belle epoque

two steps back! That is how it is with a baby, apparently, and after a few good days, poor HMB has been sick for nearly a week. However, before she got sick, I took all of the wonderful crafty mom advice and managed to cadge a minute here and there to complete something crafty (yes, there was a day or two with no shower but hey, priorities). Without further ado, my first sewing project with my beautiful new sewing machine! Meet Delilah

I made her using Emily Martin’s pattern on MSL.com. It was super easy and soothing- a perfect project for a sleep deprived person with 2 minutes here and there for crafting. Also appreciated by the person who’s wreaking all the havoc around here:

Despite the photo, she’s actually not so into dolls right now. But we had a six-month-old visitor who wiggled with all her might to get her hands on Delilah, so I imagine in a few months miss S may be interested too!

I’m still here, and crafting! Even uploading pictures and stuff, just not posting it all on the blog, mainly because I’m increasingly waddly and sleepy, and concentrating on getting my mess cleaned up and somewhat organized before the wee girl arrives next month.

I’ve been terribly belated in saying something about the truly amazing baby shower my friends threw for me here in San Francisco. I was just blown away, and could go on and on about how wonderful and generous they ALL were. But because this is primarily a craft blog, I’ll show you the crafty bits– mainly some ridiculously beautiful gifts from talented Etsy sellers that make lovely baby things. I am sure I’ll be going back to them once the wee girly arrives!

We had to pass these booties around so everyone could stroke them. They are so sweet and soft I wish they came in my size. Camilla, who was one of the amazing co-hostesses of the party, got these for me after reading about them on Bloesem. They are by Winkel and are a delicious baby gift. I can’t wait to put tiny feet in them!

And my friend Shelly went beautifully overboard in her crafty gift giving too! First of all, she makes the most INCREDIBLE baby blankets– I’ve never seen anything like them, and, again, I wish they came big enough for me. Though it probably is better they don’t because I’d never come out from under them. I told her the theme of the baby’s room (pink, brown, green and birds), and she made a custom satin blanket to match, as well as giving us a trio of wonderful flannel receiving/swaddling blankets

As a member of Etsy Kids and Etsy Moms, she also came across a slew of fantastic etsy sellers who make darling things for babies, like

This outfit from dilly bop designs

Wonderful baby shoes from diddle dumpling, a sweet Waldorf doll from the little nest and a puzzle ball, whose label I lost (chime in if you made it!). And…

A beautiful squishy soft block from hoobaleedoos

I’m not posting all this *just* to show off my awesome loot, but also to give you the scoop on a bunch of great crafty baby gifts and etsy sellers! I don’t know how it is where you are or at your age, but it seems like Moondoggie and I are in the midst of a baby boom here in San Francisco, so it is always great to find unique baby gift sources. On that note, we had the honor of going to the bris of a new baby in our circle. Of course on such an important day, he needed a gift.

Yes, I really, really love the Wee Elephant pattern in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. This one is made in the tiniest baby-wale corderoy I’ve ever seen. It is so incredibly soft, I think this is my favorite one yet.

I’ll be hanging out with my friend Lauren today, on the first Western stop of her book tour for The Seduction of the Crimson Rose. If you want to meet her too, she will be at M is for Mystery in San Mateo tonight at 7pm! She’ll also be in Houston, Dallas, Nashville and New Haven, CT this week, so check out her site for dates, times and bookstores. Her whole series is romantic, adventure-filled, funny and eminently entertaining. Even if I hadn’t been friends with her since we were 5, I would recommend her books to you wholeheartedly.

I put the button on my sidebar but never mentioned that I’m participating in the very gentle Creative Every Day challenge this year. Yes, I realise I’m having a baby in two months (give or take), which will very likely put a cramp in being super duper productive in terms of quantity of projects, but the guidelines of the challenge are kind. Yesterday I came up with a new breakfast:

Plain yogurt with dark sweet cherries (my new favorite frozen fruit) from Trader Joe’s, and figured that was my creativity for the day (according to the challenge, culinary creativity totally counts. i also made risotto). But Susan reminded me that I was slated to submit a tiny softie pattern to CROQ Zine, and thus out of excitement and renewed crafty inspiration was born Petey:

A pattern for his tinyness will appear in the February issue, so grab a copy when they go on sale (if I find out when, I’ll remind you, don’t worry)! I’ve already drawn up the pattern and how-to, and it is in Susan’s hands, so unlike some of my tutorial promises (I promise, I’m still working on them), this one is for reals– even if for some reason it doesn’t end up in CROQ, it is already all written and photographed so I shall post it up here lickety split, pinkie swear.

It has been a wet and blustery couple of days in San Francisco, inspiring lots of snuggling in and reading books and making warm, hearty meals. But today the sun has made an appearance, so I am coming out of my cave to show you what I’ve been making:

A flock of frocks from Alicia’s pattern in the book Softies. They are gifts for some lovely people I know, and I can’t tell you more than that without ruining it for the recipients who read this blog! I think these two are my favorites frocks:

Now, you are probably also noticing the FABULOUS fabric behind the little flock. Well, the kindness of bloggers never ceases to thrill me– you may remember that I got a square of that loveliness in Alicia’s Santa Lucia Doll Kit, and promptly became obsessed with finding more. I visited many Joann’s and despaired, but the lovely Jen saw my plea in the Santa Lucia Doll Flickr Pool and got in touch to say she too had been so enamored of that fabric that she bought bolts of it and was willing to send me 1/2 yard of her remaining stash! Isn’t that so generous? Thank you so much Jen! I vow that it will be used for good.

Also in the picture above is a book I’ve been coveting for ages, after reading many glowing blog reviews– Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros. I was planning to use a nice Christmas gift certificate to Barnes & Noble to buy it, but on a chance trip into Anthropologie found it on the sale table for half off! Yes! $15 for that gorgeous, fat, colorful, inspiring book. I made the beef stew from it for dinner last night, though skeptical that something with so few ingredients could have much flavor. I was SO WRONG, it was DELICIOUS, basically just as written. I have always wanted a go-to beef stew recipe and now I have one! If you try it– instead of thyme I used a bay leaf, and I threw in a chopped sweet potato just because I had it in the root veggie bin.

Now I’m going to go out and soak up the battery-charging rays of winter sunlight!

First the pig:

Despite everything else I have to do before Friday, I just *had* to make one of these pigs on wheels from the lovely free pattern over at Wee Wonderfuls . As a child, one of my favorite Christmas ornaments was a wheeled cow, so it seems appropriate we have a wheeled farm animal for our tree too.

And now for the publicity!
1. The wonderful Susan, wrote up a very kind review and mini-interview about my book on the Adorn blog. My very nice publisher has sent Adorn copies to give away to five commenters, so if you’d like to be in the running for one, pop over there and comment. If you’re coming from there, welcome and thanks for visiting! Thanks also to the CRAFT blog for mentioning the post too!

2. I will be teaching a sewing demo at Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco this Saturday!
Saturday, December 15
12:30-1:30
Click here for more information and to reserve a spot (no stress about that, though–as there aren’t materials involved, really as long as you can fit in the room you can come). I hope to see you there!

p.s. If you can’t make it, I’ll be posting a pattern and tutorial here early next week so don’t worry.

I’ve been busily packaging up the holiday orders from the shop (thank you to my lovely buyers!),

making presents to mail to family far away, like my lovely aunt (who doesn’t read this blog)

and seeing pink elephants!

That wee elephant, from Hillary Lang’s pattern in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, is a birthday present for a little lady I know who is turning 2 years old shortly. I used a piece of glazed cotton that originally came from a shower curtain my mother made years ago. I like using home decor fabric for softies and other unexpected things (like jackets or skirts), and I feel like this petite pachiderm belongs in a wisteria-festooned gazebo at a garden party!

I’ve been wanting to make a Waldorf-style doll for awhile now. I find their sweet, simple faces and squishable bodies so dear. It seems that the online Waldorf supply stores have the nicest selections of 100% wool felt, roving, batting and stuffing at the best prices too (not that I’ve bought any, I’m trying to use up the not-quite-100%-natural supplies I have before I’m allowed to get more). At any rate, today I finally jumped in!

I couldn’t find a nice peachy-colored cotton interlock, so I had to go with white, but I used my fabric pastels to make pink cheeks:

It took longer than I expected to make, and as many of the tutorials online make clear, the hair is the trickiest part (explaining why mine is wearing a hat and has embroidery thread hair rather than loopy yarn curls). I can’t point you to a specific tutorial, as I used bits from a bunch of different ones, but there’s lots of inspiration at the Flickr Steiner Dolls set. It was fun and I see many rag dolls in my future! Or at least one or two more…

I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’ve been busy over here, I swear. If you have reason to believe you are on my holiday list, this would be the time of year you might want to develop instant amnesia after looking at my blog, ’cause if I don’t blog about gifts I’m making, there isn’t much to say.

So in the past week I’ve been:

*Decorating my crafty space little by little. Above you can see some amazing glittery lotus “christmas tree” lights that will be a year-round phenomenon, cleverly hanging from hooks that perch on the picture rail (no nails, yay!).

*Cooking healthy, baking whole grain no-knead bread (I’m just going to start kneading, because the quicker no-knead breads I’ve made remind me of just not-sweet banana bread), and yummy grilled garlic chicken with steamed broccoli (not pictured: my HUGE baked yam, which needed its own side plate).

*Designing another softie! I know I promised you a pattern for the giraffe awhile ago, but I haven’t finished fooling with that one. This one came out cute enough to suit me on the first go, so if my scanner works properly, I hope to have a pattern and tutorial for this little guy up before the end of the week. I had fun doing a photo shoot with Ned Nutkin and my absolute favorite Caffarel chocolates. I buy them at Miette Confiserie and keep them in their little mushroom jar. I eat only one at a time, on days when I feel I’ve been a particularly good girl.

This is Gina the giraffe, my first attempt at designing a softie of my own! I really like giraffes and have seen a lot of cute stuffed ones, but no patterns that made me take notice. So I broke out the arts section of last week’s newspaper and started drawing and figuring. I’m going to tweak the pattern a little to make the face less camel-like, and make it stand up on its legs instead of resting on its tush. Once I get it the way I like it, I’ll PDF the pattern and write up a little tutorial for any of you who’d like to make a Gina (or Gino) of your own! It will be up either here or over at getcrafty, so stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it is up.

Hope you’re all happily recovering from Halloween sugar shock today!

Ok, I know I’m all over the place with when I post about things I like, but here goes:
*Oswald, the Purl Frog

I found a remnant of the softest green furry fabric at Joanns that needed to be a frog. He’s stuffed with lentils and has a cookie monster quality I love. This is an easy, totally addictive and cute softie pattern, and I want to make one for every baby I know. Just have to figure out a good alternative to beads for the eyes, since they are very definitely not babyproof.
*This awesome card I got in the mail from Camilla, who designed and letterpressed it herself! The ink is actually a lovely dark moss green, I just didn’t take as good a photo as the card deserves:

*The latest issues of Blueprint and Marie Claire Idees, whee! Still waiting for the latest Adorn.

*My Fiskars scissor sharpener

This is my new favorite crafty tool. I will admit to having bought new fabric scissors because my old ones got dull, but no more. This thing is amazing! It even perfectly sharpened my shears from the dollar store!
*The handmade pledge, enough said.
*Biscotti!

The recipe:
1 stick butter
3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 T vanilla extract
3.5 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
Heat oven to 350
Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, then add the eggs, sugar and vanilla, mixing well. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the bowl until a soft dough forms. Knead the dough lightly on a floured surface, then divide into two pieces. Shape each into a log about 10″ long by 2″ wide and place them, well-spaced, on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper (you can also just grease the baking sheet). The bottoms will flatten out, which is fine. Bake for 35 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow them to cool for a few minutes. Once they’re not painful to touch, use a sharp knife to slice the logs into about 1″ slices, then turn each slice on a cut side and return to the oven for 8 minutes. Take the baking sheet out of the oven, turn each cookie and bake for another 8 minutes. Voila! Biscotti. They are quite plain and nice with coffee. I think they’d also be great with toasted nuts in them, or with less vanilla and a bit of almond extract, and also if you dipped one side in melted chocolate.
*Last and very definitely not least: tomorrow’s crafty segment on The CBS Early Show! The show runs at different times in different regions, so click here to find out when it will be in yours. It will be on at 7:45 Eastern live in NYC, which is 45 minutes into the first hour of the show. Pssst…the person modeling my costume is actually my niece, so be sure to tune in!