Charley's Quilt.

This is a little quilt for a new(ish) baby girl named Charley. Working with different palettes is kind of difficult for me, I am a huge in-rut-sticker as far as color is concerned. Anyway, the original idea was pale pink and yellow, but I seem incapable of making a quilt without some gray in it. Oh, well, I think it turns out well, it started out bigger, but then The Beloved Viking and I had a falling out concerning thread tension, and we had to whack a bit off the sides. I do love the crumplies, though!

My Pony Only Does One Trick.

Well, this is what happens when you cut out more 3" squares that any normal person could possibly want. Tote bags out the Wazoo. I did, however, finish something that has been languishing in the to-be-finished pile for a while, and will post tomorrow when pictures have been taken. Anyway, in a cheesy advertisement, I want to remind anyone who might be interested that if you purchase one of these babies (at the low, low, price of $24! in my best Billy Mays voice) you also get a free 4"x5" "Yarn Love" print on shiny lovely metallic paper. Man, I miss Billy Mays, (and you might think less of me, but it's the truth,) more than I miss Michael Jackson. This is relevant to craft blogging, because I SAY IT IS.

Sunday Afternoon.

Sewing, sitting around with the animals, "What's the Matter with Helen?" on the weird antenna tv movie station, the husband folding clothes, vacuuming the house, and listening to baseball on the radio. Very very high rating on my afternoon enjoyability scale.

AH!

It is beautiful in Kansas City today. Sickeningly. It's sunny but cool and there's a lovely breeze and everything is really, really green. Rufus and I just took a long walk, down to our neighborhood park to run around in the giant field, and hardly broke a sweat. This morning I turned the air off and put in the window fans, and seriously, it has been bordering on CHILLY in the house. It's amazing. Everything smells good. I really have nothing much to report except that. Oh, and THANK YOU! to Jessamy and Geraldine for tagging me as a lovely blog! I will spread the tagging love around, but today it is too nice to stay in front of the computer! I'm going OUT!

(Above image not at all related. I just like it, and since lately my life has been all about 4" squares, I thought I would throw it up there.)

Process.

These are the things my hands do when making stuff.
(Yeah, I know, I have been lame lately, and only posting about tote bags which frankly, while fun to make, not exciting. But I am planning a party, and doing some freelance work, and applying for jobs, so. By the way, does anyone know if I can use a generic walking foot on the Viking? Because while I would like to buy a Husqvarna one, 100 moneys is a lot to put out for a tiny foot, and I don't want to start quilting stuff until I have one again.)

More Patchys.

Seriously, these patch things are fun to make. I just put a new one in the shop and have two more on the way. I LOVE the fabric on the back of these, it is a really soft woven striped fabric, and it makes me think of fancy people on boats. You know, the fancy kind of boats. Yeah. Also, as a special summer bonus, I have decided to include a 4"x5" "Yarn Love" print with every tote bag!Also, Happy 4th of July! Also known around here as Brian's birthday, so we went to a Royals game, and ACTUALLY saw them win. It was amazing. Right now there are a ton of fireworks going off in our neighborhood, and Baxter has NO idea what's going on. Yay America!

Remember When I Said

...that I was going to take more pictures OUTSIDE of my house? Well, as part of that resolution, several Saturdays ago, I participated in the Urban Photo Safari, a fabulous event put on by some fabulous people who put this thing on every year just for fun. Anyway, the jist of it is, you get four hours, after you sign in with them, to go around and shoot your heart out. At the end of those four hours, you meet back up and they download all your photos onto their handy little laptops. Then, you have a few days to pick out your best 10 pictures, and you send in the filenames. Note that you just send in the names of the unedited files, you get NO EDITING, and NO CROPPING. Which is tricky. I never really realized how much I depend on photoshop for levels, a bit of cropping, a bit of color correction, etc, until I was forced to shoot knowing I would be without it.Anyway, long story short, it was extremely fun, and by an crazy amount of luck, one of my photographs won in the voting! (Oh, yeah, everyone who participates gets 10 votes to use on everyone elses' pictures, and the photo with the most votes wins. Duh.) Anyway, I thought I would post my ten photos, to prove that I have been attempting to keep my resolution. Also, if you want to see my top 36 photos (I am indecisive, what can I say) you can look here.

Patchy McTote Bag!

In high school, my friend Morgan and I used to make up nicknames for people by picking one or two of their characteristics and using the ingenius formula ______y Mc _______ ______. Blanky McBlankblank. I think everyone did it though. We also made up new lyrics to the Taco John's jingle, which isn't really newsworthy but sure makes me hungry for Taco Johns. True story: One time I met one of the Taco John's test kitchen chefs. They're based out of Wyoming or a Dakota or something. She was really nice and left a sweatshirt here in Missouri and we shipped it back to her. TRUE STORY! There are some days when I just should not be allowed to write a blog, and this is one of them. The point of the story was: Patchy McTotebag.
I think I'll just post pictures and we'll all be happier, k?

PS: Etsyfied.