Ah, March.  How I love you.  The robins are back, there are plants poking hesitant new growth up out of the still cold soil.
  I  have a lot of sewing to do this month, not the least of which are some cute little sewing caddies our new Pittsburgh web-based SAGA chapter is donating as table favors.
   Last week I submitted my artisan points for verification, which means I'll also be working on not one, but TWO artisan project submissions.  The Smocking category is fairly small- a couple of pleating samples and a smocked sample.  The Fine Hand Sewing category has 14 different bits to be submitted, though, so I'll be hand-stitching like a mad thing.  I'd like to get them in the mail by mid-April so I have plenty of time to re-do anything that needs tweaking.

  My husband's younger half-sister is getting married (finally!) in May, and we'll be making a trip over to the UK for the wedding.  I'm really excited about that!  The wedding will be in Gloucestershire, but I suspect we'll do a bit of traveling to see some UK based friends, as well.  I wouldn't mind catching up with my friend Dylan- it's been ages since I've seen him.  A visit with another friend, Misty, is a must- I was in her wedding, and she is one of my best friends Evar!

Small Oddity

A few weeks ago I tried to post a comment on a blog I've been following for a couple of years now.  I've commented there before with no problems.  I typed the comment, hit 'post' and the comment disappeared.  "Huh", I thought, and tried again.    Then it happened again with another blog.
   I figured it was a Blogger thing.  They have them sometimes.   When it hadn't cleared up in a few days, I contacted the blog owner to make sure I'd not been turfed off her pages, and I hadn't.  I did notice that I was no longer listed as a follower, though...
   Fast forward to today.  It happened again, with yet a different blog.  It seems that when I cleared my cookies and cache in December, it also cleared off all my Blogger Following settings.  I can understand it clearing my Blogger login, but the blogs I've followed?  That's just weird.

Anyway. Fixed now.  I post this mostly so if anyone who reads this has had or runs into this problem, they know a possible fix.

Progress?

  Sadly, I have not ventured into the sewing room for more than a few minutes in the past week.
My husband's dust allergy has been rather active, so instead I've been vacuuming and dusting and spritzing things with allergen control spray, then mopping and wiping down.

Ohh.  We Interrupt this Post for the Arrival of my Shiny New iPad.....  (love air miles)


Right- two days later.  The new iPad is shiny and white and so light I'm afraid it will float away if I don't keep a good grip on it.  I'll have to procure a nifty case/lid/thingy for it at some point in the next few days.  I installed Google Chrome on it, so now I can do tabbed browsing- something I really missed about Safari on the iPad.  Games and music will be ported in gradually, as well, but for now I'm working with my Gen1 nd mostly admiring the new device.  

Back to the sewing room.  I ordered and retrieved some of these.  One bench, one each of the storage cube units, and a few drawers to put in them.  I'll be having Some Fun putting them together over the next few days.   I'm also thinking about paint colors.  The other sewing room is a very pale green
(I think its this color: http://tinyurl.com/asnkqv9)  but I'm not sure I want that same color in the other room as well.  Maybe a pale peach or yellow. I tend to buy paints that are as close to white as I can find, but I might do an accent wall in an actual color.  We'll see.  

Small successes

  Over the past week I managed to achieve things!

First up was a couple hours of work in the sewing room.  I'm cataloging my books and magazines, and this week I went through my Inspirations,  Australian Smocking and Embroidery and Sew Beautiful collections.  They're now in labeled magazine folders in order. This is one of those tasks that takes longer than it should because it's impossible for me to just sort the things:  I have to stop and thumb through some of the issues.

I got most of the Holiday decorations dragged back to the basement, and cleared off a metal shelving unit that has been taking up space in our front room.  Homes have been found for the things that were cluttering it up, and the shelf unit itself has gone up to the sewing room where it can be more useful. 

   I've stitched about another inch of Palestrina stitch on my Flip-Flop Needlebook case, but am stuck now because I have to add a new thread.  I can't remember the process, so I have to experiment.  
   My daughter-in-law sent me home with a jacket which had lost about half its hem.  I got that put back together for her last night, then realized the jacket was missing a button.  I checked with her this morning and she said she hadn't been able to find it at home, so I toddled off to Joann's to find replacements.  I wanted to use one of the funky La Mode Brocade designs, but it only comes in one size and I need two, so that was out.  The experience made me wish I lived much closer to Britex, where they have an entire room full of button designs.  Bet I could have found multiple sizes of cool buttons there!  It's entirely possible that DiL would be just as happy that I had to choose something more subtle.  She's not a funky or flashy gal.
  After finishing that bit of mending I started on a more long-term project: making a plarn shopping tote.  Last night I smoothed out blue plastic bags, cut them into loops and joined them to make a decent-sized ball of plarn.  Sometime this week I'll start crocheting that into a bag using this pattern: http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2010/how-tuesday-how-to-make-plarn-crochet-an-eco-friendly-tote-b/
  It's been a while since I've done any crochet, so I suspect this to take a while as a 15-20 minute at a time project.  [The plastic has been deemed to be too noisy to be a tv project.]

Ruminations on New Year's Eve

  Ah, the joys of the holiday season.  I had to go pick up a prescription today.  The pharmacy we use is in a little center that has a Whole Foods on one end and a double-decker area with the pharmacy on the lower level and a bike store, State Store and phone store on the upper level.
   Between the Whole Foods and the State Store, the parking lot was packed.  You'd think someone had announced a moratorium on food and booze sales for the next month or so!
   I did, eventually, manage to find a parking space and pick up my prescription.

  It's snowing now.  This is the third snowfall in 7 days. The previous accumulation is about 7" deep and we could get another inch or so from the current fall.  The Hub and I shall be staying in tonight and leaving the slick roads to braver souls. Our journey home from the Philadelphia area on the 26th satisfied every longing either of us might have had for winter weather driving!  We ran into flurries about a half hour west and by the time we'd hit the 3rd service area there was a lot of accumulation and more coming down at the rate of about 1.25" per hour!  [It took us about 8.5 hours to do the trip that usually takes us 5.5.)

  I don't make New Year's resolutions.  I find them too stressful, and most of the time mine are things that should be ongoing commitments anyway.  Instead, I think about goals: goals I met in the outgoing year and those I'd like to achieve in the coming one.
   This past year I managed to get to the gym for a training session twice a week most weeks.  The weeks I didn't get there I was either out-of-town and doing a lot of walking or I was ill and made up the session when I felt better.  I've managed to drop a few pounds and tone up enough to wear a size smaller jeans.  The training sessions will continue for 2013 with an intention to make it into the gym at least 3 times each week.  I'm hopeful that LAFitness will manage to get the pool heater working consistently so I can do a pool workout every week.
    Not enough sewing was completed in 2012.  In fact, I'm not sure I actually finished a single project!
This must change.  I have so much fabric, so many patterns and so many partially-finished projects in the sewing room that it's ridiculous.  This didn't stop me from adding to my fabric/project stash while I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, though.  Ooooh, no.  I shopped at Britex (twice!) and came home with some really nice cotton lengths to be transformed into baby clothes (I have a new great-great nephew and a great-great-niece/nephew on the way) and enough purple dupioni with a coordinating dupioni print to make another Beverley Sheldrick designed sewing reticule.  Before I start that, though, I need to clear out a couple of convention projects.
I'm trying to decide if one older project per week is too ambitious a goal.  I suppose it will depend on what it is- a daygown goes together pretty fast, but my embroidery projects could take hundreds of hours.  I see a schedule in my future.
   Catching up with housework and then keeping on top of it is another recurring goal.  I've never been Susie Homemaker and this larger home is kicking my butt!  I've decided that one thing that would help is to streamline the amount of "stuff" in each room.  My new mantra for household shopping is "are you willing to pack that up and move it?"  If the answer is no, I pass by.  I saved about $500 just today doing that as I decided that rather than buy a couple of chests of drawers for the sewing room, I'd be better served by sewing up projects so they can go on hangers or on display on a shelf.  Quite a bit of fabric will just go away, as it is destined to become wee-care items for the next Smocking Arts convention or garments for my granddaughter.
   There will be more blogging and more photos in 2013.  I promise!  After all, I'll need photo evidence of all these things I'll be sewing, right?  There will also be some garden work to share when spring comes.  (I'm enchanted by the idea of Burpee's new container corn.  I may just grow my own Halloween decorations this year.)

May all your goals be achievable and your new year be a happy one!

Well, Hmmmmm-

I follow two blogs from V and E Historic: a pattern blog and a costuming blog.  Recently, the pattern blog seems to have been taken over by a commercial travel enterprise.  I have no interest in this, but can't figure out how to remove  it.  I also can't contact the previous owner to find out if she is aware of the situation.  When I try to access VandEHistoric Costuming, I get a message that I'm not permitted to view that blog.

In other news, my husband posted this commercial to his G+ account today, and since I have a few Kiwi readers, I had to share:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc&feature=g-all-esi     There's more information at the link, but I thought it was quite clever.

I'm still here!

  It's been a long summer full of lots of little tasks, but very little sewing.

  I spent last week in Atlanta, Georgia with a bunch of stitching pals at the annual SAGA convention.  I returned home all fired up to get some stitching done!  I flew down on Tuesday night so I could have Wednesday to bop around and relax.  I'd thought about taking the Atlanta tour, but was afraid I'd be worn out halfway through the day and then grumpy for the rest of the week.  Wednesday evening Peanut Butter and Jelly Kids presented a fashion show of handsewn dresses.  The models were sweet and the dresses were lovely.  I won a doorprize!  The kit has everything I need to make this little dress except for the piping and the thread!

Jane's First Day Dress courtesy of Fine Stitchery

   Thursday I took a full day class with Susie Gay where we made a beaded scissor keep.  Mine is about half done.  I just have a bit of embroidery to do, some button stitch around the tab of the tassel, cording to twist, and then I can put it together.

   Friday was  a half day class with Bobbi Chase.  We made a sweet little one-piece undergarment for a 14" doll.  I'm hoping mine will fit my Mary Frances doll.  If not, I'll have to size up the pattern a bit and make another one.  It's so easy and quick to do, even though the entire thing is hand stitched.

Fine Handsewn Undergarments by Bobbi Chase

Saturday was another full day, this time with Jeannie Baumeister.  Our project was the Drawn Thread Lace Baby Dress.  Pulling small areas of  threads on linen is very intense work!  I didn't get as far along with this as I'd hoped, but I will finish it.  This is a photo of the dress top.  A partial thread is pulled from the center front of the fabric, then the area is hemstitched, a length of lace insertion is added, and then a piece of gathered lace is stitched on.  The flowers are tiny bullion roses and lazy daisy stitches.
Check the link below for Jeannie's post on this precious little dress.

Photo used by permission of Jeannie Baumeister of the
Old Fashioned Baby

  My Sunday class was quite fun.  We learned to make buttons using small wire circles (toy wheel frames, really) , wooden button molds and thread.  I get the idea of how to make them, but had problems in class doing the spiderweb stitch.  I'm left handed- my spiderwebs were upside-down, which means my button front wasn't very pretty.  Fortunately, these are so quick that I can take my samples apart and do them over.
   The photo below is Bobbi Chase's model board for the class.

Button board for Dorset Buttons

  All in all, this was an enjoyable convention.  I didn't win a basket (again), but everybody else at my table did!  I met up with some other Pittsburgh area women and we're discussing plans for a new, official chapter in Allegheny County.  Both flights were quick and uneventful, just the way I like them. 

  I'm already looking forward to next year's convention in Frisco, Texas.