Planning

I got off the couch last night and actually did some project planning. But with so many patterns and so much fabric in my possession, it was hard to keep from getting overwhelmed and going back to the couch. Which project do I start? I still have my husband's workout shorts sitting in limbo-land on my sewing table but I didn't feel like addressing them. I thought about making pillows for the couch but the fabric I wanted to use for the back of the pillows is in the trailer...and it was dark...and raining, so I decided to do something else. Since I have copious amounts of sweatshirt fabric, I thought about making this from the Nov 2004 issue of Burda World of Fashion:



Or maybe I'll try this one:



Decisions, decisions.

Crafty shoes

Times were hard in 1943 and I guess even shoes were difficult to come by due to the war. Sunset magazine had a project in its May 1943 issue to make your own. Pretty funky.


Copyright 2004 Sunset Publishing Corporation

Here is a clearer view of the instructions on the Sunset website.

A little of this and that

I've been in an un-crafting mood lately. Other stuff is going on in my life right now and I haven't felt very crafty. But I have managed to do a little knitting and sewing. I finished cat bed #3. No pictures yet because it's not felted yet and looks like a large, floppy hat, not a cat bed. The gray yarn doesn't look too bad but I'm still bummed that I couldn't do the whole thing in blue like I'd planned. I also knit a few rows of a scarf but with Plymouth Eros yarn, which is the yarn that looks like little ladders, you have to watch what you're knitting and this was incompatible with watching the figure skating World Championships on TV.

Last week I also did a little sewing. I made some workout shorts for my husband but the elastic is too stretchy and he says the fabric is a bit too thick for working out. So now the shorts are laying in a heap on my sewing table until I figure out what to do with the elastic waistband. I really don't want to take out all the stitches but I also don't want it to become a wadder. I even put pockets in and they came out nice. I hate wadders. I know sometimes you need to make mistakes in order to learn, but I still don't like wadders.

I did do a little sew-dreaming this weekend. While I sat on the couch watching skating and going through a mountain of old magazines, I thought about making some pillows for the couch. I have the fabric. I have the pillow forms. I thought about putting the two together. That was the extent of it though.

Just one more skein!

Drat. I need just one skein of Patons Up Country to finish the kitty bed. Last fall I started knitting cat beds out of wool yarn and then felting them. I actually found a 100% wool yarn at Michaels (gasp!) and started knitting. I didn’t really pay much attention to gauge, since this was a cat bed after all and it was going to shrink in the washing machine on it’s way to be felted. I started out buying two or three skeins per bed – I was going to make four. I had a sort of color scheme for each cat: brown and cream for Felix, gray for Ella, blue for Sergei and a mixture of the leftovers for Abby. There are no leftovers. In fact I had to keep buying more yarn. Ella’s bed turned into gray, cream, and light gray when I couldn’t find any more gray in the store. Then Sergei’s bed became blue and light blue when I couldn’t get any more blue. I wish I’d bought two balls of light blue because now his bed is going to be blue, light blue and dark gray. Not what I’d planned on but Paton’s Up Country is no longer carried at Michaels and I’m not going to pay a ridiculous amount to order it from overseas because that’s the only place I can find it online. And Abby’s bed? Well, she wasn’t going to get one but now that they’ve discontinued the yarn and dropped the price, I picked up 6 balls of the dark gray. I’m going to make one more bed and I’m not going to run out!

The beds turned out really well. Ella loves hers. She loved to sleep on top of the fishtank since the lid is warmed by the aquarium lights underneath, so I put her bed up there and now it is very snuggly warm. She sleeps there every day. Felix likes his bed too but his was on the floor and Ella has asserted her dominance over him and peed in it twice now. I have to keep washing it. Thank goodness it’s felted already! But I haven’t put the bed back out for him, because I don’t know how to keep Ella away from it. Ella and Felix are constantly fighting each other. Felix lies in wait and attacks her so I guess her retaliation is to pee in his bed. I hope she doesn’t spoil Sergei’s bed too. Ella doesn’t hate Sergei but she doesn’t acknowledge him either. Sergei and Abby might as well be invisible to her. Cats!

Just do it

I am overwhelmed by the projects I want to do and don't know where or how to start on anything. I think it's a problem of being too organized and having too many supplies, if that can possibly be a problem. Last night I sat in my newly painted, newly decorated, and newly furnished sewing room and did nothing but shuffle my fabric swatch cards around on the desk. My many fabric swatch cards. Each scrap of fabric brought to mind the project I envisioned when I bought it. Tailored pants out of the brown herringbone-patterned raw silk. Short zippered jacket from the tweedy olive wool. Comfy hooded pullover out of the quilted white cotton. I know what my problem is. I'm paralized by a fear of failure. I want to make things that are stylish, well fitting, and won't scream homemade. I need to forge ahead and just do it.

When I'm sick, I'm sick

Is it just me? When I'm sick, I'm sick. There's no working on sewing or knitting or crafting or anything more tiring than clicking the buttons on the remote, flipping the pages of a magazine, and if I'm really up to it, typing on the laptop, like now. In my near daily perusal of the blog world, I haven't failed to notice that the flu and nasty colds are spreading the country. It seems everyone has been blogging about being sick. Prior to this week I wistfully envisioned myself coming down with something and taking a few days off from work. I have a lot of sewing to catch up on. And then the coughing started. And the fever. And the muscle aches. By the end of Tuesday it was evident to all of my coworkers that I was not well and that they were probably going to catch it too. I told them I'd work from home on Wednesday. No such luck. Thursday? Worse than Wednesday. Today? Better but now my coughing fits are interspersed with sneezing. And my husband is home sick too, which was inevitable of course. At least I'm getting better (sort of) and can make the soup and pour the juice for both of us. Work? I don't think so. Sewing? Yeah, right. I'm sick. My brain can barely handle calculating if it's been four hours since the last dose of Robitussin. I won't be finishing my kitchen curtains, working on my quilt, or knitting a scarf. I'm not a superwoman. I'm sick!