belle epoque

There’s a lot to like, so I’ll get right to it.

*The CRAFT magazine blog! Joining the amazing Natalie and CRAFT blogging team is the outrageously cool Jenny (and I’m sure equally neat Becky Stern, who I haven’t had the good fortune to meet personally but whose posts I’m enjoying)! I can hardly keep up with the awesomeness over there. And I’m ridiculously honored that the tie top tank tutorial was their pattern pdfcast on Friday. Thanks guys!
*Wilhelmina, the sleepy snail

from the Wee Wonderfuls hand sewing for fun pattern card. I accidentally sewed on her little mask upside down, but I still like her.
*Linda’s beautiful crocheted earrings.
*Flight of the Conchords- Thanks to HBO on demand I was able to have a little marathon last night. The show is quirky and hilarious, but it is really the silly songs that kept me coming back for more. My favorites being the Rhymenocerous vs Hiphopopotamus, Inner City Pressure, Robot, foux de fa fa and…oh, I’ll stop listing them now. Anyway, it is very funny if you like that sort of thing (think The Vacant Lot, the State, and maybe The Kids in the Hall, but not sketch comedy), which of course I do. If you don’t have HBO, you can watch videos of all the songs on the site and surely it will come out on DVD once the season is over.
*Time on an airplane for more tiny onesie projects for friends:

A guitar from The Stitch-it Kit, ’cause babies rock.
*Spending the weekend in Madison, WI! We had some good advice about what to do in our brief hours there (for a wedding, which was also lovely), and we packed it all in:
The Dane County Farmer’s Market (yay! local apples!)

A walk by the lake

A brat(wurst) at the Union

A little walk in the woods- there had been a lot of rain before we arrived, so there was magic everywhere

After stitching up that little snail, I’m more confident of my hand sewing abilities, and have a hankering to try another handmade softie. There are still some muslin bits in the studio that remain unpacked, so if I have time I may start on a Purl Rabbit soon.

Yay!  I can show you the baby stuff I made last week now that the adorable mother-to-be has seen it. Embellishing onesies with fabric applique? SO cute and fun.

And because I’m an outfit kind of girl, I made two wee onesie & trouser sets for various adventures like surfing and sailing.

If you like to sew and know any small people (or people having them), get yourself some baby patterns and go nuts, it is seriously so much fun and so satisfying to make wee tiny things! Plus you don’t need to commit to huge amounts of fabric, and you can use favorite scraps for appliques. There was also an arts and crafts portion of the shower (a hostess after my own heart!) where everyone made sweet wooden picture frames and onesies embellished with fabric paint-pens. An extra pack of slightly larger onesies escaped decoration somehow, so I got ahold of them for further onesie madness chez belle epoque. Hooray!

I always enjoy L.A., even though almost all of my trips have been super short (hardly ever more than 2 nights). Typically I am with nice people who drive me around and take me places so I don’t stress out about the traffic and figuring out where I’m going. For this trip, Camilla printed out a very efficient and excellent list of places to visit and how to get there (she’s awesome), so I got to trail along with her and look at pretty things. I’ll let her write about the highlights as far as shops were concerned, since she did all of the research.

One thing I will recommend, though, is going for Persian food at Shaherzad. Oh my gosh, it was AMAZING. The mother-to-be had been telling us about this restaurant for years, and it lived up to every mouth-watering word. Yum.

Before I get back to work, I want to say how thrilled I am to see how you guys are using the tutorials! If you’ve made something and haven’t posted it to the Flickr group yet, please do. Thank you, and GREAT job, to Rebecca, Laura, Carmen and Joyce, who have shared their creations over there- they are very inspiring.