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What new craft should we try?

My friend Donna and I have taken to occasionally trying crafts and projects that are new to one or both of us. When her peach tree was overloaded, we made jam. Then when I got the bug up my butt we made soap (the soap works great by the way).

The other evening Donna asked me what was up next for our crafting adventures and, I'm stumped. I want to try something new but I've tried a lot of crafts over the years.  Needless to say I'm turning to you for advice and ideas.

Here are all the crafts I can think of that I have tried (not mastered mind you but tried):

fiber crafts: sewing, quilting, knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, embroidery, latch hook, weaving, screen printing

industrial arts: woodworking, woodturning, woodburning, welding, carving/whittling

paper arts: calligraphy, scrapbooking (poorly), paper mache (poorly)

other: ceramics (including wheelthrowing), wreath making, ukranian egg dying, glass fusing, stained glass, lost wax casting (didn't get far on this one)

Butter making is getting some blog airtime lately but I've tried that too (my mom does it with her preschool class)

So what else should we be trying? A cooking art? Souffles? Oh wait, I don't have a kitchen! What about bookbinding?  Crewel?  Macrame?

All ideas welcome.

In the meantime, I'm off to make another custom tv cover. I've made a couple custom sales through the etsy site. Let me know if your tv is feeling naked.

Not quite a year behind

I think scrapbooking is one craft that has to be done with friends. The only time I get inspired to work on Biscuit's album is when my friend Sactownkid invites me over for a "crop."  It's basically like going to a scrapbooking store with free access to all the supplies because that gal has some cool stuff (like Halloween stamps when you mention you're doing a Halloween page).

Saturday night I got two pages done from last fall.  Sorry for the awful photos.

Luckily, since I'm WAY behind and not a very good scrapper, it's convenient that she's scrappin' for Biscuit too. Check out this digital layout she did in her online class.  Thanks again, Sactownkid!!

Biscuit's weekend

It's pretty exhausting shopping for fresh veggies and new shoes

After a nap it was off to grammie's for "swimming" in another itty bitty pool

Hope you had a fun and restful Saturday. If you want to while away the afternoon with some good blog reading, head on over to Jen Lemen's site and start with this post.

I hope to be back later with photos of this quilt all finished up (assuming Biscuit actually naps--she's in there playing right now).

Book talk

So I hopped on the bandwagon and sorted my books by color. Which was interesting only in that I saw books on my shelf I didn't know I owned. And I found out I own a lot of white books.

I decided to do a random (unedited) book pull and share a bit about each book and whether or not I've even read it. Somehow this seemed interesting to me--maybe it's because I love seeing what's on other people's bookshelves when I go to their homes.

Top shelf (mostly white but I grabbed an orange book)
Love in a Time of Cholera--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read it on a family summer vacation--I think the summer I was pregnant with Biscuit. Enjoyed it reasonably well. Things that stick in my mind, they described his collar in some weird way (celluloid??) and he worked as a telegraph person and the ending on the ship.

Middle shelf (black section)
I Know This Much Is True--Wally Lamb
Read it ages ago. Don't recall much. Is this the one about the house painter who's kid dies of SIDS? If so, that's all I remember

Bottom shelf (yellow)
Home Based Businesses for Dummies
I bought this for Mr. H as part of a Christmas gift that included the business license for Haworth Woodworks (business is going great, website is coming soon) Neither of us have so much as opened this book.

From the (completely disorganized) bookshelf in the craft room. I pulled one random book from the back (books are two rows deep).
In the Name of the Rose--Umberto Eco
Best I can recall my boyfriend in college recommended this book. I've started it a few times but never gotten past page 50 or so. Does it start with some archeological dig? I have no idea. Maybe I'll pick it up again soon-it's supposed to be good.

And, in the most scary photo of all, the nightstand which is TOTALLY out of control right now. In addition to way too many magazines, free blank journals from BlogHer, the never ending scarf knitting project and Walter the Farting Dog, I have:

• Book 6 of Harry Potter which I never put away after re-reading the last bit in preparation for Book 7
• Too Much of a Good Thing by Dan Kindlon which, oddly enough, Biscuit yanked off the shelf at the library during a little fit and I am finding very interesting. It's about parenting  and raising children of character in an age when parents can often afford to give children everything they need and more. I'm nearly done.
• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I remember liking "From Beirut to Jeruselum" several years ago and got this book from my in laws several years after everyone else has read it. He repeats himself a lot but overall it's interesting. I tend to like business books.  Random aside, do you read Seth Godin's blog? I like that too.
• Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin--I just bought this and plan to read it but can't seem to focus. Have only finished the introduction.
• The Crafters Companion by Anna Torborg--I liked learning a little more about the crafty bloggers I read. But I probably won't use any of the patterns. Fun book anyway.

And just to finish up this "book-themed, wow I know how to live it up on a Friday night" post, a video of a very distracted Biscuit helping to read her favorite book:

And as a final PS, what does your Amazon "recommended book list" say about you? I find that thing scarily accurate about what I will like.

Just before Mr. H took it back to the garage for a redo

Wow, kitchen remodels are so. much. fun.

You can almost picture the fridge underneath the hover-cabinet. Except, you can't really, because the hover cabinet is an inch too low.

Mr. H is having his way with it in the garage as we speak and I am confident all will be well by midnight.

I think I'll go hole up in my sewing room until my most excellent lifting skills are required again.

Super special treat (ok, they're really just figs)

I bought some delicious Turkish figs at the Farmer's Market on Saturday but yesterday Biscuit refused to eat a fruit that looked like this (only less blurry)

So tonight they reappeared as a "super special treat" appetizer and she ate three and kept asking for more.  Here's what they look like as a super special treat. (again, less fuzzy in real life)

Have you ever really looked at the inside of a fig? I can't decide if they look like a beautiful jewel or an internal organ. Either way, they are yummy.

And in totally unrelated news, the kitchen is becoming somewhat kitchen-like. The end is in sight!

Quilt in progress

Another little girl is due to join the family in a few short weeks. I'd better get back to sewing before niece #3 arrives.  Hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

A letter to Starbucks

Dear Starbucks executive (or barista) (or whoever has anything to do with Starbucks that might actually read this blog),

Those cardboard boxes of coffee are just perfect for us friendly folks who want to bring caffeine to what promises to be a boring 8:30 a.m. meeting.  And it's great you provide cups and napkins and sugar and cream--all for just $12.  But if you can get a fancy cardboard box for coffee, do you think you could spring for a watertight bottle for the cream?  That tricky "sticker over the hole in the grande cup" thing doesn't work so well in a car filled with toddler crap.

And it's kind of a hassle to clean a grande cup full of cream out of your car upholstery.  Just sayin'.

Oh, and while I've got your attention, the whole tall, grande, venti thing is kind of annoying. I have and will continue to call a small a small.

Other than that, love your stuff. Keep up the good work.

Your friend with a stinky car,
Melissa

On the up side, we drove out to my in laws' house to use their steam cleaner and we got fed a fabulous pasta dinner complete with shrimp they caught during their recent Canadian fishing trip.

And since I can't leave without a photo. Look, our kitchen has light. And it looks like a beer glass. Only better. And there is paint on the walls. And check out that fabulous window. We also very nearly have a floor.

Skirts and birds

First the skirt:
Here is Biscuit walking into daycare*, unbrushed hair, no shoes and a NASCAR t-shirt. Yes, I am an awesome parent.

On the other hand, I did make her skirt.

Ages ago, the lovely Alicia G (of the Craft Cart) sent me a most spectacular package of upholstery samples and a necklace and a really long piece of this wonderful floral fabric.  Immediately I knew I wanted to make Biscuit a tiered, gathered skirt. And several months later, here it is. Not perfect but done.

Thank you SO much Alicia! Now I just need to come up with the perfect project for the upholstery pieces...

Changing gears completely, birds.

Every evening when I leave work I walk across a field that is filled with these tiny black birds with orange bellies and narrow wings that fly within inches of the ground. It's really cool to watch them swoop through the air and skim just above the grass tops. A nice treat as I head out into evening commute traffic.

Tonight I had my camera along and spent a good while trying to get a picture of the birds but instead getting about 10 photos like this.

I do believe that blur in the center is possibly a bird (but not exactly what I was going for).
I finally got this:

At least there's a bird in there! And then I took a video so bouncy it would give you motion sickness so I won't bother to share. 

Ok, so that was really random and I guess you had to be there but these birds are way cool. (well, in person anyway).

*not sure what's up with the bluish light. weird....

Ok, here's another shot of the skirt :)  I'll be back tomorrow with less randomness!

Good clean fun

If you had asked me two months ago to rate my interest in the craft of soap making on a scale of 1 to 10 I would have said zero.  But then I listened, somewhat reluctantly, to the Craftsanity podcast with Dee Bellini and got totally excited about making soap.

I made several trips to several stores and got all the supplies for the free recipe provided* (note-this link will download a pdf file) and then I roped in my friend who is always up for this sort of silliness (and who already owned a stick blender). Lo and behold our soap came out great (despite the lavender buds looking weird and the lavender scent smelling really off).

I thought our bars of soap were so lovely I decided to go all craft bloggy and try to pose a gorgeous product shot (a la Posie or Heather) with sprigs of fresh lavender. It looked really good in my mind.

My first mistake was having a day job and a toddler preventing me from capturing the elusive natural light so praised by the craft blogging community.  By 7:30 the sun was well behind the trees but I found a reasonably well lit patch of my front walkway and laid out my vignette.

At which point my new neighbor came over to tell me about how his cat has been in our yard and he hopes that's okay.  I tried to be nonchalant about the fact that I was hunkered down in my front yard photographing a shoebox full of soap on one of my bathroom towels. In the crafty blogoshere it seems so perfectly normal to pose vignettes of soap (and why does hers look so damn good?).  In my neighborhood, not so much.

New neighbor either didn't notice (or didn't comment) on my strange little project and went home. And I moved to the driveway on the other side of the house. When the family walking their dog started down the street just after a bunch of kids on bikes I threw in the towel (literally!) and decided ya'll would just have to live with my poorly lit, fuzzy photos of my slightly weird smelling but oh so moisturizing soap.

With real lavender sprigs!!

* if you try this recipe, two things. The oils are apparently by weight (not volume) so use your scale.  It took us just over 20 minutes to be certain we'd reached "trace" with our stick blender--lots longer than we expected.