Tukeyliciousness and balance

Happy Thanksgiving Canadian friends!

I am the designated turkey-maker this year. I must confess that while I really like cooking, I don't really adore turkey dinners. This is why my long-suffering husband gets turkey only once a year for Thanksgiving.

I'm certain that the leftovers will be glorious, though...

This has been a very welcome long weekend. The work week has been one of my longest ever. I made it home in time to see my son only one night this week. Entirely unacceptable. It is making me re-examine my work-life balance and question whether it is acceptable. I think that maybe it is not.

I should point out that I am usually able to manage daycare pick-up and regular home times...except for in the Fall. Fall is the busy time at work when I seem to disappear from my life for 3-4 months. This has always been OK with me until last year. Now I find the travel/overtime too big of a sacrifice. What to do?? I am left in the all too familiar quandary of figuring out a balance between a career that has been cultivated through hard work and my family (who will not be young forever). I don't remotely imagine that I am alone in this quest to find balance. I think that I just imagined that I had set my life up with a lot of room for balance before my son was born. Perhaps not as balanced as I thought. Hmmm...some more thinking and balancing will be required!

All this being said, work has also interfered with my crafting somewhat. Unlike a 2-year-old, crafting can stay up late with me. I have been coming home from work, eating some dinner, and then crafting late into the night! Sleep, shmeep. I am working furiously toward a shared November 14th deadline. Hello Ottawa crafters! More about that soon...

Craft show intimidation

What have I gotten myself into?? I agreed to take part in a craft show.



I think that at the time I agreed to be part of the craft show it seemed very abstract. It seemed like a good way to meet some other local crafters. Besides, I love craft shows! I think that I might mean that I love GOING to craft shows. I love to be inspired by the creations of others. Now I am intimidated...my creations are more "crafty" than inspiring. There are some real, hard-core creative people who will be selling at the Craftalicious show. YIKES! So feel free to come out and be nice to me while I sit at a table and feel somewhat intimidated (November 14th in Ottawa!).



Here is a small preview on what I am working on for the craft show:

• Re-usable Christmas bags. I will have a few sizes, but most importantly one size that will fit wine bottles and another size that is perfect for video games and hardcover books.
  

• Bird ornaments. Some in Christmas fabric, some not.
  

• Card ornaments. These were probably the most satisfying to make. It was really fun to pick out different colour/pattern combinations. The closest to quilting that I could manage on a larger scale for a craft show.

Flea Market finds

I had so much fun at the flea market last weekend! The whole family went, but husband and son quickly retreated to the park and left me to wander on my own (OH BLISS!). There were many toy trucks at eye level and my son was starting to vibrate with excitement (and greed). I must confess that I was feeling much the same way!

Here are some of the highlights of my finds (no pictures of the BIG metal Tonka trucks because Evan has been too busy playing with them to stop for photography). Please excuse the BAD pics. It has rained ALL WEEK and I could no longer wait for natural light - I want to show my fantastic finds!

Pyrex bowl (turquoise with wheat harvest):





Pyrex bowl (avocado green!) - I just couldn't resist this one...my mother had a bowl exactly like this. It was the bowl that was used to make every cookie that came out of her kitchen (likely still is!).


I spent most of my time picking through the most fantastic box of vintage pattern books. This one was my favourite (the photographs CRACK me up!):

Notice the lovely cigarette dangling from his nonchalant hand on the cover:

Another page is an ode to pipe smoking 'gents (not sure if the second guy is holding a fishing pole or a walking stick with his non-pipe hand!):

Here are the alpine loving fellas. Don't you love that there is also a hand drawn dog on each page (with a very gentleman-of-the-manor-type description of each breed)?:

Finally, the ASCOT! The image of this sophisticate (cigarette in gloved hand) makes me giggle:

Finally, some of the vendors had some vintage Fisher Price toys. My heart begins to race at the thought of these fantastic-plastic toys. I had to really steel myself to behave. I wanted to buy them. I wanted to buy them so badly that I can still taste the greed in my mouth. I tried to rationalize that they would be a gift for my son....but I knew this would be a lie. So I walked away from the Sesame Street (with a fire hall, Mr. Hooper's store, etc), and I walked away from the garage with the elevator that dings. I am practically a saint!

I say PRACTICALLY a saint, because I did walk away with a little FP cash register that I will put away for Christmas or birthday for the boy (I do think that he will like it - so I can rationalize it!).

OK - long post over. I am slightly embarrassed by my greedy, consumption heavy post!

NOTE: the last two images are not mine (I took them from Google and neglected to make note of the source - oops!)

Just don't know where to start...

Life has been crazy busy lately...mostly in good ways. I have been travelling for work (boo!), but my boys (husband and son) came to meet me in Toronto by train (yay!). Evan was very excited to travel by train and behaved BEAUTIFULLY for his dad. We visited with family and went to the Toronto Zoo. Fun for everyone...and we were sure that Evan would adore the zoo. Ask him what his favourite animal is...? The truck (but of course!). At least it was a zoo-y safari truck.



The camel ride was also pretty exciting:




Doesn't Alice look lovely and gentle? (OK...I don't actually know the camel's name, but why would you name a camel anything other than Alice?).


That lovely young lady in the pictures (no...not Alice the camel - the human one), is my cousin's daughter and Evan took a total shine to her. Notice how he wouldn't let go of her hand - not even in the safari truck! That is devotion. He was pretty smitten (and cute!). I was worried that it might be too much for a 10-year old girl, but she was lovely with him. Thanks Alexandra!

We stayed at my aunt and uncle's house (where we were married!). They have a lovely house that backs onto a small forest and stream. So very relaxing. On Friday night my aunt and I sat outside by a fire (with a lovely glass of wine) while my uncle and husband admired the largest TV that I have ever seen.

I don't know how to put this (it will possibly sound very hokey)...We don't have any family in our adopted home town. Much of the time this is just fine. We have built a close community with dear friends who serve as family. We are happy. But - there is something so easy and peaceful about passing time with your family. People who know your history...maybe this means that they "get" you in a way that others can't access? Maybe the pressure is off because they HAVE to love you?? I don't really know, but there is something very easy and centering about spending time with family. (Told you it would sound hokey.)

Back into the real world routine (at top speed). I'll post about my fun flea market finds in my next post.

She did it!

Remember when I (in my undignified way) declared my crafty crush on Martha's fantastic ABC embroidered quilt top?


Well - UPDATE - she finished it! Go check out the gorgeousness on her blog.

The one in which I am not that smart...

My crafty stories today very clearly demonstrate what a quilting novice I truly am. I wonder if when other people say "self taught" they have had to rip out the same (very high!) number of stitches that I am ripping out in my new hobby? Oh well...I see seam ripping time as time to come out of the sewing room and enjoy a bit of television.

I (FINALLY!) started quilting my zig zag quilt. I thought that I would do some straight line quilting because I really admire how clean the straight line quilting at Red Pepper Quilts looks.

I had measured the width of my walking foot and decided that I would use the edge of the foot as my guide for 3/4" spaced lines. Here is the part where I am not smart - I didn't really account for the fact that the needle travels down the centre of the 3/4" measurement. The result? Extreme busy-ness on busy-ness. Not pretty.



So....I learned something about how to measure.

I also came to the realisation that what I really liked about the quilts that I had seen at Red Pepper was exactly what my quilt is NOT! Calm, quiet, soothing and linear. This does not mean that I don't like my quilt...it is bright and bohemian. It just means that this is not the quilt with which I should try to emulate a crisp, clean style.

Here is the plain old zig zag quilting that I did (once I had finished watching some TV and ripping out the previous straight quilting):

Much cleaner stitching against all the ziggy-zagginess and the bright, bold colours and pattern.

I also enjoyed some quality time with a glass (or two!) of red wine and a movie (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Clearly I was too into the movie (or the wine!) and I made a mistake in my ripple blanket. Can you spot it? I didn't until I was a few hours past my mistake. Boo!

I'm off for some quality time with the TV and crochet ripping out.

Quel désastre!!

OK, so a summer of fabric ordering and in & out of my craft room has resulted in a MESS! I was not feeling inspired or happy facing the chaos that has taken over (somehow the chaos in the rest of the house is OK...fixing it would take too much time away from crafty pursuits!).

I saw a great tutorial on folding fabric...YEEESSSS, you read right. I really like folding fabric. I like ironing it, folding it, then I stack and re-stack it into happy little piles. I find that it clears the mind of any worries and fills it with happy pattern and bold colour instead. Mmmmm....soothing and peaceful. OOoohmmmMMMMmmmmm.

I have the world's smallest craft space. I think that it is around 7X8 (that might be generous!) and is shared with the recycling bins. It is small...but I am SO grateful for it! It's the first time that I've ever had a dedicated craft space that was mine. It is such a luxury to be able to leave the sewing machine out. It frees me up to steal a few minutes for sewing here and there (without using up all of that time hauling all of the gear out). It means that I can leave all of my crafty things out on display. It means that I have my very own little "haven". Do some of you feel similarly about the crafty space you have managed to carve out in your life???