Sara + h

sammy & oliver

Awhile ago, I picked up half a dozen vintage "I Can Read" books at Goodwill.  Among them were four by Syd Hoff: Albert the Albatross, Danny and the Dinosaur (which we already had but when you live in a house where sharing can be an issue, two copies of the same book isn't a bad thing), Oliver, and Sammy the Seal.

There's something so very Mid-Century about these books.  The stories and illustrations both have a kind of gosh-gee-whiz-rocket-ships-and-apple-pie  sort of feel about them.  Quintessentially 1950s America.  The perfect inspiration for a first birthday gift.

Illustrations were traced, stencils cut, t-shirts painted, fabric clipped and stitched, and voila!  Sammy and Oliver were born.

Next time I"ll do the applique by hand.  If there's one thing this wee project taught me it's that I'm no good at sewing small circles onto a t-shirt with a machine.  Squares are one thing.  Circles are an entirely different matter.

twirly-esque skirt

My vision often exceeds my reach and that's no more true than it is in the case of sewing.  I'm long on inspiration and short on skills.  It's all too common for me to sit down at the sewing machine with a "simple" idea only to have it end with a seam ripper and many, many pieces of thread littering the floor.  The hum of my machine's motor is often punctuated with profanity.  All of which explains why, around here, fabric and thread can lay dormant for long stretches.  After repeated failures, it takes awhile for the confidence, or at least willingness, to try again to return.

You might ask how things could go wrong with a well written tutorial such as Erin's Twirly Skirt but friends, I'm proof that the abilities of the pattern writer and those the person sewing have very little, if anything, to do with one another.  I was f'ing up left and right trying to sew this damn skirt.  I ripped the hem out no less than three times trying to get it to look as though it hadn't been sewn by a hyperactive chimpanzee.  When you're talking about a 75" hem, that's a lot of ripping.

Now, you might think with all those many, many threads of discouragement sprinkled about my feet I'd have given up, but I'm here to tell you I persevered.  The skirt I ended up with was different than the one I set out to make, but persevere I did.  Some of the elements of Erin's skirt fell by the wayside due to sheer laziness on my part and some out of necessity.  Loosing the drawstring meant loosing the fiddly-ness of one side seam (not to mention no drawstring to make) and believe me, I needed to loose all the fiddly-ness I could.  A simple elastic waistband it was.  I love you simple elastic waistband.

The change that came out of necessity was loosing a good amount of fabric.  The beautiful and ever-so desirable twirl of Erin's skirt comes from taking a large tube of fabric and cinching one end.  My problem was that cinching the 75 inch, size 90 tube down to a size that wouldn't fall off my less than agreeable three-year-old model  was near impossible.   I reduced the width of each of the pattern pieces (skirt, hem, & casing) by five inches, thereby decreasing the overall size of the tube by 20 inches and making the job of drawing in the waist to an appropriate size a whole lot easier.  My skirt is probably less twirly than Erin's but it's twirly enough.  Enough is perfect when you're sewing impaired.

evening shadowplay

Straight off the camera.  No manipulation.  Really.  I love Fall light.

 

popping up all over

me

I first saw this meme over on Domesticali but it's been popping up all over crafty blogland.  I'm playing along despite not being tagged because my posting mojo done gone off and left me and these questions provide just enough of an outline for me to follow.  Here goes.

1.  Do you promote your blog?

My only real methods of promotion, per se, have been to comment on the blogs of others, link to Sara + h in my Flickr profile, and [very] occasionally link to a related post from an individual picture I've posted over on Flickr.  If my blog and my livelihood were intertwined, I'd do more.  It's not, so I don't.

I've not been a particularly active commenter in recent months (sorry) and I've never commented specifically to get people to come to my site, but for those who are just starting a blog, I'd say this is one of the most effective ways to generate web traffic.  It's also a way to "meet" people and make connections.

2.  How often do you check hits?

This is entirely dependent on how actively I've been posting.  When I'm posting, I check, usually once a day but sometimes more.  Like a lot of folks, I find it interesting to see how people find me.  (The number of hits I get from "flapper + hat + pattern" is astonishing.  I'm done with flapper hats in all their forms.  Other people aren't, apparently.)  When I'm not posting, I don't  check.

3.  Do you stick to one topic?

Broadly speaking, yes.  My life from many angles.  Most notably the craft angle.

(Is anyone still awake?)

4.   Who knows you have a blog?

In real life?  Not that many people, actually.  Even though this is a public site, it's still, in many regards, a personal journal.

5.  How many blogs do you read?

Well, let's just say my Bloglines is not an accurate reflection of the number of blogs that I read.  I used to have a convoluted, beyond explanation (hey, it made sense to me) system for my blog reading.  That system fell apart some time ago and I've yet to sit down and subscribe to the feeds of all those blogs which I read on a regular or semi-regular basis.  Laziness, as ever, is my enemy.

6.  Are you a fast reader?

As someone else said, I'm a fast skimmer.  (Was that you, Meg?  I'll have to go back and check.)  I quickly breeze over whatever doesn't hold any particular interest to me on a given day so that I can devote my attention to what does.

7.  Do you customize your blog or do anything technical?

Look at this site.  Does it look like I do anything technical?  Moving on...

8.  Do you blog anonymously?

No.  I respect those who feel doing so could potentially put them or their loved ones in jeopardy or who just want to maintain a higher level of privacy than I do.  I personally don't feel the need for anonymity but that could always change.  The world can turn funky on a dime.  If all of a sudden this blog becomes private, you'll know that's happened...and that I'm too lazy to go through all my posts to remove pictures and edit the names of people and places.

9.  To what extent do you censor yourself?

Everyone censors themselves on some level.  Sometimes it's just not prudent to say a thing out loud or in print (in pixel???).  On the subjects of politics and religion, I prefer to be eye-to-eye with whomever I'm engaging in discourse.  You'll likely never find more than a passing mention of those things here.  On the other hand, one of the reasons I don't freely mention that I have a blog to the people in my day-to-day life is so that I have more freedom to be frank, so that I don't feel the need to censor myself.

10.  What's the best thing about blogging?

The people.  The connections.  The artistry.  The skill.  The inspiration.  It's all so very, very good.

apples & honey

Astrid and I welcomed the day with apples and honey.  A small observance.

To both those who celebrate and those who don't, shanah tovah, a good year.

birthday feet

In honor of Feet Week

Lola's now six (as of Tuesday) and she's got the boots to prove it.  A little bit biker chick, a little bit cowgirl.  She's ready to stomp.  Watch your toes.