The Texas Change Purse Massacre

Tonight, I commence my assault on the summit.  At the risk of spoiling the surprise for my female relatives, I have planned to make some Christmas presents...a suite of purse accessories, including a pocket Kleenex holder, a change purse, and a makeup bag.  I am attempting to embroider the recipients' initials on each piece.  Tonight I cadged patterns from various websites (shout out to www.whipup.net), made templates, cut the pieces of fabric and fusible interfacing with my oh-so-sexy self-healing mat and rotary cutter.  Have attached the interfacing to the flimsier of my fabric choices, culled from my admittedly excessive collection of fabrics I have hoarded and schlepped around with me for (in some cases) decades.  Have attempted to scrawl the initials on the various pieces using several highly unsuitable writing instruments (where's a slightly-more-dextrous-than-normal hamster when you need one?).  Plan to embroider on the commute tomorrow.

Fall garden wrap-up...

It is a balmy 50 degrees here and actual cold weather is nowhere in sight.  Seems to me I should wait to plant my bulbs until the weather is consistently chilly... otherwise they might sprout prematurely and suffer through the winter.  Or is that a bunch of malarkey?  My free sample bulbs, courtesy of Breck's, wait in the closet, although the iris bulbs are seeming a little wan and crunchy.  The lady fern seeds/spores/whatever are also looking a tad dusty, but we'll hope for the best.  I'll be interested to see which bulbs from last year make an appearance.  The perennials came back like champs, and the rhododendron showed signs of life.  Watching everything slowly disintegrate from my third story window.  In two weeks I can go dispose of the ravages of last summer's beauty.  Then it's Christmas lights.

Is embroidery a dying art?

Nay nay, I say.  It is experiencing a one-woman revival here in apartment 2B.  Behold some of my recent handiwork.  Seriously, embroidery is so ridiculously simple that a hamster with only slightly better than average dexterity could do it.  If you can trace a picture, color inside the lines, and sew a button, you can embroider.  I downloaded a bunch of fonts to my computer, cool Jugendstil and Arts and Crafts-style ones from the last century, and have begun going to town.  I haven't figured out how to post more than one photo per post yet, but I'll try.

Greetings... this is a first.

Is it strange to be an urban dweller (an über-urban dweller, even) yet have a secret penchant for handicrafts and the gentle household arts of yesteryear? I suppose not--seems like that kind of thing is terribly trendy these days--but for some reason among my friends I seem to be alone in my predilections.

I get antsy to make stuff with my hands. Baking is semi-forbidden in my house (alas, all we do is eat the things I make), so I'm stuck baking on behalf of others or for holiday gifts. But I can sew, do embroidery, kind of knit (okay, not really), and make stuff out of paper. I guess that's what I'm going to do on my blog, talk about the stuff I make and how my life relates to it, or the other way around. I'm making this up as I go along. The only reason I'm awake is because my son had a bad dream.