Please, Oh, Please Reprint these Books

IMG_1738, originally uploaded by Flame's.

Angela Banner wrote a delightful series of little books for beginning readers. For some reason, they have not been re-printed in the last 15 years. They go for the big bucks on eBay. We are lucky enough to own at least three of the darlings, a bit worse for the wear but still so charming. Big sister reads to Enzo in bed.

The Girl in Her Summer Dress

I took this picture outside before we walked to the bus stop for the last time as a second grader. *Sniff*. Time is flying and I want to enjoy every minute of it. Making a dress for her slows me down and makes me feel like I'm living in the here and now.

Round Neck Top Pattern

I found this that*darn*kat pattern surfing the web. Maybe from Sew Mama Sew. I decided to buy it from Etsy and try it. I made it for Fifi's last day of second grade. I made it in a chocolate brown linen blend (challenging to cut and sew; it easily unravels) and a orange Heather Ross fabric.
I love how it came out.

ATC Kids Swap

Fiamma named her series of artist trading cards, "Five Cats". We took her pencil drawing, and photocopied it. She then cut them out and collaged the drawing onto five watercolor paper trading cards, and then she individually painted each one.

Just a 2 Year Hiccup of An Absence.

I didn't post here for so long: the the longer I didn't post, the more I talked myself out of it.

I was still crafting but just not keeping up this crafty blog. Called myself some names like blog loser, and wanna-be craft blogger.

Funny thing is, I started this blog three years ago, and last posted in it two years ago, almost to the month! A synchronicity of sorts. Because I am back.

The Kids' ATC (artist trading card) Swap of 2009 has called me back out of retirement (lol- as it can hardly be called that because I only had a handful of posts, and it's not like anyone was reading it anyway!). This is the perfect place to post photos and talk about it. Wise Craft is a great blog that I have loved to read ever since I realized there was a world of craft blogs. She sponsored this swap.

Love Is All Around

We made these Valentines for Fiamma's kindergarten class. I was sort of in a hurry to get them done because I waited until the night before Valentines to do them, and I was sick, and I was set on starting and finishing a Valentine's skirt as a present for Fi. So I had her draw an image and then photocopied it. We cut them out and stuck them on some pretty colored cards I had in the supplies, and then the crowning touch was sticking on these funny Japanese erasers with pictures of hamsters dressed up. Or maybe the crowning glory was Fiamma writing Happy Valentine's, Love Fiamma in 18 cards. She's getting so big. She can write! Hallelujah. That project finished...phew... on to the skirt.


I made Fiamma a Valentine's skirt. I used an old pattern I bought at ThriftTown for .29 cents.
Here's some detail of the skirt:

Of Furniture & Children

We used to have three desks, and two couches in my relatively small living room/dining room. It was crowded.

One desk is a large dark wooden teacher's table with double drawers that I hauled from North Carolina back in 1989. It holds the computer and printer, and the drawers are filled with decades of junk. It is old and scratched up, stained and lovely.
The other desk is my grandmother's green sewing machine table that I rescued from the moving blankets in the shed with the idea that I would use it to learn to sew. It is piled with haphazardly organized piles of paper, and a wonderful hula girl lamp I gave my eldest son for his 14th or 15th birthday. I took it apart and actually using the original manual my grandmother carefully saved, I managed to sew two pillow cases.
Something is wrong with the tension though, and it needs to be serviced and the idea of unhooking it from its case and putting it in the car to go to a sewing machine repair shop just makes me freeze up. So I bought an inexpensive singer from Target one day, and that is the machine I now use.
The final desk is a 50s era find from across the street. The neighbor scored it somewhere and was going to eBay it or Craig's List it and I bought it quickly for 100$. I succumbed to it because each of its numerous drawers had organizational appeal. There are even two pull out boards at either side of its middle main drawer. The previous owner did sort of overdo it on the refinishing; it is shellacked to where it shines from across the room.

The couches? Well, when I moved in with T, my partner, way back when the two eldest boys were not even teenagers, he had a green leather couch that he had bought new. I took a sort of instant dislike to it. It was too bachelory, too modern, too pine green, too leathery. Too too. But as the years went by, I made my peace with it. It cleaned up easily, warmed up nicely and was easy enough to decorate around. Besides, it was all we had.
Over the years, it took a beating. The kids loved to play on it, hang from the back of it, and even jump on it. It had a few worn out holey spots in the leather, and the padding was gone, baby, gone. It was time for a new couch. I surfed Craig's List looking for a deal on a couch. Uh-oh.
I came across a used Crate and Barrel sectional couch in orange, and I was a goner. I fell in love with that couch. I was convinced that this was the couch of my dreams. It had a chaise lounge. It came up with pillows. And I was in love. I was sure that orange was the color I needed in my living room. All I had to do was convince T. That was not easy. But somehow I managed to get that couch in my life, in my living room. I was happy.

T was not. The sectionals pulled away when you sat on the couch; the set-up in our living room didn't lend itself to the direction the chaise lounge went in. T wanted to keep the green couch. We had a stand off, and that's how we ended up with both couches for months. 2 couches, and three desks. People teased us. It was crowded.

The orange couch was lovely. Lovely and problematic. It didn't really fit great in our living room, and it stained if you breathed on it. With a one year old and a 5 year old, this was NOT good. Eventually, months later, the green couch went out to the curb one day and was immediately grabbed by a passing car. (Yay. I love passing on furniture and used goods, and dread adding to the waste stream.) The stand off was over.

The orange couch continued to get a small stain here or there, near impossible to fix, as fixing it meant only that it got worse. I draped fabric over the couch but missed the orangeiness. I worried that I had made a mistake. I don't believe in stressing out over material things, and the couch was stressing me out. It wasn't a good match for a busy messy family that liked to eat in the living room.

Flash forward to now. Today. Yesterday. The two little kids at almost 6 and 19 months love taking off all the cushions and putting them on the floor and playing, on and off the couch. It's their new thing. I started to get uptight but then you know what? I realized that the couch is already "our" couch. It's got a patina of wear and tear, of dirt and stains, and it's okay to just let it be our family couch. Like our kitchen table is our kitchen table, scratched and colored on, washed off to the bare wood. Loved. Loved and used. And NOT to be stressed over.

I even helped them build a fort with it.

Birthday Girl

Here is the Birthday Girl posing as royalty.

Well. There's a new tradition at kids birthday parties around here of NOT opening the presents at the party. I think it's brilliant. No meltdowns, or jealousy, or overkill. Your presents, your way, in your own sweet time.
Want to open only one a day? Go for it.
So this said, I didn't get a chance to see how the little shoes went over at the birthday party. I did take my sil aside and tell her that if she preferred the ones Fifi had on, (the unadorned slippers)-- I would make a new pair, likewise if they were too small. I have another friend who offered to buy a pair so if the purple ones didn't please her Highness, the birthday Princess-- they already had a alternate home.
I just got a phone call from my sil. We were both in tears. She told me they were heirloom quality and she was blown away. Addie calls them : Purple Softness

Angel's Work

If idle hands beget the Devil's work...



I always meant this to be my spt, and craft blog. So I am finally back to blog here after abandoning it for 9 months.

Yesterday I finished the felted ballet slippers for Addie's 5th birthday. Addie is Fiamma's little cousin who lives in SF.


Birthday Ballet Slippers
Yarn: Cascade 220
Needles: Circular needles, Size 10, 16"
Pattern: Fiber Trends Felt Ballerina Slippers
Modifications: none
Notes: Careful with the felting. My first pair came out too small.
Started+Finished: Irrelevant because I set them down for forever. And then finally finished them under the birthday party deadline.