Oh the Cuteness!

My parents and sister came up to visit this past weekend. It was so nice to see them all and celebrate my dad's upcoming birthday. My sister brought up my belated Christmas gift, and it was most certainly worth the wait: She picked up sewing not too long ago and this is one of the first handbags she's ever sewn! Ho-ly-crap! I love it so very very much. I hardly ever get to see sis, and the fact that she somehow knew I've been obsessed with a red/white color pallete lately just shows how awesome she is! Best big sister ever! I love the little details; the pleats, buttons, lining, and those too-adorable handles. This is my new favorite purse. Speaking of awesome handbags by new sewers, my friend Jill has been working on a couple super-duper cute ones over at The Curious Bee as well. I adore the green flowery one!  So, amidst all this handbag inspiration flying at me, I created my own sweet little number one sleepless night this week: I was out and about looking to buy a cold...

Dennis and I celebrated our one year anniversary on March 10th and I've been wanting to show our presents to eachother. Since Valentine's day was so recently and we're both really broke right now, we decided to just do a small meaningful gift and go out to dinner. Dennis made me a pair of fingerless gloves!  Too super freakin awesome! I squealed when I opened the box. He's been collecting old t-shirts and sewing gloves from them for a while now, and when I was going thru my closet for shirts to give him I happened upon my much-loved yet too-small pegasus shirt from Urban Outfitters. I told him that I wanted a pair made from it and he delivered! Ugh, I love them so darn much!  For my gift to him, I know he loves the slideshows I used to do of my self portraits on flickr, so I made a slideshow of all the pictures we have ever taken of eachother with a song that has always reminded me of him, and I put it on YouTube for all the world to see. You can watch it if you like, b...

Well, I was just over on Amazon listing a few books I've been meaning to sell and when I was done I went hunting for new things to put on my wishlist. I don't know if I'm the last one to hear about this, but I just realized that there will soon be English versions of a couple of my favorite Japanese craft books coming out next month! They're coming out under a group called (Make Good: Crafts + Life). I am so ridiculously excited, especially for this one : Japanese crochet books are always a great resource for me because the crochet symbols are universal and easy to follow. But the few sewing books I have are usually for inspiration only, because while I can read the measurements and follow the diagrams to a point, the finer pattern details and techniques are completely lost on me. I can't wait to get my hands on these books, and I sure hope they come out with many more of my favorites!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Dennis and I will be watching Irish movies and eating corned beef and cabbage. How about you? Anywho, the real reason for this post is that the apartment below us is vacant! Ghasp! Here's the Craigslist ad our landlord has posted: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/apa/1072557557.html I'm writing about this on here because Angela and I would love it so much if we could encourage some cool people to move in downstairs. For some reason the neighbor below us and the neighbor across from us were continuously fighting about lord knows what, but since we could hear them sometimes I gathered that it was a typically Oakland-style fight concerning baby-daddies and money. Yes, I am serious. We love our neighbor across the way and are very glad the one downstairs has moved on as she was not very friendly. If you're looking for a nice apartment with amenities, a great landlord, and neighbors who are friendly then look no further! Angela and I would love it if ...

Lately I have been absolutely captivated by all manner of Steampunk-y goodness.This necklace was made by Etsy seller Bionic Unicorn . For those of you that don't know, steampunk is a kind of retro-futurism wherein there is a fantasy world where today's digital technologies are run by analogue components. Clockwork computers, steam powered superfast cars, etc. Just imagine the Victorian days with lots and lots of technology that's all run by gears and steam. I find it fascinating and have spent the last few days sifting through all the websites on the subject I can find. My favorite find and by far the thing that started this new obsession is this steampunk'd computer (especially the keyboard) from The Steampunk Workshop . Recently, I also had the opportunity to go to Rakkasah, a large bellydancing festival in Vallejo. I bellydanced all through highschool so this was not a completely random outing. But when I got there, amongst all the usual vendors, I found some amazing...

It seems like every day I don't make something is a wasted day. I feel so much happier when I know I'm being productive and getting things done, even if it's something small like making dinner. Dennis and I had a lovely evening a few weeks ago when we decided to stay home and be creative. He wanted to make a knitting needle case, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show him how to use the sewing machine. So we spent some time thinking about the construction and ended up basing it on the case that came with my Klutz knitting kit, pretty much a long 3 by 3 inch rectangle. He cut out the pattern pieces from an old piece of wool suiting I had in my stash, then he cut the lining from a cool skull and crossbones material. For Christmas I had made him one of those classic mason jar sewing kits, and I used this same fabric to make the pincusion on the lid. Now he has a complete set! He snagged some buttons from my stash as well to make it look like the fabric was from an...

Another project is done and crossed off the massive to-do list! And even better, this one didn't sit around in pieces for a year and a half! I found this amazing fabric over at Superbuzzy . I was a bad girl and I went on there when I saw they were having some things on clearance. I had a cart full of stuff picked out but in the end I narrowed it down to this one amazing mushroom print. It's very light weight cotton 2-layer gauze and it was on sale for 30% off. I bought three yards knowing I had to make at least one skirt and a billion other little things from it. So here is the finished skirt, and guess what? It's the first piece of non-costume clothing I have ever made! To make it, I cut 1 1/2 yards of the mushroom fabric and the super soft blue gingham I used for the lining, trimmed it to the length I wanted and hemmed the bottom edge. I used a basting stitch to lightly gather the fabric at the waist until it fit me right, then I covered it with a light pink vintage seam ...