Happy New Year! (a little bit late)

The holidays have come and gone, and we are now well into the new year and back to regular life. I hope your holidays were lovely, and 2011 has been good so far. Do you make resolutions for the new year? I don't really like resolutions, because I never really seem to stick to them for long, but for the last couple years I have made a list of 10-20 things that I hope to accomplish during the year. Some of the things I put on the list are serious, like paying off debt, some are craft or career related, and some are just fun, like finally going sledding or seeing more live theater. I like the lists because I don't have to do everything, and it gives me a lot of different options of things to try and feel like I accomplished something.

Some of the craft related things on my list this year are:
-Finish knitting my shrug- I am nervous about this, its been 8 months since I last worked on it! Not sure if I can figure out where I was in the pattern.
-Knit lots of socks- I have tons of sock yarn stashed, and I just ordered yarn for these Ravenclaw socks!
-Sew myself an item of clothing.
- Make or buy some new accessorizes and accessorize better.

Hopefully all will go well, and I will have lots post of my progress to share. Best of luck in your new adventures this year!

Chronicle Books Haul-idays!

Hey everybody, Chronicle Books is having a really great give away right now, and they have so many great crafting, art and other DIY books that I couldn't not enter! The basics of the give away is this:
Post a list of Chronicle Books valued at up to $500 that you’d like to haul in, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing to WIN your list of books! And, one of your readers who comments on the post will win the list too!

Awesome right?

So here is my list of books, and if you leave a comment here you could win it too!

Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free

Lotta Jansdotter's Handmade Living

Ramayana

Garden Anywhere

DIY Fashion

Witch Craft

America's Doll House

Let's Bring Back

Lost States

Fast, Fresh & Green

I Love Macarons

Tea & Crumpets

Picture Perfect Knits

Holiday Knits

Soil Mates

Weekends for Two in New England

IDEO Eyes Open: London

MoMA Make Art/Make Mistakes

Eco Fashion

The Map as Art

Lists

You can find out more about the giveaway here.

Gnome Costumes!

It may come as no surprise that I love costumes. Not only do I enjoy making them, but I really love wearing them too. Wearing a costume just gives you a little different outlook on the world, and a peak into what it would be like to be a different person. I also really like to do my costumes right. No store bought costumes or slapdash things thrown together at the last minute for me. The problem with that is that every year when Halloween rolls around, I am very busy and only get a few hours to actually sit down and make my costume.
This year my husband and I decided to be garden gnomes, because, not only are they awesome, we knew we already had the big clothing pieces we would need for the costumes. We made the hats, apron, beard and belt, but everything else came from our closets. I was very pleased with results (especially for how easy it was), and now I have a great gnome outfit should I ever need one again!

The wedding dress!

So, remember how I posted about making a wedding for a friend several months ago? Well, due to some delays in getting the fabric and my busy schedule, I ended up doing all the sewing about two weeks before the wedding. I was in such a hurry to get it done that I didn't take any process pictures, but I finished it with time to spare and it came out beautifully if I do say so myself!

Here are some pictures of the dress on the day of the wedding.





This one is a little blurry, but it seems to be the only picture I got of the dress from front.

I am back!

Whew! Life has been busy, but good since I last posted. I got a new (to me) car, lots of family came to visit, and the biggest event of my summer- my puppet show of the Pied Piper of Hamelin! The show was very well received, and we are looking forward to performing it again soon.

Here is one picture of the puppets from the show. Please do check out our puppet blog too. It is all set up now, and I posted pictures of the whole puppet making process!



Now that the show is complete and I have had a little bit of time to relax, I am getting really excited about fall. I still have a few weeks until I start back up teaching this fall, though, which is good news since I still have a wedding dress to make! I will be going fabric shopping later this week, so look for my first dress making post sometime next week. Hopefully I will have some garden update pictures too, we got several tomatoes already, but there are lots of green ones still!

Garden Update

Hello! It seems to me that I am overdue for an update on the garden. I am very pleased to say that between what we learned from experience last year, and the better weather this year, the garden is doing pretty well. I haven't picked anything yet, but I have lots of photos to share.


Here is the view from one corner of the garden- you can see a little bit of most everything.

Pea plants and a pretty pea blossom. There are a few pea pods almost ready to pick, I think I will go back for them and a few other things this weekend.



Radishes! They don't look ready yet, but seem to be better this year since we spaced them a little farther apart.


Cucumbers- the plants are still a little small, but seem healthy. We probably won't have cucumbers until August.



Mixed greens lettuces- I am definitely picking these this weekend and making a salad. I also plan to plant more seeds afterward so we can get a second crop.



Green beans- these are also basically ready to pick!


Green Peppers- as you can see we have a blossom on one of the pepper plants, and they both look healthy.



Chamomile- It is growing! I was not sure it would there for awhile. Now I just need to find out how to make it into tea . . .


The tomatoes- Four of the five plants are doing wonderfully. The small plant in the second cage there has some wilting and yellowing leaves. I really hope it is not blight. It may just be over watering- it doesn't really look like blight yet. I am giving it until this weekend to get better, but if it doesn't I might have to get rid of it so the others don't get infected. There are lots of green tomatoes that need protecting!




Last but not least Zucchini- The plants are looking good, and there are some blossoms. I just hope we actually get some zucchini this year, last year we had tons of blossoms but none ever fruited.

Ribbon Bags Ahoy!

I finished the ribbon bags last night, and I am pleased with the way they turned out. It also means I have completed two big projects this week, and have a nice feeling of accomplishment.