Standing

Hello, friends. Today we are here, standing on the edge of 2008. Welcome to Knit or Die Post No. 100. Leave a comment, I'll pick a winner at random in one week (Monday January 8) and that lovely person gets a prize sent to them in the mail. I don't know what it will be yet, but it will be a prize and it will be for you. So yeah. I think today I am going to listen to lots of loud rock music and try to restore some order to the Fort. I'd post a photograph to demonstrate how horrifying but it's just too awful to share. You would cry. And that would be a sad way to ring in the New Year.

Peace, love, and death-metal,
xoxoxo erin

p.s. I kind of made a mess of the template. But Blogger is too frustrating right now before coffee so please accept my apologies.

FAVORITES 12.27

FAVORITES 12.27
Originally uploaded by Erin Or Die.

My brain is mush.

Prepping.

Cute overload: Aaron gave me a big red wagon with hardcore tires for my birthday, for hauling stuff around. Like plants and Martha Stewart Everyday at K-Mart purchases and our imaginary children. He listens when I talk (constantly) and I love that about him. Here is the Girl Cat noozling up in said wagon, currently parked in the dining room.

So the quilting is completed and all that is left is stitching the damned bindings down, which I can't bring myself to do any way other than by hand. It's hateful and time consuming and slower than the slowest slow was ever slow, but it's coming together and that feels good. We are scheduled to depart the Quad Cities International Airport in 24 hours. I'm doing laundry and last-minute crafting my face off as furiously as I can. A's bro & his wife gave me Desperate Housewives Season 2, which is helping the previously mentioned horror of hand-stitching for miles along. I got their kiddo this toy for Christmas. It's hilarious. I love it. It's gonna get so annoying so fast, I can hardly wait. I couldn't find a drum kit at Walmart. They probably would have seen right through that anyway. I'll see you guys soon. Everybody have a happy holiday, ya heard? I raise my mimosa to you. Cheers, and happy happy, friends.

P.S. Sweet Juniper is my new favorite blog. Absolutley, Parent Differently. I'm with them.

Complaining.

Maybe I am the last one to hear about THIS but WTF? MSLO is killing Blueprint?! I feel blindsided, and I should have seen it coming. Remember when they were giving subscriptions away with the purchase of that Fancy Special Weddings Issue a while back? Honestly, I want to know what they are thinking. It's just like how they turned MS Kids magazine (which I totally was buying at the newsstand even though I don't even HAVE kids, the stuff was so cute and fun) into a COLUMN in Living. Martha publications keep eating each other. It's a stupid move though, IMHO, and this is why: in real life, normal people (read: not me and Aaron) become "engaged" with a ring and a Fancy Pants Proposal (Aaron asked me to be his wife in the awful galley kitchen in the old awful apartment, ---wait, technically, only one of us could have been IN the kitchen, he must have been in the living room/bedroom, that stupid apartment was that small,----- with a ring he twisted out of wire, when we had been dating about 3 months) and normally, the wedding follows, what, a year-ish later? You tell me, I obviously don't know. So you buy wedding mags for one year. Even if you buy every issue for a year, that's only like, twenty, thirty dollars. And once you are married and your thank you notes are sent out, you are no longer a target for MS Weddings magazine (unless you end up remarrying, but let's not be cynical and insinuate that such an outcome is what MS is banking on). What are they going to sell you now? The Blueprint blog? Jerks. I enjoy Blueprint. It was like a Domino with a sense of humor that liked to get drunk sometimes and didn't assume you had a bottomless bank account (and a stick in your... you-know). I finally caved and subscribed to Domino, but it's totally not the same. Dang. And I was all feelin' bad for Martha lately, too, since she lost her mom. Ugh. What a mess. I hate everything.

Excepting, but not limited to:

Alexander Henry. My love knows no bounds.
This cat. Again, love, no bounds, yadda yadda.
These disgustingly yummy treat things. I know they are profoundly wrong, but they require almost nothing on my part, and deliver such a "How could anything this gross be so delicious?" thrill.

Amen.

Borrowing, Part # I forget. 3?

Davenport Public Library
Main Street
Check Out Receipt
Customer name: HOLST, ERIN M

Title: Knitting rules!
ID: 30050056672255
Due: 12/26/2007,23:59

Title: The best American nonrequired reading 2003
ID: 30050054345870
Due: 12/26/2007,23:59

Title: Blue jelly : love lost and the lessons of canning
ID: 30050033953695
Due: 12/26/2007,23:59

Title: Kaffe Fassett's quilt road
ID: 30050054459754
Due: 12/26/2007,23:59

Title: Kaffe Fassett's kaleidoscope of quilts : twenty designs from Rowan for patchwork and quilting
ID: 30050056800617
Due: 12/26/2007,23:59

Total items: 5
12/5/2007 3:11 PM

Thank you for using the
Davenport Public Library

Have a great day!

This week sucked, thank who-ever it's almost over. I need to go sew now. See you like, next year.

Revealing.

This photo pretty well sums up the last week. Hi again. Jenna tagged me um, a month ago, and Rachael tagged me today, so I guess maybe I ought to do the dang thing.

1. My favorite song in the history of recorded music is, far and away, "Livin' On a Prayer" by the illustrious Bon Jovi. Everything else just pales in comparison to that masterpiece of New Jersey pop-metal brilliance.

2. I have a fake tooth. I worry how obvious this fact is when I smile.

3. It's almost my birthday (December 1st) and I identify very strongly with my zodiac sign. So as a Saggitarious, I am fun, but my foot pretty much never leaves my mouth.

4. I don't know if this has much to do with being a Sag, but my attention span is about three seconds long.

5. This makes me well-suited for kindergarten, which moves at the speed of light. I think it's a good fit. I need to go back to school and do this for real. (And yes, I can manage not to use the eff-word in front of the children, but I do say "dude" a lot. As in "Dude, you need to sit down at your table! That is not your work. Make a better choice.")

6. Um, I guess there have been a kind of surprising number of times when I have met folks for the first time and they have thought I was from Europe. And not because I am so extremely fashionable and worldly that there is positively no way I could be from Middle Of Nowhere, NY. It's more like "Where did you get your accent? Are you Romanian?". WTF, people. It's embarassing. It happened twice at my first JoAnn, once in the quad at Brockport, and at knit club. I guess I talk funny and possess some prominent eyebrows. I should have just played it off and told them I was an exchange student, but I'm also a horrible liar.

7. I definitley like Coke Zero better than Diet Coke. Hands down.

Ok. That was eye-opening. You're it: Binet, Kim, Tristan, and Papa Dukes. Your job: post this on your little blog, think of seven weird things about yourself, tag some friends, and leave them a comment to let them know they are tagged. Have fun, and happy self-reflection.

Happening.

Time for a picture post cos my brain is hurtin'.

I went to Michael's. I don't like that store but I like MS Crafts and Wilton and fluffy bird ornaments.

I hand-quilted. My friend came over and we quilted like crazy and all the sudden it was 3am and the quilting is about 2/3 done. How's that for an exciting Saturday night?

I made cupcakes for Bunco and no one ate them.

Knitting the fronts for the baby cardi (I know, no swallows, I'm tired) at the same time is tangly but well-worth it. They'll actually be the same length when they're finished! Miraculous!

So I am actually getting things done, even though this stack here is mis-leadingly providing evidence to the contrary. Fabric heap growing exponentially at a rate greater than I can keep up with. There's two jackets, some pillow cases, Halloween decor (oops, missed that one), a quilt top or two, beginnings of some Chrismukkah stockings, and Lawd knows what else hiding in there. Lotsa Alex H. Trixie tsk-tsks. She clucks, "Simple human, you are much too scatterbrained and spread too thin. Get it together! Now fetch me my kibbles at once."

Finalizing.

Dudes, I finished something.

A modified version of this bag, from a free pattern by Clover. Follow that link, those projects are so cute you're liable to get a toothache. If anyone can make heads or tails of a Japanese crochet pattern, those Mary Jane slippers have got my number, bad. The bag is made out of about 3/4 of a yard of 54" decorator fabric (which my machine loved sewing through 4 layers of, let me tell ya) off the flat-fold table with a green broadcloth lining. I made it a little bigger, slapped a pocket on the inside, and gave it "real" straps, for my friend at the fabric store's birthday. Which was 3 weeks ago. Detecting a pattern there? :X

On the subject of bags, via not martha, check out this guy getting told to eff straight off : Unclutterer: Is that a purse or an over-night bag?. A unified front presented by humongous bag carriers of the world in the comments! Sorry mister, but if it can't hold a bag lunch, a book, waterbottle, datebook, knitting project, and enough Coke Zero to keep me a step ahead of the kindergarteners, won't find it slung over my shoulder, y'all.

Tiling.

Faves 11.7.07
Originally uploaded by Erin Or Die.

Dude I finally figured out the mosaic maker. Good golly, I am rather set in my ways. Birds bling buttons cats cupcakes crochet kindergarten chocqua skulls and a touch of Jesus. See?

Doing.

OH HEY THERE!

I am a little late (and a little I-know-better) for NaBloMoPo, but here I am none the less. This is my 91st post, and I would like to do something special for my 100th, but the way I roll, it could be 2008 by that time. I'll try! Trying to remember to look around, and not just ahead tunnel-vision style. Things are getting away from me. Like returning phone calls, paying the library back the $2 I owe them, cleaning the bathroom, making things. Oh goodness. There are so many fabulous ideas and gifts to make and DMC Color Variations floss and piles of exciting fabric gracing every horizontal surface in my fort, and nothing gets fricking done. Ugh, me.


This is the back of a baby cardi I am knitting for a slightly longlost friend from undergrad who is about to pop. I am biting off the shape of the Tattoo Cardigan from SnB Nation, but knitting at a totally different gauge with lovely machine wash/dry L.B. Cotton Ease. There is no solid plan yet for the chest where they put the swallows/nautical stars/skulls. I am kind of thinking argyle. I love swallows but my gauge is not as fine as the printed pattern. Time to bust out the graph paper! How about a snake around a dagger or a heart with the MOM banner??? Born To Lose?? Spiderwebs?? Anchors? A mermaid? Petunia from Pete & Pete?? Endless intarsia possibilities, my friends. Endless.

Borrowing, II.

Yay for going paperless. These books are due on my baby sister's 18th birthday. That's crazy. So this is what I'm reading. This week, a little BUST contributor lit, a little EZ (need baby gift ASAP), a little Erma, some goofy stuff with great photos to inspire, and I'll read anything Dave Eggers ever put his name on.

Davenport Public Library
Main Street
Check Out Receipt
Customer name: HOLST, ERIN M

Title: Job hopper : the checkered career of a down-market dilettante
ID: 30050054260046
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Title: All I know about animal behavior I learned in Loehmann's dressing room
ID: 30050039205249
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Title: The best American nonrequired reading, 2002
ID: 30050050453264
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Title: Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's almanac : projects for each month of the year
ID: 30050039284442
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Title: The Salvage Sisters' guide to finding style in the street and inspiration in the attic
ID: 30050054411540
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Title: Between friends : craft projects to share
ID: 30050046071790
Due: 11/14/2007,23:59

Total items: 6
10/24/2007 5:14 PM

Thank you for using the
Davenport Public Library

Have a great day!

YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY TOO DAVENPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY THANK YOU.

Chicks With Sticks, hopefully I'll be seeing you fine ladies tomorrow.

Toting.

You're all going to laugh but I need a new bag, and I am thisclose to just ordering a Boat and Tote from LL Bean. Everything at the stores looks the same, everything on etsy looks the same, all the bag patterns look the same. I'm getting aggravated. And the Boat and Totes are indestructable and visually unobtrusive.

Meanwhile, this is a great and tremendously useful site : u-handbag. Maybe she can help me.

Piecing.

The alternate title for this post could be Why I Won't Be Leaving The Fort Until 2008 At The Very Earliest. There are not one, but two interesting pieces of patchwork afoot here, and this photo is of one half of the first. Interesting to see what the prints "do", how they blend and fade and read through the camera lense. Fascinating. Wish me luck, that this hodgepodge will be transformed into two throwy (45"x60"-ishy) quilts for the little sisters by Christmas. Of this year.

Borrowing.

I should rilly just buy Passionate Patchwork before they notice how often I check it out. Also I don't think I am old enough to be reading I Feel Bad About My Neck, but I am going to anyway. I didn't expect my thrifted copy of Erma's If Life Is a Bowl Of Cherries, What am I Doing in the Pits? to hit me like it did, so you never know. I love that book. I should probably make it my life's work to obtain every edition of said title. I only bought it because the "bowl of cherries" cliche kept popping up in my work (don't you think that cherries are a really loaded symbol? Maybe it's crass, but I do), and it had goofy illustrations I wanted to cut out and paste to some silly thing. But then I read it, and I remember crying on the bus, thinking how weird it was that I was reading this hilarious book and crying on a bus. It's the seed of Desperate Housewives, only no one is gorgeous and people don't get killed all the time.



Davenport Public Library
Main Street
Check Out Receipt
Customer name: HOLST, ERIN M

Title: Created in darkness by troubled Americans : the best of McSweeney's, humor category
ID: 30050054411672
Due: 10/24/2007,23:59

Title: I feel bad about my neck : and other thoughts on being a woman
ID: 30050056722332
Due: 10/24/2007,23:59

Title: Ready made : how to make (almost) everything : a do-it-yourself primer
ID: 30050018309285
Due: 10/24/2007,23:59

Title: Passionate patchwork : over 20 original quilt designs
ID: 30050046016035
Due: 10/24/2007,23:59

Title: The happy hooker : stitch 'n bitch crochet
ID: 30050018315357
Due: 10/24/2007,23:59

Total items: 5
10/3/2007 3:36 PM

Thank you for using the
Davenport Public Library

Have a great day!

Going.

I suck at having a blog. This photo is what our life is like. There's bills and Diet Coke and more fabric and less sewing and Anthropologie catologs (I regret ever signing up for that, they just makes me irrationally angry) and crumpled-up construction paper with MISS ERIN written in shaky crayon letters, everywhere. I mailed Alex's birthday gloves without taking a picture of them, 25 days after her birthday. Nevermind I am a bad blogger, I am an even worse sister. Who am I kidding. This blog is a joke. Oh well. I'm going to a cocktail party now. Call me. See ya later.

Posting.

Tres novel, no? Forgive my (not entirely unusual) lack of blog. This time my excuse is that I left the camera in the glovebox nearly two weeks ago after a W900 show and I can only seem to remember this fact when the car and I are many miles apart.

I am having an EXTREMELY hard time accepting that THIS sensational clock is from WALMART. I WANT it. Resistance is futile. We are a cuckcoo clock lovin' family over here and I can't believe that clock is from Walmart and I need it. This is the first time ever in my entire blog-reading life I have seen something on the extremely inspirational decor8 that I could actually, conceivably have for myself, without guilt or excessive credit card debt.

Anyways, I finished the Birthday Girl's gloves a few days ago, they are blocked and dry and lovely and they need to go into the mail ASAP as her birthday was 3 weeks ago now. I still haven't solved the dilema of how to photo them. So that's good. I finished something

Oh and speaking of finishing. Last week I spent half an hour sitting on the floor trying to trace the crotch of a pair of pajama pants so I could sew up a pair for me out of some fabric that has been waitingpatiently for me for a very long time. Crotchlines. Not Fun. So I said Bump This and went into work at the Fabric Hole the next day and as soon as I clocked out, I went through the book of whatever company was on sale (Butterick at the time), grabbed a jammie pattern for less than 2 bucks, went home and turned them out. I feel like I should have been able to figure the shaping out, but if it took ANY LONGER than it absolutley had to, they were not going to happen. Cursed, stupid crotchline. Wonderful sloppy flannel pj pants though, coffee and donuts print. Best pants ever.

Pulling.

sometimes i'm tempted to forget myself
jump back into the skirmish as a mercenary.
what little time my poor soul may have left
i'd rather that i lived it in sanctuary.
i don't take orders from the war room anymore
this is one recruit who's surrendered.
i don't take orders from the war room anymore
now i am my own defender.


I realized tonight that I've worked at JoAnn in Davenport longer than I worked at JoAnn in Rochester. I really do live here. How geeky that JoAnn is my barometer.

I think I need to go to St. Ambrose University for Early Childhood Development and then everything will be just fine. How could it not be? Ambrose is walking distance from my house. I could be there in less than ten minutes.

Happy Birthdays out to Alex, my sister, who is 21 today, and Sophia, one of my kindergarteners, who is 5.

I'm gonna fall asleep at the keys and I have to work in 8 hours. This is the LiveJournaliest entry ever. BYE.

Reassessing.

I know this is boring by now, but this is seriously how stupid I've gotten.

I got my order of Alexander Henry prints (tattoo, city girl, beauty bar, kissable color, & tsukiyo) from Denver Fabrics on Monday, yesterday at work I killed the bolt of pink skulls (flora de los muertos), because it is on sale and all of the sudden I grew terrified someone else was going to get it before I could, I'm working on making someone to go with me on a trip to get more (inked, etc.), and I'm on eBay right now looking at the AH offerings, contemplating some Bad Choices...

I think I need to make an Alexander Henry label for all these dunb posts. I've seen some pretty crazy quilters (and I've spent 45 minutes cutting their fabric) but this, to me, is weird. Never in all my crafting life have I had an obsession this bad, this single-minded, that I couldn't snap out of. It is not normal.

Does anyone else have a crafty crush that they simply cannot shake, that makes them do dumb, irrational things? Please say yes. I'll give you a prize if it makes me feel better about my addiction.

P.S. I do have a couple of projects in the works. I swear. All of the recent haul was bought with a destination in mind and that is no lie. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't make my heart pound and the blood rush to my head. I suppose it can't kill me but dang, it's, like, $8.95 a yard!

Falling.

Alone at home after school with the sun coming in through the curtains, the cats have been fed and are lounging contentedly, just the white noise of cars outside and birds that have built a nest in our fireplace chirping (don't ask). It's quiet. Peaceful. I want to pretend it's fall but I know that outside it's 86 degrees and Mississippi River Valley humid. It can be fall inside at my house, anyway.



I ran around like a lunatic all last week stressing about the brief ( nonetheless, short-notice) visit from A's family. I changed the sheets on the guest bed and went and did something else and this is how I found Norton upon my return to the spare room. It just made me laugh. He climbed into the blanket tunnel to escape the whirling crazy person tearin' it up all over HIS house. When we moved here, for the longest time he spent most of his days under that blanket, which was the bedspread at the time. He would not come out for nothin'. This went on for what seemed like forever.
"Hey, have you seen Norton?"
"Um, no. Check the futon."
Cat-shaped lump under the red blanket. Yep. And now that he's settled in, he is into everything. While I don't appreciate him knocking every object in sight off the kitchen counter, I felt sick knowing he was so uncomfortable he wanted to hide in bed all day. But he's all better now, and back to his old tricks.



So on my home inprovement binge, this happened and it's just as cute as I imagined it would be. I love when that happens. Mary Engelbreit's "Chair Of Bowlies" print, my salt & peppers, a can of red spray paint, and some homesewn aprons. It's my new favorite spot in the house. Bless A's heart for hanging that stuff for me. And powertools. Bless powertools.



We did a very grown up thing and got a mirror for over the fireplace. It's like, the thing to do. Nothing lights a quick-decorating fire under the arse like a visit from A's mother, no?



Knitting: The sistergloves grew fingers, spontaneously. It amazes me how creepy they look spread out on the table versus how classy they look on. But the ends need to be darned up and also it's astonishingly hard to photograph your own arm with results that even approach normal. It's hilarious, actually. Try it sometime.

Catching.

This is a cute little baby rabbit I spotted through the kitchen window, just chillin' out in the alley.


The dining room table needed a reminder that it is a dining table, not just dumping grounds for junk mail and bills. And thus, Baby's First Floral Arrangement. I broke a pair of scissors trying to trim the stem off a fake glob of hydrangeas. The orange flowers are from the only line of pretend flowers I like from the Fabric and Craft Hole (they look like calico to me and I decided I liked them long ago but was only able to bring myself to buy them because they were 50% off), and the yellow ones are from an odd bag I picked up at the DAV once that prompted my dearest Aaron to ask, "What are you going to do with all the funeral flowers?". The hurricane is from Pier One and the plastic citrus are yet another weird DAV find. No faux floral without irony here. OH, hell to the hell to the nooooo.



Hey this is hush hush but someone very chic and special is going to be 21 soon and needs her own pair of cashmere (OK, CASHMERE-BLEND) opera-length fingerless gloves with a scalloped edge and lacey travelling vine pattern (#135, VK Stitchionary Vol. 1, pg. 91). Cross your fingers that her sister can finish them in the next ten days and get them in the mail quickly.

OK, Knit Talk: I pored over the usual knitting library suspects (a book or two by the completely insane Nicki Epstein, etc.) and the difficulty in choosing a lace pattern was compounded by the fact that I needed one that could be simply translated to knitting in the round. I SO wanted to do the Nosegay with all the bobbles (there WILL be bobbles, make no mistake, whether she'll like them or not, so-help-me-Jesus) but only the patterns with the "rest rows" seemed within do-ability (I'm just knitting when I'd be purling if I were knitting flat). Has this happened to you?!! Am I weird?!! Don't most peeps prefer knitting in the round to avoid purling and seaming?? I also remember reading somewhere about the difference between "lace knitting" and "knitted lace" which to me is splitting hairs but I think I am knitting knitted lace. I don't have a good reason to give a damn one way or the other, I just want to make a nice prezzie for somone fancy on her birthday!!

Ummm, if I am not mistaken, SNL ought to be on at this time and yet there is pro-wrestling on my TV. I must be off to go rectify this situation. I will check you later, blog. Don't tell my sister you know what she's getting for her birthday. xoxoxox.

Melting.

There must be something wrong with me.

Innocently enough, as I occasionally do, this morning I checked the local NBC affiliate's website, KWQC.com, for the weather report. I walk most of the places I go. I like to know just how miserable I am going to be. Pretty effin' miserable:


WTF, IOWA?! WHAT FOR? WHO NEEDS THAT!! Ack ack ack, a thousand times, ack.

The weird part though, is that while most folks are currently experiencing cooking ennui, not I. Oh no. Since I got back, I swear the oven has been going going going and the little house has just been hotter than hot. But we've enjoyed lovely lasagna (see 7/27/07 for the Lasagna Show), some molasses cookies that promised soft and chewy but delivered cakey, Alton Brown's Good Eats Granola, samosas (Molly Katzen style), and today, easily 90 degrees out, I made banana walnut bread. It needed to be done. I added a sprinklin' of nutmeg and a generous dose of cinnamon and it's pretty awesome. Aaron keeps coming home saying "Hi peanut something smells good Jeeeeesus it's hot in here". Next up: SEITAN!

I've also started knitting the Twinkle Shopping Tunic from VK Holiday 05 out of some white Wool Ease Thick&Quick that I picked up from work for 97 cents a ball, crocheted a handful of granny squares AND I've completely fallen madly for the quilts of Kaffe Fassett (a topic for another post). There has to be some kind of seasonal disorder that explains why I am dreaming of blankets and knitting sweaters when the temperature of my house rivals that of the earth's core.

Slaving.

The promise of lasagna is not an empty one. Behold:

Only thing I messed up is please add a layer of noodles after the first saucing. I must have forgotten to snap that step. Also note that I am too generous with my materials at the beginning and have to scrape towards the end. I don't usually boil the noodles before they get piled on, and they come out okay, but next time I make it, provided it's any less than 4 million degrees in the kitchen, I think I may give them five minutes of boiling time.

Going.

Oh, hi.
I chilled with 99 percent of the people who read this blog while I was there, so I guess I will just say that my trip to Rochester was lovely. I had fun every day. Even the rainy ones. You can too go home. Whoever said you can't is a bully. Although the word "home" does start to get quite blurry and convoluted as time wears on, you can go. At least for a bit. I went home and then I went home. If I talk about this topic at any length at all I start getting quite teary and also nauseous so I'm stopping now, so I'll end by saying I look forward to my next visit and thank you all for being so dear.

I'm actually quite tired and mildly screwed up from probably more the staying up all night than the one piddly hour time zone change, and from spending the past two days wrassling scrapbook embellishments, with many more to follow. Tiny paper wine bottle. Tiny paper french fries. Tiny paper grad gown. Tiny paper phone booth. Tiny paper Statue of Liberty. Tiny paper sushi. Tiny paper prom. An entire life told in tiny paper approximations.

I'm missing Interpol at Harro East Right Now. GRR. But should this be the greatest injustice of my life, I'll recover.

Spooning.

::::falls over and d.i.e.s. from the cuteness::::

I never knew it was possible to desire measuring spoons.

[Beehive Kitchenware Co. via oh joy!.]

Cutting.

Oh, "<-----Place On Straight Grain Of Fabric----->", how you do make me so very nervous.

Welcome to the Alexander Henry Dress Factory.

Wondering.

Unless you are Jenna Small Bird, you can go look at this flickr set of a project that's been in the works for over a year now (or I worked on it for 2 months solid and then let is sit for a year, and then I did something with it a few days ago). If you are Jenna Small Bird then it's going to be in your mailbox in a few days anyway so I wouldn't peek. I shouldn't even be posting this until it's in transit but I couldn't resist and it looks like rain so no bike ride to the PO for me.

Digging.

I went to the thrift store today. The DAV never disapoints.





When the house started "coming together" a bit (it's still far from done, but what I mean is more like, "when we got a couch"), I was surprised how many people were surprised by the decor (words like "Pottery Barn" and "Martha Stewart" are being used). Is this more what you were expecting?

Biting.

I skibbled into Steve and Barry's (who I see have dropped "University Sportswear" from the chain's name) on Thursday on my way to work to check out dear SJP's new collection, Bitten. Like everybody, I was skeptical of whether it was actually going to be cute. I think in the wake of Sex and The City, we're having a hard time separating Carrie from Sarah Jessica. Carrie's style was created by Pat Fields. Sarah's style was created by I can only assume Sarah and possibly a stylist. Holy moly, it's actually cute. I'm going back. In a place with no H&M, my beloved source of cheap and interesting clothes, Bitten is a good thing. H&M is one of the top five things I look forward to most about my trip to Rochester next month (1. fam 2. knitters/wedding 3. various friends who don't knit 4. thali 5. H&M. Ta-da.) I feel bad about my lust for trendy made-over-seas clothes, but I don't know how you can assuage that guilt when you're on a tight budget. I like SJP's motives, which are (so she says and I want to believe her) growing up in a big family with no money. That's pretty noble. I'll toast to that. Any thoughts?

Practicing.

Just so you know, for the past month or so, nine out of ten nights, this has been the scene in my basement. The upside, for you, lovely reader, is that this is a still picture, with no audio. I can dig the audio these dear boys are producing, it's just that it, like, permeates my entire stinkin' house. It's not very peaceful. You think you wanna be one of those moms (wives?) where all the kids feel welcome at your house, but this whole "Um Shit You Guys We Have A Show In Six Days And We Gotta Learn Twenty New Songs By Friday Night Holy Crap Dude" ordeal has taught me that probably, you don't. At least, not four beer swillin' dudes with amplifiers and drumsticks, anyways. Oy.

Coupling.

First & Most Biggest & a few days late:



As of 6/4/07, this dude and I have been married for two lovely years. And I still have done nothing in the way of creating a wedding album. He is my best friend in the world and I adore him a little more every day. I smile when I think of him. This photo is apparently the most glorious picture of us ever taken because I have a pillow case with it on it. Long story, you don't really want to hear it. Anyways, to commemorate this stupendous occasion, Aaron surprised me with a pink rose at work, and after my shitty twelve-hour workday was finally over, we went out for pancakes. It was stupendous.

Also on the subject of weddings:



It's really no secret that I am a weird Martha Stewart semi-fanatic. I am not alone. Many a blogger has confessed that she will buy pretty much any magazine that Martha publishes. I am among them. My only regret towards our very brief engagement was that only two issues of the utterly gorgeous MS Weddings came out during my time as a Bride(zilla)-to-be. OK but did you know that if you buy the fancy Collector's Edition of Weddings ($9.95) that's on the stands right now, that you get a free year of Blueprint? It's crazy. My plan is buy it with the 50 percent off coupon from the JoAnn NPI so then I get it for five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS = SIX ISSUES of Blueprint and the magic fancy issue with it's many pictures of lovely flowers and cake for looking at when I am sad and when I decide we need to renew our vows in 18 years so I can have a mini-wedding with cupcakes. Oh, blog, I knew you would understand.

Squishing.

I don't think I've ever been really clear about my "dayjob" (while I blather on about my nights-and-weekends-and-school-holidays job at the Fabric Hole). I am a para-educator (which is nothing more than a fancy Iowa word for teacher's aide, I think, just like "guest teacher" which is Davenportese for SUB) at an elementary school and I work with behaviorally disturbed kids K-2. It's the hardest goddamn thing I have ever done in my life. But you get to love the kids so much, even when they're being A W F U L. The classroom teacher I work with is a doll and one of the things she does is first thing in the moring, they draw a name out of the basket and that person is the Warm Fuzzy. The Warm Fuzzy gets to be the line leader all day, and go first at whatever, and everyone has to give them a compliment (A WARM FUZZY, PERHAPS?), and then we go do the calendar. So the Fuzzy is denoted by the sticker he wears on his shirt (all five of our kids are boys) but the problem is that the stickers keep falling off and getting lost. And that can be pretty disasterous to a seven year-old. So with five days left 'til the end of the year, I had a Stroke of Genius and I made a little badge out of wool felt and DMC and a safety pin. How hopelessly nerdy can you get?

Treasuring.

I wanted to start this post with something cute about how enamored of the Alexander Henry Collection I am, as I know I've mentioned before. Yes, Alexander Henry is totally my boyfriend. But it's just getting out of hand. I think about it all the time. I don't buy that much, I guess, but I think about buying it. Just to have. Because it's delicious. You can't trust me around it. I try to think of ways to smuggle more home and not get caught (by my hubbers, not STEALING from work, heaven forbid). The prints get in my head and follow me around. I'll get a third of a yard or whatever here and there just so I can sleep at night. It's sick. I won't lie. It's completely weird.

I don't know. At JoAnn a few weeks ago I was (gleefully) cutting some Alex fabric for a guest who was grumbling about how you used to only be able to find AH and Robert Kaufman at the independent quilt shops and was all wistful about how they sold out and wholesale to the big chains now. I don't know where to stand on issues like that anymore. I personally am at once grateful and tortured by AH's deal with JoAnn.

Here, let's talk about something else. In this last batch of photos I just dumped off the camera, of stacks of coveted fabric, a maxed-out GC-card-worth of speakers and mixing boards, here's a new photo from The Cave AKA The Master Bedroom, version Lots of Dots Point Oh. We've become bedding junkies. I've always been a fan of the dot. Way too much hoarding and excess going on over here. Must be some kind of weird compulsive personality type we both are. Way too wanty. Get zen or die.

Missing.

I have such lovely friends.
Thank you, Ms. Small Bird. You are so cute. I'm working on your swapperdoo still. It's coming!

Birdwatching.

Too cute! matteart, @ etsy via Domino via Oh Joy!. Every single item in his shop is darling. Please go buy something from him because he makes my new favorite stuff and I have no money right now so I can't!