Books I Read in 2011

I had a goal for 2011 to read one book a month. I had done pretty well on maternity leave, and wanted to make sure that I didn’t just give up on books in favor of TV and blogs. I made it, but I’m not going to set a much higher goal for 2012! I want to spend time making and seeing other people, too. I used GoodReads to keep track of what I’ve read, which kept it simple (although I’m kind of guessing as to which books were at the beginning of the year or not, because I didn’t sign up until after Jan 1). My book club accounts for several of these books, although we didn’t hit one book a month and there were months that I read my own choice instead of the book club book. I started commuting on a daily basis again in September, which gave me a few extra hours of book time a week. I got a Nook this fall, too, so some of my choices are guided by what I can check out from my library or the Philadelphia library if I don’t feel like buying a book for it (ebook prices need to drop, y’all. Plus I’m realizing that there’s no such thing as a clearance table or used bookstore in the land of digital, which is highly unsuitable), but it does help me be able to read when I’m awake in the middle of the night unable to sleep without having to turn on a light and wake up Carl. There were several more that I only half finished before I had to return them. No reviews this time, but my highest recommendations go to #2, 7, 8, 16, and 17.

1. Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, Anne Lamott
2. Half Baked, Alexa Stevenson
3. A Very Long Engagement, Sebastien Japrisot
4. Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three, Paula Polk Lillard
5. Passing, Nella Larsen
6. Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, Jenna Woginrich
7. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
8. Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Gabrielle Hamilton
9. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer
10. Even Now, Karen Kingsbury
11. Spoiled, Heather Cocks
12. Ask Again Later, Jill A Davis
13. The Friday Night Knitting Club, Kate Jacobs
14. Knit Two, Kate Jacobs
15. A Vintage Affair, Isabel Wolff
16. The Piano Teacher, Janice Y.K. Lee
17. Room, Emma Donoghue
18. All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, Lan Samantha Chang
19. The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Ben Sherwood
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
21. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

Bar Chart Mini-quilt

A few scraps, a challenge, a little play, and a little quilt. Now back to working on finishing “my” projects.

Pfaff 30

 

This is my “new” old sewing machine, a Pfaff 30 from approximately 1961. I got it around Mother’s Day (and found another vintage machine the same weekend that needs a few repairs) thanks to some craigslist searching. It has a few curious traits: I can’t find bobbins that fit exactly so we have to modify them (the Singer class 15′s are the closest approximation, so it’s likely a Singer clone), stretch belts seem to be the best fit but they don’t last very long, and the manual says no cotton thread in the bobbin but I still like my Aurifil best for quilting so I use different threads top and bottom, which is probably the cause of the occasional thread breakage. It’s a straight stitch machine which means I’m keeping my old cheapo around for things like buttonholes, but the feed dogs drop and it’s great for free motion quilting. I’d much rather have thread that breaks than needles that fall out and break like in my old (newer) machine, and it’s nice to be able to take a screwdriver to it to adjust things without feeling like the whole thing could fall apart. Thankfully Carl’s interested enough in the machine side of things to keep it up and running when something’s a bit off. I subscribed to the yahoo vintage pfaff group, and I’m just not at that level of devotion to the machines. This one’s working out well for me, though, and the reliability after 50 years is pretty amazing.

(And yeah, there’s a little bit of fabric on my “cutting table” that needs to find a home on my shelves!)

 

 

Basics Miscellany Block

One of my favorite lines of fabric to come out this year was Julia Rothman’s Miscellany by Cloud 9 fabrics. I love Julia’s illustrations, and they translated great to fabric. They’re especially distinctive compared to everything else on the market. I was excited to see the contest that Pat and Victoria were hosting for blocks to be made from this fabric that would go into a charity quilt through Basics. I got to brainstorming what I would do if I got to participate, and ended up buying a fat quarter stack – and then learned that I was being given a piece of each fabric in the line to make a block with! It was fun, though, because I’ll probably design a whole quilt with these fabrics much differently than one 12″ block.

My first thought was something based on the endless knot design with bias tape on top, but I couldn’t come up with anything that flowed. Then I was going to do something with curves, but when I saw Dan’s name on the list of participants and remembered that I’ve never really sewn curves in a block before, I decided he probably had it covered (which he did! He sewed an awesome block with curves!). I didn’t want to do anything too improv-based, either, because there wasn’t a lot of extra fabric and I wanted to make sure that I’d end up with something I was happy with. Here’s my block:
I paper-pieced the triangles in four rows and sewed them together. It was actually fun measuring out and making the paper piecing pattern (I used wrapping paper because it was lightweight and I needed lengths of 12″ which is longer than regular paper). I should have made one practice run, though, because I didn’t cut the pieces big enough for the first row I made (the second row in the block) so the points weren’t quite covered. I love the accuracy that this method gives! I should try it on some trickier designs next.

I’m excited to see everyone else’s block and see who wins! I saw this one earlier today – such a creative use of these prints, and not something that ever would have occurred to me, but it’s really great too.

Proof that I still sew

I’ve snuck a bit of sewing and crafting into weekend naptimes lately, but haven’t gotten around to taking pictures of everything. These are tiny little blocks, measuring 5-6″ (accuracy in stitching is not my strong point), so each of the half-square triangle units inside are 1.5″ finished, if I remember right. And that partial block in the lower right hand corner may have gone missing. I’m blaming the dog.  I’m not sure if these will be in a doll quilt or the center of a medallion, but there are plenty of other WIP’s to keep them company.

The fabrics are from a City Weekend Mini-charm pack (2.5″ square) that I won on a Martha Stewart crafts department blog giveaway.

Small Craft

Just a small craft for the bridal shower below – a brooch for the bride. We held the shower at a restaurant (the Kingsmill marina, beautiful setting on the James River), so there wasn’t a lot of prep that needed to be done. I pulled out my box of lace scraps, felt and ribbon, and did a touch of stitching and gluing while chasing Will around. I suppose I could have trimmed those loose threads, but that’s that.

Amateur Photography Hour

I’m still getting used to taking pictures with the “fancy” (DSLR) cameras, and this bugs me about what I uploaded last night from a friend’s bridal shower. The first picture the flash came on on auto, so I turned it off for the second one. Much better lighting, but my f-stop was wrong so I focused way in the distance and had a blurry subject.

Then we wanted a group shot. I’m happy with the one I took myself, but I have a suspicious that the guy I handed my camera off to so I could be in the picture thought he’d change a setting, because every picture he took was washed out and blurry. He was taking pictures of his own family with a DSLR, so it seemed like maybe he could handle it.The rest of the pictures from the shower are on Facebook.

Burlap Curtains

What do you think of burlap curtains? Our front two windows have double curtain rods, but I’m so not into polyester sheers. The ceilings are on the high side, so we’d be looking at 8.5 feet of curtains to graze the floor, and I’m not finding many options below $100 per window since you have to buy each curtain & sheer by the panel (the burlap curtains above, btw, are Pottery Barn and are $80 per panel). I’m not sure that the burlap you buy for $1.50 a yard is the same quality as what pottery barn uses, and I can’t believe I’m considering sewing my curtains (so boring & time consuming) but we have plenty of other windows that we’ll be buying blinds for and it’s going to add up! I think for the “sheers” I’ll use cotton gauze – a little more expensive at $3.85 a yard, but better than polyester and it’ll add a little texture. It should be a nice, casual look overall.

Or should I just use these used potato sacks? (Kidding, kind of).

Pennants and Pinterest

housetohome.co.uk

You know what trend is really overdone in the crafty world right now? Pennants. And yet this is my inspiration photo for the bonus room, and I’ll probably make a pennant string for somewhere in the space, although I’m looking at the palest shades of yellow imaginable. And we’ll all be sharing the space, hopefully, instead of having it just as a playroom. I’m thinking we’ll hang up the flags we own (and maybe buy a couple more to round out the collection), hang this up as curtains, and do some kind of bright polka dots like these but maybe cut out of felt and adhered with sticky backed velcro so they can be played with. I’ll report back if that turns out to be genius or the worst idea ever. (And can I just say that it confuses me to have that website be whatisblik.com – I type thisisblik.com every time).

I’m keeping track of the pictures I like for decorating, and a whole lot of other things, over on pinterest. Check out my boards here.  Also, if you want to join let me know – it says invite only but I requested an account and it only took a couple days to get added. I didn’t sign up at first because I didn’t know why I’d need a visual bookmarking tool because I don’t think of myself as being super visual, but it turns out it’s the handiest way to bookmark there is, and I get annoyed when sites don’t have pictures because they can’t go on my pinterest. Also, the community aspect is really straightforward – it’s kind of what I hoped tumblr would be, but wasn’t, even if sometimes it feels like the same images are getting recycled on everyone’s boards. I make an effort to add new things and not just repin all the time, so there’s fresh stuff floating around. And remember to pin from the most specific post page you can find so the author/stylist/photographer is really credited (ie don’t pull from a site that’s already aggregating content so I have to click through 5 pages to see where it really came from).

Decorating the new house

If good blogs have a story-like narrative, I’ll admit to being a terrible blogger and make the startling revelation that we’ve bought a house and are moving in starting next week! Yeah, the conventional way might be to blog about our search process, the house we’ve found and put under contract, and everything along the way, but we’ve been browsing for a long time and didn’t really believe we’d find the right thing in our price range until we had an offer that was accepted last month. Even then, it was hard to believe that the deal wouldn’t fall through along the way, but it didn’t, and we get the keys next Sunday. We’re almost all packed up now, and a move 10 minutes down the road isn’t as tough as most other situations, although having an almost 5 month old means we’ll need a lot of extra help to get ourselves settled.

Since we got married two years ago and combined our two houses full of stuff into one, there hasn’t been much decorating outside of hanging everything in sight on the wall so it wouldn’t get ruined. We packed up stuff that didn’t fit and either gave it away or put it in storage somewhere else until we’d have room for it again. We didn’t want to do anything major that might affect selling or renting our current house – even a lot of the planting that Carl did last year was in big containers so that we could take bushes and trees with us if we found a place. We’ll have no problem filling the new space, except for a few bigger pieces of furniture (I can always use more bookshelves, no matter how many times I sort through my books). So I’m pretty excited to get the chance to decorate again, even if it’s more of a challenge incorporating someone else’s tastes into the space – it’ll be good to have a house that’s really ours, not just his or mine.

When I moved into our current house, all of the walls had been painted white, which left me with a blank canvas and meant I could take my time with picking colors and painting. I painted the kitchen, living room, and one wall in the bedroom. The former owners of our new house kind of took the rainbow approach to color choice, with no white walls left in the place, and almost every room a different, bold, color. Even in rooms where the color isn’t so bad, they’re definitely not what I would have chosen, and it just wouldn’t feel like it was ours if we didn’t change a few things around.

We’re prioritizing which rooms to paint first, so we can get as much as possible done before our stuff is moved in. I’m not sure how that’ll happen in less than a week’s time, but that’s the plan! You want to know what’s weird? One of the things I like the least is the bright blue ceilings in the kids’ rooms (Will’s room and the guest room), but we’re considering a light aqua ceiling in the kitchen. The kitchen has white cabinets, black & white linoleum floors, and lavender walls.

I was looking for pictures online to convince Carl of my vision of turquoise walls to go with the black and white, and I found this image to illustrate (it won’t let me post it here) from a vintage catalog that’s way more my era than Carl’s. So turquoise walls were out, and a turquoise ceiling was in. A search on the House of Turquoise blog (which seriously could be my guide for decorating the entire house, I love those colors so much) brought us this inspiration photo:

source

So the plan is for the walls to be white, and the ceiling to be blue. We’ll have to figure out a few things, like how to make it blend it well with the family room since they’re connected. And our wood dining table will be in this room so that I can have the dining room for a craft space, so I may be covering it with a black & white tablecloth to make the room feel ok. When first started quilting I collected a lot of black and white fabric that I haven’t been very inspired by lately, but they’ll come in handy to make some decorations (placemats, runner, wall hanging, etc) here.