I'm doing a little bit of redwork, for a rather belated one quit project. Yesterday I needed something that required no space and very little thought, and embroidery is just the perfect thing for that.

Our house is at the moment in a total state of disarray (which is different than our continual state of minor disarray). Our dining table is in the living room, and it's laden with everything from the pantry. Our dining is half covered in drop sheet and half covered in laundry. The coffee maker is on the dining room floor, but you can bet it's full of coffee. The stove and kitchen cabinets are in the big back room (a wip in itself). This is all so that the kitchen floor could be sanded yesterday, which Elie did, in very unpleasant heat. Good Lord, that man can work. The floor will be lovely when it's done, but it's such a mess now. The fact that it bothers me is very interesting because I have a rather high tolerance for living in renovation mess. (You may recall that I didn't have a kitchen ceiling for about two years.) I guess this is somehow my limit. I think I even know why—there's no usable table. Who knew that the table was so important? I guess I want somewhere to lay out my thoughts, to make my lists, to eat peacefully, and just to serve the the logical place to put a thing down. At times like this I think you're supposed to go to the Italian pastry shop and buy an assortment of mini cannolis, cookies, and little tarts. At least, that's the way I was brought up. Of course, we don't have an Italian pastry shop. Oh, how I miss New Jersey sometimes.

Enough of that. I don't really want to whine—it's clear that at some point yesterday I was doing embroidery while my better half labored in a dust bath. More a point of interest than anything else. I'm going off to Caseys to buy donuts.

This skirt (Simplicity 2758) is so easy. I guess most skirts are, but this one really is. On Friday night, I was flipping through my patterns, looking for what might be right for some fabric I'm itching to cut, and I figured I'd give this skirt a go. I was pleased to open the package and find that the skirt consists of just three pieces. I know, it's not complicated— what was I expecting? It felt so easy, I even lined it. Actually, I lined it because the fabric, although it is a cute gray stripe and was on sale at the end of last summer, is a nubby-textured poly-blend, and I thought it would bother the back of my legs. And no, the fabric I used in the skirt isn't the one I'm itching to cut into. This skirt pattern got to audition for the part of the skirt made out of the fabric I really like. The fit is pretty good, maybe a bit tight on the waist, but maybe it's just that it has an actual waist. The actual waist and the fact that it twirls well, make it feel a bit retro, especially with the green shirt. It's more fun than some of my other things.

For taking photos of this skirt, I got out the tripod. I will do this all the time from now on. It's way better than balancing the camera on a table. (You can say Duh! at me. It's OK.) Actually, Eva and Elie usually take the pictures of me wearing something, and after all the posts, their patience is beginning to wear a bit thin (not that I blame them). The tripod lets you be a bit of a ham if you want to. In this photo, you can clearly see (clearly) that I'm listening to my dear friend Tyra and "finding my lines".

A couple months ago I bought myself some of this Nani Iro Fuccra print because I had really loved it for a year, and I thought that if I waited any longer, the fabric wouldn't be available anymore. I bought enough (just) to make a top, but I had a bit of a time deciding which pattern to use. I wanted flowy and drapey, like the nani iro pattern book cover, but not so flowy and drapey that it didn't have shape. No tailored button-up shirts. I found the pattern I used on yoshimi the flying squirrel's flickr pages, and it seemed just right. It's Burda 7834, and my first Burda pattern. I think I would have like the nani iro pattern book too, but I didn't want to order a whole book and then wait for the order and then have it maybe not be quite right. I'd like to see more of what people have done with the patterns in this book. I guess I'll have to keep my eye on the nani iro flickr group.

A word about double gauze: This was my first time working with double gauze, and I didn't realize that it was actually two layers of gauze until I cut it. I though double gause was a term for a fancy-thick double weave. Now I know!

If you've been around here long enough, you know that I'm fan on contests, particularly creative making-stuff contests. There's something about a set of rules and a deadline that gets my creative juices flowing. When I saw that Instructables was hosting a a mother's day sewing themed contest, I got all excited, especially when I saw that some of the prizes were dress forms. Mmmm...Dress forms. So I did something I haven't done in waaaaay too long—I conceived, started, and finished a project all in one day. Then it felt so good, I did it again. Mwah-ha-ha! I'm getting my zest for making back. It was really nice to make something that hadn't been sitting on my mental to do list for ages. Whipup really knew what they were talking about when they did the whiplash contests.

My actual instructables are a box pleat apron, and a cute fireflower Nintendo DS case. (Eva has a DS now. More on that later, I imagine.) In case you're not sure what an instructable is, I will tell you that it is basically a managed tutorial—step-by-step instructions on how to do something. If you're down with instructables and my projects, you can vote for me. Actually, instructables contests are interesting in that you can vote for as many entries as you like, so you could vote for me and 12 other people too. Other entries I like include Fastest Recycled T-shirt Tote Bag, Summer Visor (my mom loves visors!),and really you should probably check out the sleeping bag suit.

We went off to the Third Sunday Market--an antiques/junk fest--today. It was a beautiful day for it. I always enjoy the market more when I have a mission, and my mission of the day was crochet potholders. I want to acquire a collection so I can do this with them. I came home with four. I did not buy anything from the stacks of feedsacks, even though it was very tempting. It's just the beginning of the season and they were marked up too high, IMHO. We also bought a glass juicer because the orange plastic one I got second hand in college finally broke. There was a stall with some of the most beautiful quilts I have ever seen. The dealer had a serious eye for color. Wow.

I wore this shirt I made on Saturday to the market today. (Another top from ISBN 9784834725506) I didn't think I would finish it this weekend because I hadn't bought buttons, but then I fished these white ones out of my vintage stash. All different, but all the same size. Fun.

Here I am, showing my shining face here again. Where have I been? I'm not quite sure. First I was drinking the workahol, then I had to get summer planned and end-of-year business, and then iPhoto wanted to upgrade, but it wanted to update all of my ga-jillion photos first, and it just didn't seem like a good idea to do that with without backing up... You get it. Where I haven't been: I haven't been having an online life somewhere else and forgetting this place. I'm not on twitter, and I'm pretty much never on facebook. I think about them a lot, and I wonder if that's where other people are and if I'm missing something. But, I don't think they're for me--they seem too "on" always. I like the slow pace of sharing that blogging has. I don't think I can quite keep all my ducks in a row on facebook, and that's how I like my ducks--rowed.

I'm trying to make myself a bunch of summer shirts. This one is from Japanese craft book ISBN 9784834722506. The sleeves were really gappy, and I darted them up a bit, and they're still gappy. I like the keyhole though, and I especially like the keyhole button. The fabric is more bolt44. They have very crisp stuff. This photos was taken on the day Elie and I made compost berms in our garden where the old metal house used to be. We are so happy to be planting a garden there now. It's huge, and I hope we aren't doing too much, but there's nothing wrong with being optimistic in Spring, is there?

If the shirt fits...then you can be pretty sure I'll be making this pattern sometime again. This is Simplicity 4077, view E, sans ruffle. Even though I didn't do the ruffle, I kept the facing, because it makes the shirt look more finished. I top stitched around the collar for the same reason. I do think the shape of the collar is a little weird—it's a little of an era, but I'm not sure which one—so maybe I'll mess with that next time. The pattern also comes with a mandarin collar, but I'm not so sure about that. If I make it again, I might bring the waist up a little bit so it's more petite. I added 3/4 in. of length though, and I'm glad I did. I decided to do that after looking at many photos of this pattern on flickr. Flickr is so awesome for deciding which commercial patterns to sew because you can see all different body types modeling what you might make. Oh, and the fabric came from Bolt 44—thanks to True Up for alerting me (and other people on the internets) to their existence.

In other weekend news: Elie and I (just the two of us!) carried the old powder blue bathtub out of the old bathroom/future laundry room. Now, it was just steel and not cast iron, but still, I think I deserve some kind of tub hauling prize.

The easter bunny was totally in our yard today. Someone's very large velvety-brown bunny must have busted out of its hutch. We call him Bob, for Big Old Bunny. He was trying to make friends (very close friends, I presume) with the wild yard bunny who lives under the lilacs. Bob is twice the size of wild yard bunny, and he chased her around the neighborhood all afternoon. We get so much entertainment from the animals.

It's Saturday morning and I've got that world-is-my-oyster kind of feeling. It is sunny and springy, so I know we will spend time out in the yard, but Eva and I also have a going-to-town agenda that includes a quilt show, a crepe snack, a perusal of the toy store, and a trip to Sally Beauty Supply to pick this season's toenail polish color. (Last year it was always classic red. This year I think we'll mix in a metallic.)

Last weekend, I finished this little jacket I started for Eva a couple months back. Girly Style Wardrobe—queen of little girl outfit Japanese craft books. I love the way it came out. I'm pretty sure Eva likes it to. Actually at first she said that the armpit was itchy, and I thought that I was going to have to do ribbon binding on the seams or something, but it turned out that it was just a pin her vicious mother had left inside her garment.

Last year, I so loved seeing all the pretty things that came in from Meg's mobile swap, and this year I decided to join.

I didn't have too much of a plan. I wanted to have dangly cloth parts (I used Martha Stewart's strawberry pincushion as a template), and I wanted to have felt balls, and I wanted to make the circular kind. My partner wanted something colorful, and I think this fits the bill OK. Actually, I started out with red, yellow, orange, and pink, the colors in the tweed strawberry shape. Funny how it always comes back to blue, red and gray for me.

Of course, a nice thing about swaps is you get a present back. This is what I got from Liz. Isn't it cool? She used paint chips for all the different grays and blues. Very lovely indeed.

I've been working on a few little things, both portable. At the moment, if it's not portable, it's not getting done. Portable sewing and knitting are two more reasons to love carpooling! And, it's light out until after 5:00 now, so sometimes can even do it on the way home.

It got unseasonably warm here. Quite possibly it did the same thing for you. I enjoyed taking a walk on my lunch hour, but the warm waether also put me in a bit of a panic because we're not ready for spring. The garden is not prepared, house projects have not been prepped. These things need attention, and quite honestly, I am still in a boots and wool sweaters mentality.

On a different note, we were in Chicago last weekend, where we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was fun, even though the poop show didn't go on that day, they did have the other major attraction Eva was look forward to—cow eyeball dissection. I sat that one out. By the end of the visit we had determined that we are more Science and less Industry. Possibly we actually knew that beforehand.