpieces, too. The bodices for Spanish were given to me white, I dyed them (and followed up with black fabric spray paint) to make them black, added a purchased skirt that I sewed the red trim to, and then added the sleeves and embellishments to the bodice. I love using existing costume pieces so much. It's such a fun challenge. The skirt is a petticoat that is really inexpensive, found on Amazon, so the whole costume came in at under $22 each. There are 4.

While I am sewing fro shows this year I am listening to books. I haven't really done this much before, mostly because I am not usually in one spot long enough to listen to anything. Airplanes and road trips got me through Calypso this summer, but that was it. Last year, I watched all the seasons of Parks and Rec while sewing for shows, but I missed a lot, not looking at the screen. So, I thought it would be great to try listening to some books I have been meaning to read. It has been such a good thing! I am so happy I dedicated my sewing time to doing this. I started with Just Kids, by Patti Smith, then Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and just finished Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I have meaning meaning read these books for so long, and never got around to it and just feel so happy to have finally experienced them. Woolf has always been hard for me to settle into, I have a hard time focusing on her writing, and the audiobook was perfect for that.

I'm not sure what I am going to listen to this week, I think I have about 2 more books I can fit in before the shows start. I love the idea of classics, but might want to listen to something contemporary next.