angry chicken

brownies

It was cool enough to bake last week. Fall is coming here. These were made from my family cookbook, the recipe and notes are in this older post. These were made by Lydia and Sadie and they added Trader Joe's chocolate chips, which I think make all the difference.

Not about brownies:

• We are still loving Adobe Voice on our ipad for projects—I'm so proud of this movie Sadie and Delia made about Nelie Bly all by themselves. So great.

• I started and finished sewing Sadie's coat. I will show it soon.

• I also was told about this site full of podcast goodness, Radiotopia, which is full of amazing shows to listen to—kind of mind blowing.

weekend sewing

I have been working on some crewel projects in the evenings while the girls are hanging out working on their own sewing projects—right now it's sewing on their pointe shoes. I have mixed feeling about these beautiful hand made shoes. The mom in me is concerned and the little girl in me loves them. And there's a third part of me that would love to learn how to make them.

Unrelated to dance:

Pete sent me a link to this amazing 5 minute podcast from the memory palace about John Glenn and space and I'm not going to say anything else—but please listen to the whole thing, it's worth it, and it's funny.

more hand-sewing of creatures

We are still in a hand-sewing kick around here. This one was almost entirely sewn by Delia. It's made from Mimi Kirchner's excellent friend Kitty ODF pattern. The dress was made by my mom for my Mandy doll, from about 1978. The neck on the dress is a bit small, but from the front it looks just fine. We hand-sewed this kitty doll, but the directions call for stitching by machine. I had felted the heck out of a sweater and the weave was so tight, using a whip stitch by hand was really easy.

escape from the heat

Last week in Portland it was really hot. We don't have AC, just fans, but the evenings have been too hot for the fans to even help. We had camping reservations, but at the last minute, I just couldn't face it. Where we were camping it wasn't going to be any cooler—just the idea of packing for camping was making me sweat. So, we headed to the coast instead where it wasn't hot at all. It was heaven. We had a lovely time with Grandma and Grandpa at their beach house and we set up the tent in the yard, so there was camping, too. The girls slept in the tent both nights and I didn't have to pack all that camping stuff. And I got a normal bathroom and a kitchen.  Win-win.